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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gardens &amp; Goblins" data-source="post: 7337079" data-attributes="member: 6846794">I would try and keep things mechanically simple and dramatically strong:Summary1) Claimants get a chance to prepare.2) Claimants get to try and capture the crowd's support.3) Claimants get a chance to react.- increase the number of NPCs in the crowd, purely for flavour reasons. 30-40, a nice crowd. Out of that number, only 15 or so can be ready to capable of fighting/willing to risk their lives. The rest can flee.- Don't worry about determining how many of the the crowd support/resist/are undecided. Keep it abstract. There's a bunch of folks for, against and everyone grumbles into their beers when things are said. And unless the PCs fancy polling the crowd, the exact numbers are not going to be known anyway..- reveal the two NPC claimants to Kingship.- have the PCs declare which claimant they will back. If they decided to support one of their own party members, good stuff, claimant 3 has entered the game.- Phase 1: Setup: Before any public gestures/antics, give the players the chance to meddle. They might make promises, bribe other claimants, buff theirs with spells. Usual D&D shenanigans. - Phase 2: Delivery: Have each claimant address the crowd of NPCs by making a Performance check. This is classic political delivery - Persuasion/Deception/Intimidation are great for one-on-one social actions. Here, we want folks to work the crowd, to entertain, delight, enthrall, command and so on. Highest roll wins, with the claimant becoming the 'Winner'.  In the case of a comically, ''Nobody rolling above a 5...'', go with it. Sometimes we choose the best of the worst... Narrate the crowd's reaction as appropriate and depending on the style of monarchy this might be the point where they all shout, "Claimant X for King! Whoop!'. Or not. - Phase 3: Fallout: Ask each claimant (ideally, secretly) if they wish to do anything to challenge the Winner. (Perhaps they'll attack them. Perhaps not.) They might even try to Persuade/Deceive/Intimidate the other claimants. Perhaps they can bait a fellow claimant into a fight or cow them into submission. The important thing to communicate to the players is that the crowd has been swayed (the majority, at least) and any action by a claimant will be under intense scrutiny, with the crowd naturally favoring the Winner of Phase 2 (Advantage/Disadvantage as appropriate). Wrap up the crowd's reaction - most likely more grumbling into beers, jeering and furious nodding/head shaking. Done. Assuming a fight has not broken out (though to be honest, with so much at stake, it probably should..) the Winner is scheduled to be crowned King. Personally I'd have the coronation scheduled to happen in a few days, so there's plenty of time for them to suffer a nasty fatal accident while alone hunting. Likewise, if you want to spin things out, have the time between Phase 1 and 2 (or even 3) be a couple of days/weeks. This should give the party a lot of time to make a complete mess of things. Such is D&D...</blockquote>

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