D&D 5E [5e] Intrigue Campaigns: Cons, Heists and Secrets

[Fenris-77]

I'd like to take a thread here to plumb the collective wisdom of EN World. I'm in the midst of writing an intrigue campaign, plus some rules overlays to help facilitate it, but before I get to far I'd like to see what some other folks have come up with for intrigue campaigns as far as builds, tricks and combos goes. I haven't had the pleasure of playing an intrigue heavy campaign in 5th, and while I trust my reading comprehension, I'm quite sure there is a bunch of cool stuff that I haven't though of.

Here's what I would love to hear about and discuss here:

1. Social interaction builds for any and all classes. Some SIP builds are obvious, but I'm sure there's a ton of cool stuff. I'd like to have some templates to present my players to give them some cool ideas outside Yeah, I'm playing a rogue too... So, whole builds, small class mods and tweaks, whatever has worked for you.

2. Party builds for intrigue heavy campaigns. Ideas about how to plit skills and responsibilities over a four PC party while avoiding too much duplication.

3. Rules stuff. Uses for offbeat spells, skills and feats. Combos and sneaky stuff. Players are devious monkeys, and I'd rather know about as many good tricks as I can beforehand, rather than having to dodge flung dung mid-session when a player busts out something sexy.

4. Homebrew. I'd also love to hear about any hacks and rules people are using in their own campaigns to help 3rd pillar play.

5. I'd really appreciate it if we could just skip the whole D&D isn't built for this so why bother conversation. Been there, done that.

Whatever you have to add about any of the above, I'd love to hear.

 

[CubicsRube]

I put up thread suggesting giving advantage to social interactions based on your class and it was panned pretty hard.

Best of luck and if you come up with some good ideas I'd like to hear it.

Hope the thread stays positive for you

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm a huge fan of mystery/intrigue campaigns, especially those in urban settings. That said, I find it is one of the most difficult styles of campaign to run.

Some general thoughts and ideas:

• Make sure everyone in the party has the same motivation, since a campaign like this usually isn't simply "kill monsters and take their stuff".
• Have a LOT of leads, rumors, and plot hooks ready to go at all times. In a campaign like this, the majority of "play" is following up and leads (and then branching off of those leads).
• Be ready to flesh out NPCs on the fly. There are guides for creating NPCs quickly using only a few sentences.
• Information, clues, and connections are valuable rewards.
• If you have a primary hook, try to allow for multiple avenues to advance the plot. Railroading is a killer.
• I find that low/rare-magic settings work better for a campaign like this since it removes a lot of the spell shortcuts. That's personal preference of course.

My other recommendation is to find some good examples of creating complex and interconnected plot hooks. I HIGHLY recommend The Beast of Graenseskov on DMs Guild. I just started running it and it's an amazing example of how to write and run a mystery. It's also amazing to see how the players will respond when you throw a couple of weird NPCs and rumors at them!

 

[MGibster]

5. I'd really appreciate it if we could just skip the whole D&D isn't built for this so why bother conversation. Been there, done that.

It isn't built for this but that doesn't mean you can't tweak it. Many RPGs encourage niche protection and unless your character is the designated "talky" one often players don't bother trying. But one option might be to allow players to take Deception, Intimidation, or Persuasion as a class skill regardless of what class they elect to play. You may even want to include Investigation or whatever other skill you might think would help in a game of intrigue as options for player characters. A Barbarian might not be as good as talking as a Bard but at least the player will feel as though he can contribute something meaningful.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5. I'd really appreciate it if we could just skip the whole D&D isn't built for this so why bother conversation.

You might consider borrowing mechanics from systems that are built for that kind of thing. Aspect mechanics, from FATE could be applied to traits/bonds/flaws, Gumshoe mechanics could be applied to skills, as could 4e Skill Challenges,, 13th Age Icon relationships wouldnt clash with D&D, PbtA would be just full of possibilities.

 

[Blue]

Flashbacks.

