Petty politics in an AD&D®
game?
Who needs it?
You do, that's who. Believe
it or not,
almost everything a party
does in the typical
campaign has political ramifications,
ranging
from boosting the economy
of the local
village by pouring gold into
it to destroying
a region?s political stability
by assassinating
its ruler. Most of the time,
characters can
blissfully ignore the havoc
they wreak simply
by moving on to bigger and
better
things. There will come a
day, however,
when they will achieve a
station in life
where they must deal directly
with these
petty political issues. Then
(if not sooner)
they will discover the rich
potential and
virtually limitless possibilities
of political
adventuring.
Several characteristics distinguish
the
political adventure from
the more conventional
dungeon or wilderness adventures.
The political adventure involves
a political
crisis, such as the uncovering
of a traitor in
the king?s court or the settlement
of a border
dispute with a neighboring
ruler. There
are generally no damsels
to rescue nor evil
temples to destroy, although
political undertakings
often serve as lead-ins to
such adventures.
Armed conflict in political
adventuring usually involves
large military
forces rather than small
parties, and most
political ventures work best
when only a few
player characters are involved
-- two or
three, for instance, instead
of a half-dozen
or more.
PCs may choose, or be
compelled, to leave the gladiatorial
arena in
favor of the political arena
for three principal
reasons. First, politics
is a natural part
of game circumstances. Service
to king and
country may involve going
on diplomatic
missions; or, if a character
is of noble birth,
his family may require him
to discharge
various menial ? but potentially
hazardous
? political functions. Any
time a player
character obtains and develops
territory he
becomes a politician: he
must rule his fiefdom
and deal, either diplomatically
or on
the battlefield, with the
petty nobles whose
land surrounds his. If the
character?s fiefdom
is arable, won?t others be
interested in
acquiring it? If it is not,
then how will he
support the local population?
Has the character
inadvertently developed land
that was
already claimed by someone
else? Will
neighboring nobility allow
trade routes to
the character?s land to remain
open and
safe? How much tribute must
the character
pay, to whom, and how will
he raise the
funds? There can be innumerable
problems
to solve, all of which arise
quite naturally
from the simple act of developing
land.
2nd, close involvement with
the political
structure that the DM has
set up in the
campaign world adds depth
and reality to
the campaign. Adventurers
are usually
concerned with saving their
own skins. How
would they deal with being
responsible for
the well-being of an entire
village or town?
Responsibility, as they will
soon see, involves
maturation. Characters (and
their
players) will soon learn
the value of discretion
and how to judge the implications
of
their own actions. In short,
they?ll have to
grow up a little to be successful.
In doing
so, they will come to see
things from a
different perspective. The
world will no
longer be a great playground
existing solely
for their self-centered pursuits,
but a real
place where people must answer
for their
actions.
Finally, political adventuring
is different
? a change of pace. Variety
is not the spice
of life in the AD&D
game world, it's the
meat and potatoes. Politics
is something out
of the ordinary for many
fantasy games, but
still relevant enough to
game life to make it
great fun. It gives both
the DM and the
players an opportunity to
explore facets of
their talents that are left
untapped by normal
dungeon adventuring. Yet,
this is not to
say that political adventuring
lacks the
excitement and danger of
swords-and-sorcery
adventuring. In a long-running
and
well-structured campaign,
most prominent
NPCs will have attained fairly
high levels in
their respective classes,
so political conflict
between them and player characters
often
degenerates into armed and/or
magical
conflict. But often, political
conflict can be
resolved without immediately
going for the
sword or the spell book;
the emphasis is on
tact and persuasive ability
rather than on
raw firepower.
Preparing a political adventure
is not
unlike designing a dungeon,
except that
political adventures rely
more heavily on
setting, plot, and characterization
than on
action. Before discussing
possible plot lines,
it is necessary to understand
what role each
of these three elements plays
in the individual
adventure.
There are only 2 basic settings,
the 1st of which is the territory
developed
by a PC. Nothing
involves characters more
deeply than a
threat to home and hearth,
and placing the
adventure at home has the
distinct advantage
of utilizing a previously
developed
setting. You already know
the area's geography,
its population, its industry,
and its
commercial interests. With
all of this going
for you, the plot will almost
develop itself.
There are countless chinks
you can toss
into the character's feudal
machinery, but
be wary of overdoing it.
