Flat Black: Status in the Imperial Service

[Agemegos]

Background

My long-running social-SF setting FLAT BLACK involves about a trillion human people living on about a thousand extra-solar planets within about 150 light-years of where Earth used to be. The colonies were many of them founded by religious separatists and assorted utopists — even, some of them, by ethnic separatists — and for some centuries between the destruction of Earth and the invention of FTL ships they developed chaotically: most have ended up very odd. In the time in which campaigns are set the colonies are back in contact, but interstellar travel is moderately expensive and rather slow, so tourist volumes are very small, and the social influences of colonies on one another are trifling. It is a mad kaleidoscope of bizarre societies, all disjoint from each other. High status in one society isn't really recognised in another, and when frequent travellers meet in orbital hotels and the passenger lounges of interstellar liners they adopt, temporarily, an affectation of the cosmopolitan equality of interstellar travellers that they usually don't — may not be able to — keep up when they return home. (This interstellar upper crust is stratified basically by class of accommodations shipboard, and migrants making a once-in-a-lifetime journey in bunkrooms are not considered members.)

In FLAT BLACK Space is ruled by a hideous chimaera of

1. a fabulously wealthy FTL monopoly called “the Eichberger Trust”;
2. a confederation of the colonies, called ”The Empire”, and mostly manifest as the Imperial Senate, which is at least as unsavoury as the UN General Assembly, and mercifully deadlocked; and
3. a ruthlessly philanthropic interstellar do-gooding organisation called ”the Imperial Service”, which is staffed substantially by scary fanatics, and with no sympathy for any goal other than preventing famines, plagues, and massacres — it feels especially responsible for those traceable to interstellar travel as their cause.

The upper crust of frequent flyers magnanimously include even the most junior officers of the Imperial Service as fellow-members of the interstellar aristocracy. Imperial servants do not return the consideration. They are blandly polite to the frequently flyers, or bluff and affable, but in private among themselves they call them “the demi-monde”, and think them contemptible.

When duty requires Imperial servants live on isolated postings in colonial communities, and when they do they cope as they must with ambient social circumstances — usually comporting themselves as high-status outsiders and sending their children to boarding schools in Imperial jurisdiction. Otherwise they gather in places where the Empire alone has jurisdiction — which is to say mostly in the Empire's extraterritorial enclaves on planets and in orbital habitats such as are its natural jurisdiction — and there they constitute a society of their own with its own characteristics and values.

The society of Imperial Direct Jurisdiction

The Empire's extraterritorial enclaves on inhabited worlds (granted for quasi-diplomatic use and spaceports), orbital habitats, and bases on asteroids and airless planets and moons partake of the nature of company towns. Almost all of their inhabitants are employees of the same employer, or the children or employees, or retired employees. The minor exceptions are merchants and service providers, creatives and so forth who have Imperial servants as their customers, clients, audience, neighbours etc. It is a society for which service to the Empire, or at least to the Imperial Mission through some organ of the Eichberger Trust, is a shared value.

It is also a society where most people live on salaries and allowances issued in kind; few by their own enterprise and none except technically the retired on the income of private wealth. The range of salaries is comparatively narrow (an admiral of the fleet on the eve of retirement is paid only about nine times what a midshipman on his prentice cruise gets), and although admirals get bigger quarters and fancier uniforms than middies the provision of free medical, dental, and psychiatric care, free air and water, free accommodations, free food and refectories, free sport & rec facilities, free food, board, and education for one's children under 18, free anti-aging treatment etc. must tend overall to make the range in costs-of-living rather narrow. There just isn't a lot of scope for conspicuous consumption, and Imperials are inclined to hold the wealthy in contempt rather than regard.

