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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Peni Griffin" data-source="post: 4365331" data-attributes="member: 50322">The first thing you've got to ask yourself is:  What do my players respond to?If you have any players who like reading intricate background detail, you're in clover.  Give them a Gazeteer of Playerworld laying out, in general terms, the possible PC backgrounds - rich dwarfs from Dwerrostan make their money from manufacturing and trade, poor ones scrape out a living in the mines and resent the conspicuous consumption of the ruling classes; the conquered halflings of the Share who do not cling to subsistence farms in the hinterlands are crowded into refugee colonies in the urban centers of the conquering humans; noble human political ambitions are centered on the person of the Emperor but, as he ages without naming an heir, jostling for position among his seven children becomes intense with the aristocracy, the rising middle class, the urban poor, and the free farmers each pinning their hopes on a different candidate - and requiring that they choose some general background and provide a reason for being in Campaignville.  After character generation, but before play, you tailor-make a "What your character knows about the world" precis with more detailed, focused information.  Then begin introducing the various factions in the course of each adventure until they spontaneously develop sympathies, antipathies, and friendships.  Do  not base the early adventures on politics, but let the politics intrude - a riot complicating a mission here, a secret messenger crossing your path there.If you have players who never read handouts or e-mails and are bored with creating character backgrounds, you're in a much trickier situation.  The kind of person who is "all about the build" or who says "I'm a fighter and I wanna get rich" is hard to involve naturally in political intrigue and is often bored by it.  Work with that, not against it.  There's no reason a PC in a political game has to know or care about the issues.  How many people IRL blunder through political situations in pursuit of their own goals without understanding the ripples their actions initiate in the world of the greater pond?  Plant hooks in the adventures baited with the PC's (and the player's) motivations.  Want to be rich?  Lord Hackysack would pay good money to read the note from Lady Sylvestra you found in the pocket of that street thug you accidentally killed in the alley behind the Drunken Gith Tavern.  Want to meet foes worthy of your carefully min-maxed skills?  Can't get into the League of Adventurers without a rich patron.  Want to get drunk and assert dominance over NPCs?  Amazing how every bar you go into is crammed to the gills with factional thugs, interested observers, recruiters, slumming nobles, and otherwise connected people.  Sooner or later, they'll be tangled up in stuff they don't understand and don't care about, trying to track down the dirty so-and-so who made life hard on them or rescue that high-charisma noble who did them a favor.</blockquote>

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