TL;DR - there's gonna be an election, the undesirable side might win, I want a one shot for my party to investigate if it was fraud.
So, like many, my party's shenanigans in and around Phandelver has lead to an election. I'm not roleplaying the election itself - instead I'm assigning probabilities based on the party's actions. When they last left Phandelver, things were leaning 55/45 in Halia's favor. Now it's looking increasingly like they'll be returning as heroes, having found and reclaimed WEC. They'll also have the body of a martyr in tow, just to really up the 'we gave it all for this town' vibe. The martyr was actually the only one of the PCs that was liked by pretty much everyone they interacted with (the only one that didn't go straight to threats to get their way.) It'll probably end up 80 or even 90 percent in Harbin's favor.
If Harbin wins, the players will be retained as advisors. This was a condition of Sildar supporting Harbin. Sildar believes that Harbin is an effective administrator, requiring only a little guidance, and the knowledge that his family is safe. The reveal that he's been fearful for his family all this time will hopefully be the thing that gets the party onside after the election.
However, whatever the probability, Halia does stand a chance of winning. I plan to decide the election with an open percentile dice win, with the conditions known to all - 1-15 Halia wins, 16-100 and Harbin wins. If Halia wins, I know for a fact the party is going to suspect fraud and will want to investigate. I'm lazy as hell, so I'm looking for a prewritten one-shot that I can adjust rather than having to create a clue trail myself.
One of the CCC modules has an election going on. You have to go out and rescue them from foes and bring them to the town hall. I have checked my notes but can not remember it.
Edit to add.
Found it. CCC-Tarot-01-07 the Seat of th the Ruler Tier 1 level 3
Thank you for taking the time to look that up, it's appreciated. It's not quite what I was looking for, but it does give me some ideas.
My one-shot will take place after the election if Halia wins, and is intended as pure roleplay. Did Halia cheat to win? If so, how? And how does the party prove it?
<The rest of this post is really me thinking out loud and inviting feedback. Writing to this forum really helps my thinking.>
I need to create a crumb trail. I figured that magic would be the go-to method for cheating an election, and that Phandalin doesn't have resource to protect against anything but the most rudimentary spells (after all, why would they have ever needed to? Up until the discovery of W.E.C what powerful force would want to take over Phandalin?) With the backing of the Zhentarim, Halia would easily have access to strong enough magic.
I know my party, and the first thing they'll do is try to interrogate Halia. They won't even consider the fact that she's just been elected mayor. They'll be turned away by the very town militia they helped trained "sorry friends, our loyalty is to the town and the mayor." If they choose to get violent... well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Maybe some NPCs saw some new people in town the day before the election, conspiring with Halia. They have set up camp outside of town. One of the interlopers was a wizard, the other a carpenter (party will have to find this out for themselves). If they examine the carpenter's area they'll find plans for a ballot box, identical to the one used in the actual election - the folk hero fighter will be able to read the plans. If they investigate the wizard's area, the wizard will find writings about teleportation spells, maybe even a scroll of 'minor teleportation' (nerfed teleportation spell). Hopefully this will tell them that the election was cheated by creating a magical ballot box that teleported the actual votes, and replaced them with fake ones. If they come forward with this, or if they check in with Sildar first, it won't quite be enough proof. Sildar/Harbin will tell them they need to retrieve the ballot box.
Cue part II - the heist. Halia has had the ballot box moved to a guarded vault in back of the townmaster's office. The rogue will need to break in to retrieve it. If they drop something into the box, the wizard and paladin will sense the magic and feel a faint trail that it's leaving (kind of a magical trail of a teleported item), they can follow that trail and find the discarded genuine votes and the real ballot box.
Finally, they'll need someone to present the case to the town. Someone who doesn't have a history with Harbin and who is a paragon of goodness/lawfulness and has high charisma - and wouldn't you know it, the newly created paladin fits that bill perfectly.
