How to actually run Empassa: where the Gods rule

''There's no particular exertion needed now.  When he has the document asserting the defendant's innocence, guaranteed by a number of other judges, the judge can acquit you without any worries, and although there are still several formalities to be gone through there's no doubt that that's what he'll do as a favour to me and several other acquaintances.  You, however, walk out the court and you're free."  "So, then I'll be free," said K., hesitantly.  "That's right," said the painter, "but only apparently free or, to put it a better way, temporarily free, as the most junior judges, the ones I know, they don't have the right to give the final acquittal.  Only the highest judge can do that, in the court that's quite of reach for you, for me and for all of us.  We don't know how things look there and, incidentally, we don't want to know."

What is Empassa

Empassa is one of 20 city states that makes up my RPG-setting: Mankement. Each of these city-states is supposed to be weird, gameable and unique. The city of Empassa is a theocratic bureaucracy: the priests-rules or the city pride themselves on being the one place where the will of the Gods is absolute law. Everything a person wants to do requires the approval of the relevant God(s), even the most insignificant ones. This means two things: i) Empassa is constantly expanding as more and more Gods are discovered, this is called the Eternal Expansion, and ii) pleasing all of these Gods has become virtually impossible. Thus the result is an experience similiar to a religious version of Kafka's The Trial.

Why run Empassa?

Empassa is made to frustrate your players at every step; a bureaucratic nightmare where everything is convoluted and nothing makes intuitive sense. I am not a big fan of antagonistic GMing so why would I even want to do that? Well, I think bureaucracy makes for good OSR-Style challenges: The obvious answer will be dissatisfactory for some reason, so an alternative approach is required, there are a myriad of sollutions players can come up with and these sollutions do not require system mastery, specific classes or McGuffin-esque items or abilities. Still I think you should only run Empassa if it fulfills the right kind of function in your game. 

Settlement functions:

Settlements in RPGs have many different functions depending on the kind of game you are playing, the role they currently serve in your campaign and what your players are intersted in at the moment. 

With some help from the gretchlings on the Glog Getho OSR discord server and some further input from the FKR collective discord server I compiled the following functions that settlements can serve:

• Provide a place where players can have menial tasks done for their PCs
  
• Provide a place where players can get gear and supplies for their PCs
  
• Provide a place where players can get steered towards the core gameplay/adventure
• Provide a place where players can experience the core gameplay/adventure
• Provide a place where players can find answers to further the core gameplay/adventure
  
• Provide NPCs players can interact with and their PCs can form bonds with
• Provide players with alternative challenges
• Provide players with a place where their PCs are relatively safe from regular dangers
• Provide players with a place where they can mitigate the effects of their failures
• Express your setting by providing a contrast with different parts of your world. 

I would only run Empassa as the frustrating bureaucracy it is supposed to be if Empassa served as a main part of the game played. If you need a town to restock before going into the dungeon, or if you just want a place for your players to interact with NPCs, don't run Empassa like the bureaucratic nightmare it is. 

What could be a reason for PCs to want to visit Empassa in the first place? As it is the City of Gods, there is a tempel to every known God and even some unknown ones that even the priests have forgotten about. If you need information or a blessing from a particular God, you can get it in Empassa. In my world, Gods are anti-magic. An entire city dedicated to the Gods will probably know how to deal with weird magics, undo curses and store away particularly dangerous magics, so they won't be wreaking havoc in the outside world. 

Running Empassa

So how do you run Empassa? The easiest way is to run Bastion in Chris McDowell's amazing Electric Bastionland and add tempels and religion to everything.

Other than that here are:

Some principles to keep in mind when running Empassa:

• In Empassa, nothing happens unless the Gods will it so.

This is the entire premise of the city, but for it to work the Gods should not be able to make their will known directly. If they could, there would not be a bureaucracy of rituals and rites, but a squabbeling council.

• The Gods show their will by grating favor to those who follow their will.

It is probably best to make 'favor' in some way diegetic. I like the idea of Gods granting you temporary marks on objects or on your body to show you have their favor (and maybe also to show you when you have fallen in disfavor). This is because it makes it easy to imagine how this society would decide who has the favor of the Gods, as well as make it more gameable. PCs might. for example, forge the markings of favor to get stuff done. Workarounds such as these are necessary because:

• The official ways to get favor are never functional

 Anyone familiar with bureaucracy will know it doesn't really function well when stuff needs to get done quickely. Moreover, sometimes it is almost impossible to figure out what you have to do in the first place. In the worst cases, it is literally impossible to do what needs to be done due to bureaucratic impossibilities. Players will need to come up with alternative ways to get favor from the Gods if they want to get stuff done. Fortunately, Empassa is full of mystery cults who dedicate themselves to a single God, rival priests that would love to take each other down to further their religious/political carreers, and an entire black market dedicated to making Empassa navigable for either the right price or a future favor.

d6 bureaucratic frustrations

1. The rite you have to conduct has been deemed herretic. There is currently no permitted alternative.
2. The borrough you are in is out of the sacrificial tribute you are suppoed to use in the ritual.
3. What you want is impossible because of a bureaucratic circularity (you need X to do Y, you need Y to do X)
4. There is only one ritual that needs to be done for this to work. That ritual can't take place until the next blood moon on a harvest day (which is way too long from now).
5. A new God has been discovered/born and you need to honour them before you can proceed. Their tempel is in one of the districts that is still under construction.
6. No one can agree on which of the Gods involved you need to sacrifice to first. All sacrifice to these Gods is terminated until the matter is settled.
   

Principles to keep in mind when making Gods

• Gods can be particular, not just general

Don't be afraid to have Gods for every waterway, gate, street or bridge in Empassa or any of the landmarks in the surrounding area.

• Gods don't have to be unique

Many Gods, especially of the more particular kind, can overlap partially with other Gods. If you have a God of health, you can also have a God of childbearing, a God of bonesetting and a God of cough syrup administration.

• Every God should be both mundane and absurd
  

 If the Gods weren't mundane, why would people feel the need to worship them. If they aren't absurd, what is the fun in that? I have a God for the phases of the moon, that is also the God of the tides and the God of mentsruation. It makes loose sense to tie menstruation to tides and moonphases, but mostly it is just a fun addition and makes it memorable to my players. I try to do this for all of my Gods.