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Old 12-15-2018, 08:40 AM   #1
Devil_Dante
 
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Default helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

Hey guys, need some hints to plan my next adventure.
Long story short, my players will move into a region known for the abundance of guilds and strong families (based on europe of 16th-18th century), important trading posts, every kind of services, spies, assassins and so on. In this region, there are 6 important cities. Every city is ruled by the council of six. Every city has one guild who has the 51% of the influence above the others 5. In total, there are 36 senators, who formed, more or less democratically, the govern. This land is famous for the intrigues, the subterfuges and the plots that every guild (major and minor) attains, in order to increase its influence and power. The ruling guilds are: Mages; trading; mercenaries; lumberjack; balckmith; artificier. The minor guilds are very various: bounty hunter, monster hunters, fishermen, innkeepers... Do even exist spies, assassins and thieves guilds but they are secret guilds of course.

They will need to seek informations about their quest lines. For some reasons, the most important criminal guild, the "shadow thieves", has been focused by a lot of different criminals and non criminals guilds. In particular, they think that the "artificier guild" is threating them. And this is happening to other guilds too. Chaos is starting to spread accross the lands and the cities. The shadow thieves were known among thugs and important families. They were tollerated by the rulers because the are needful in different ways: espionage, hired killers, dirty works... No one ever worked against them, because they are strong enough to take their enemies down.

Now, my players could find their informations in two different ways: speaking with "the right guy who knows stuff", or contacting "the right guild who knows suff". The infos they are looking for are dangerous, thus, the right guy will be hard to find, and even harder to convince to share his knowledge, probabily incomplete or partially wrong thou.

The right guild will have better infos, but at one cost: they will have to understand what is happening.

Now, how can i handle this two different approaches?
For the first one (the guy), i thought to use the rules to find a person, from the "social engineering". When they eventually find him, they will need an high influence roll (i use generally only influence roll, with the variant rules of MoS). At that point i could decide what kind of info the person would have, or simply create some chart and randomly roll for the infos they found.

For the second one (the guild), i need to create the proper adventure, filling it with intrigues, subplot, suspance and social interactions. This adventure shouldn't be fight based, but more focused on the investigation.

Have you any idea? I'm having very hard time, planning a investigation-subtefurge base campaign. Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Devil_Dante; 12-15-2018 at 08:47 AM.
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Old 12-15-2018, 11:51 AM   #2
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

Hi,

I've a done a few games like this, here are some suggestions:

People Not events
First of all intrigue is really about people, therefore to fuel your adventure you need to make a great deal of different people that they can interact with, some of them will be normal people, some important, you need to make enough NPC's that they won't be able to tell which are just window dressing (not important) and which are part of conspiracies etc.

Create a web
Start by just inventing a few NPC's, If you have a Serennissima type setting you need gondola men, you need a Doge, etc.... You probably already have ideas of a few NPC's. After you have the small list, you need to create more - a lot more! to do this, take each existing NPC, then branch out, creating NPC's linked to them. Think about what/who they need to interact with just to live (a rich man needs servants, a doctor has patients, a thief has a fence to sell goods to, and the fence has clients of his own). This is how you make a lot of NPC's in a short time. Little by little as you use logic to understand the setting you will naturally figure who exists in this world, don't worry about names in the beginning, don't worry about personality traits just yet, try to just do a skeleton job of making the relationships, you should probably make a chart with the names and draw lines between them marking the lines with how each person knows the other. Try to loop the web back so that branching people start to connect in weird ways, and everybody knows almost everybody else in some way.

The Web is conflict!
Most people should have a goal, have allies and enemies, they should have a secret, and know a secret about someone else (depending on how much time you have you can do this multiple times for multiple people). The important thing is to have conflict, you need to make sure that there are as many interlocking conflicts as possible so that everyone is trying to do something against someone EX. Doctor Marcello is in love with Sophia, Duke Argento's daughter, Sophia knows that the Red bandit is really the Princes twisted half brother that everyone thinks is dead, The Prince mourns his brother and blames Dr Marcello for his death…. keep doing this over and over creating a web of interactions, rivalries, jealousy, black mail, keep doing it until you have a lot of stuff going on.

