Imperial Bureaucracy

[Darth_Hilarious]

Now if only we could get rid of OUR senators that easily
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People keep telling me that I'm crazy. I keep telling them "No I'm not, I don't get a check".

Revenge is beneath me , but accidents DO happen .

[garhkal]

Well, i know one thing. If we ever DID have a zombie apocalypse, those in govt would be safe.. No brains there for the zombies to eat!
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[72Grabber]

[vanir]

But if you could play tricks on minds, influencing biochemical neurology through the Force...perhaps a take on quantum entanglement to assign a physical engine; then by means of this same engine one ought be able to play a trick on a dog, make him think you were a friend, or make him think his master was a foreigner and a threat. By the same mechanical engine, play a trick on a plant, make it wilt.

By the same engine, play a trick on a chair and some air and move it though the fluid dynamic functioning air around it, simply make some molecules assume a functionality based upon the premise that the chair is currently in another location. Using physics this would move the chair.

And that mind trick has become telekinesis. But of course, that is how the Force works. It's all just one thing, several aspects. Extreme focal extrapolation results in the powers.

[Mikael Hasselstein]

Alright alright alright...

Can we please return to the topic of the levels of the Imperial bureaucracy?

I'm still curious if there's some sort of standard for Grand Moffs. Are these first among equals with the Moffs, or are they above the Moffs in the chain of command - writing performance reviews, etc.?

Also, what is the scope of what a Grand Moff governs? Is an oversector/priority sector simply an important sector that needs more resources to govern effectively for the good of the empire, or is it a realm that includes a group of sectors.

Or, did the Emperor keep this expressly nebulous so that he could manipulate the whole shebang?

[vanir]

I do have a nice study by Dr Martin Kitchen on the bureacracy of the third reich (and a ton of others on the subject), whose celebrated assertion is that Hitler, an absolutist dictator ruled by imposing inherent disarray. His underlings spent so much time hopping from one leg to the other trying to each interpret his arbitary demands and arguing with each other there was never any opportunity to make any genuine challenge even through subversion, the classical manner.

I would propose Palpatine rules like this. Following Hitler's template then: ranks such as Grand Moff and Grand Admiral are like Grossadmiral, Reichsführer-SS, Reichsfeldmarschall, these are really political titles and pure concoctions in the military rank system, they simply don't exist per se, they are a badge of political authority which, under an absolutist dictatorship inherently means a military authority of a capacity similar to Imperial war councils and cabinet chiefs of staff (you don't tell the secretary of defence you don't recognize his military rank so get lost).

That would infer the actual ranking system of political-military authority among the sectors goes, in ascending order:
Garrison base and regional divisional commanders and Fleet commanders
Planetary Governers
Regional Moffs.

Then you have Grand Admiral, and Grand Moff but these are personal rank awards to specific individuals for the express purpose of accomplishing cooperative designs on behalf of the Emperor himself. So they outrank everyone, sort of. Kind of like being Palpatine's personal friend, who shows up in a military uniform with a rank authority superior to anyone else in the entire galactic region. It gets attention.

ie. I'd say the strict rank structure actually stops at Fleet Admiral and Regional Moff, but Palpatine invents new ranks at whimsy.

[CRMcNeill]

My read, based on the Imperial Sourcebook, is that Governors were responsible for individual planets or systems, while a Moff was the equivalent of a Sector Governor, with dozens or hundreds of planets. A Grand Moff was in command of multiple sectors, aka Oversectors or Regions. The term High Moff only comes into play in the post-ROTJ era, where warlords essentially made up grandiose titles for themselves.

As far as military rank, a Moff would also be the commander of his sector's Naval Sector Group and Sector Army, but in particularly active (violent) sectors, he would leave day-to-day command to military flag officers.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Barrataria]

Vanir, I like your comments.

For my money, I have always found the fact that Tarkin appears to have some pull over Vader to be intensely interesting, since after that scene you never see anyone but the Emperor do so again. Notwithstanding the same uniforms, my rationale for this is that the Moffs (or at least the Grand Moffs) are nobility formally outside the military chain of command but have extensive pull over the military forces assigned to their sector. Vader is also outside the military chain of command and not part of the nobility. This sort of tension makes for interesting storytelling dynamics, to say the least, and I've always wished we saw more of that in SW (but then again if the exposition of the Jedi in the prequels is what we would have seen, I guess we're better off speculating 25 years later on a nerd board )

[DougRed4]

I've always found that dynamic fascinating as well, Barrataria!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[atgxtg]

I think the reason for Tarkin's status over Vader is that Lucas probably didn't have Vader as the Emperor's right hand man, and second in command in the Empire. Even a low level officer questions Vader at one point in the film - and gets away with it. That "Holding her is dangerous" scene wouldn't have happened in ESB or ROTJ.



Even after the latter films, I suspect that Vader really didn't fit anywhere in the official command structure.

I think vanir has a good point with his Third Reich analogy. Palpatine did keep power in part by having his underlings fight amongst themselves, and I think it also helps to explain some of the mysteries about rank in the films.

Alos, it could very well be that since the Death Star was considered to be such a dominating weapon that Vader was placed "at Tarkin's command" specifically to keep Tarkin in line. Tarkin did have command of what was considered the most powerful and invincible weapon in the Empire's arsenal. It's quite possible that he could have used it on Coruscant to kill the Emperor. A bunch of bickering underlings and a "subservient" Vader, secretly acting as a watchdog, prevents that.

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

True, though was it the 501 who took Leia's ship?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[Barrataria]

[vanir]