Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
Last night my players executed an in-game Coup d'etat. Or rather a reverse version, arresting a band of conspirators with sizeable political power in the dead of night while their leader was out of town.
They asked "So what skill do we roll?" And I was something at a loss. I had no idea, and nothing really satisfied me. So I made them roll at IQ-5 to represent some sort of default, and was generous about complimentary skills.
What skill should we have rolled against? Strategy feels too battleground. Intelligence Analysis is about analyzing the data, not performing it.
And yes, I know we could have played in through in detail over the course of a month. That's not really how this campaign works. How do you condense it into a single roll?
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I think a single roll may be overoptimistic. I would be looking at a roll helped by complementary skills, at a minimum. You might also want some of those skills to be exercised by an organization that works with the PCs.
In a coup in general, there are two issues. One is mechanical: Can you get your people in place to capture and neutralize the people they're working again? The other is political: Can you get the general population to accept the action as justified? Ordinarily, I would treat the first one as Tactics, and the second as Politics. GURPS Social Engineering suggests Propaganda and Psychology (Applied) as complementary skills for the second.
In the case you describe, though, the characters aren't actually *replacing* the existing regime; rather, they're taking action against conspirators within it. So I think what they have to do is make a Law roll to ensure that what they do is seen as a valid exercise of power. Propaganda might help communicate the legal basis of their actions to a mass audience; one or more investigative skills, such as Criminology, Administration, or Research, might help find supportive evidence. Similarly to a standard coup, the Law roll could be resisted by the Loyalty of the public to the conspirators. Alternatively, though, you might apply a penalty to the Law roll equal to the Status of the conspirators; arresting "the usual suspects" (Status -1) would be pretty easy, but arresting a pillar of society (Status 3 or 4) would require a damned convincing case.