Eberron campaign intrigue help needed

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

I've just started planning for a future Eberron campaign that will be set in Sharn--with the PCs having some relationship to Morgrave University--and would like some help on how to devise a plot full of dark intrigue, double-crossing and skullduggery. However, I've often been accused of over-plotting (shading toward railroading with hugely extensive backstory), so I'd like to avoid that tendency. I'm not a new DM by any means, but I'm looking for ways to cleverly plot film noir-ish intrigue set in Sharn. Future adventures will go outside the city, but I want them to stay in Sharn for the entirety of the adventure.

Thanks!

 

[Whisper72]

Hmmm... keep it simple in the beginning....

Have a professor sponsor the PC's for some searches for schema's in Xendrik. The professor himself is fully legit, and of good intent. He has a silent partner though. He has a girlfriend who has whispered things into his ears, and based on this info he is now investigating stuff. In reality, the 'girlfriend' is a spy of sorts, who is a representative of some House (maybe Cannith), ostensibli trying to rebuild the power of the house. The people in charge of the rebuilding of Cannith are led by a visionary who is really an agent of the Dreaming Dark...

Maybe the 'girlfriend' is not really an agent, but pressured into service through some leverage / threats by Cannith agents, and she could thus be turned by the PC's if they catch on.

Furthermore, maybe the schema's were already found by Dhaakani ages ago, and now they are regarded as almost holy symbols. Stealing them, will thus set the goblins on your tail. Added to that, the Lord of Blades is not happy about a resurgent Cannith house, maybe he knows more about what happened in the mournland, and Cannith was to blame, working on some secret weapon, and thus he has an invested interest in blocking the PC's...

I think that these levels are enuff intrigue to last a campaign??

 

[fuindordm]

Well, the standard thing is to have several layers of factions. I'm trying to do something similar in my Eberron game, and one of the first things I did was to sketch out something like a business organization chart. For example, you can decide that your big bad is Vol, and she's been manipulating Sharn for centuries to stage a magical assault on or corruption of Aerenal.

Vol controls the Emerald Claw, but that's too obvious.
There's also that Lich living in the cliffs, who could be a useful henchman.
Who else hate's Aerenal? The dragons. Maybe Vol is finding a way to provoke another war between the
dragons and Aerenal.
Who's good at misinformation and starting wars? House Thuranni, who perhaps has historical reasons to work against Aerenal.

So you've got several layers between the Big Bad and the players when they start out:

Vol-------->Emerald Claw
|
|---------->Lich--------->House Thuranni
|
|---------->The Aurum (high priest of Kol Korran in Sharn)-------->House Cannith (weapons manufacturers)--->
House Tandarak (an assassin's guild)

So the basic plot is that a series of murders is being set up to make it look as Draconic minions are killing
Aerenal citizens, and vice versa. Further (extensive) investigation leads the party to figure out that the assassins are being directed by the lowest levels of the org chart, leading them up to the Aurum. So far it looks like a straightforward plot to stir up conflict in the hopes of selling weapons, and maybe the conflict doesn't yet appear to be between Aerenal and Argonessen, but between Aerenal and some other nation, a war that it sure to draw the attention of the dragons because it is being fought over some Draconic site (such as the caves in Darguun).

As they work their way up to the Aurum, however, they keep getting hints that there are other players--the Thuranni have the job of keeping an eye on the development of Vol's plot, and keeping it on track if need be. Agents in the shadows might interfere with their missions, and just as the party begins to think that they've stopped the assassinations and cooler heads are prevailing....

Wham. Yet another important assassination, this one not perpertrated by House Tarkanan but by a complete unknown. Better yet if it is done is a gruesome and exotic manner. Wham. The Emerald Claw, in disguise, manages to stir up a real military action in the contested country. The PCs have the Aurum under control, they think, but maybe the head of that branch drops a clue in his dying words that his orders were coming from somewhere else...

As war escalates, it's a race against time to find the proofs that the assassinations were arranged, and by whom, and to stop the war before the dragons intervene.

