Lessons from Literature: Courtly Intrigue

As I mentioned before, I've been working on some stuff as a consequence of finishing the Musketeers Saga by Dumas. One of these still isn't ready, and may never be, but in the meantime I thought I'd talk a bit about courtly intrigue. This post is actually made up from a lot of stuff I learned while running Vampire for many years, but it's no less true for all that.

A huge amount of the 'action' in the three volumes of "La Vicompte de Bragelonne" (LVdB) actually centres around the intrigues in the court of Louis XIV. This is actually no less true of "The Three Musketeers" (TTM) and "Twenty Years After" (TYA), though it was particularly noticable here. But how does one set up courtly intrigues in an RPG?

Step One: Identify the Power-bases

In LVdB there are two clear power-bases and a third, hidden, base.

The centre of the first power-base is the King, Louis XIV. As an absolute monarch appointed by Divine Right, Louis is untouchable. But he's also a young man, much given to pride, fits of pique... and not entirely in control of his realm (at least at the start). Until just after the start of the book, he's been living under the guidance of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin, he's survived the Fronde (a peasants' revolt that had a huge impact on him), and he's thus just starting out on his personal reign. Naturally, as the nascent Sun King, he is surrounded by all manner of flatterers, ministers, and other agents.

The second power-base assembles around Louis' sister-in-law, "Madame" (actually Princess Henrietta, but she's usually referred to simply as Madame). She's a vain, beautiful woman who mostly entertains herself by stringing along a series of admirers, whom she plays off one another.

And the third power-base is assembled in secret by Aramis. This one is based on the secret order of the Jesuits and involves a plot around a prisoner being held in secret in the Bastille...

Step Two (A): Build the Networks

Once the power-bases are established, the next step is to populate the networks. Around the centre of each power-base there needs to be a number of people, each with their own interactions and agendas. In particular, there will necessarily be several people who are in the orbit of multiple power-bases, thus providing conflicts for the PCs to fall in to.

In LVdB, the key figures around the King are his ministers Colbert and Fouquet, the captain of his Musketeers, d'Argtanian, the Queen and Queen Mother, his current mistress Louise de la Valliere, and a number of others.

I'm not going to populate the other factions, except to note that Fouquet is being bankrolled by Aramis, while d'Argtanian is bound to his old comrade by friendship. The Queen and Queen Mother are obviously connected to Madame by bonds of family, while Louise is one of Madame's Ladies in Waiting.

(It's likely that you'll want to populate things one more level out - in addition to providing the network of people around the King, you'd want a small network around each of those people. So Louise is linked to her fiancee Raoul (Athos' son), and her friends and rivals.)

Step Two (B): Springs and Levers

While populating the networks, you will also want to give some thought to the connections between the people in those networks. This is key to building a workable courtly intrigue - everyone has their own agenda, and those agendas never run entirely together.

So, for each network, and for each pair of characters in that network, determine how each character feels about the other. Note that these relationships may or may not be symetrical - Colbert and Fouquet hate one another; Raoul loves Louise while she friend-zones him.

Additionally, for each character you'll want to determine what drives them and what can turn them. For instance, Fouquet has a servant who is loyal... unless you offer him just enough money.

This stage is probably the key part of building the intrigue. Very often, the temptation is to make organisations just a bit too monolithic, or making characters just a bit too loyal, or otherwise setting things up so that they're essentially 'fixed'. But for an RPG you want the PCs to be making changes, and that means giving them levers to work with... and springs coiled so that when they move some stuff it has consequences they don't entirely expect!

Step Three: Instigate Some Plots

Once the court is mostly established, it's time to start thinking about the intrigues that are going on, and also the ones that are going to form the basis of your adventures. This is the point where you move from general relationships to specific schemes.

For this one, I'm going to drop back to "The Three Musketeers". As we know, Richelieu hates the Queen and wants to disgrace her. The Queen, for her part, is engaged in an affair with the British Prime Minister, the Duke of Buckingham. And now we move from those general relationships to the specific: Richelieu learns that the Queen has given the Duke her diamond choker, and so he encourages the King to hold a ball and to require his wife to wear those studs. Naturally, there is no way she can get them back in time, unless...

