Radical Ideology Generator

26 Jan, 2025

The Novarion Sector plays host to hundreds of cultures, intellectual traditions, and political movements. As the gulfs of space are bridged by starships brimming with foreign minds and new ideas, they crash, mix, and evolve. This process of exchange and transformation has produced many ideologies that are almost the same as those of Old Earth. These ideologies underpin governments, unite empires, and motivate popular movements of millions. They are time-tested, enduring into the future because of their common usefulness and their appeal across cultures and countries. In the process of spreading, they are hammered into simpler, more general forms, all the better to be taken up by the masses and elites alike.

However, there are plenty of other ideologies that grow twisted, strange, and beautiful under the light of alien suns. These radical ideologies are not widely held. They are fringe beliefs, at most capturing the minds of an orbital habitat or a city in their sway; sometimes their only adherent is an isolated iconoclast. However, as time wears on and the future grows ever uncertain, the dominant beliefs and the common worldviews begin to crumble. Into this vacuum step the radical ideologies, ready to seize the moment and become fringe no longer.

Generating a Radical Ideology

Ideologies are made up of Prefixes, Aspects, and Cores.¹

Determine whether the ideology has a prefix, and one or two aspects. There is a 50% chance the ideology has a prefix. There is a 50% chance the ideology has two aspects instead of one. Then, roll on the appropriate tables in order: (Prefix) Aspect (Aspect) Core.

When rolling for Aspects or Cores, roll a 1d50 (1d100 divided by 2, round up) or choose a subcategory and roll a 1d10. The more incongruous, the better.

Prefixes

The prefix in an ideology situates it in history and thought. It declares its dissent from what has come before or its allegiance to the past.

Aspects

The aspects of a radical ideology are what distinguish it from its more common, restrained brethren. Those who hold radical ideologies have often given them great thought; they seek the nuanced understanding of their ideology, distinguishing it from those who have given little thought to how the world works, or the way the Core of the ideology might be achieved.

Common

Personalized

Religious

Identity

Future

Cores

The core declares the focus and concern of the ideology. Different ideologies will view different aspects of life as their core, but all cores will declare a certain organization, a certain necessary order for their adherents. An ideology's adherents believe that when this core is implemented or achieved, it will bring about harmony, peace, salvation, material abundance, spiritual awakening, the completion of the Great Work, transcendence, and perhaps even the best of all possible worlds. For the adherents, at least.

Economy

Hierarchy

Tradition

Aesthetic

Esoterica

#novarion-sector #rpg #swn #worldbuilding