D&D 5E How much politics do your campaigns usually have?

[Derren]

Just wondering how much politics your campaigns or home brew settings usually have.

And if it is more than just a simple background, what styles of governments do you use? Only simple monarchies? God king style monarchies from the Incas/Aztecs? (Trade) Republics? Constitutional monarchies (see Britain)? Elective monarchies like the Holy Roman Empire or Polish Commonwealth?

 

[Istbor]

Depends on the theme of the campaign and what the players want out of it really.

What types of Governments do I use? Generally it is you name it, we have it. Though, again, that depends on the situation. Is this a campaign that will involve several nations or an established empire?

I have had the God-Kings, Magocracies, Aristocracies, Republics, Monarchies, Matriarchies, Stratocracies, and more.

My current homebrew is that of a Roman empire near the height of its power. An Emperor as well as a council of officials (not elected) rule the provinces. There are obvious power struggles that happen, and several hooks to get the players involved. Some of the group are pretty 'meh' about it. Liking only the perks that come from helping a political figure on the rise, while one has throw her hat into the ring and is working to gain a membership on the council.

That means, my campaign has to fluctuate how much politics and intrigue happen, sometimes from session to session. Also sometimes when I might be drained from a long week, and can't wrap my brain around game of thrones ways of thinking.

I guess it depends on how in depth you want to go with it. This time around, I wanted to really, really work on my world building. Right now, it is paying off. That extra attention to detail has come in handy due to the Baroness' interest in the government. It could have easily gone the other way though, and I could have had this massive government structure detailed like the Imperium of Man in 40K (mine isn't ) and have no player actual peek behind the curtain or show interest.

 

[pukunui]

I tend to avoid politics in my games. I have difficulty running intrigue plots in a satisfactory way, so I tend to focus more on fighting monsters and the like and keep governments in the background. For instance, the PCs recently went to a big city, but I never bothered to tell them what type of government it had or anything like that. The players didn't seem to mind.

 

[Croesus]

While politics occurs in the background on my campaigns, it's very rarely front and center. This is mostly due to player preference. Most of my players have little patience for intrigue-style adventures. They also hate being bossed around, and what does one expect a nobleman or king to do when the PCs are "just mercenaries"? The first time they got thrown out of a kingdom for not showing proper respect to the chieftain was enough for them.

Kind of a pity, as I like to run some adventures that can't be solved by brute force. Using political opponents is a good way to do such. Oh well, I'll just have to stick to other ideas, like plagues and natural disasters.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Not as much as I would like.

I would love a game with a Dune style geopolitical Landscape with a delicate power balance between military, trade, and resource powerhouses. I often think of how powerful magic users shape the political landscape of a setting so you can add Magical, alchemical, technological powers into that mix.

I think it could be a great campaign, but it takes a level of world-building that I'm not comfortable with yet.

 

[Shiroiken]

Politics has a background effect for my current campaign, as the players' actions impact the land. Politics sometimes setup the adventures too.

The first adventure took place in Verbobonc, which is a semi-independent Viscounty of the ArchClericy Veluna (a theocracy). They uncovered that the Temple of Elemental Evil has arisen again, and rescued Prince Thrommel IV, heir of Furyondy (a monarchy allied with Veluna) from its depths. They were rewarded, and one of the characters was made a Knight Bachelor of the Hart, made commander of a stronghold in the Northern Lortmills (a hilly territory on the western edge of Veluna, technically belonging to the Highfolk), and named Watcher of the West. The reason for the title, is that the stronghold's primary function is to keep tabs on the hated Baklunish (Arabian humans that often raid into neighboring lands) who are considered westerners.

The second adventure took place because Keoland (a receding Empire in the Sheldomar Valley that is a rival to Furyondy and Veluna) sent adventurers to find an artifact in the Yatil Mountains (just north of the Northern Lortmills). The party went in and took the artifact, giving it to Prince Thrommel, as he could use it for political leverage against Keoland.

The third (and current) adventure is taking place, because the Prince asked the party to deliver the artifact, and the King of Keoland asked for aid in dealing with giants that are attacking Steirich, which is technically under his protection. He cannot send troops, as he is currently engaged in another "war" with the Sea Princes (an oligarchy of pirates and slavers), and he wants the adventurers to delay the giants, and find out why so many different clans are working together, and defeat whomever is instructing/advising them (since giants wouldn't be smart enough to pull off the attacks they've made so far).

 

[Mercule]

My degree is in political science with a minor in philosophy. You may weep for my players. It comes as such second nature that I don't even realize creating power structures, etc. I've at least learned to close my mouth until the players ask a question.

On the other hand, I just about broke a DM because he let me play a political character.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't think bog-standard D&D is a super-great fit for a political intrigue game. It can work, but it's not really set up to do it. I'd want a few politics-focused mechanics to make a big go of it. Stuff like alliance networks, favor exchanges, and the like, can be done simply through RP, but if I was to make a big go of it, I'd want to mechanically model some of the possible political conflicts in the campaign and let the players affect them, encourage different archetypes than standard, the whole 27 feet.

 

[Lehrbuch]

Just wondering how much politics your campaigns or home brew settings usually have.

Depends what you mean by politics.

I mean that the driving motivation for characters doing things is maintaining or improving themselves in some sort of power structure.

And in that sense politics is pretty much the only reason NPCs do things, in my games, except for a few inevitable weirdo-cultists. So, there is always politics whether that is within a gang of mercenaries, a tribe of gnolls, the aristocracy of a kingdom, between dragon brood-mates, or even internally within an apocalyptic weirdo-cult.

The advantage, I find, is that if NPCs have goals like this for doing things, it is very easy to improvise the response of NPCs if/when the PCs do something unexpected. Doing the unexpected is pretty much expected behaviour for PCs of course.

Which doesn't mean that the power structures need to be very detailed or known much about in advance. It's fine to just start with a broad idea and improvise and evolve the structure as you go, if/when the PCs discover/do stuff.

And if it is more than just a simple background, what styles of governments do you use?

For city / state-level politics, I usually have either monarchies (i.e. military dictatorships, and the military part of that equation might often be dominated by magic) or some sort of semi-elected oligarchy. This usually means elected by some minority. Such as, only descendants of some mythic ancestor, or only wizards, or only male owners of more than 100 slaves, etc., etc.,.

 

[Lehrbuch]

Most of my players have little patience for intrigue-style adventures. They also hate being bossed around, and what does one expect a nobleman or king to do when the PCs are "just mercenaries"?

I think that the key to good political play is to allow (and encourage) one or more of the PCs to have political goals of their own. Rather than just doing "missions" for powerful NPC politicians. Although, that doesn't mean that the PCs have to have goals on the same scale as a king.

For example, if one PC has a relatively low-level goal like "wanting to improve/regain her family's prestige by marrying a minor nobleman", and then the DM decides that the candidate minor nobleman belongs to a different aristocratic faction to the king. Suddenly, the PCs become a lot of engaged in the idea of politics and have reasons to do or not do stuff, and independent ideas about how they can take political advantage of situations. And once the PCs start doing stuff like that, the politics basically just drives itself: PCs do stuff, NPCs react, PCs do other stuff, NPCs react ... , and so forth.