The Social Dungeon
You can actually think of this like a dungeon, except that the relationship lines on your web diagram replace the corridors between rooms. Essentially they will meet a few NPC's when they arrive, as you interact these NPC's will name drop other NPC's (representing the doors of the dungeon) and through social interaction and questioning the players will learn of other NPCs (secret passages). When things get slow you can roll for wandering monsters (have NPC's screw around with PCs), if the PC's do not act they are acted upon.

Life is not simple
In an intrigue game there should be a lot of grey morality, things should not be clear cut, create choices with no good outcomes etc. Politics is a dirty game where there is almost always someone who is harmed by another being helped. Though a different genre, "film noir" is really awesome as a way of showing the dark side of humanity and can be mined for personality flaws and relationships. Remember that there are very few people who are truly sociopathic, you need to realize that there are different categories of villains, some are willing to steal but not kill, some would kill but are afraid to do so.... even the non villain characters can be selfish or corrupt or at the very least lacking in the moral character to become involved or stand up for what is right. Once you have enough of these people you throw in a few good people in the setting, they shouldn't be easy to differentiate from the bad or selfish people (most people pretend they are good after all), these are brave or innocent, they are the gems hidden in the filth, when they are revealed the players get to be reassured about humanity, these people are special and helping them can mean doing the impossible: fixing the world for the better (assuming your players wish to do this).

Intrigue is civilized
Make sure that violence and mayhem are difficult to pull off, you do not want magic explosions every day in an urban intrigue campaign. this means rule of law needs to be important, the gaurds or police need to be able to tackle the players if they start being naughty. Really build an understanding of the penalties associated with murder, violence, etc.... be careful to balance here, if violence has the result of death penalty Players may need to leave your setting if they do something wrong which would suck, but if you make it too lenient you will find that they will not bother to do the intrigue part, just kill whoever they want..... One way of having it both ways is to have harsh punishments but have a corrupt legal system too, maybe they are in trouble but if you pay off somebody (lawyers guild, mafia, specific police etc) then they can get away with it, but the cost is either very high or now they owe evil guys money or they owe a favor, they have to do something they don't want to do, make the task very harsh, but possible to accomplish (connects back to Life is not simple above). Of course the court system and crooked people involved will now be part of your roster of NPC's you can create with their own interactions with the other characters!

The Straw that broke the Camels back
Consider setting the starting set up as an impasse - the factions in your setting are roughly even in strength and cannot overcome each other, then when the PC (your players) arrive, the different factions will have a logical reason to get them to help. This is a realistic way that a small group of strangers could actually change a larger setting.

Build in the buy-in
Try to make some of the characters backstories touch on certain characters in the setting, its hard just being strangers arriving and having no stakes in the game to begin with

Domino effect
Once they arrive an event starts a chain reaction (either their interference or something else, a death of a power player, a change in laws, a disaster or unrest in the population) this is a classic way to begin a story because it causes change. Little by little this change begins to build, smaller events lead to larger events until finally some big deal happens. Juxtapose this with larger social or military situations (the city is under siege and your players are trying to live inside etc.) and you get some awesome drama!

Build a good engine then let it fly
The trick with this is to front end your work to make a compelling set up. once it starts going you will find that it becomes easy to run because you just have to naturally run the NPC's using their goals to guide the action. Often you can generate content for a session by asking yourself questions about characters: EX. Will Sophia use the knowledge of the Red bandits identity to get a chance take control of the Guild?

Build a Call Back List
At the end of each session write down 3 things that your players did that could or did make the setting change (big or small), put this onto a running list. When planning a session refer to your growing list of "call backs" and pick one item, imagine how this event could have changed the setting and then incorporate that into the session. In other words make sure that something they did hass a result/consequence next game. Players love this and it makes your setting feel realistic. Ex. the characters talked badly to Madame Istria last game, have her sister Korrel approach them to say that she's been waiting for someone "to put that dreadful woman in her place for years" and thank them, inviting them to her house for dinner. Ex 2. the characters kill Dr. Marcello, two games later his patient dies of some disease that could have been treated, now the patients lover vows revenge against who ever caused this (she is owed a favor by the red bandit etc...…. This doesn't have to be really big stuff, actually I recommend varied call backs, some minor some major.