The society of IDJ is in fact characterised not by conspicuous consumption but by conspicuous service. The class of people with the lowest prestige are those who don't even have the basic decency to work for the Empire, such as performing artists, free-lance providers of personal services, free-lance content providers, and merchants vending comforts and luxuries. (Of course a personal reputation for furthering the Mission on your own initiative can cancel out the reaction penalties here. Famous authors of Empire-affirming journalism and fiction are not disdained.) The class of people with the highest prestige are those who do important work directly concerned with preventing war, plague, famine and massacre, especially if danger and privation are involved. The least-regarded occupations are routine functions in the bits of the Eichberger Trust that earn the money to keep the whole thing going and jobs in the Home Office that keeps IDJ habitable; work for the Colonial Office delivering health and development aid ranks next; dangerous service with the Navy, the Marines, and the Commission for Justice next; and the political direction of the Empire highest of all.

There is an element of social class to the whole thing, though it is slight compared with some societies and mobility is both easy and rapid. Imperial servants recruited from the colonies often feel that the natives of IDJ are looking down their noses at them, and that they are concentrated in low-prestige jobs in the Colonial Office assistance departments or in the enlisted ranks of the Navy. People whose families have a long history of naval service are proud of that tradition and tend to share a feeling of fellowship with others with similar traditions. Proudest among these are those whose family tradition of naval service goes back to the space navy of the Republic of Mayflower, who may sometimes say that their families were naval officers "when Tom Eichberger was a merchant with poor business ethics". And highest of all you have the IMperial Family, a set of a few hundred related people who have their children raised from childhood to rule, and who dominate appointments to the Imperial Council and Board of Trustees.

GURPS Status issues

So, how do I represent this all with GURPS Status?

IDJ is not one of those societies mentioned on B.26 in which Status is closely tied to Wealth, so there is no bonus to Status for Wealth. Nor is it one of the societies suggested on B.516 in which Status is capped by Wealth, or in which Wealth is capped by Status. There is basically no connection between Status and Wealth.

IDJ is not one of those societies in which [one form of] Rank replaces Status. It’s “first names in the Mess, except for the Colonel”, and the family of high and long lines of officers have Status without Rank.

I don't think that the bonus to Status for Ranks 2, 5, and 8 works well. In the first it produces odd and undesirable effects either in making low rank matter too much to families of high Status or in making ranks 2, 5, and 8 free. In the second place I think the increments fall in the wrong places: There ought to be a social step between Rank 2 (corporals and sergeants?) and Rank 3 (subalterns), and between Rank 6 (colonels and naval captains) and Rank 7.

[Agemegos]

The immediate issue is that I am running a campaign in which one player character is a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial Navy whose family name is “Eichberger, yes, that's right, Eichberger”: her grandmother was Chairman of the Imperial Council, her great-grandfather invented FTL, in one possible interpretation she and her brother are co-owners of the Eichberger Trust and all the Imperial Service’s stuff.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

The immediate issue is that I am running a campaign in which one player character is a lieutenant-commander in the Imperial Navy whose family name is “Eichberger, yes, that's right, Eichberger”: her grandmother was Chairman of the Imperial Council, her great-grandfather invented FTL, in one possible interpretation she and her brother are co-owners of the Eichberger Trust and all the Imperial Service’s stuff.

I have, for obvious reasons, been pondering this very question (and since my plans for this weekend exploded have had more time to do so). I think that IDJ is a society where Status is independent of all other traits. Tomi has Status 6 and Rank 4 and they are totally independent of each other.

[scc]

It would depend upon how to societies SEE each other and how they feel about each other. Rank/Status from societies that are based upon ones that existed on Earth will probably get a better reaction. People from Militant societies will probably be treated better then people from less militant societies (No one will want to risk ******* them off), but things could go bad over matters like slavery.

Societies that are based upon the same pattern or appear to be will get along fine (Knight equals Samurai)

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

[
So, how do I represent this all with GURPS Status?

Obviously you have no such thing as Status.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I have, for obvious reasons, been pondering this very question (and since my plans for this weekend exploded have had more time to do so). I think that IDJ is a society where Status is independent of all other traits. Tomi has Status 6 and Rank 4 and they are totally independent of each other.