Sound like it could work? Or a total snoozefest? I know my table is feeling we've leaned a little too far to combat in the last few sessions, so I really want to give them a bit of roleplay. And I wanted to be sure there was a little something for everyone to really underscore that they are a team and reliant on each other.
First, this sort of plotline might be excessively topical. Just a warning.
Secondly, why would the players think "I rolled a d100 openly and it came up 06" means there was cheating? I suggest investigation reveals "Nope, Halia won fair and square". If you really want to cut the plotline off at the knees, have it be an open ballot (Phandalin is a small town, it really wouldn't be that strange).
First, this sort of plotline might be excessively topical. Just a warning.
Secondly, why would the players think "I rolled a d100 openly and it came up 06" means there was cheating? I suggest investigation reveals "Nope, Halia won fair and square". If you really want to cut the plotline off at the knees, have it be an open ballot (Phandalin is a small town, it really wouldn't be that strange).
The topicality is purely coincidental, the game has been heading this way since way before the US election (we took one year break from it). Plus, we're a family, and all on the same side of that particular argument, so that's not a problem. There are no grievances being played out.
Fair comment on the open roll. I went for that because I don't want the results of the election to just be DM fiat. Superficially the odds are the relative chances of each candidate winning - in the background they represent just how hard Halia has to cheat. If the odds had been very strongly in her favor, and she won, I'd probably have rule that she won fair and square, and that was the consequence of the party screwing up.
The open roll, based on the winning chances I set (these things are being conveyed by Sildar, who is tracking sentiment in the town) was there to make the party feel like they did impact the election. If Harbin wins, we'll head down a different plot track (possibly foiling and assassination attempt). If Halia wins, even though the town is significantly siding with the party (and by extension, Harbin), then that should be enough to trigger the party's suspicion of foul play. If it doesn't, a well placed word from an NPC should.
Maybe I will just decide she cheated and won. My fear in doing that is that I've been using the looming election as pressure to stop the party from resting excessively. I don't want them to feel they had no impact on the election at all. But I guess maybe it also works the other way and could get a greater emotional effect - "We put in all this effort, and the town seemed to love us when we got back, how the hell did she win? She must have cheated! We must get to the bottom of this."
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TL;DR - there's gonna be an election, the undesirable side might win, I want a one shot for my party to investigate if it was fraud.
So, like many, my party's shenanigans in and around Phandelver has lead to an election. I'm not roleplaying the election itself - instead I'm assigning probabilities based on the party's actions. When they last left Phandelver, things were leaning 55/45 in Halia's favor. Now it's looking increasingly like they'll be returning as heroes, having found and reclaimed WEC. They'll also have the body of a martyr in tow, just to really up the 'we gave it all for this town' vibe. The martyr was actually the only one of the PCs that was liked by pretty much everyone they interacted with (the only one that didn't go straight to threats to get their way.) It'll probably end up 80 or even 90 percent in Harbin's favor.
If Harbin wins, the players will be retained as advisors. This was a condition of Sildar supporting Harbin. Sildar believes that Harbin is an effective administrator, requiring only a little guidance, and the knowledge that his family is safe. The reveal that he's been fearful for his family all this time will hopefully be the thing that gets the party onside after the election.
However, whatever the probability, Halia does stand a chance of winning. I plan to decide the election with an open percentile dice win, with the conditions known to all - 1-15 Halia wins, 16-100 and Harbin wins. If Halia wins, I know for a fact the party is going to suspect fraud and will want to investigate. I'm lazy as hell, so I'm looking for a prewritten one-shot that I can adjust rather than having to create a clue trail myself.
One of the CCC modules has an election going on. You have to go out and rescue them from foes and bring them to the town hall. I have checked my notes but can not remember it.
Edit to add.
Found it. CCC-Tarot-01-07 the Seat of th the Ruler Tier 1 level 3
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
Thank you for taking the time to look that up, it's appreciated. It's not quite what I was looking for, but it does give me some ideas.