Players sitting around for two hours planning things out regularly is a chore. Having all of that go south because of something overlooked makes it into a meaningless chore. The opposite of fun.

So assume the characters are competent or even better, and jump right into play and allow a certain amount / type of flashbacks per character where they can "pre-plan" to deal with whatever twist just came up in their heist.

So when you announce the dogs getting released at them, the mastermind does a flashback about the kennels, and how they arranged for the beasts to be drugged and sleepy.

A limited resource, many times the players will not want to use us a Flashback. And some things they couldn't foresee and can't.

And different types - while a mastermind-type character might be able to pull out any, a fighter might have his flashbacks only circle around his skills of athletics, intimidation, and and animal handling. (Or whatever.)

And offer differing strength results - there's a big difference between "learning the guard's schedule as as long as we keep to a strict schedule and don't let them raise an alarm we're good" vs. "there are no guards".

 

[Blue]

You might consider borrowing mechanics from systems that are built for that kind of thing. Aspect mechanics, from FATE could be applied to traits/bonds/flaws, Gumshoe mechanics could be applied to skills, as could 4e Skill Challenges,, 13th Age Icon relationships wouldnt clash with D&D, PbtA would be just full of possibilities.

Great suggestions. I'd add Leverage and Blades in the Dark as systems tailored around this sort of thing to steal inspiration from.

 

[Fenris-77]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - Yeah, I'm looking hard at BitD for things to steal. The flashback mechanic is one of the things I'm looking at and the issues it deals with are pretty key to some of the core reasons 5e sometimes struggles with this kind of game. I've already decided to steal some of BitD's clock ideas, as I use something sort of similar anyway and it's worked well in the past. There's some PtbA stuff that I may steal as well.
[MENTION=22103]GlassJaw[/MENTION] - great suggestions. I'll admit I'm a little stuck on the magic level. I have considered limiting magic somehow, but IDK if that's the route I want to go. This isn't going to be primarily a high level campaign, so some of the high level win button spells won't be in play generally. Also, things like Spider Climb or pass without trace allow for more participation from characters that aren't set with the Rogue set of. skills. Someone could play a wizard without a R dip and still participate.
[MENTION=4534]MGibster[/MENTION] - tweaking the skill system to keep the whole party involved is also on my list. Currently, I'm looking at decoupling the 1-1 skill-ability relationship to open things up a little. Obvious stuff, like using STR for intimidation, but also for less obvious reasons. For example, using INT to persuade with logic and reason. I think it allows some narrative flex for the characters and there will be less time where characters will just be sitting around.

On the bigger hack end of things, I am turning over the idea of tweaking the d20 rolls to include partial success and maybe additional success. I'm not sure if that will apply to every skill or not. The idea is still very much on the chalkboard phase.

I think I need to develop some test characters to form a working group stand-in party to bang some of these rules off of. I think characters for this kind of campaign will need to MC more. Rogue dips specifically, but not limited to that. I think that parts of a campaign like this could be very episodic, with more downtime in between scenes, so Warlock could be a good pick. I'm thinking Warlock, Rogue, Fighter, Bard as the base classes, with MC dips as seems necessary. The usefulness of Subtle Spell in this kind of story isn't lost on me though, so maybe a Sorcerer makes sense to. Again, work in progress.

 

[pogre]

This may be a little heavy-handed for you, but generally those scenarios work better for me where it is a society/city that highly respects and fears the law. I don't think this robs the players of agency, but if they know certain spells like unauthorized scry or "abuse" of divination have legal consequences it adds to the tension to the adventure.

YMMV and all that.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, limiting the use of magic in public is helpful. When casting a spell in full view of the guests at the Duke's ball will get you arrested it makes players think a little harder. It also make Subtle Spell awesome. Having certain types of magic, like scrying, be in some absolute sense illegal is a great idea and I'm going to steal it. Of course now I have to write a whole list of magic ordinances, but that's kinda cool too.