Running Political or Intrigue-Based Adventures in D&D

I finished running my first ever D&D “intrigue” adventure recently. Since a) it went pretty well and b) it was quite a different adventuring experience to our usual sessions, I thought it would make a good topic for a blog post.

A while back I tried to categorise all the possible Dungeons & Dragons quest types, and I came up with 9 results, into which I think you could probably fit 99% of RPG adventures. To recap they were:

1. Fetch (incl. Rescue) Quests
2. Delivery Quests
3. Protect Quests
4. Kill/Destroy Quests
5. Investigate/Discovery Quests
6. Negotiation Quests (my broad term for “Intrigue” quests and other missions where you need to negotiate an outcome, using social skills)
7. Survival Quests
8. Attain Quests
9. Combo Quests

While this is far from a definitive categorisation in any way, I’ve found that it’s a useful list to go back to occasionally, to check I’m providing variety at the table. And, case in point, while planning scenarios for my Waterdeep: Dirty Jobs campaign, I spotted a glaring omission in my repertoire. Until recently, I don’t think I’d ever run an adventure where completing a negotiation, or pulling off a successful piece of intrigue, was the main goal of the mission.

Why was that? Probably because, in D&D, even difficult negotiations and complicated social interactions are usually resolved by a single Persuasion check. And I didn’t think that the players tracking down a particular NPC and stating their case, followed by a quick die roll, would make for a compelling adventuring experience.

Sure, DMs can spin out these types of scenario by make obtaining an audience with the NPC a significant part of the quest (adding a second Persuasion check to the scenario! Whoop!). Or they can have the NPC agree to the players’ request but only on the condition that the players retrieve a missing heirloom (i.e. bait and switch the PCs onto a fetch quest etc.). Or you could make the travel to the NPC’s palace fraught with danger… which is great, but to my mind that’s just introducing a travel / survival quest masquerading as an “intrigue” adventure, rather than delivering a genuine session or two of intrigue.

In short, I didn’t find any of the above solutions satisfying. Surely it’s possible to create an intrigue adventure that contains at least 80% intrigue and is still fun to play and run?

Well I gave the matter some thought and came up with these three techniques, which led to one of the better adventures I’ve run as part of my Waterdeep campaign…

3 Simple Tips for Running Intrigue in D&D

1. Widen The Intrigue To Include Multiple NPCs

I decided that I could make the intrigue more dynamic right away by creating a scenario in which the players would have to speak with multiple NPCs to achieve their goal… thus avoiding the “single Persuasion check” as a be-all and end-all moment. And so I came up with a mission that involved persuading three of Waterdeep’s Masked Lords to vote against a forthcoming “Labour Law” (a mandate that the campaign’s main antagonist is trying to push through, in order to turn the city’s homeless and refugees into slaves for his new temple district).

These NPCs would all have very different personalities and need handling differently (see point 3), thereby not only extending the scenario but also creating more variety. While one of the councillors is a classic “you rub my back and I’ll rub yours” politician, another is a stickler for the rules who is outraged that her supposed anonymity as a Masked Lord is being sullied by the players’ political lobbying.

2. Create a Cool Backdrop

I really wanted to avoid a series of dry encounters in which the players knock on the NPCs’ doors requesting an audience, and have a contrived conversation in their lounge. So I didn’t even present that as an option. Instead, the quest-giver suggested that the players’ best opportunity to approach these Masked Lords would be during the three-day Vernalia Spring Festival. The festival featured several smaller events such as the Blossom Games, the Marketplace Jamboree and the Fey Day Ball, all of which added local flavour and setting depth, while also enabling me to mix up the social interactions with some fun games and contests, and one surprise combat. (This framework also enabled me to plant seeds, intrigue and sensitive info for future adventures, as there were plenty of familiar NPCs they attending these events).

Festivals are always a great backdrop IMHO! (Art copyright WOTC).

