Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 obdormio Aug 20, 2010 13:42:05	I am currently planning a campaign that will hopefully include a good bit of intrigue. I've set it in a slightly fragmented kingdom, and from the first session, there will be at least five groups or factions vying for power and influence that can act as either patrons or antagonists to the players, depending on the choices they make.  There's a powerful church; the noble class, represented by the local lord; the crown, represented by a wide-stretched bureaucracy; an emerging merchant class; and a criminal network lurking in the shadows. None of these are monolithic organisations, obviously, and some are looser groupings than others, and which of them will play a big part in the story will depend once again on the choices of the players. I want to give the players the opportunity to join in with any of these factions fairly early on, and my best idea for how to do this so far is to have them find, in the course of their adventure, a document, or something similar, produced by one of the factions, with a content that would embarrass them. The idea is that any one of the factions would be interested in getting their hands on it, either to use as leverage against the producing faction, or, in the case of the producer, to hide it away. Bam - instant in with whichever faction the players wish to align with, and instant enmity of any other faction that finds out. They could of course decide to give it to no-one, destroy it or keep it themselves to be independent players, which would also give an interesting result. My problem is, I can't quite come up with something suitable for this document-thing to contain, to be strong enough leverage to be worth the while. Anyone have any idea that could help me?
#2 lamarok Aug 21, 2010 13:54:18	Very interesting Obdormio. I think your best bet would be that any one of those organisations head honcho gained power illegitimately. The church's' leader dealt in some sort of witchcraft/conspiracy/magic or the lord had someone assassinated or the leader of the rogues has something big planned. The last one might be the easiest because then they could join in on an assault on a town or enemy or something or they could turn it in to the king/lord to receive honors and be hired to go to war.
#3 tedium Aug 22, 2010 18:18:52	Nobles: mistresses or other personal scandal. Something dodgy (assassination, blackmail) in the lord's rise to that position. Crown: Suspected illegitimacy of heir, evidence of corruption in tax system. Merchants: Tax avoidance, price fixing. Criminal network: Documents identifying leaders, revealing safehouses. For the first 3, I've deliberately put them as netural, evil (or closer to it), so that the first would be fairly alignment independent, the second would tend to push away good characters (which will be a problem for many potential options). The other thing I can see, is that very few will allow for alliance with anybody, for example, the revealing documents for the criminals would be of considerably less use to the merchants than the Crown or Nobles (depending on who runs the local constabulary). Another option is some secret deal that ties 2 factions together (bribes from the merchants so that the nobles turn a blind eye to the smuggling done on behalf of the criminals/to avoid the crown's taxes), of possible interest to the others, and allowing some tension between the two cooperating ones (the ones that leak it won't want the other to know about their indiscretion)
#4 atomicbanana Aug 23, 2010 10:27:55	if your characters are running good aligned or are just good-natured, a document can be a discarded ransom/blackmail note aimed at one of the factions.  The discovery of the note can be a good "in" for the PCs to meet with the higher-ups of a certain organization.
#5 obdormio Aug 24, 2010 7:04:18	Thanks for the ideas, you've been a real help.