Hello. I am hoping to bounce ideas off of the heads of the rest of the forum members here about a campaign I am designing. I'm generaly looking for anything to throw into the campaign at Heroic level, atm, but would welcome ideas for adventures in paragon level, too.
The Campaign world is set in a large city called Ravena. It is a Monarchy with a Parliament. Similar to British government the hea dof Government resides with a Prime Minister and the dutis of government are divided among different ministries.The aim of the campaign is to utilize Beleth as a arch-villain for the whole campaign.
At Heroic Tier I want the PCs to be "bureaucrats" in the government. In the campaign setting the Ministry of War and Martial arts are in charge of the civil service, so government bureaucrats and the civil service are essentially soldiers. The PCs would act as trouble-shooters, conflict resolvers, and civil servants for other ministries. So far I have:
-Ministry of Guilds, Business, and the Treasury
-Ministry of Culture
-Ministry of Foreign Affairs
-Ministry of the Nobility
-Ministry of the Peasantry
-Ministry of Education, Wizardry, and the Arcane Arts
-Ministry of Health
-Ministry of Villages, Townships, and Cities
-Ministry of Farms and the untamed Primal Wilds
-Ministry of Justice and Corrections
I'm looking for ideas of other government bureaucracies to include in the settign and possible conflicts that PCs may have to handle regarding them. I have an idea bouncing around with the Ministry of Guilds where the ships merchants guild is being harrassed by Pirates out of the Thieves guild. Yes, the thieves guild is a fully vetted and legal guild. Unlicensed larceny is only punishable in this setting. Licensed larceny is taxable and any lost property can be claimed as deductions on taxes for the offended party. Bizarre, I know, but I figure that's part of the wackiness of the setting.
Exampels of events such as that though i would love to hear of though.
Thanks for any input provided!
Can I ask a few questions about how you are running your game?
Are the players following a defined plot line that you have established? In such that they have to make the right decisions and actions to advance the plot forward? Do you know in advance where the game is going to end up?
Or is the plot of your game loose, the players are able change the minds and affect the actions of the other NPC's in the ministry, through diplomacy, and other actions - such that they are part of the plot and the story arc is writing itself over each game based on the machinations of the players. Where the game ends up is up to how the players manipulate things?
And about your players:
Do they like to plot and manipulate NPC's? Or do they just want to do what is going to get them levels? How deep do they play the game? Do they view the game as a miniatures game or as structured storytelling? or something in between?
As far as the big pay off, I just rolled a D20, and rolled that the minister in charge of the minstry of the military, civil service, and martial arts made a pact with Beleth to gain more power for his bureaucratic post. So thats kind of the angle around Epic Levels. Around Heroic, I wanted to just play it loose and have the PCs accomplish small tasks for various different ministries. I wouldnt be above them attempting to influence government and even taking control of an arm of government themselves around paragon level.
As far as my players go...the leaders do mostly attempt to try and influence the world around them. They are people Ihave played with and know I have a thing for games involving political intrigue. I want to keep the intrigue aspect of it on the DL for heroic tier, and instead concentrate on them being "bureaucrats".
One thing you can pull on them:
They witness a minster of one branch exchanging a large sum of money with a minister of another branch...they follow that minister and see him exchange some of the money he recieved with yet another minister and so on until fully 10 or more ministers of various branches have all exchanged money back and forth. Some seem rather happy about the exchange while some others are downright upset when they meet to exchange money.
What the players have discovered is a legitimate gambling ring, they were all betting on the outcome of a gladatorial event that happened the previous day...but they may think they have stumbled upon a clandestine activity.
If the players confront one of these ministers and ask them what the money exchange was all about they will probably get an honest answer, for this was not an illegal activity...however a few of the ministers involved are actually cheating, fixing events and otherwise influencing outcomes. So some of the ministers may be rather devious with their answers to the PC's questions.
If the players follow these ministers around, discreetly, they may see more suspicious activity...like the hiring of thugs to threaten a farrier who was supposed to lame up a horse for an event.
Anyway you can run with that and get a very involved plot going, as well as things going on in the background which the PC's may become involved with from other angles.
You can have all kinds of fun with them if they leap to the conclusion that they are witnessing a bribe happening when they see all this money exchanging hands..they may go and report it to some justice officials who will ask them for names and faces etc and investigate this affair, causing a snowball of various betrayals and drama can ensue all over a legitimate activity. This could earn the PC's some real enmity with a few ministers if their involvement gets out.
Alternatively the PC's may try their own hand at "fixing" these gambling events -something a few of the players in my games love to do.
And here I was thinking of a way to do a gladiator fight in the setting. Excellent idea! Mission from the sports and recreation ministry to crack down on gambling on games of honor!
You forgot the Ministry of Silly Walks.
democracy iz serius bizness.
But looking at the original list...i did forget a ministry of religions. I'm sure I'll be able to do some wonders with nobility who worship bane and the thrreats to democracy posed by Tyranny and such.
These are dependent on the magic content of your world I suppose.
