Question: what is the procedure of this cloning thing? Is there some sort of "board of imperial purity"?

Question: how a conspiracy to overthrow such Emperor would work? How they would proceed? What are the goals? Would they want to replace the emperor with another one (on their design maybe? or usurp the throne?) Why? Who?

If the genetic engineering is ongoing, you might call it a "biocracy" or a "genocracy" (to make up butchered latin words). Genocratic Empire or Imperial Genocracy could work.

Nice ones.

But I wonder, maybe that's my impression, isn't "cracy" a form of collective government? Like Technocracy, Plutocracy, Theocracy (ruled by smart, fit, priests)? Does it fit a system where there is just one person in power?

I think you might be confusing kindness and selflessness.

A selfless ruler would always put the country first. This might mean that given the chance of defending the country from a grave threat or settling a personal grudge with a lesser threat he would choose the obviously sensible decision.

I see. Well, yes, but I think it's not a real issue. If you own an Empire you want it to thrive, you don't spend all the funds on luxuries, at least if you are smart. Plus, it's a non issue in a game, since the player is an avatar of selflessness by definition (the player is not doing it for fun, or to get revenge on some pixel characters, but to win the game).

we're not exactly your specific game community, which is what it seems like your treating us as.

On the contrary, I'm asking here because you are not my gaming community. I find it limiting to restrict onself to your players only, the mindset is too onesided then. A smaller chance to think outside the box. Especially, when the topic is so theorethical and broad.

Besides, I like to talk here about such things, it's fun :) Frequently, me needing it for the game is partially just an excuse :)

Just for the record, I enjoy these threads.

The game design subforum is so little trafficked that it's not like it's pushing out other threads anyway. A pity Wavinator isn't still around.

Just for the record, I enjoy these threads.The game design subforum is so little trafficked that it's not like it's pushing out other threads anyway. A pity Wavinator isn't still around.

Me too, it makes a change to be the ideas man and not have to worry about implementing the idea :)

Question: how a conspiracy to overthrow such Emperor would work? How they would proceed? What are the goals? Would they want to replace the emperor with another one (on their design maybe? or usurp the throne?) Why? Who?

OK, maybe like this (post your own/alter it/etc):

Who & why & how:

A) A group of powerful people (bureaucrats, a court faction) want to get rid of you and then put a puppet Emperor they could control. The plan is to get control of seats in the royal cloning council, then make you unalive and then forge a clone and put on the throne (actually replacing it by one of their own secretly bread for this purpose, they don't intend to use the legal cloning facility since it has too many checks and gene security mechanisms).

B) An alien plot to weaken the Empire. Overthrowing you is not absolutelly needed, any solution that makes the Empire weak is OK. So they would try to undermine your authority first and maybe replace you with an inferior Emperor clone that would bring even more disgrace and incompetence. Or just replace with a clone that is genetically altered to like their race and be submissive to them.

C) People that want a republic, they want to make an ideological change, damaging the whole idea of Imperial genocracy, then get rid of you and push for a new governemnt type. Sabotaging royal cloning facilities being an important tactic (so there is no choice but to revert to some other form of government after the old Emperor dies and there is no easy & fast way to replace him).

Tactics (shared):

- get control of the royal cloning facity OR destroy it OR alter it

- reduce the dignity of the Emperor OR ridicule the whole concept of Imperial genocracy

- sow dissent and disloyalty among courtiers/ministers (it always help with carrying on a treacherous plan, whatever that plan might be), possible bribes

- physically get rid of the Emperor (assassination), it should be the last step

That actually sounds good, that'dbe a story I'd sink my teeth in.

Well, is this all meant to be just pure lore for world buildings sake? or is any of this meant to be later reflected in design and mechanics?

BTW,

Don't get me wrong, I don't deny that these kinds of threads are interesting and worth wile, I just think having a team/ partner to work with would make some of these topics more rewarding for the OP to discuss and implement.

I love a purely intellectual discussion maybe more than most, and was content to just discuss on forums for years, but over time, I've realized that's trumped by actually operationalizing it.

Guess it might depend on where a person is on the scale of theoretical to hands on.

By all means, continue doing what you’re doing it seems to be working for you, I'm just used to trying to improve and tweak systems until they reach the optimum levels of efficiency & effectiveness.

I have thought of a society which got disappointed by the other government forms and decided to engineer the Emperor. They selected the best genes of their race and they cloned an Emperor to rule them all.

Genetically engineering an emperor isn't something that can be done by "society" as a whole. There must be a powerful organization that has the technological refinement and source material to produce a candidate (e.g the Tleilaxu in Dune) and a position of power or supremacy to impose him/her/it as the legitimate emperor; different factions would be expected to support their own emperors, even if they all agree on the basic premise of building a good ruler, and there might be severe civil wars.

When the emperor dies or retires, the problem returns. Is the emperor-making group permanently at the helm, avoiding disruptions with an easily installed new emperor? Or every succession causes a renewed conflict between factions (example: USA presidential elections)? Or it never happened yet because the first emperor is still ruling (example: humanity in Warhammer 40000)?