Ideally, you probably want three or four plots running at a time. Which probably means you want to start your game with one nearing completion, one in mid-progress, and one that has just started. This is the one that the PCs probably want to stumble on and stop... or not.

Once the PCs are involved, and one of the plots resolves, you should kick off another plot, and another, and another... until the PCs start their own schemes and then you just need to track the progress of the machine.

(Oh, and be sure to introduce new characters if old ones start to fall away. Otherwise, your network will start to look rather small after a while!)

Step Four: Build Some Ways In

Crucially, your networks of courtly intrigue need to have routes in for the PCs, or you'll find you've got no adventure! Generally speaking, you'll want to start your PCs at the periphery of one or more of the networks, and as they complete each adventure they should move a step closer to the centre. Eventually, they'll either be dealing directly with the power-bases or, even better, they'll have become powers in their own right. But one thing at a time.

There are, broadly speaking, two ways to bring the PCs into the fray. Either they stumble on one of the ongoing plots, or they become involved in a character in one of the networks. Or, better still, both of these happen.

And so, in TTM, d'Argtanian becomes embroiled in the adventure first by running afoul of Rochefort (who works for Richelieu), then by getting involved with the titular three Musketeers (who are in the King's network), then by killing de Wardes (who is one of Milady's lovers, again connecting him to Richelieu's network), and then he stumbles onto the kidnapping of Constance (bringing him directly into action, and also connecting him to the Queen's network). Once those connections are all in place, the poor guy doesn't have a chance - he's thoroughly enmeshed in the adventure whether he likes it or not!

Step Five: Go!

The Cookbook Theory of Monster Manuals

In a discussion recently, I saw someone make the interesting point that most 'monster' books are actually of little use to him because he tended to flick through the book and would maybe pick out one or two beasties to use, but would never touch the vast majority of them. As such, although one might say that a DM can never have too many monsters, the reality is that those monster books are shockingly poor value for money if you consider actual use.

Which, come to think of it, is very true - I have loads of monster books, none of which I particularly regret purchasing, but almost none of which I've made much use of. Over the years I've probably used most of the monsters in the "Monster Manual" (at least, the ones that get reprinted edition after edition), but for just about every other bestiary... not so much.

This triggered a comparison I had with another type of book of which people tend to have many, they tend to look through once, and then they tend rarely if ever to use again: cookbooks. (Hence the name of this post: my theory is that monster books are really the cookbooks of the RPG industry - they seem like items of great value, but the use they see is actually far less than one might think.)

And that, in turn, reminded me of my "Experimental Cookery" series on the other blog, which started out with a determination to buy and make systematic use of a cookbook - each week a recipe would be selected, originally simply by turning to the nexy page, and made up according to the method.

So, perhaps I need an "Experimental Monster Slaying" feature, wherein I select three monsters a post for use and build a short adventure around those monsters. Which may be an especially good idea if it does turn out that actual gaming becomes harder to come by...

Wrapping Up

As mentioned on the other blog, LC and I are in the process of moving house. This is largely driven by work, and in particular the commute, which has become significantly more difficult since Christmas.

One of the consequences of this is that it is likely, though by no means certain, that I may want to wrap up one or both of my ongoing campaigns sooner than expected. (Ironically, this comes just as the one started to have something resembling a plan and just as the second was about to start on an actual story arc rather than being purely unrelated one-offs. Oh well.)

And so, I find myself thinking about endings, and the endings of campaigns in particular. Now, at this point in time I haven't come to any decisions on the two existing campaigns - that will depend on how long the move takes, where we end up, and such like. But considering endings in general, there are several ways a campaign might wrap up:

The Campaign Reaches Its End: The best way for a campaign to end is if it completes what it set out to do, and so comes to that conclusion. I've been lucky enough to have several campaigns do this: "The Eberron Code", "The Shackled City", "Company of the Black Hand", that sub-Tolkien campaign I ran in high school, "Vampire: Rivers of Time", and a few others. That's always good, because the story wraps up, there's a nice sense of closure, and the job is done. Huzzah!

