Week 1, not so bad. Freezing my ass off in this van, putting up microphones. Weirdest job ever, hanging microphones in suburbia, but it pays.
Friday 24 December 2021
The Gig
Monday 13 December 2021
Some Thoughts on Intrigue
This is me thinking out loud about intrigue in role-playing games, and a bit of scaffolding to make it happen. For the moment I'm thinking about this like a world builder, a would-be GM setting up a situation suitable for political intrigue.
What I've got is:
- overt violence is impractical (or extremely costly)
- several (or many) factions competing for dominance in a cooperative endeavour
- power is divided among the factions
- factions want more than one thing
- strengths and weaknesses tie the factions together
Costly Violence
For intrigue to happen, you need multiple factions in a context where overt violence is impractical (disastrous, strongly discouraged, or incredibly expensive).
This could be the fact that escalation is bad for everyone. In the cold war, any direct military conflict between the superpowers could have escalated into a world-destroying nuclear exchange, so conflict had to be indirect, covert, deniable, or all three.
There may be a faction that has a monopoly on violence or overwhelming military power, but deploying it might be incredibly expensive. Crushing enemies might just make more enemies; troops must be paid; debts must be cashed in; the obligations of vassals might only be usable once. There may be no way to carry out violence without overwhelming retribution.
Another possible brake on escalation is when there are many factions that are competing for dominance over a cooperative endeavour. The realm is more prosperous when the barons are trading instead of warring. They are unequal in power and one of them will be king, but no one baron is strong enough to take the crown by force without the support of many others.
In this kind of situation, there may be rules that govern the transfer or power: heredity, etiquette, oaths, contracts, traditions, or rituals. The rules protect the factions from the disastrous costs of conflict. Even if there's no open violence, a winning coalition might decide that everyone who supported the losing side needs to be punished, stripped of its assets, or stamped out completely.
Therefore, anyone who opposes a strong coalition publicly must resist in legitimate ways. Their opposition is merely part of a system of time honoured checks and balances, challenges which are rightfully protected by tradition. Anyone who resists the eventual winner in illegitimate ways risks being branded a traitor, a rebel, a conspirator who opposes not just a contender but society itself. Anyone who does this can be legitimately stripped of their freedom, power, and wealth. Any non-legitimate actions must either be indirect, covert, or deniable.
Competition Within a Cooperative Endeavour
I mentioned this above, but the cooperative endeavour could be any context that none of the factions are willing to destroy. It could be the functioning of a city, the belief in the rule of law, a planetary ecosystem that won't support them fighting.
It needs to be constricting enough that they can't simply go their own ways. They're stuck together in the same planet, realm, city, or lifeboat and they share its fate.
Power is Divided
At the same time, no one faction can be so powerful that it dominates the others outright. Each faction's power is incomplete. Each must have only a few pieces of the puzzle, however outwardly strong they seem. If any one faction is so strong that it holds all the cards in any negotiation, this limits the options for intrigue.
Factions Want More Than One Thing
Years ago I was listening to some tips on negotiation; it made the point that once you pin down your negotiation to everything but the price, you're fucked. Now it's just a straight tug of war, and any change in terms will have a clear winner and a clear loser.
Splitting Up Power: Internal Cracks
Splitting Up Power: Different Strengths
- Who has society's material wealth?
- Who makes society's decisions?
- Who controls society's ceremonies and proceedings?
- Who has society's cultural biases or ideas of legitimacy in their favour?
- Who is well regarded and influential?
- Who knows more than the others?
- Who is able to conspire and coordinate most freely?
- Who is organized and able to act decisively in cohesion with their supporters?
- Who has strong ties of loyalty?
- Who benefits from the biases inherent in the institutions?
Each faction might have strengths in one or more of these areas, but weaknesses in others. For example, imagine a general with a reputation as a war hero, made rich by foreign spoils and plunder. Unfortunately, she is viewed as a commoner with the least legitimate claim to the crown, and by virtue of her military rank is forbidden from even entering the Rotunda.
To play to her strengths, she wants to exaggerate external threats to the capital to give herself more latitude to operate politically. Even better, forcing other houses to have to pony up money for costly troops would stretch them thin. However, she's desperate for some kind of cultural legitimacy—perhaps by marriage or false historical record. She also sorely needs eyes and ears within the Rotunda so she can stay ahead of the senators' plans.
Don't overlook the challenges and advantages involved just in communication and alignment. Some English king or other apparently tried to ban jousting tournaments, because these gave his barons opportunities to get together and plot against him. Sending one-to-one messages back and forth takes time, and in politics, an advantage over the means to coordinate is a huge advantage.