I think that they might not be totally independent. Well, I think it's best to make them mechanically independent as, say, ST and HT are, because building the linkages into the rules seems un-Universal and not-4e-like, besides being hard to get right. But perhaps the Imperial Service has a feature that I suggested unsuccessfully during the Social Engineering playtest, that you can have Status without Rank and that gaining rank doesn't raise it, but that attaining certain ranks allows and requires you to buy Status up to corresponding minimums. Thus, if you are a Lee of Virginia (say) becoming a second lieutenant in the US Army doesn't increment your social standing, but if you are a Heinlein of Missouri and get commissioned ensign in the US Navy you have to drag your Status and cost-of-living up from "son of an impecunious feed-store clerk" to the requisite "officer and gentleman". In FLAT BLACK, correspondingly, if you are an Eichberger-yes-that's-right nothing short of becoming a full admiral or being co-opted to the Council is going to exalt your social standing any higher, whereas if you are a knife-wielding outcast from a street gang on Ekumenon and get commissioned as one of His Majesty's very junior officers you are going to find yourself welcome in Imperial officers' messes and addressing battalion commanders as "Gerald".

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Obviously you have no such thing as Status.

Perhaps I don't. I very often wonder whether any society has a feature that works like or produces the effects of GURPS Status.

How then ought I to represent the advantages of being the great-grand-daughter of Tom Eichberger, or one of the Lowells-who-were-keeping-peace-in-space-when-Eichberger-was-a-merchant-with-sketchy-business-ethics? Zero-point feature?

[scc]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Perhaps I don't. I very often wonder whether any society has a feature that works like or produces the effects of GURPS Status.

How then ought I to represent the advantages of being the great-grand-daughter of Tom Eichberger, or one of the Lowells-who-wear-keeping-peace-in-space-when-Eichberger-was-a-merchant-with-sketchy-business-ethics? Zero-point feature?

The first would be a feature because it's likely only granting a reaction bonus from those who both know and care, but the later is a Perk because it's going to be granting a +1 on reaction rolls

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by scc

The first would be a feature because it's likely only granting a reaction bonus from those who both know and care,

"Eichberger" is the most famous name in the setting. Tomitomo Eichberger invented FTL travel, became the richest person ever, and founded an interstellar empire. The income of his estate funds the interstellar government, including the navy, the marines, and the aid programs. Probably most people don't know the state of his family, but when an Imperial naval officer shows up with "Eichberger" on her name-plate most people would at least wonder.

Whereas only the Lowells themselves, the Aths, the Vomacts, the Medforth-Millses and a dozen other families know who the Lowells are.

It seems to me that the main effect of being one of these people, as of social status as I know it, is not that other people react "well" to you and you react badly to them, but that you have access to the wealthy, the powerful, and the influential. You can get in to the clubs and parties where they are, they will come when you invite them, you can get to them to request jobs and favours and introductions….

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I very often wonder whether any society has a feature that works like or produces the effects of GURPS Status.

GURPS Goblins ;)

Originally Posted by Agemegos

attaining certain ranks allows and requires you to buy Status up to corresponding minimums.

The other side of that is "What is required for you to buy up your Status?"

GURPS seems to think that by default that's a question of sustaining the CoL and lifestyle of higher Status, plus acquiring the behaviour and social restrictions of the new Status, plus maybe acquiring some appropriate Contacts or Allies. But that seems harder here: one may be expected to pay for it in the Imperial Service by taking on Duty.

For lots of societies being a member of the right families is a key to Status, and marrying into them thus becomes very important - I'd expect marrying into the Eichburger family to be an aim of millions of people in this setting.

There will certainly need to be a means of preventing people from simply changing their name to Eichburger - Norway, at least, has a law in the present day to prevent people changing their names to those of certain noble families.