How about a ministry of troublesome monsters - to deal with those monsters that crop up and start doing damage to areas and/or causing dangers to trade routes and outlying communities.
Ministry of extra-planar affairs
Ministry of explorers, adventurers and spelunkers
Ministry of prophecies, predictions and fate
The extra planar dealings would probably be handled by religion or wizardry, if not foreign dealings.
The monsters would be under the auspices of what location problems were occuring under. Mostly likely the untamed wilds ministry.
Adventurers I figured were either handed individually by their respective ministries ( I do have the beginnings of a ministry for each major power source: Martial, Primal, Divine, and Arcane) or parties would be under the auspices of the Military Arts ministry, if not part of the bureaucracy as "bureaucrats" such as te PCs.
I was thinking of around Paragon level establishing that portfolios of influence and responsabilities were given to different ministerial groups and ministerial groups competed against each other for portfolios of responsabilities. Paragon level would deal with competition between ministries and the PCs participating in intra-ministerial"wars". I wanted to establish at the start of Heroic level the Ministry of Martial Arts took control of the civil service form the old civil service minstry, so at least i would establish precedence for such an occurance, even if it is rare (according to the vision I have for the world), which would set up the leader of the martial arts and civil service sellign his soul to Devils to help in his acquisition of government power through the parliament of the country. Kinda like hitler, in that an evil person will be using government to take it over, and the mixing of the occult.
Ministry of Guilds and Business - overseeing the law with reguards to guilds, slavery, trade, land use, and other matters of buisness.
Ministry of Treasury - oversees the use of the states taxes and confers.
Ministry of Culture - the Arts and Education - pretty simple here.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs - unchanged.
Ministry of the Nobility and Justice - the Nobles would handle all matters of Justice and keep it closly guarded.
Ministry of the Peasantry - there is no need to elaborate further on this, if your a peasant then there is no need to give further title.
Ministry of Wizardry and the Arcane Arts
Ministry of Health and Science - this would oversee the health and welfare of the states people but would also serve as a laison office between the Ministrys of Religon, Wizardry, and Culture.
Ministry of the State (replaces Villages, Towns, and Cities) - keeps track of who owns what, who is buying what land, and so on.
Ministry of Religon. Keeps the religons of the land in check and away from offical state power.
Ministry of Agriculture - watches over food stores and keeps the farmers going.
Ministry of Corrections - prisons and captial punishment.
Hey I like your idea. Wanted to share my two cents worth. I changed some of your ministries though.
The changed arnt bad. Iknow I compressed some of those ministries into others just so I dont have to bloated of a bureaucracy.
As for the changes in nobility, I reasoned making it weaker than you made them due to the democractic natur eof the country. I was aiming more towards something like Britain's parliament in terms of respect for the nobility in the government.
Its nice to see the input, though. I'll probly be incorporating some of your ideas in my game.
Let's see...
A few combined ideas/questions.
1) Play up the run-around. Intercommunication between the ministries is a major problem, creating all kinds of waste and dangerous neglect. The wandering monster idea? Imagine a stomping fiend trampling through the wilds, sometimes lumbering through populated areas. He's a wild beast, so the Primal Wilds team is on the case...but he's getting into urban areas, which means the Ministry of Cities is attempting to gain control over the situation...but it is also an undead beast, which means his presence is creating a disastrous illness within his path, and the Ministry of Health is demanding they have dominion to cure the problem, and there is only so much funding to go around and each ministry wants its fingers in the pot...
2) Play up the military presence. If everyone is a soldier under the thumb of the Ministry of War, local politics will be colored by martial ideas, if not strict martial law. Might may mean right, and competition between different ministries or between disagreeing officials may rely on ritual violence as conflict resolution. In other words, challenging superiors for the right to their title, winning the right to a certain project's funding through competitions of strength and might, or outright urban warfare between rival factions.
3) What's the monarchy up to? Depending on how they feel about the power of the Ministry of War, they might be valued allies in the revelation of fiendish influence, or perhaps the royalty itself is corrupted from within or in the thrall of twisted forces. The monarchy is often the 'face' of the realm, and establishing them within the context of the ministries would help nudge the plot towards your intended goal.
4) Work with the players to establish which Ministry they would prefer, then use that for adventuring ideas. If they have several possibilities, consider having missions that are joint efforts between several groups; the ministries of disagree over the origin of a crisis as arcane or divine, thus State, Religion, Wizardry, and Peasantry are all involved in solving the issue. Or a particular foreign party is suspected of trafficking with a robber gang to disrupt caravans, therefore Trade, Justice, and Foreign Affairs have to set aside their differences and work together, despite each group having its own agenda.
5) What's the overall world like? You mention Ravena as a city-state, what are its neighbors? Enemies? Allies? Primary exports and imports? How does their population view the government, and view the monarchy? How do the government and monarchy view the population? Who, outside of the government, holds significant power, legitimate or ill?
For the world, will outsiders impact the campaign, and if so, how do they view Ravena, do they have any agendas that will conflict with those of the PCs, and have the machinations of Beleth managed to ensnare other cities?