If an area is in too
much turmoil, neither the
character nor the
people he rules will want
to live there. Players
quickly tire of having their
characters
forced to find and hire more
mercenaries to
replace the ones slaughtered
in the last
attack, and even the hardiest
souls will
consider retiring from the
landowning
business after the fifth
or sixth peasant
revolt. Use discretion and
common sense in
putting obstacles in the
characters? way,
especially when some character?s
homeland
is at stake.
The 2nd kind of setting is
all or part of
the territory outside the
character's (or
partys) homeland -- the great,
wide world.
This vast territory is considered
a single
category because designing
political adventures
in the "outside world" is
different
from a political adventure
that takes place
"at home." Characters may
not have a
great personal concern for
the goings-on in
the rest of the world (although
these happenings
could eventually affect their
homes,
too), but high-level adventurers
of some
renown could well be enlisted
by a noble or
high-ranking official to
perform some sort of
political mission.
The difficulties in creating
an "outside
world" setting are numerous,
but need not
be any more troublesome than
devising an
imaginative, cohesive dungeon-based
adventure.
Your first task is to come
up with a
plot; the mechanics of doing
this are discussed
in the next section of this
article. For
example, suppose that an
assassin
is known
to be operating in some noble?s
court. The
characters are enlisted to
find him out and
foil his plans; they may
know who his intended
target is, and roughly when
he will
strike, but not how the deed
will be done.
The noble?s castle and surrounding
territory
must be designed and defined,
and the
courtiers and nobles created,
with many of
them having some potentially
incriminating
aspect to their personal
histories. All the
essentials of a ?whodunit?
story should be
part of the setting, with
the player character(
s) serving as both the hero
of the story
and the detective who comes
up with the
solution. The setting for
such an adventure
is not ready-made, as it
is when the adventure
takes place in the characters?
own
territory, but must be crafted
to fit the plot.
Plot:
In the simplest terms, the plot of an
adventure is the task assigned
to the character(
s) and the basic circumstances
that
brought about the need for
the task to be
performed: Country A wants
to attack
Country B, and the adventuring
party is
charged with trying to prevent
the war. The
reasons why one country wants
to attack the
other need not, and perhaps
should not, be
readily apparent. The geographic
setting of
the adventure, and the personalities
<(traits)> of the
NPCs that the adventuring
party will encounter,
will hold the key to finding
out
those reasons, but it is
the party's job to sift
through the information and
come up with
the answers -- and then use
diplomacy and
political skill to resolve
the problem.
e.g., the ruler of
Country A may
profess revenge as his motive
for wanting to
attack, but he mayreally
have his eye on
the rich farmlands of Country
B that lie just
over the border. You can't
hand out this
information on a
silver platter, but at the
same time neither can you
strictly dictate
the action the way a writer
plots out a story.
The adventuring characters
all have minds
of their own and will exercise
them in
different ways. It's necessary
to build a plot
in which several different
routes of inquiry
will all lead to the correct
answer; clues
should lead to other clues,
until finally all
the pieces of information
taken together add
up to the solution. The essential
ingredient
of a good political plot
is mystery. Without <link to article(s)
about mystery>
it, the adventure becomes
dull and routine.
Characterization:
This is perhaps the
most important element in
a political adventure.
It is through the people
they deal
with that the characters
are drawn deeper
and deeper into the plot,
so your NPCs
must be carefully detailed.
You should know
before they are encountered
what they look
like, sound like, and act
like, and you
should know what each NPC
knows about
the situation in question.
What motivates
each of them, and how do
those motivations
affect their actions? For
instance, Prince
Maldichon may know nothing
about his
father?s plans to attack
Country B, but his
own plot to usurp his father's
throne may
cause the prince to act in
strange and mysterious
ways.
How much will an NPC be willing
to
say? How much coercion is
necessary to
make him say more? NPCs should
not be
too close-mouthed, or the
characters will
never get anywhere; but they
shouldn?t be
blabbermouths or stool pigeons,
either. The
most realistic and challenging
NPCs are
those that are played by
the Dungeon Master
just as if they were player
characters
themselves, with their own
distinctive feelings
and ambitions.
If you fuse the elements of
setting, plot,
and characterization well,
the political
adventure will be both entertaining
and
challenging to the players.
Following are
two examples of how these
elements can be
woven together effectively.
