Remember, Remember, The Fifth Of November... Politics & Intrigue in RPGs

Currently running A Red and Pleasant Land, its non-stop politics hidden behind a layer of random whimsical moments and jam.

In the most recent session the players have begun a plan to assassinate one of the Red King's Brides and replace her with one of the players so that she may act as a proxy for the Colourless Queen. I am however still generating the background political setting every session thanks to the appropriate table so I really have no idea how their plan is going to pan out in the face of this.

 

[Morrus]

This needs a bump, as it's November 5th!

 

[Ymdar]

Dark Heresy

 

[Koloth]

All a good political intrigue game takes is buy in from both GM and players. One downside is while the GM and Player 2 are dealing with aspect 3 of plot 4, the rest can become bored unless the GM tasks switches fairly often. This is can often be easier to do in an intrigue game then a combat game. Depending on game system, may need to re-purpose a skill or feat or such. Plus for systems where XP or equiv is primarily combat derived, will have to implement some type of reward system for goals accomplished.

 

[Umbran]

Most of my GM energy is gong into an Ashen Stars game at the moment.

While, as you noted, Gumshoe systems are big on the investigation, my players are a bit more interested in the action-adventurey aspects of sci-fi, making it more a game of space opera than gritty intrigue. But that doesn't mean the game is without politics.

They players are undertaking their action and adventure in the background of a galaxy that seems to be slowly slipping its way towards war. Just last session, they decided that they will preferentially take missions from one of the factions within the morass. We'll see how it turns out.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Vampire: The Masquerade…..especially with the live action rules….is built for political intrigue. The various Clans are analogues for political groupings - Ventrue are establishment, Brujah are anarchs, etc, and the way the mechanics support this is pretty slick.

Amber, also diceless, is a game about politics among super-powered immortals. Character generation is based on competitive auctioning of abilities and the intrigue is largely set up by this.

Paranoia is also a political intrigue game, insofar that players are set up to back-stab each other at every opportunity.

 

[pemerton]

I've run political intrigue fantasy games using AD&D (mechanically it brings little to the table for this stuff) and Rolemaster (brings a bit more than AD&D, but a lot of the resolution of the intrigue still ends up being free RP/negotiation among participants).

My 4e game has had moments of political intrigue but it's more about cosmological conflicts.

My current Classic Traveller game has political intrigue, which I think is fairly standard for Traveller. (In mechanical terms it's slightly better suited than Rolemaster.) So does my Burning Wheel game. (And ditto with respect to mechanics.)

 

[Jhaelen]

In Ars Magica the majority of adventures are also about politics and intrigue. Whether it's about dealing with the local nobility, the Church, Faerie courts or other covenants in their Tribunal, you always have to tread carefully and make deals. It's really rare that don't have to think about the ramifications and repercussions caused by your actions. Magi are a suspicious and potentially very dangerous bunch, so they're watched carefully by everyone.

 

[Over the Hill Gamer]

Chivalry & Sorcery, an rpg from the 70s, had a strong political component to the game. Very realistic, too, as I recall.