Similarly, having a responsibility for administering the ceremonies and proceedings may not give you any official power. You're just supposed to bless the marriages. But that gives you all sorts of ways to control the amount of friction everyone experiences. You can speed things along or drag things out on technicalities. You may have complete access to venues that might otherwise be secured against intrusion. Being the only faction able to find a quiet side chamber away from prying eyes during a tense summit might make all the difference.
Random Faction Strengths
To keep things surprising, let's use that strength/weakness list as a random table. Each major faction gets one strength and (to make sure their power is incomplete) two weaknesses.
Roll d10 | Strength/Weakness |
Material wealth | |
Decision-making power | |
Control over ceremonies, proceedings, venues | |
Cultural biases and legitimacy | |
Influence and reputation | |
Knows more than the others | |
Freedom to conspire and coordinate | |
Organization, cohesion | |
Ties of loyalty | |
Institutional biases |
Trying this out with a very small sub-faction, the court doorman I mentioned earlier. A strength and two weaknesses:
- Strength: (2) Decision-making power. Curlis, master of the door, can choose who to admit and who is refused.
- Weakness: (7) Freedom to conspire and coordinate. Curlis is always observed, and despite his strong opinions and his position of influence, has limited ability to benefit from this power (e.g. via bribes).
- Weakness: (6) Knowledge. Despite directly seeing the comings and goings to the court chamber, Curlis stands outside it and has only conjecture to go on about what dealings are taking place.
Tying Factions Together
Roll d6 | Strength/weakness tie |
A brutal choke hold | |
A coercive power imbalance | |
A sense of duty | |
A delicate alliance | |
Repaying a debt | |
Benefits shared freely out of love or loyalty |
- Curlis's decision-making power ties him to, um, the baron out of (6) love or loyalty. He's glad to serve the baron faithfully and keep out those he thinks are bad for the court.
- Curlis's inability to conspire or coordinate ties him to the court advisors, out of (3) a sense of duty. All his communications with the outside world flow through them, and he abides by this out of a solemn duty to remain impartial.
- Curlis's lack of knowledge of the political landscape ties him to the baron's financiers in (1) a brutal choke hold. He is completely suborned by them, and keeps out anyone that the financiers think might influence the baron to spend any further before repaying his debts.
In Play
So far I've been talking from a world building perspective, as if you were going to plan out all these factions ahead of time. I don't think that's necessary, and probably not even a good idea. Tim Groth put it aptly, "World building is a misnomer, it is really just set building."
The key thing players need in order to engage politically is to understand the landscape to be able to make informed choices. Where do they apply pressure? What asymmetry can they exploit?
To avoid the info dump problem, I'd recommend rolling all of this as late as you possibly can. If you can roll and brainstorm on the fly, great. You can also get your players to declare their goals to telegraph what they're up to, so that you can do a bit of thinking between sessions.
Achieving Political Goals
Here's a super simplistic theory of political action, just truthy enough to structure a campaign:
To achieve a political goal, you must negotiate (or conduct covert action) to achieve all ten strengths.
Everyone wants something; you want the crown. By negotiating with everyone, you help them achieve their different, disparate goals in return for their help with your singular, focused goal.
The easiest way to put this into practice is to create a patron with a political goal, and to have the PCs be fixers/ambassadors/negotiators. The patron knows the 'campaign structure', and can simply present a handful of relevant facts as the starting context.
- (Wealth) The baron is struggling with debt. A bid for the throne is expensive, who will fund this?
- (Decision-making) House Otherhouse controls the council of barons, which by tradition chooses the king in times of the line being disrupted. We have no sway with Otherhouse right now.
- The church conducts the coronations and must bless the transfer. Will they?
- (Coordination) The barony is large, but on the periphery of the realm. Who can be trusted to host the necessary meetings to mobilize support?
- (Knowledge) What other schemes are afoot that might derail this? Who else is mobilizing supporters?
What Do Players Do?
- Scope out the political landscape. Who wants what? What are the factions being public about?
- Scope out a faction's strengths and weaknesses
- Reinforce a strength. Can they take the status quo for granted, or are there new threats?
- Figure out who might be in a position to shore up one of your weaknesses
- Assess a rival's base of power
- Scope out one faction's hold over another
- Scope out a faction's internal cracks, the sub-factions and what they might want.
- Apply pressure on allies to commit
- Negotiate, make blunt offers
- Act to weaken, undermine, or delegitimize a rival's strength
- Undo or undermine a relationship between your rivals
- Take covert actions to learn or change what you can't reach openly
- Test boundaries to learn the real limits of your influence
- Offer last chances to rivals
- Take bold covert actions
- Make your schemes overt, bring on the final showdown and find out who really stands with you