The Campaign Reaches an End: This includes a campaign that ends in a TPK, but more commonly (in my experience) it has occurred because the game has been flagging and I've felt a need to end it prematurely. And so the current arc has become the last arc, and the whole thing brought to a conclusion. Examples of this would be "Star Wars: Imperial Fist", "On Tracks of Lightning", the Tollis campaign, and the most recent 4e campaign I played. This is probably the second best way to end: there is at least some closure, and there's a plan behind it, even if it wasn't the original plan. So, yay, I guess.

The Campaign Fizzles: Third best is what happens when people start to lose interest. Games become less and less frequent, attendance becomes sporadic, and eventually you just... stop. This was the fate both of the last D&D sort-of-campaign I ran at high school and also the last game I ran for the old Saturday group (about which I can remember literally nothing) - the group just drifted apart and eventually ended without a formal full stop. This is a shame, but is perhaps preferable to what follows for one simple reason: if a game fizzles because of lack of interest, it means nobody's going to be too disappointed that it's done. After all, if they'd cared that much, they would have kept going!

Abandoned: This happens if it's found that a game's concept just doesn't work, or if the GM finds he simply can't run the game, or if sufficient players drop out that it's no longer workable. It was the fate of too many high school campaigns to even try to name, of half a dozen games with the old Saturday group (though generally from before it became the Saturday group!), of the short-lived game I ran in Yeovil, of the Numenera game, of my attempt to run "Lost Mine of Phandelver" for 5e, and I'm sure of many other games I'm forgetting. This is always disappointing, since the game started with high hopes, but it happens.

Just Stop: But probably the worst possible ending is when a game just... stops. This tends to be due to a sudden and unexpected life-changing event. Unlike when a game is abandoned, this happens with no warning at all. One day the game is there, then something happens and suddenly it is not. Argh! Fortunately, I don't think I've ever had this happen to one of my games. But it's not good when it does.

Looking forward, as best I can, it seems to me that "Eberron: Dust to Dust" isn't really in a position to be brought to an end quickly - it's right at the start of a multi-pronged plot structure which makes it impractical to wrap up in a satisfactory manner. Which is a shame, because that probably means that if it has to end it has to just be abandoned.

Conversely, "Firefly: the Lost Episodes" is structured so that it can run or not run as schedules allow. It would be better if we either didn't start the "Ghost in the Black" arc or were able to bring it to its conclusion, but even that arc should be fine provided we don't end between the last two episodes. Tuesday's episode is intended to seed a name for that arc (but isn't actually part of it), so that's fine - I'll just hold off on starting the arc for a little while.

Obviously, we'll need to see what happens. With a lot of luck, both of the campaigns can continue as-is, albeit likely with a change of host. Failing that, one or both may need to stop. In any event, I'll be on the lookout for a good end point for "Eberron: Dust to Dust" - or, failing that, a good place to pause the game with the option of either resuming or not at a later time.

Love and Honour or Money and Power?

One of the problems with the D&D alignment system is that there's pretty clearly a right answer: Neutral Good. "Bablyon 5" has shown pretty definitively the problems when either Law or Chaos wins, while "E.T." correctly instructs "be Good". Plus, since the NG philosophy basically boils down to "be excellent to each other", as espoused in "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure", it's kind of hard to argue with that.

Unfortunately, NG is also the least interesting of the alignments. You might argue for the goody-two-shoes of LG, but this is actually incorrect - the tendency of LG characters to try to impose their morality on others inevitably causes conflict, and in a storytelling sense conflict is interesting. NG is just blandly nice.

I'm currently reading through "The Man in the Iron Mask", and percolating a whole bunch of "lessons from literature". I'm not ready to post most of those at this time, and indeed may not get some of them polished sufficiently ever to post. But one that does occur is a potential alternate alignment system, one that's perhaps a bit more interesting by virtue of not having a clear 'right' answer.

Three things about the system before I start:

1. It only applies to human and human-like characters. While these alignments might apply clearly to some monsters, many will have less recognisable motivations, and it doesn't really make sense to try to shoehorn them into this system.
2. Under this system you can be 'neutral' on one of the axes, but not both. Pick a side, damnit!
3. These alignments are priorities rather than absolutes - you're unlikely to find a character who is absolutely driven by one side and never by the other. That's actually true of the Good/Evil and Law/Chaos axes as well, but even moreso here.