Just an example! Have fun.

Ben

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

...one of the first things I did was to sketch out something like a business organization chart.

Thanks! The process is really what I'm looking at, and I like the organization chart idea. I can always come up with ideas. I'm basically trying to find a good way to help me brainstorm sneaky and tricksy intrigue. I want something that isn't easy to suss out right away, as one of my players, Stormborn, prides himself on being able to figure out movies and books at the beginning. (The nice thing about a campaign is that if he starts to figure it out, I can always change it up on him!)

Keep those ideas coming!

 

[LostSoul]

Do the players want to run a game full of intrigue? If they do, it will be much easier to avoid the railroading.

I think I'd do something like this:

Find out what the players want. Ask them to give you some reason for the game to begin. ("I'm looking for some way to reach the planes!" or "I want to find out who killed my ma and pa.") Run with that.

Have some of whatever they are looking for be at the end of your adventure. They fight through whatever they need to to get the information at the end. Fighting doesn't have to mean combat; you can use NPCs whom you need to get information out of.

Maybe you could do something like this: A professor has some information for one of the PCs. But he's been killed, and the information is gone (in a similar method as that guy's ma and pa). So they hunt down the assassin. He works for some group. The PCs have to choose between killing the assassin (out of vengance) or finding out where that information went.

Without all the campaign specific stuff in there, it boils down to: 1) using the PC's hooks as motivation and 2) making them choose between two conflicting desires.

 

[Anti-Sean]

Keeping with the professor angle, I have a 'professor' in the story in my .sig who doesn't even exist at all. It's an identity that changelings have used and shared over the years in order to set up contacts for jobs of usually dubious legality. I have it as an open secret amongst Sharn's changelings, but you could easily tie it to the Tyrants or the Cabinet of Faces. If the PCs come to rely on the professor for multiple jobs, they could be dealing with a different person behind the identity each time, and sent on various missions that work at cross purposes to each other and to their overarching goals.

 

[Rel]

Two things that I've used in my current (moving towards completion) Eberron campaign:

The entire first half of the campaign was set in Sharn. I wanted to be able to get the PC's involved in the intrigues right away so I had them in this bar in Lower Dura run by Halflings (who were in league with the Boromar Clan). In walk some Goblins and a Bugbear "Enforcer" and start busting up the place and killing a few Halflings. The PC's intervene and whack a few Goblins and the Bugbear before the Watch breaks it up.

The Sgt. of the Watch (good ole Dolom) gets contact info on the PC's so he can get ahold of them if they require further questioning. The next night they are called back to the bar where he asks them to conduct a repriasal raid on Daask who sent the Goblins the previous night. He tells the PC's that he wants to "send them a message". The PC's do the job.

The trick is that Sgt. Dolom is not Sgt. Dolom. It's a Changeling hired by Boromar to convince the PC's to do some dirty work for them. The net effect was that the PC's made enemies out of Daask and that gave me an easy "random encounter" to throw at the PC's whenever I felt one was needed.

Secondly, I ran a plot wherein a wealthy human business man hired the PC's to investigate some antiquities in the Depths. But the trick was that this guy wasn't human at all. He was a Kalashtar posing as a human to avoid unwanted attention by the Riedrans. He was investigating a way to strike a blow against Riedra to prevent them from gaining further strength. I think this could be done well substituting a "Professor" for wealthy business man.

 

[Rafael Ceurdepyr]

Keeping with the professor angle, I have a 'professor' in the story in my .sig who doesn't even exist at all. It's an identity that changelings have used and shared over the years in order to set up contacts for jobs of usually dubious legality. I have it as an open secret amongst Sharn's changelings, but you could easily tie it to the Tyrants or the Cabinet of Faces. If the PCs come to rely on the professor for multiple jobs, they could be dealing with a different person behind the identity each time, and sent on various missions that work at cross purposes to each other and to their overarching goals.

This is a quite cool idea! I've been taking notes on things in the Sharn book that spark my interest, and the Tyrants description of being able to change/forge identities was one thing I'd written down.