D&D General Introducing political intrigue in D&D is NOT hard

[The F-Bard]

Hi everyone,

I see a lot of questions on forums about how DMs can introduce political intrigue in their settings. Personally, I have always been attracted towards politically savvy games. I thought a lot about how I can articulate how I do it and the result is the video linked below. Several people on reddit and facebook seemed to like it. So I thought I will post it here as well. May be it will help you too.

Of course, there's an element of self promotion here, but the video is not to make money. It's too share ideas. I hope you will have ideas and share them with me.

Thank you.

 

[payn]

I imagine political intrigue being more like faction play and uncovering mysteries and conspiracies amongst the setting. I wholeheartedly agree though that the players seeing some reaction to their decisions in the world is a lot of fun. Making a difference is great and should gain favor for the PCs. It also has its drawback in that you are bound to upset some applecarts and gain a few enemies. Sometimes from unexpected people and places too. It builds brand new plot hooks into the game the PCs actually have a stake in, and who doesnt like that?

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Hmmm. I've generally heard the opposite. Even in Living campaigns there has always been a sizable group who didn't care about whether group A, or group B was running city C. They had the following attitude:

 

[Ath'kethin]

Hmmm. I've generally heard the opposite. Even in Living campaigns there has always been a sizable group who didn't care about whether group A, or group B was running city C. They had the following attitude:

True. Many people insist on playing D&D purely as a combat game, and many people's minds it can't be anything else.

It's a pity.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Aliens is a good example of how the soldiers are f..... doomed because a b.... a bad person thought his own conspirancy.

Ripley : You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them f****** each other over for a goddamn percentage

 

[Paul Farquhar]

True. Many people insist on playing D&D purely as a combat game, and many people's minds it can't be anything else.

It's a pity.

Even when the game isn't focused on combat, there is still no guarantee players will care about factional politics.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Even when the game isn't focused on combat, there is still no guarantee players will care about factional politics.

Indeed. My group plays a large mix of systems, with Fantasy d20 games maybe ¼ of them, and political shenanigans is way down the list of things they find fun. There's a fair amount of it in the Mindjammer (FATE) game I've just started and I think I'm going to have to cut back. When the players are saying "so the Schismatics are a subset of the Alienists who feel that the Alienists are going too far, possibly because of the influence of the Facilitators. So are they on friendly terms with the New Blues?" it begins to feel a little too much like work for some players.

The group is very non-combat, but rather than politics, I think I'll try and stress other play styles more: Exploration, Romance, Cultural Warfare, Terraforming, Business ... there are plenty of options!

 

[Ixal]

It would help if the D&D (or other fantasy) settings would have an actual workable political structure. But most of the time they neither have a "modern" political system (meaning a system which we modern people would at least empathize with and think we understand it) or a historic/fantasy one like an actual feudal structure . At best some titles like king or duke are name dropped, but it is never explained, or even defined what those titles entail, what powers they have and what obligations. Most of the time people default to Disney royalty where the king can do everything he wants and all the other nobles or advisors are either decoration or evil persons wanting to be king. And in such a system you can not really have intrigue and is also not how those systems worked except maybe very, very late France.

What I noticed recently when going through the realms of Pathfinder, but it also applies to D&D, is that the factor of marriage is very often ignored, even though nobility often depended on strategic marriages. Most of the time in fantasy RPGs rulers are either unmarried or if they have a spouse its more often only to have a justification to have children, but the spouse itself remains bland and belongs to some random family which is never expanded upon instead of being related to other prominent noble families or even being related to the ruler of some other country in that setting.

Just look at how the noble families in Europe are related to each other. The sterotype of inbred nobles did not come out of nowhere, although its only the Habsburgs where this was an actual issue as far as I know.

 

[payn]

The group is very non-combat, but rather than politics, I think I'll try and stress other play styles more: Exploration, Romance, Cultural Warfare, Terraforming, Business ... there are plenty of options!

Those all sound political to me. How do you remove politics from the listed items?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Those all sound political to me. How do you remove politics from the listed items?

When the players decide "a plague on all your houses" and carve their own path.