Help me decide what the incompetent Mayor will do

Stoat

Adventurer
Here's the situation:

My PC's are the lords of a small, goblin-ravaged village located on the shores of a tropical island. They didn't want to run the day-to-day affairs of the place themselves, so they appointed a mayor. A bad mayor.

He's the young, spoiled son a wealthy noble family. He's boorish, selfish, loud-mouthed, prone to drink and quick to anger. He's an irresponsible child of privilege who cannot abide it when things don't go his way.

After giving him the job, the players took off on an extended adventure.

How does he screw things up while they're gone?
 

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You can have fun with this.

Essentially everything. So let's not say the mayor is evil, just as you say, a child of privilege who throws a tantrum when things don't go his way.

When the PC's get back, they find:

1. That most of the villagers are divided into a pro-mayor, against-mayor camp. Those against-mayor will be angry with the PC's for giving him that position, but will be very vocal in their grivences to the PC's too.

2. The pro-mayor group will be people who are close friends to the mayor and have gotten all the best deals, decisions, choice crops, lowest taxes, etc. You name it, they are kissing the mayor's butt and riding the gravy train.

3. The mayor has botched up a job on handling outlying farms falling to bandits and goblins. They will find some of the farmers who are homeless and begging for food and scraps at the local church because their farms got raided and they escaped with their lives. When the PC's inquire about it, the mayor didn't send the manpower to go deal with the bandits / goblins because he likes having guards hang around him for personal protection.

4. The good and honest sheriff was sacked and sent packing for speaking his mind. The constables now take orders directly from the mayor and they are doing what they can to hold onto their jobs. If the sheriff was in control, the bandits and goblins wouldn't have been a persistent problem.

5. They find out that a festival that the whole village normally celebrates was moved to the mayoral mansion and only the closest mayor's friends are celebrating, everyone else has to work. This does not make for happy villagers. The PC's arrive at the village at the time when they know there should be a festival in full-swing, but see only empty streets.

6. The mayor has been having party after party and the village's coffers have been completely spent and is deep in the red. Money lenders are hovering in the village and they are bringing some nasty toughs to collect payment in which if they don't get paid, they may start taking things from the locals first since they are easier targets in order to collect their due. You can make this a more legitimate claim by allowing the money lenders to foreclose on other local villagers and confiscate their belongings and the PC's have to deal with that mess.

7. The grain stores which the villagers contribute to tide themselves over in winter is completely spent because the mayor gave it out to "friends" who came from all over the place and as gifts got to take away lots of grain sacks along with other goods. The bad thing is that the mayor kept this a secret and the villagers don't know that they face starvation come winter.

8. The relationship with the druid circle has taken for a turn for the worse, when the mayor starting cutting extra trees breaking their village's agreement after 200 years of peaceful trade. Now the druid circle refuses to come and bless crops, fertility in the livestock, etc.

9. Trappers and huntsman won't come to the village until they've been paid the money due to them for the pelts, furs, and meat they provided. The PC's take note when they visit the inn and there is no meat for the meals and the butcher has closed shop. The mayor has ignored them thinking their fees are ridiculously high and offered a contract for coppers on the gold piece which they immediately scoffed at and left.

10. The local blacksmith was thrown in jail for not giving a gift to the mayor on his birthday. His sentence is 30 days.

Have fun!
 


One nice one is where hte Mayor co-opts th full-time services of the local cleric to heal his ever ache, sprain or sniffle. While others really need the healing.
 


The alternative is for the Mayor to be too good. He is so super competent that he brings civilisation to the area, creating a treaty with the goblins, and making the village a safe place to live. He gets trade started and institutes a proper constabulary.

When the party returns, they find Goblins they had fought with on the streets, but need to hand over their swords, as carrying a weapon has been deemed a crime. They might no like it, but what can they do - the village is thriving! Will they sack him just because he has made decisions they don't like?
 
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The alternative is for the Mayor to be too good. He is so super competent that he brings civilisation to the area, creating a treaty with the goblins, and making the village a safe place to live. He gets trade started and institutes a proper constabulary.

When the party returns, they find Goblins they had fought with on the streets, but need to hand over their swords, as carrying a weapon has been deemed a crime. They might no like it, but what can they do - the village is thriving! Will they sack him just because he has made decisions they don't like?

Now there's an unexpected twist for the PC's! ;)
 



4. The good and honest sheriff was sacked and sent packing for speaking his mind. The constables now take orders directly from the mayor and they are doing what they can to hold onto their jobs. If the sheriff was in control, the bandits and goblins wouldn't have been a persistent problem.

6. The mayor has been having party after party and the village's coffers have been completely spent and is deep in the red. Money lenders are hovering in the village and they are bringing some nasty toughs to collect payment in which if they don't get paid, they may start taking things from the locals first since they are easier targets in order to collect their due. You can make this a more legitimate claim by allowing the money lenders to foreclose on other local villagers and confiscate their belongings and the PC's have to deal with that mess.

I immediately had a vision of that spoiled rich "kid" Trellane from that episode in the old Star Trek series. I think the episode was "The Squire of Gothos" or something like that. The interesting thing is, if this "kid" runs the town into the ground financially, it might be up to the PCs to take it up with the noble parents of this kid, and you could get some interesting scenarios there:

I quoted 4 & 6 above as I think they could work well together. The sheriff gets canned and he was the town's one hope of containing this Trellane like figure.

1) Are the noble parents embarrassed/ashamed of how their child has behaved? (Do they act sternly towards Trellane, like the old episode of Star Trek?)
2) Are the parents (or one parent) evil, and the town being bankrupted and abandoned part of their plan? Then, if the PCs try to do something about fighting the debt collectors, do they incur the wrath of the evil parent or parents?
 

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