My one-shot will take place after the election if Halia wins, and is intended as pure roleplay. Did Halia cheat to win? If so, how? And how does the party prove it?
<The rest of this post is really me thinking out loud and inviting feedback. Writing to this forum really helps my thinking.>
I need to create a crumb trail. I figured that magic would be the go-to method for cheating an election, and that Phandalin doesn't have resource to protect against anything but the most rudimentary spells (after all, why would they have ever needed to? Up until the discovery of W.E.C what powerful force would want to take over Phandalin?) With the backing of the Zhentarim, Halia would easily have access to strong enough magic.
I know my party, and the first thing they'll do is try to interrogate Halia. They won't even consider the fact that she's just been elected mayor. They'll be turned away by the very town militia they helped trained "sorry friends, our loyalty is to the town and the mayor." If they choose to get violent... well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Maybe some NPCs saw some new people in town the day before the election, conspiring with Halia. They have set up camp outside of town. One of the interlopers was a wizard, the other a carpenter (party will have to find this out for themselves). If they examine the carpenter's area they'll find plans for a ballot box, identical to the one used in the actual election - the folk hero fighter will be able to read the plans. If they investigate the wizard's area, the wizard will find writings about teleportation spells, maybe even a scroll of 'minor teleportation' (nerfed teleportation spell). Hopefully this will tell them that the election was cheated by creating a magical ballot box that teleported the actual votes, and replaced them with fake ones. If they come forward with this, or if they check in with Sildar first, it won't quite be enough proof. Sildar/Harbin will tell them they need to retrieve the ballot box.
Cue part II - the heist. Halia has had the ballot box moved to a guarded vault in back of the townmaster's office. The rogue will need to break in to retrieve it. If they drop something into the box, the wizard and paladin will sense the magic and feel a faint trail that it's leaving (kind of a magical trail of a teleported item), they can follow that trail and find the discarded genuine votes and the real ballot box.
Finally, they'll need someone to present the case to the town. Someone who doesn't have a history with Harbin and who is a paragon of goodness/lawfulness and has high charisma - and wouldn't you know it, the newly created paladin fits that bill perfectly.
Sound like it could work? Or a total snoozefest? I know my table is feeling we've leaned a little too far to combat in the last few sessions, so I really want to give them a bit of roleplay. And I wanted to be sure there was a little something for everyone to really underscore that they are a team and reliant on each other.
First, this sort of plotline might be excessively topical. Just a warning.
Secondly, why would the players think "I rolled a d100 openly and it came up 06" means there was cheating? I suggest investigation reveals "Nope, Halia won fair and square". If you really want to cut the plotline off at the knees, have it be an open ballot (Phandalin is a small town, it really wouldn't be that strange).
The topicality is purely coincidental, the game has been heading this way since way before the US election (we took one year break from it). Plus, we're a family, and all on the same side of that particular argument, so that's not a problem. There are no grievances being played out.
Fair comment on the open roll. I went for that because I don't want the results of the election to just be DM fiat. Superficially the odds are the relative chances of each candidate winning - in the background they represent just how hard Halia has to cheat. If the odds had been very strongly in her favor, and she won, I'd probably have rule that she won fair and square, and that was the consequence of the party screwing up.
The open roll, based on the winning chances I set (these things are being conveyed by Sildar, who is tracking sentiment in the town) was there to make the party feel like they did impact the election. If Harbin wins, we'll head down a different plot track (possibly foiling and assassination attempt). If Halia wins, even though the town is significantly siding with the party (and by extension, Harbin), then that should be enough to trigger the party's suspicion of foul play. If it doesn't, a well placed word from an NPC should.
Maybe I will just decide she cheated and won. My fear in doing that is that I've been using the looming election as pressure to stop the party from resting excessively. I don't want them to feel they had no impact on the election at all. But I guess maybe it also works the other way and could get a greater emotional effect - "We put in all this effort, and the town seemed to love us when we got back, how the hell did she win? She must have cheated! We must get to the bottom of this."