You could have mortal but very long-lived emperors that stress the self-preservation of the emperor-building system to the breaking point: where are, after a few centuries, the cloning facilities, the genetic engineers, the political support (in elections or other procedures that have not taken place for generations), etc.? The game could be about the emperor successfully organizing his succession and retirement in hard times.

The Pern novels by Anne McCaffrey are an excellent example of this subject; a planet struggles to maintain astronomy, various races of domesticated dragons, an idle paramilitary corps of telepathic dragonriders, and other expensive things that are only useful against alien critters who fall from the sky at intervals of several generations and are just about as terrible as an empire without his head, with coverage of how it went the first time (heroic emergency mode), how traditions and institutions were established, abandoned, revived and applied, and how great people made the difference.

In general, this system of making emperors is compatible with different government systems, possibly at the same time; true democracy if different candidates are offered for election and produced disinterestedly as a matter of duty and prestige, aristocracy if candidates are derived from the gene pool of certain families, rather corrupt oligarchy if candidates are expected, or engineered, to further the interests of their makers; if the emperor controls succession it would be a true autocratic monarchy; if there isn't much of an election it would be some kind of oligarchy or technocracy.

A custom made emperor candidate would, in most cases, avoid the internal struggles within factions that are usually implied in a normal election: no place for ambitious people who want to be emperor, no need to kill off everyone above yourself in a succession line, etc.

How about something more like his divine shadow in lexx?

The emperor is transferred from vessel to vessel surviving centuries or even millenia through a ritual of half technology and half evolution. The vessel has to be specially bred by genetic engineering (in lexx any suitable host would do at a push).

Perhaps the emperor consciousness blends equally with the host body like the trill in star trek rather than taking over completely like the goa'uld in stargate. This would make it critically important that the vessel is not rebellious or selfish and is the right mind to be blended.

Just some ideas to throw in there...

Genetically engineering an emperor isn't something that can be done by "society" as a whole. There must be a powerful organization that has the technological refinement and source material to produce a candidate (e.g the Tleilaxu in Dune) and a position of power or supremacy to impose him/her/it as the legitimate emperor; different factions would be expected to support their own emperors, even if they all agree on the basic premise of building a good ruler, and there might be severe civil wars.

When the emperor dies or retires, the problem returns. Is the emperor-making group permanently at the helm, avoiding disruptions with an easily installed new emperor? Or every succession causes a renewed conflict between factions (example: USA presidential elections)? Or it never happened yet because the first emperor is still ruling (example: humanity in Warhammer 40000)?

I think in the past they had some sort of republic but they found it flawed. Then they decided to got for an empire. But because there were many factions and no one trusted anyone they decided to go for a truly neutral Emperor. They cloned it from a wide selection of supreme genes (not some nobles genes, just genes of the whole race, further selected by some algorithm). This way they got a person at the top that had no prior obligations, no family, no old debts and favours to be repaid. Truly neutral ruler to who all the factions could agree.

As a bonus such person can be considered a superior human (enchancers, the best combination of genes to make the best intellect, aggressive prunning of inferior genes, boosted immunity system, resistance engineered at the very early stage). No mental illnes, idiots and the like which were plaguing monarchistic systems. A speciment truly designed to be an awesome ruler.

I agree with the infrastructure thing. They need an extensive royal cloning facilities.

a superior human

Hmm, eugenics. Sounds like wars would be fought over much less than a plan like this :)

I think in the past they had some sort of republic but they found it flawed. Then they decided to got for an empire. But because there were many factions and no one trusted anyone they decided to go for a truly neutral Emperor. They cloned it from a wide selection of supreme genes (not some nobles genes, just genes of the whole race, further selected by some algorithm). This way they got a person at the top that had no prior obligations, no family, no old debts and favours to be repaid. Truly neutral ruler to who all the factions could agree.
As a bonus such person can be considered a superior human (enchancers, the best combination of genes to make the best intellect, aggressive prunning of inferior genes, boosted immunity system, resistance engineered at the very early stage). No mental illnes, idiots and the like which were plaguing monarchistic systems. A speciment truly designed to be an awesome ruler.

I agree with the infrastructure thing. They need an extensive royal cloning facilities.

But there is no "they", only specific powers and factions.

If the old republic is so corrupt and weak that an empire seems a better option, how can distrustful factions agree on a "truly neutral Emperor"?

In the best case, some factions agree and support the emperor but many planets/systems/colonies where other factions are prevalent revolt, proclaiming some combination of independence and rejection of what they can well consider a coup.

And the best case scenario is unlikely: factions do not automatically erase themselves from existence only because of a new institution like an empire, and they'll try to influence and corrupt the empire.

The traditional way to found an empire is by superior power, possibly through peaceful means. For example, a "superior human" can rise to power by being, well, superior (and benevolent enough to gain popular support), crushing dangerous factions in the process; the emperor, rather than someone with a conflict of interest, can worry about being succeeded by his or her clones.

All it takes to have a superhuman emperor without unrealistic political dynamics is a spark of disinterested effort of a plausibly small scale, e.g. a single visionary scientist and a cloning vat, or even pure coincidence (example: Red Son, a recent "alternate universe" version of Superman where Kal-El lands on Earth at a different longitude and succeeds Stalin as the head of USSR).