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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CruelSummerLord" data-source="post: 3797212" data-attributes="member: 48692">Consider just who your players are, and then try and tailor the political intrigue in a way that might appeal to them.  By this, I mean try combining the hack-and-slash bits with the role-playing bits.  Some sessions have your players doing one, and others have them doing the other type of activity.  This works especially well when you consider that, up until the Renaissance, many societies, from European nobility to North American First Nations to Japanese samurai culture, often gave people increased prestige and status based on their perceived courage and valor.  This can be a great way to introduce the PCs to the political movers and shakers of your campaign-the people are celebrating these heroes for ridding them of the bandit scourge, and so the baron is going to try to get the PCs on his side to increase his own prestige, either by getting them to do various deeds for him, or simply by associating with them.  Your PCs might have to perform grand and heroic deeds to prove their worth and valour, or to otherwise keep it.  In the 1E DMG, Gygax speculated that many adventurers might actually be gentry or aristocrats, who inherit very little from their family estates and adventure to gain greater prestige and wealth by doing heroic deeds and winning great treasure.  By the same token, when the BBEG, who is himself a major political player, sees that the various deeds the PCs are doing is threatening his own plans, he might use more devious political means to strike at them, which your Role-players will have to deal with.  Those players who crave action would still get it when they have to fight all those monsters that keep attacking, either to keep up their reputations, or because they've become so famous and well-known that they're the ones the authorities turn to.  Remember that baron who tried to ingratiate himself with the PCs?  Well, in return for greater social prestige and political clout by associating with him or his even sponsoring them as members of the gentry or aristocracy, the PCs will obviously be expected to return the favor by dealing with that band of raiding trolls, or the maurauding band of worgs that are attacking his tenant farmers...While the PCs who enjoy diplomacy and high intrigue are mucking it up at high society balls and political meetings, the ones who enjoy brawling and fighting are mucking it up fighting rampaging ogres and hill giants out in the hills.  You might like to try reading Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, for some great ideas on how to combine intrigue with action-even as he intrigues on behalf of the Queen against Cardinal Richelieu, D'Artagnan and his companions fight the English invader and serve loyally in the French armies.  They do both political intrigue and hard-nosed fighting, which should keep both types of PCs happy.</blockquote>

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