Medieval dynasty intrigue, what's needed?

[OgreBattle]

So I mostly think about dungeon crawlers and dueling games, not so much about foofy aristocratic bickering.

What key gameplay elements are needed to convey a story where you vie for the throne, have hidden agendas for revenge, are trying to place your kid on the throne, are trying to make all your rivals suffer and so on while keeping up appearances?

I'm thinking something abstract where you have X actions to do per day which advance your agendas or uncover what foes are doing. So not so much "I roll every time I talk to this person to detect lies" but more "I roll for this social event to see if they spilled the beans on anything".

[Trill]

From the top of my head

• Fame and Infamy mechanics: You need to be able to track how well known and how well received you are by the general participants. Including:
  1. Affiliations: Things like "House Stark dislikes your methods", "The Tauri are your allies or at least pretend to be so", "The bankers are neutral towards you", etc.
  2. Blackmail: Make groups act in ways you want but reduces your standing with them or particular members (if important enough)
  3. Support: Help other groups, which costs (if only time) but increases your standing with them or particular members
  4. Posturing: Making yourself seem better to those that are unsure about you.
  5. Denouncement: Making others seem worse to those that are unsure about them
• Assassinations: If not playable then at least a short thing "You got yourself assassin ABC, equipped with gear F, G and H and with knowledge about circumstances T, U and V. The enemy has defensive measures D1, D2 and D3. *roll* he managed his job but was seen."
• Social investigation mechanics: Ways to find dirt on your enemies or find useful opportunities.
• Physical investigation mechanics: Ways to find capital, things that can be used to acquire capital, and things that can be used to get yourself another advantage.
• Minor Combat mechanics: Stuff like "You've been called to a duel."
• Mass social combat: Debate clubs, basically. You and your enemies try to persuade the majority of something. You can bring forth arguments, remove enemy arguments, and try to emotionally manipulate the crowd (if noticed this might hurt your side).
  Mostly stuff like preventing enemy gain or opening paths for yourself.
• Individual social combat: Persuasion. You try to convince someone of your position. Keep them responsive, make them pay attention and don't let them doubt you.
• Maybe area management?

[Chamomile]

I blogged about this. Please, hold your applause.

Now, that post was about running an intrigue campaign for D&D, and assumed that you would still want the bulk of your gameplay to involve going into a dungeon to kill a dragon. If you want a game that revolves more around intrigue than anything else, you are immediately facing the problem that a good, robust social system that doesn't produce bonkers outcomes and is actually satisfying to play is an as-yet unattained holy grail of RPG design, which means you can't actually rest things on social mechanics.

As such, an intrigue game should focus itself more heavily on the other wing of intrigue: Investigation (and to a lesser extent, stealth). Let the process of telling lies and seeing through them be resolved by opposed skill checks no more complex than D&D, with maybe a reputation bonus based on how much the person you're talking to likes you, rather than making the likely doomed effort to develop a fully functional social system with comparable depth to a good combat system. Focus efforts more on the kinds of investigation mechanics you might use for a detective game, which can be just as easily used to turn up blackmail material, discover hidden alliances, or find out whether Lord Spooky knows that you know that he knows that you've persuaded Lord Campfire to vote for a shiny mana policy. As an added bonus, mechanics for breaking into someone's house to snoop for clues can be used almost unaltered to break into someone's house and shank them.

[Dean]

That's a really cool blog post Cham, I like it.

I think Kaeliks stealth mechanics are extremely good. I would use those a lot in this game. I would also consider the possibility of having your players create two parties, one of which has Face characters who are your "real" characters and the people vying for the throne and the second party is the people who do the dirty work for the first party and they're killers and fighters and thieves like normal adventurers. That way Lady Celeste can decide the Kings bodyguard saw too much and send some people also played by the party to go deal with that.

[Username17]

I concur, that was a pretty sweet blog post Chamomile. Makes me sad that the L5R rpg and the later additions to the setting were so fucking awful. The initial explanation of the Imperial Courts would have made for great Intrigue. Daimyos who have ministers from various clans in their lands who are in charge of various stuff and loyal to the Daimyo but also loyal to various clan structures. Also the "Honor" thing is a nice setting excuse for pushing favors around.

As to running it in D&D land, I would suggest keeping the various house leaders as NPCs. One of the major things you're going to want to do is to assassinate the head of House Dorhammer in order to reset favors and allegiances. And if the head of House Dorhammer is one of the player characters that's a dick move for Mr. Cavern to pull.

-Username17