Example
1: This adventure is set in a
player character's home territory,
that of
Lord Valdis von Wodinskirk
of Karmagia.
Karmagia was a small fiefdom
(located in
hex H4-103 on the map of
the WORLD OF
GREYHAWK Fantasy Setting)
sandwiched
between the much larger and
stronger fiefdom of Luxor
and the foreboding
Suss
Forest. Karmagia's sole asset was
gold -- the territory sat
on a mother lode ?
but Valdis could neither
entice merchants to
Karmagia nor send his own
caravans to
town because of Luxor's incessant
highway
robbery.
The setting, then, was Karmagia
and the
surrounding areas of the
Wild Coast. The
plot was the opening of trade
routes through
Luxor to the city of Elredd.
(During the
adventure, Valdis discovered
that some of
his miners were smuggling
gold out to
another nearby noble, called
The Toad.
Sub-plots always make things
more interesting.)
The principal characters
were Lord
Valdis, his henchmen, the
Queen of Luxor,
and a very interested merchant
prince from
Elredd. The Queen?s primary
motivation
for ordering the robberies
was not greed,
but retribution: Valdis had
refused her
matrimonial advances. The
merchant had
been ?gifted? with a death
sentence from
the local assassin's guild,
and was interested
in coming into a lot of gold
quickly so he
could buy off the guildmaster.
So, both the
queen and the merchant were
more ruthless
than mere greed would make
them. Unfortunately,
Valdis only succeeded in
provoking
a war which led him into
a more dangerous
area of political adventuring.
Example
2: The 2nd adventure illustrates
a setting outside the main
character's
home territory. It was set
in the court of
Lady Rhalta, Queen of the
Olven state of
Celene. Eldrich Silversteel,
her Majesty's
1st cousin, was called in
to uncover a
traitor in her cabinet who
was leaking information
regarding Celenian troop
movements
in that country's war on
the Suss Forest
humanoids. The raids conducted
by
the humanoids had mysteriously
become
precise and well-organized,
and the forest
troops were uncharacteristically
well
disciplined. Obviously someone
or something
was providing them with leadership,
and whoever or whatever it
was had access
to privileged information
that made the
raids devastating to the
Celenian forces.
Silversteel was given as
much background
material on cabinet members
as Lady
Rhalta could provide, and
his investigation
proceeded from there. The
trail led him
from Enstad to deep in the
Suss, where he
encountered the mysterious
movers behind
the raids, and back again
to her Majesty's
court for a suspenseful confrontation
with
the traitor.
In this adventure, the setting
and the
characters were molded to
fit the plot,
whereas in the previous example
the plot
grew from the setting and
the characters. It
is possible, of course, for
a particularly
intriguing NPC to spark your
creative
flame, in which case the
setting and plot
would evolvve from the NPC's
personality.
However the idea takes shape,
it is the
fusion of all 3 elements
tha twill make or
break the adventure.
Types
of political adventures
Of course, there is an infinite
variety of
possible political adventurers,
so any list will
be far from complete. 5 basic
types of
political adventures are
described below,
with variations given for
some.
Military
adventures are those which
involve the considered use
of military
forces. This is by far the
most involved type
of political adventure; it
necessitates detailing
the makeup of the military
forces involved,
the ruling bodies commading
those
forces, the resources (both
fiscal and human)
and the terrain of each side.
There are 3 basic variations:
international
warfare, civil warfare, and
the deployment
of large "peacekeeping" forces
on
foreign soil. International
warfare can involve
the creation and dissolution
of alliances,
massive troop movements over
long
distances, and the problems
of supplying
armies away from home (not
to mention <logistics>
fighting the actual war)
within the framework
of the AD&D
game rules. Civil war
presents the character
with the dilemma of
choosing a side. It can be
quite interesting if
the character and the nobles
with which he
has made military, commerical,
and perhaps
emotional ties choose opposite
sides and are
forced to fight one another.
If the character
chooses the rebel side, how
will he and his
compatriots face the economic
considerations
involved in fielding an army?
Will
the people he rules remain
loyal to him or
shift allegiance to the central
government?
The third variation can be
very interesting
to play. Since lives other
than the character
?s own sometimes mean little
in the
AD&D game universe, the
moral question
of allowing peacekeeping
forces to fight
back don?t take on the same
importance
that they do in our real
world. But does one
allow troops to pillage and
plunder the area
they are supposedly protecting?
