Realpolitik CIV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Danke. I've been missing you guys. You're like a family to me if by family I mean bitter political rivals."

—Sonereal

"BANGS. HEAD. ON. DESK. .... REPEATEDLY."

—Whosit

REEAAALLPPOOOLLLIITIIKKK!!!

Realpolitik is a forum game played on civfanatics.com based on the Paradoxplaza Realpolitik series. A Realpolitik is where the Game Master plays a turn-by-turn strategy game (in this example Civilization IV). The players role play as immortal politicians living in a democracy who want to become rulers of the said nation. An election would take place every turn set, where player characters (and sometimes non-player characters) would vote on who should rule the nation for the next turnset. Each player was awarded two votes to put into parties created by themselves or other players - with one catch: only one vote per party. Parties were thus encouraged to band together in "Coalitions" to unite voters. Some of the elections got quite vicious. After the second turnset, there would be another election. Elections were entirely thread-based affairs, taking about a week.

The first one was created by Lighthearter (LH) who was the Game Master of it as well. It was played as the nation of England and went for about a year. Eventually, LH got tired of taking an hour to play each turnset and declared the game over, writing an epilogue that neatly wrapped up all storylines. After a brief stint of utter confusion LH resigned indefinitely as a Realpolitik GM, only to realize that what he thought had happened had happened but hadn't happened, even though it happened.

There was a brief Beta that Lighthearter hosted as well. This introduced new rules such as NPC voting. These rules were refined for Realpolitik II: Dark Storm Rising. It began in March of 2011, and ran through early July. It had its fair share of challenges and difficulties, and there has been a reboot in Realpolitik III: Dark of the North. It included a lot of elements from the game genre of Action Chatroom and changed the setting from immortal politicians to LOTR style wraiths, who were the bad guys in Realpolitik II. Eventually, this became inactive as well.

LH's current[when?] game is 'Star of the Shogun' in which the players are running Japan. A lot of the rules have been refined for this one, allowing the players more freedom with their options as politicians.

Tropes used in Realpolitik CIV include:
  • Action Girl: NPC Anna.
    • RP3 seems filled with them. Nepthirna, Nadia, Laiin, Agente, Esther - not all have appeared, but they've been confirmed by the GM as Heroes of the Light for the players to oppose.
  • Actual Pacifist: West India Man.
  • Anyone Can Die: Including a player who was killed off for treason.
    • Arya during the Battle of Sidon.
  • Awesome McCoolname: Magnive, who began calling himself "Gaius Magnivius Caesar", upon becoming the steward of Rome.
  • Badass Normal: Ravus_Sol's Monks in Black.
  • Badass Princess: Catherine.
  • Bittersweet Ending: The Epilogue has left many players sad that the game didn't continue - and that England doesn't rule the entire globe.
  • Cold War: England against Tsarist Russia and Vikingdom.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Nadia, torturing Catherine for fun.
  • Completely Missing the Point: Given that we're dealing with radical political beliefs(on all ends of the isle) is it really surprising?
    • Arya complaining about how England's people were better educated then to rise up against their government if it exterminated all the Irish and resettled because they were . . . uppity.
  • Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The final installment of the Ukraine narrative.

Catherine: You saved my life. Twice. I just . . . I guess I never said thank you.
Athers: And you'll never need to.

    • In RP2, when LH was starting to feel it had failed, heard about a new patch coming out that allowed hotseat(and thus his Civil War mechanic) and asked the playerbase if they wanted to restart after the patch and leave this game in the dust.

DT: I'm of the opinion that, having got this far with RP2, we might as well Continue. It's not like we were using those anyway.
Sparthage: My vote is for Continue as well. I will refrain from calling an Armed Revolution until the patch comes out.
Hoplitejoe, Southernking, Redspy, Nonevah, Princeof Persia, Ninjacow, Tambien: Continue
Chimera1804: ...I'd vote but there doesn't seem to be much point.

  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Ravus_Sol guessing Ilduce349's entire plan with no information and proceeding to not only call him out on it, but fool LH into thinking he'd found out for real.
    • Athers and Arya taking out two pirate ships at the same time in the Ukraine narrative.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: Half of what occurs in the chatroom for the game, as evidenced by this conversation on foreign leaders(before Catherine was introduced as a character):

Ravus: That would make Catherine Caesar's daughter then . . . .
Lighthearter: Cathy's not the leader of Russia.
Ravus: Really?
Lighthearter: That makes PETER Caesar's daughter!

