How's everyone doing? Hope yall are having fun rolling those nat 20's.
I need help building an encounter. My idea is that a demon has infiltrated a mage city, and tricked the ruler there to forming a cult for his master. The demon I am using is Titivilus. For a little background, this is the premise. Bel is entering the world, but has created three tethers that the players need to destroy in order to face him. One of the tethers is in the mage city, where Titivilus is. The area is meant to be for level 10 of six players. Im not super big on politics (Like non-existent), but I would love to do that as some of my players are really intrigued by those types of themes.
I guess my questions is, how would you guys create this area, and crate political intrigue? Are their any battle encounters you would have? Also are there any book you can recommend to help with ideas for this?
If more information is need, ill gladly provide more.
The key to political intrigue is actually pretty simple. Location A has problem X. Groups 1, 2, and 3 all have different responses to problem X, and are all vying for power in Mage City. Group 1 says "it is our job to solve problem X", group 2 says "we can use problem X to our advantage," and group 3 says "is problem X even a problem? Why are we not doing something about Q for the gods' sake!"
But hold up, Group 1 is divided on how best to solve problem X, with the secretary of Group 1 actually thinks they'd make a way better leader of Group 1, and is willing to capitalize on the division resultant from the X crisis to rise to the top.
Meanwhile, a small subset of Group 2 has been meeting in secret, discussing not just how Group 2 can use problem X to their advantage to gain favors from the Queen over their rivals, but they think they can use problem X to overthrow the city and install a new puppet Queen, establishing Group 2 supremacy.
The leading council of Group 3, it happens, all have a lot of money in the Y trade, which has actually been booming since problem X came about, so it seems their motive for keeping problem X around us highly suspect. And then there's Q, what's up with that? What did Q ever do to them? Must suck to be Q right now with Group 3 whipping the populace up into a frenzy over it...
That's basically how you make something political. Create a problem, complicate it with factions, complicate it with subdivisions within those factions, complicate further by putting both good and bad characters on multiple sides of the issue, and if you want you can complicate it even further by introducing multiple other problems (X was looking lonely) for people to squabble over alongside problem X. Then it's just a matter of hooking the party into one or more of the various plots and hearing the various issues explained subjectively by the various NPCs so they can make their own choices on how to proceed and who to back.
Hope that helps!
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How's everyone doing? Hope yall are having fun rolling those nat 20's.
I need help building an encounter. My idea is that a demon has infiltrated a mage city, and tricked the ruler there to forming a cult for his master. The demon I am using is Titivilus. For a little background, this is the premise. Bel is entering the world, but has created three tethers that the players need to destroy in order to face him. One of the tethers is in the mage city, where Titivilus is. The area is meant to be for level 10 of six players. Im not super big on politics (Like non-existent), but I would love to do that as some of my players are really intrigued by those types of themes.
I guess my questions is, how would you guys create this area, and crate political intrigue? Are their any battle encounters you would have? Also are there any book you can recommend to help with ideas for this?
If more information is need, ill gladly provide more.
The key to political intrigue is actually pretty simple. Location A has problem X. Groups 1, 2, and 3 all have different responses to problem X, and are all vying for power in Mage City. Group 1 says "it is our job to solve problem X", group 2 says "we can use problem X to our advantage," and group 3 says "is problem X even a problem? Why are we not doing something about Q for the gods' sake!"
But hold up, Group 1 is divided on how best to solve problem X, with the secretary of Group 1 actually thinks they'd make a way better leader of Group 1, and is willing to capitalize on the division resultant from the X crisis to rise to the top.
Meanwhile, a small subset of Group 2 has been meeting in secret, discussing not just how Group 2 can use problem X to their advantage to gain favors from the Queen over their rivals, but they think they can use problem X to overthrow the city and install a new puppet Queen, establishing Group 2 supremacy.
The leading council of Group 3, it happens, all have a lot of money in the Y trade, which has actually been booming since problem X came about, so it seems their motive for keeping problem X around us highly suspect. And then there's Q, what's up with that? What did Q ever do to them? Must suck to be Q right now with Group 3 whipping the populace up into a frenzy over it...
That's basically how you make something political. Create a problem, complicate it with factions, complicate it with subdivisions within those factions, complicate further by putting both good and bad characters on multiple sides of the issue, and if you want you can complicate it even further by introducing multiple other problems (X was looking lonely) for people to squabble over alongside problem X. Then it's just a matter of hooking the party into one or more of the various plots and hearing the various issues explained subjectively by the various NPCs so they can make their own choices on how to proceed and who to back.
Hope that helps!