Resources I've used:

GURPS Social engineering, GURPS Pulling Rank and GURPs City Stats
Focus on rules for Search modifiers and Status as they will make your game more realistic. As an aside, Social engineering is a fascinating book which I come back to again and again.

Vornheim the city supplement
This has a great system where you randomly created conflicts between different people, I've used it to create a noble court before to great effect. In my own campaign the Chronicler of the court (a serial killer himself) kept two books, a Chronicle for the country that was all nice and sweet and a secret book (called the Rotten book), which had all the blackmail info. Because I needed to create a lot of content very quickly I used vornhiem to randomly create the contents of the book, then transcribed the results.

Red tide sandbox guide
This has a good system for creating noble courts, business operations and city stuff..... randomizers let you create various important people in organizations and then create the conflicts that are present between them.

Fate
this is free - it has a neat rule called "Faces and places" which basically says that for every location there should be a person with needs that is associated to that location. Urban campaigns are also about local geography, create NPCs who connect to the various locations.

Apocalypse world
Check out chapter on building "fronts", basically this is a system for not railroading your players, its a way of writing adventures without pre-plotting the story.


I hope that helps. I rarely post answers to the forum but I felt that I could actually give a solid answer here.

Good luck!
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Last edited by cupbearer; 12-15-2018 at 01:42 PM.
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Old 12-15-2018, 04:07 PM   #3
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

Check out Amagi Games, or maybe Levi Kornelsen, on drivethrurpg. He has a product called "Situations" which I find a useful aid in designing such adventures. I'm having trouble getting to the site to place a link here, atm, sorry.
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Old 12-15-2018, 08:02 PM   #4
Donny Brook
 
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

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Originally Posted by cupbearer View Post
Hi,
...

I hope that helps. I rarely post answers to the forum but I felt that I could actually give a solid answer here.

I thought that advice was very good, and I've copied it over to the notes for the intrigue campaign I am working on.

Thanks!
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Old 12-15-2018, 10:50 PM   #5
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

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Originally Posted by Donny Brook View Post
I thought that advice was very good, and I've copied it over to the notes for the intrigue campaign I am working on.

Thanks!
you're welcome!
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Old 12-16-2018, 05:01 AM   #6
Devil_Dante
 
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

i am speachless! Did not expecting such an exhaustive answer!
Thank you very much! There are a lot of hints right there.

Will be a real challenge create such adventure!

I try to find the source you wrote, but following your tips could be enough!
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Old 12-16-2018, 08:18 AM   #7
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

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Originally Posted by cupbearer View Post
I rarely post answers to the forum but I felt that I could actually give a solid answer here.
Solid? Like a 10' cube of platinum. I hope you post more often. Even at 10% of the quality of this post, you'll be of benefit to the rest of us!
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Old 12-16-2018, 10:03 AM   #8
Devil_Dante
 
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

Yes indeed! I was looking for some NPCs mapper. Maybe someone found on the web, or write a little bit of code in order to have a randomized relationship tree. Should t be too difficult.
the idea of having random link between NPCs is cool. I only have to understand how to add the story line into these maze of relationship

Edit: I was thinking to start linking the major NPCs involved. From them I will continue creating the secondary NPCs, creating a tree and cross the relationships between them. Will be probably the most intricate and difficult adventure I v ever written.

Last edited by Devil_Dante; 12-16-2018 at 11:19 AM.
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Old 12-17-2018, 01:39 PM   #9
cupbearer
 
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Default Re: helping to plan an intrigue based DF adventure

Quote:
Originally Posted by Devil_Dante View Post
Yes indeed! I was looking for some NPCs mapper. Maybe someone found on the web, or write a little bit of code in order to have a randomized relationship tree. Should t be too difficult.
the idea of having random link between NPCs is cool. I only have to understand how to add the story line into these maze of relationship

Edit: I was thinking to start linking the major NPCs involved. From them I will continue creating the secondary NPCs, creating a tree and cross the relationships between them. Will be probably the most intricate and difficult adventure I v ever written.
Glad to be of help!
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