    • Red Spy using an explosion spell against a barrel of pancakes.
  • Dark Action Girl: Nadia Amanova, leader of the Ukrainian Resistance.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Everyone, but LH, Nuke and Ravus deserve special mention.
  • Didn't See That Coming: Political backstabbings and backroom dealing.
  • Dirty Communists: The IngSc party. Specifically Mechaerik and Aysee. Also, Britain in general upon the adoption of State Property.
  • Damsel in Distress: Catherine, captured by Ukrainian forces in Pripyat.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Dem Taqat: ‘We need: sacrifices, darkblade, sacrifices, dead good guys, sacrifices, power, sacrifices, the dark lords aid, sacrifices, to break up the alliance, sacrifices, wraith unity..... did i mention sacrifices? We need them as well.’
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: Only the special forces of the nations are generally characterized.
  • Everything's Better with Princesses: Catherine. My God, Cathy.
  • Evil Brit: (Almost)Everyone (except Fargle) at various times IC. DT and Captain Fargle OOC.
  • Expy: The Night Eagles to the British Special Air Services (SAS).
  • Gambit Pileup: Repeatedly, but then again, it is a game about politics.
  • General Ripper: Arya on Ireland.
  • Genre Blindness: Experienced by all at times.
  • Genre Savvy: Athers, Cathy, Anna, and most of the politicians at various times.
  • GMPC: Captain Athers.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Most every player-written narrative.
  • Grey and Gray Morality: All over the place.
  • Memetic Badass: Ravus_Sol
  • Insane Troll Logic: Ilduce's plans to kidnap Catherine from her kidnappers and then marry her.
  • La Résistance: The KRF(Khan's Resistance Front) in Ireland. OH MY GOD.
  • Running Gag: I CAST SUMMON LH/RAVUS/DT/ARYA/NUKE!
  • Obviously Evil: "The figure has no hair, and neither any nose. Instead, he has twin slits on his face in an inverted V, and small red eyes. He stands eight feet tall and you feel an aura of power and disdain emanating from him."
  • One-Man Army: Captain Athers, the NPC commander of the Night Eagles.
    • Arguably, Arya at times.
  • Only Sane Man: Multiple.

“I – don’t – understand! WHY? Why did those oafs have to go with a full-scale execution instead of a quiet little thing where we get her out of the way!?! MORONS! The lot of ‘em! They deserved what happened!”

  • Rescue Romance: Catherine and Athers.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Lighthearter played in Realpolitik II: New World Order on Paradox Interactive's forums, and his experiences from there are what drove him into adding the rules against using a complaint generator and his harsher stance on wild oppositions.
  • Shout-Out: Once again, IngSoc.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Leans heavily cynical, despite the efforts of some politicians.
  • Strawman Political: Used frequently in the electoral bouts.
  • The British Empire: Obviously.
  • The Captain: Athers, captain of the Night Eagles
  • The Chessmaster: Ravus_Sol.
  • The Roman Empire: Defeated in the vicious Caesaerian War, but still present.
    • Makes a return in RP3 as one of the three members of the Dark Empire (which includes the Aztecs and Mongolia)
  • The Squad: The Night Eagles.
    • Players on Quests.
  • Tsarist Russia: Present and angry.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential
  • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Most of the plans developed by the players.
    • Sonereal's decoy plan started with faking a heart attack in the middle of a city so the other players can steal Dragonbane and ended with him wiping the entire city off the map with magic and nearly causing the underground tunnels in the mountain (where the others were) to collapse.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Invoked spectacularly by the other players upon learning of Nuke and LH's big argument at the end.
  • What the Hell, Player?: Invoked in almost every narrative in one way or another.
    • Also one of LH's signature moves in chat.
    • Notable example: During RP2 near the opening election, to Nuke and DT talking about plans to Arya - but stopping when Sonereal (a new opposing party member) appears.

“You've been telling your political secrets to an ASSASSIN-FOR-HIRE WORKING FOR RAVUS!”

  • What Were You Thinking?: Again, multiple.
    • Ilduce349's Ukraine plans
    • Arya's Irish plans.
    • LH's reaction to 65% of the player-made plots.
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