3. Know Your NPCs and Their Motivations

Another technique, which proved very valuable, was writing down a character sketch of each of the Masked Lords that the players are tasked with approaching, and then listing some reasons that push them towards voting in favour Labour Law bill, and reasons they might wish to vote against it. While doing this, I also wrote a list of reasons that the quest-givers (the Harpers faction) chose the players for this job, and a complication that could easily undo any good work the players do, if it is not dealt with efficiently.

Here is an example of one such sketch:

ALTON SUMMERWINE

Alton is a 49-year-old human noble. He is the Head of the Guild of Vintners, Brewers and Distillers.

Appearance: Summerwine is 5’10” with black hair, still mostly untouched by grey, sun-browned skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors, handsome features, impeccably dressed in green, claret, brown and white, almost as if his wardrobe is inspired by his vineyards, which are south of Waterdeep. Wears an earring of a sun in a chalice in his left ear, the family emblem.

Reason they are pro the bill: “Those refugees are all terrorists or terrorist sympathisers! They kidnapped my daughter. I might vote against the bill, because work, shelter and food is much more than they deserve!” (Alton has also had to double his spending on security, and he’s now afraid to let his daughter travel freely on business).

Reservations about the bill: Alton is fundamentally against slavery, which is illegal on the Sword Coast. One of his most respected ancestors, Nestor Summerwine, spoke out against slavery in the past. (DC 20 History check to know this).

Reason the Harpers thought they might listen to the heroes: The heroes rescued Alton’s daughter. And deep down he is a decent guy, just with a strong personal reason to hate anyone associated with the Mucky Pigs.

What could persuade them:

• Emphasising that the Labour Law is really a slavery bill.
• A plan to root out the Mucky Pigs and kill their leaders.
• Swearing to protect his daughter….
• …starting with accompanying her to the Market Jamboree. “I have ordered a couple of my men to go with her, but she has a habit of ordering them away.”

What is the complication? The Mucky Pigs are planning a new attack tonight at the Market Square!

Trait: The demand for excellence is the cornerstone of success. I live by high standards… and I hold those around me to those standards.
Ideal: Commerce is the foundation of civilisation and security.
Bond: My family (esp. my daughter), its lands and its legacy.
Flaw: Some people are destined to live worthless lives.

Normally, I don’t put too much effort into my NPCs, because they are usually just plot devices to keep an adventure ticking along, but in this instance the extra prep was more or less essential, since a large part of the mission – as I saw it – was to delve deep and unpeel some of the NPCs’ layers, and find out what they could use to aid them in completing their mission. This naturally only works if the NPCs have some layers to unpeel! And, of course, it was also important that the NPCs remained consistent across the sessions it took to run the adventure, and the two or three encounters they each had with the players.

Final Thoughts

I was really pleased how the adventure panned out, using these three pretty basic techniques that I think any DM could easily mimic (if indeed they have not already mastered similar or better ones already!).

The final extended scene was a massive fey-themed party at the Palace of the Flying Ballroom (a location from my forthcoming book, which I designed for running social events), during which the players had one last chance to emphasise the evils of slavery to the three Masked Lords, while enhancing their standing with two of them by trying to find a match for their unmarried scions (and shamelessly flirting with the third!), all of which took place in between zero-gravity waltzes, romantic trysts in hedge mazes, and high stakes games of croquet.

The Flying Ballroom Palace… an Extraordinary Location for running balls and social events

Obviously it was just one adventure, so I can’t claim to be any authority on the topic of running intrigue just yet, but it will be interesting to see how much mileage I can get out these same techniques when running my next “social” or “intrigue” adventure.

Your Intriguing Experiences?

Have you ever run an intrigue-based adventure in D&D? Or even a full campaign? Perhaps using another system, with more tailored mechanics for political machinations? I would love to know your experiences and any tips I can incorporate into my next intriguing scenario… please do share in the comments below!

Technical Note: For some reason WordPress now publishes the full post in the email sent to subscribers, which is pretty annoying, as I nearly always have to do some last minute corrections after I press publish. In other words, you should less typos etc. if you read this post on the blog itself (and not in the email), where the last minute corrections will be active.