What if the
troops go against their leader?s
orders? If
the character has an interest
in the area his
forces occupy but the local
ruler orders
those forces to leave, what
does the character
do? Remember that when a
character is
working in the international
community, his
actions will have decided
and often unpredictable
implications.
Economic
adventures deal with the myriad
curses of macroeconomics:
inflation,
depression, famine, and so
forth. The political
problems that arise from
such conditions
can be very difficult to
deal with. The solutions
are usually long-term ones,
which goes
against the tendency of most
characters
(and players) to expect,
if not demand,
immediate results. Adding
to the difficulty
is the fact that many players
may be blissfully
ignorant of the causes and
cures of
economic phenomena.
What if the crops fail one
year? How will
the character feed the starving
populace for
which he is responsible (and
which he is
dependent on)? The king,
financially
strapped because of the cost
of constructing
his new beachfront palace,
may demand a
tribute higher than the character
can pay.
How will he raise the money
(assuming that
adventuring is, for some
reason, out of the
question)? Or, drop this
bomb: The village
is experiencing runaway inflation
because of
an influx of gold from adventuring
in the
area. The peasants, unable
to keep up with
the rising prices, are forced
to emigrate or
steal to live. What can be
done? These are
the real problems of rulers.
Commercial
adventures are closely related
to the economic type and
involve
issues of commerce, such
as opening and
protecting trade routes.
What can one do if
a neighboring noble places
outrageous
tariffs on his merchants?
What if the noble
refuses to allow passage
through his land? It,
is very difficult to maintain
a prosperous
fiefdom without prosperous
trade, yet it
should be equally as difficult
to open and
maintain a system of worthwhile
commerce..
Smugglers may undersell local
merchants.
Caravans that once frequented
the character
?s land may suddenly find
greener or
safer pastures elsewhere.
Don't bother players with
the tedious
issues of market fluctuation
and stiff competition;
determine how the market
works
when it is basically stable.
Then, when
drastic things occur requiring
character
intervention, there is enough
at stake (regaining
or retaining the condition
of stability)
to make the problem worth
solving.
Internal
security -- which usually translates
into danger at the royal
court ? provides
one of the most compelling
types of
political adventure. The
most exciting and
suspenseful of these are
like the assassin and
spy scenarios described earlier.
Or, there
could be an adventure involving
embezzlement
from the state treasury.
Anyone may
be the thief, from the footsoldier
who
guards the vault to the hero?s
closest henchman,
but whoever it is, his reasons
for
committing the crime must
be believable.
An interesting twist to throw
into any campaign
is an unfaithful spouse plotting
to get
rid of his or her current
mate, intending to
share land and status with
a new partner.
The closer an enemy is, the
more dangerous
he or she becomes.
Revolt
is the worst nightmare of any
noble, and occurs in 1 of
3 general
forms. The 1st is the "ordinary"
peasant
revolt, in which oppression
from the ruling
class causes a general uprising
not unlike
the French and American Revolutions.
This
type of revolt is somewhat
simplistically but
adequately defined under
"Peasants, Serfs,
and
Slaves" in the Dungeon Masters
Guide. The second
form is a revolt started,
supplied, and maintained
from the outside.
A hostile foreign power,
through propaganda
and insinuation, turns the
public
opinion against the player
character(s). A
few agents infiltrate the
populace to lead the
rebellion, and arms are provided
by the
foreigners. The third kind
of revolt is more
limited in scope. It involves
an individual
faction of malcontents or
power-seekers
whose views are not supported
by the general
public; through terrorism
or a quick
military coup, the faction
tries to destroy
the character's power base.
It is his problem
to stop them.
The treatment of political
adventuring
given here is admittedly
rather sketchy, but
it is also true that not
many specific points
can be made, since the details
of how an
adventure is constructed
and staged must
necessarily differ from one
campaign to the
next. The DM who plans out
political adventures
should always remember that
every aspect of politics
is closely related to
every other one.
Politics is like a great web
of interconnected
and interdependent strands.
If the
elements of setting, plot,
and characterization
are used well, and if the
mystery and
suspense are maintained ,
you'll
find political adventuring
to be a rewarding
and pleasant change from
the the dull, drab
dungeon.