So, anyway, this system has two somewhat orthogonal axes, much like the existing system: Love vs Money, and Honour vs Power.

The first axis, Love vs Money, is really about whether the character is more interested in people or in things. Would your character rather have four true friends but be penniless, or would you rather be a lonely millionnaire? (In extreme cases, a money-focused individual may even come to regard people as 'things' to be bought and sold. Such a person can hardly be said to be driven by 'love', of course!)

The second axis, Honour vs Power, is about the character's integrity versus temporal power - would you shoot an unarmed man in the back? What if nobody would ever know? What if it was the only way to defeat him? (At it's simplest level, an honour-focused character is all about his personal code of ethics, keeping to the vows he has sworn, and keeping his word. But it gets much more interesting if the setting also includes an implicit social order, as is the norm in the pseudo-Medieval world used in most D&D campaigns - the character has probably never explicitly made a personal oath to serve his king, but it matters not; because he is the king that oath is implicit and cannot be avoided.)

Obviously, this isn't a system I would use for every game, or even for most - in general, I still think alignment is best dropped. And I certainly wouldn't put any mechanical emphasis on these alignments, except insofar as they might interact with Inspiration or similar. But for the right type of game, such as a Musketeers-type game, I suspect they could well be interesting, especially if the party has significant alignment differences. (In particular, watching the honour-focused d'Argtanian and the power-focused Aramis pull apart in the novels is really quite interesting, and tragic.)

Fifth Edition Foes

Fifth Edition Foes (5eF hereafter) is a third-party monster sourcebook intended for use with D&D 5e. It's published under the OGL, relying heavily on the SRD published alongside third edition, and building on a lot of "special" OGL material provided by WotC for the "Tome of Horrors" book. The book is published by Necromancer Games, who are one of the top-tier third-party producers still in operation.

It's fair to say I had my reservations about this book, for two main reasons. The first is that I was uneasy that it existed at all - WotC have indicated that they're intending to provide a suitable license for 5e and that they would prefer providers to wait until they're ready before entering the field. 5eF, then, is an indication that NG have chosen not to respect WotC's wishes which, while undoubtedly legal, isn't necessarily ideal... but it also means that NG are getting a competitive advantage over anyone who does respect WotC's wishes. (The reality is, though, that last isn't NG's problem - it's WotC's issue to fix, assuming they care.)

But the second reason I had reservations about this book is that I recall another third-party monster book that came out very early in the life of the edition - the "Creature Collection" for 3e. Which was a book with several nice ideas, but which was rendered almost useless by the writers' lack of experience with the system. Indeed, it was sufficiently bad that any monsters that were to be used had to effectively be rebuilt to be useable with the actual rules. I was therefore somewhat concerned that 5eF might suffer the same problems.

Having read through 5eF, my feeling is that that latter concern is largely unfounded. The monsters presented are basically fine for use, subject to the understanding that monster design is not exactly a science to start with (which applies to the 5e MM as well, of course). So these monsters seem to be mechanically fine and quite solid.

In addition, I am well pleased with the range and selection of the monsters chosen, with one caveat. It's certainly a fairly eclectic bunch of monsters, serving as a fine "Fiend Folio" to the official "Monster Manual" (a reference that probably only makes sense if you know the history of the original FF). The one caveat I have to apply is that the book does contain a number of instances of very similar monsters - do we need both a Gallows Tree and a Hangman's Tree as distinct monsters, for example? There are also four or five instances of monsters that are accompanied by a form of zombie spawned by the 'main' creature - did we really need a full-page description of each of these zombie types individually? Heck, given the zombie in the MM, did we need these ones at all?

But those are pretty much nitpicks. And, given that I was crying out for more monsters, this book most definitely hits the spot. Good stuff.

(In terms of physical presentation, the book is fine. It's black and white and full of recycled artwork, but that's not hugely unexpected given that it's a third-party book and an updating of older books, notably the "Tome of Horrors". It also has the big advantage of having a nice, strong binding, which is more than the official 5e books can claim...)

So I'm well pleased with this book, and expect to make significant use of some of these monsters in the near future.