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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8321859" data-attributes="member: 6796468">So... it's gonna depend on the society. Take Wolde, for example.Wolde in my Ashen Lands setting is a gothic germanic style city-state with a heavy influence of english interlopers. Earlier in the campaign's history, a nearby kingdom was destroyed by the Emperor, but only because the populace actively opposed him against their own rulership. Many of those rulers managed to escape from Raven's Reach to Wolde before the hammer came down on the Druids that turned the populace against the Empire and their rebellion. (Later druids would become terrorists against Civilization and eventually succeed in assassinating the emperor, his family, and burning the capital and it's surrounding environs to ash... but that's another story)So Wolde has it's own Princes (As part of the Empire it was a Principality rather than a Kingdom with the former ruling families kept in a place of power in order to maintain social cohesion) as well as the Raven Princes. So there's a lot of tension between those two factions since the Raven Princes have no one to rule and just SO MUCH MONEY looted from the Reach that is by law theirs...But there's also a certain level of Raven Chic because of these interloper princes with their piles of cash. They may not rule society, but their galas and events influence fashion, culture, and thought, which has severely altered the way the society kind of works. One of the Raven Princes even married one of the Wolde Princes in order to combine the weight of their names and purse to push that family to primacy. And now there's a legitimate Crown Prince in Wolde for the first time in almost a hundred years.But.When I run a game related to the social/political aspects of Wolde, that's more of a Backdrop against which smaller battles are waged between the players and some noble houses. Most of which aren't particularly interested in the PCs off the bat because it's just another nouveau riche peasant rising up in society, of course. At least until they start causing problems or reach out to make contacts. At that point things start solidifying in... largely a high school way.So you've got your different groups with their different interests, but there's also overlap, and people who are part of multiple groups but not fully welcomed into any one group, some backstabbing or perceived insults, and for the most part it's pretty static until the players come in and interact.But only the politics the players -choose- to be a part of will matter except for any "Bully Group" political groupings. Who just do their best to harass and embarrass anyone they find threatening.Now if I'd done something in Castle Valka, which is a very militant society, there'd be a lot less options for different political tacts because what the Steward says gets done and everything else is very militaristic "You take orders from X people and give orders to Y people and have minimal interaction with Z people"</blockquote>

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