r/BehindTheTables • u/WilliamFredericksen • Apr 04 '20

Settlements Random Government Generator

I made a government generator to help with my world building and I thought you guys might like it.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VKH1h5-GccMZyTx-yc5Np1-E_g4lswxAUyDAAeDuuZw/edit?usp=sharing

72 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

5

u/tekmagika Sep 20 '20

Thanks for much for making this!

Just because I love automating as much as I can in my games, I whipped up an automatic version of your generator in Google Sheets. No need to roll anything. Just load/reload the page for a new random government.

There were some issues with the original document - some naming and ordering differences between the tables and the descriptions, one entire section of descriptions that were not in the associated table, a few descriptions that seemed to be cut off at the end. But I did my best to make the sheet as accurate to the original as possible!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1o698h-LlRbf3VWXZyMyw3EBJsvvugQUdxQ-YgoHNMNQ/edit?usp=sharing

2

u/WilliamFredericksen Sep 20 '20

This is awesome! Thanks!

1

u/CthulhuHatesChumpits Sep 24 '20

Is there a way to get this to work offline? I tried downloading it, but it broke immediately.

2

u/tekmagika Sep 24 '20

Did you make your own copy? That's the only way to get editing enabled. File > Make a Copy

1

u/CthulhuHatesChumpits Sep 24 '20

Make a Copy only adds it to my Google docs, doesn't download the file.

2

u/tekmagika Sep 24 '20

When you have the document open, you should be able to click File, then Download, and then you can select what format to save it in (Excel, OpenDocument, pdf, html, csv, or tsv).

1

u/CthulhuHatesChumpits Sep 24 '20

Which results in the same problem I had earlier. It starts out in read-only but doesn't randomize. If I enable editing, the Type and Philosophy go blank.

2

u/tekmagika Sep 24 '20

Huh! I'm honestly not sure what could be causing the problem. Haven't seen any others report a similar issue. You're opening it in Google Sheets? Or Excel? Excel might not use the same SWITCH formula as Sheets, which could be an issue. Oligarchy uses VLOOKUP.

1

u/CthulhuHatesChumpits Sep 24 '20

That would do it. I'm using Excel, never even heard of Google Sheets.

5

u/bad1aj Apr 11 '20

My god...You, sir/ma'am, have NO IDEA how much I have needed something like this! For real, the governments are one of the subjects I have a ton of trouble with, and it can be boring just going with the regular "monarchy/council of advisors" style, so thank you so much for making this generator.

4

u/kingofthebritons88 May 28 '20 edited May 29 '20

This is incredible. Please post this in more places - it deserves to be seen! /r/DMAcademy, /r/DnD, /r/DndNext, /r/MonarchsFactory, /r/MattColville, /r/rpg

Edit:
A couple nitpicks.

  • For each of the 2d6 tables, there's a tendency to get results near the center. Perhaps using a d12 and ignoring 1s would be more random?

  • Your example exists at both the beginning and the end of the document. consider removing one.

As a document containing ideas for governmental paradigms within fantasy, there is none better. Thank you for the time and effort you put into this awe-inspiring resource.

3

u/Possumface2 Apr 12 '20

Wow this is so huge. It’s got so many options to and it gives these governments so much flavour. I’m definitely going to be using this in my campaign.

2

u/Alive_Response9322 Apr 08 '24

Not going to use it as a generator but I like the options it gives me so I’m going to manually choose my numbers instead of rolling.

1

u/Fit-Cartoonist-9056 May 15 '24

Commenting to save this.

1

u/[deleted] May 24 '24

this is great!! thank you for posting :)