Political intrigue, help?

[Lazarus Long]

The campaign I'm running is set in the WoT. the PCs are in Caemlyn and have just come to the attention of some of the noble houses.

Now I want to get the PC's mixed up in some of the intrigue (or at least let them see what's going on in the political realm of the city), but I'm not sure how to do it.

the cliche would be to have them invited to a party, and let them mingle. But, like I said, its a bit of a cliche.

the only other thing I could think of was horseracing... that they'd be invited by a noble to watch the races with them.

Any other ideas? Thanks in advance.

 

[Paka]

The best way to handle political intrigue is to just figure out a half dozen NPCs and what they want. Politics is just the push and pull of what they want, right?

How to embroil the PCs?

I like the horse races idea. Maybe one of the noble's sons could be into a local bookie for some money and the players could find him just as he is about to be knifed in the back.

After they save him he asks the players to come back to his father's house so that his family can dine them in thanks...oh, and don't mention the business about me owning money, it'd kill ma.

Have fun...

 

[Utrecht]

There a couple pseudo cliched ways of getting PC involved in the machinations of the nobility.

1) Have nobel family A hire the PCs to burn/steal (for N and E parties) or "recover" stolen goods (for Good) from Nobel family B.

There are a couple of nasty things that you can do here - especially if the party is good - As it turns out Family B is good and the goods are needed to further some nefarious plot.

2) The PCs are guarding something of Family A- they are approached by representatives of Family B to "stand" aside (again the Family B will spin the information to suit thier needs)

3) A PC looks earily like a member of Family A - could they please act as a stand in for X event - during the event - someone attempts to kill them - who did it?

Again, they are somewhat clicheed - but the important thing to remember about stereotypical fantisy nobility is that they:

Have to much money
Have to much time
Don't like to get thier hands dirty (That is what PCs are for)
Get off of hurting the social status of other families (this is where the social standing rules in the latest Dragon would be neat)

 

[Lazarus Long]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

They're all really good, and I'm going to be using one (or more) of them, but I can't say which- one of my players is on the boards and he'll cheat

Right, Rix? lol