Overall, nice idea. Hope it goes well. 
Suggestions 1 and 2 are what I am gearing heroic tier towards. I appreciate the idea behind suggestion1 because that is definitely what I can use towards doing Major Quests. I know my first story arc is a group of pirates are ignoring the policies the ministry of guilds has set for the thieves guild. However, the reason why is because a group of thieves has become acquainted with the teachings of Bane through a priest, putting them on a path working for the ministry of religion to correct a rogue church, and then they come across that the supporters of this rogue church are members of the nobility looking to rock the boat of the country, putting the PCs working for the ministry of the nobility. The whole premise at the end being that the nobility were discontent with their position in life being vestigial organs of society and looking to find a way to impose their rule over the people of the country.
Options 3 and 4 will happen more along the lines of the paragon tier as I imagine the PCs as being either special forces used by the martial arts ministry to correct problems of intra ministerial conflicts that the general populace don't know is goig on, or the PCs may actually find themselve sin charge of a ministry or two due to their stellar of success, putting them in conflict with the artificially risiing star of the Minister of the Martial Arts and his unholy pact with Beleth.
The final options I may save if the campaign continues as a campaign world, allowing characters to write the story of the setting through their level 30s attaining their epic destinies.
Again, though, thank you for the idea of the rampaging monster zombie. Loved it!
Why is there a ministry of the peasantry? I'm not saying you should take it out necessarily, I'm just saying that I as a player (okay, a nerdy player with too much historical knowledge of England during the medieval period) would wonder about that. IRL aspects of the peasantry were little more than slaves; in fact, they were considered property of the local noble to the extent that in some periods and areas if you killed a serf within a given demesne you were expected to pay the noble off for the worth of the lost labor. Other peasants might have gained plots of land or found a trade they became good at... at that point they weren't so much peasants anymore.
I think you may be missing guilds for skilled tradesmen. The peasants can just get kicked around when they get uppity but if you cut off the town shoemaker's hands because he spoke out against your taxes, you have to go to the next town over for shoes. I was just in York (not the one in Virginia) a couple weeks ago and they still have a couple guildhalls within the old city walls. In many cities, the various guilds getting together is what formed the original government for the area.
I wanted to condense the number of guilds so I lumped most trade guilds a a single guild for ease of information dissemination to my players. I believe I have around 10 or so guilds in actuality, and I fluctuate between more or less of those numbers as needed. All in all, having a minstry of guilds is a stand in for a ministry of business or ministry of trade or what have you.
I do suppose I treat the guilds with a rather dismissive hand since the majority of them are not interesting to include a devoted story towards. Granted, the PCs can stop violence between the cobblers and tailors, or stop a riot of the dyers guild when a new dye is introduced to the city and a non-guild member starts selling it. I just feel its not worth building a story around. I guess I feel theres no need to go into the minutae of the guilds if the PCs will, at best, interact with about 3-4 of them in any true fashion. Mostly the guilds are a vehicle for incorporating the story hook of the legalized thieves guild. On the other hand there can be expeditions to the mountains for goods for the smithys guild. There can be escort/bodyguard missions out to sea for the shipper's guild. However, I do need to consider ho many adentures I can make for the heroic tier and I want at least each ministry to get a chance to be presented to the PCs before they get to level 11.
As for the peasantry ministry, the world is taking the assumption if that you aren't born noble, you're part of the peasant class. The 3 estates concept just shaved down to 2. You could also say that instead of Commons and Lords, like the parliamentary designations in England, there's Peasants and Nobles. Again, names just used for ease of dissemination to my players. They kind of grasp the concept of Peasant better than "Commons". Also, lumping lower and middle class together does save the availability for a story on the fact that the "peasantry" is more than just that. Or I could use the minstry as a analog for the modern day HUD. Whatever the final form it takes I am holding on that one as a guild that is seriously stretched thin and hardly capable of fulfillign its portfolio fo responsabilities. It may just be the adventure that moves the PCs from Heroic to Paragon as they attempt to either help one Ministry absorb the Peasantry ministry, thus enhancing the new ministries power, or preserving the peasants ministry for some reason or other.
Well... the three estates were actually "those who fight" (the nobility), "those who pray" (the clergy), and "those who work" (everybody else) so you actually do have that represented. Perhaps instead of having separate guilds for all the trades you could have one skilled workers' guild that bands together to assert their own proto-capitalist doctrine.
Thanks for the recomendation Johnny. I'll use that idea for the guilds ministry. Im also rethinking my use of a peasants guild, too. You brought up some valid points.
It would involve various Ministries.The ambassador/diplomat would like a tour.Perhaps a visit to some local museums or places of interest.
He/She is here to sign a treaty or just further relations with your government.
Some darker storylines-
1. The ambassador/diplomat is from a country where liferights violations occur.(AWKWARD!!!)
2. An assassanation plot is uncovered and must be prevented.
3. The ambassador/diplomat is an impostor.The real one must be found or the fake exposed.
This should keep them hopping.Hope this helps