How to make D&D more political?

I've been playing a fair amount of Rogue Trader (fantasy flight) and Lords of Waterdeep. I'm trying to figure out (for paragon) how to get the feel of political manoeuvring and influence over land while keeping away from 'money & management' type game.

Rogue trader allows for crazy elements of power (you have frigging space ships and infinite money) and tends to be more about personal goals. D&D seems to be quest orientated - go to x, kill, fetch or otherwise do something to item/person/monster Y return for reward Z.
Personal goals seem to be more of a 'backstory' type thing and seem to be relegated there.

Anyone else find this or have ideas to over come it? (Maybe I'm getting tired of DMing)

One idea: Check out the Story Hour sub-forum, initiated (if I understand correctly) by Piratecat. It includes stories (or is it merely links, now?) from his "Eversink" campaign, which was set in a reimagining of Venice, Italy (sinking into the Mediterranean); and the action was largely politics.

Take a look at the non-d20 Song of Ice and Fire game. The rules are totally different, but they can give ideas. I have a FATE DM who was also really good at this kind of stuff.

I played about three sessions of it. The DM gave up on it because the combat rules were ... weird. That's not an issue here. At least you'll be familiar with them.

All the PCs were sworn to the same house. That immediately solved problems like PCs having completely different goals.

Much like social skills in D&D, expect different PCs to step back from any "skill checks". We had a general who was frankly our greatest warrior but not all that bright. Needless to say, he stayed away from any and all intrigue checks, but participated in tactical discussions (in a metagame sense). Expect that. My own PC was the spymaster. He could fool people (actually, he was crazy good at it) but had no real fighting ability and couldn't lead troops either. (He had the equivalent of low Charisma but loads of Bluff. The end result was he only had one real social skill, but he was damn good at it. He was like a slightly less competent, slightly sneakier Littlefinger.)

How good? One time, our lands were infested with a particular band of pirates. (We rolled very low on law and order.) My PC put on a disguise (that was his other crazy skill) and infiltrated the band, using the excuse that he was a con artist pretending to be a merchant... He was nearly killed by the paranoid bandit leader, personally. (The bandit leader had good combat and leadership skills, but wasn't so good at intrigue.) I survived by scaring him with ghost stories.

Which brought up the next part of my plan. I had taken control of a small band of spies, and had them pretend to be ghosts. This was because said bandit leader had killed a priest and so I had something to work with there. Also because pretending to be a ghost was part of my character's forte, much to the DM's annoyance.

The bandits freaked out. Some of them sneaked out, while I had off-handedly mentioned to the bandit leader about knowing a priest. I made sure to talk him into admitting he'd killed that other priest in front of some of his men. Then I riled up the men, convincing them that only the leader's death would placate the ghosts. They killed him, the ghosts miraculously stopped the haunting, and that's how my PC talked someone to death

But note the downside. Other than pretending to be ghosts, the other PCs had nothing to do there. Alas, "don't split the party" is a rule that very quickly falls apart in a political campaign. I don't have good suggestions on how to avoid it, but you should be forewarned.

Have a wide variety of potential quests and tie the fortunes of different houses to if and how those adventures are handled. Include an obvious winner, an obvious loser, and one or more houses with ulterior interests in either direction.

Set the houses up with alliances. friendships and enemies, but have the adventure consequences not take them into account so an adventure can pit two friendly houses against each other or give enemies a common purpose.

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[MENTION=91834]Phototoxin[/MENTION]
My words of caution: Do the players want politics and intrigue?

I ran a game of D&D which had significant political intrigue. However, only one player really paid enough attention and was invested enough to enjoy and exploit the political side of the game. So I adjusted to a bit more of a rail-road generic fantasy adventure and they enjoyed that much more.

Agree with EM upthread: just stop awarding xp for monster kills and start awarding xp for achieving player-defined goals. Maybe offer them guidelines about what kind of goals will give them what kind of xp rewards, so they're not reduced to guessing what kind of goals are appropriate for your game.

It's by the way, but I just finished listening to the backlog for Happy Jack's Saga of the Inukai AP--and boy howdy, those guys run a good political game.

There's a 3e book on political D&D that you might enjoy:

http://www.amazon.com/Dynasties-Demagogues-Penumbra-Chris-Aylott/dp/1589780337

I stole some ideas from Paranoia to make my D&D game more political

First, I made a variety of groups available for PCs to ally with. There were a lot of groups with a lot of enmities and alliances going on.

Second, I made the players aware of tangible benefits available from the various groups.

Third, I made adventures available from various groups, often at the expense of other groups.

Fourth I made sure that particular groups would be appealing to different PCs. Thus, while PCs might be on a mission for a group, each PC frequently had his own agenda for other groups of interest.

Fifth, I sometimes gave PCs secret missions at odd with either the primary mission of the group or the personal agenda of another PC.

I didn't emphasize as much as I could have, and as a result the game didn't turn extremely political, but I think this is a method that would work for me if that was what I wanted.

In all honesty, I would think twice before running a political game with D&D. The assumed rapid escalation in PC abilities relative to everyone else creates problems - if the NPCs are lowish level then challenges that are tough at low level rapidly become trivial; if the NPCs are highish level, the question is likely to asked why they didn't dominate the PCs as soon as they came on the radar. And if the NPCs level up alongside the PCs, that runs the risk of cheapening the PCs' achievements - why go to all the trouble of adventuring if the NPCs get the same boosts for 'free'?

Of course, none of that is particularly helpful.

The books that most helped me in structuring a political campaign were actually from "Vampire: the Masquerade", especially those dealing with building campaigns, the guides to the Camarilla, and especially the old "Chicago by Night" supplement (get the 1st Edition one if you can - it's probably the single best pre-gen setting I've seen).

But the crib notes version:

1. Determine how many factions you are going to have, and the nature of those factions. In my experience, it's best to keep all the factions somewhat mixed - don't have obvious 'good guys' and 'bad guys', but rather give each group some good aspects and some bad. (Oh, and if you haven't already, read "The Three Musketeers" by Dumas - Richelieu is basically exactly what I have in mind; an ambitious schemer, but also one of the key reasons France remains strong.)

2. Draw up a diagram showing how the factions relate to one another. Note that relationships don't have to be symmetrical - faction A can think they're allied with faction B, while faction B is actually using faction A.

3. Similarly, draw up a relationship disagram for the inner workings of each faction.

(So, you'd have one diagram that shows that the King's Musketeers are opposed to the Cardinal's Guard, and a second diagram showing the relationships between Richelieu, Milady, Rochefort, etc.)

4. For each major campaign element (faction, character, etc) create at least one secret. Either something they're trying to find out, or something they don't want other people to find out about them. (e.g. the Queen's affair with Buckingham)

5. Draw up a list of ongoing plots, including at least one per faction. And, ideally, put together a "random plot table", giving you as long a list as possible of stuff you can introduce to the campaign as the PCs upset things.

That gives you a pretty good starting point, before the PCs get involved, and it also should give you some indication as to how things would play out if the PCs did nothing.

And then, let the PCs start upsetting the table, by antagonising all three of the top Musketeers immediately after arriving in Paris, getting involved in a feud with Rochefort, thwarting the Cardinal's plan to disgrace the Queen, and so earning both the respect and emnity of the most powerful man in the campaign. (Seriously, read "The Three Musketeers". There's a reason it keeps getting made into movies.)

I hope that helps somewhat.