GM who has no idea about how politics or nations work

>GM who has no idea about how politics or nations work

>tries to run political intrigue

Is there any way this can be anything other than a failure?

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How would you run a game of political intrigue, user?

>All nobles are corrupt
>All nobles hate peasants
>Sieges always turn into assaults

>sieges always turn into assaults

what do you mean by this?

Strap him down, clockwork orange style, and force him to watch some like west wing or game of thrones or something

Sieges are won by starving out the defenders not by throwing men at the walls. If you gotta assault a castle or fort, something has gone wrong for the attackers

But that's not even real politics. Make him watch C-Span.

Oh, yeah.

Frankly, a storm is more fun to roleplay than a siege, tbqh, imho, senpai

>own many classic political texts or various cultures and time periods
>love medieval warfare
>people world build with modern political expectations
>political intrigue is comical
>military actions do not show any strategy
>mfw

Guess that's why siege engines were invented, right?

To help with the starvation part.

Lolno. Lrn2history.

This is true and is why you see it all the time in movies and tv. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a show or movie where people were starved into surrendering a siege.

Establish some factions, each with varying levels of money, influence, and military power.

Toss in a distruptive force. The players, for example, and have each faction try to recruit, eliminate, or manipulate the party to attack, embaras, or rob the other factions. Any time you feel the players aren't being pushed or are being too successful, toss an assassination in or have some noble publicly insult the party.

I think a campaign where the players are part of an army besieging a city for the long haul would be fun, myself.

That's a crime against humanity in some places, user.

That being said, GoT is a dead ringer for the Wars of the Roses so as far as MEDIEVAL politics goes, it's not too far off.

>okay lads, sit on your rumps and make sure everything's clean
>okay lads, there's a few peasants who we've seen trying to get food into the city, go and pummel them
>okay lads, let's do some marching practice and drill
>okay lads, let's enjoy some drama

Until eventually

>okay lads, we actually have a campaign to win here, it's finally time to storm the city

Or even

>okay lads, it seems there's a relief army on its way to take us out, I suppose sitting on our arses all that time didn't really matter

Well, except for when someone births the smoke monster from lost and dragons start eating peasants.

But I don't know much about the War of the Roses, so maybe I'm wrong.

Anything else is unrealistic so I don't see what's your fucking problem with this.

well, you don't always have time for starvation to kick in or maybe the place you're trying to take over is coastal and you cannot cut off the supplies its getting by sea.
Its never pretty storming a castle though. Even with siege towers and battering rams, you're gonna lose a ton of your army. And lol, good luck trying to literally knock down stone walls with catapults or trebuchets, those were designed to take out people in the city or on the walls, not make a nice new hole to penetrate.

Go find a fucking politician, historian or professor of whatever the fuck is relevant then.

Do you really think Putin will play d&d with you?

Politicians bullshit most of the stuff they say and do.
Your Gm can do the same,
The game could work perfectly fine.

>Not coming up with ways to speed the deterioration of life within the city's walls
>Not negotiating with people on the inside to turncoat and burn supplies in exchange for payment when the city is taken without actually planning to reward them for it
>Not coming up with new ways to keep the men in the siege camp motivated and morale high so no one deserts
>Not exploiting the immediate area of its local communities for supplies when times get tough
>Not having the relief army be the final boss of the siege to ensure the siege isn't broken and the city falls


It's like you don't even want to throw your literal shit over the wall until they can't take it anymore.

because thats boring to watch and people want action
read a book

I wouldn't play D&D with him anyway. Even if I could get away from it without being poisoned by a radioactive heavy metal, he'd probably be That Guy to a large degree.

It is a bit of a shame that almost every medieval fort or castle is just brimming with horrifying tricks and traps and I doubt any of them actually saw any use.

Well...yes and no.

Starving the enemy out is time consuming and expensive and if you don't have good supply lines you'll be in as much trouble as the defenders. If reinforcements show up you're basically screwed. If the enemy has ways to resupply the city you're screwed. If you're supply lines aren't secure you're screwed.

Assaults, while costly, are faster and if you're making a rapid strategic advance then you've got no choice but to assault the walls.

There was that Clone Wars (2D) segment where Obi Wan is just bored and pissed off because a siege is taking fucking forever. The Anakin shows up and tells him about finding a secret tunnel into the Separatist command center.

If you're going to have a siege, either skip ahead to moments where things might be happening or plug in the character action right where things get interesting.

youtube.com/watch?v=VjO55pKuBo4

I just watched the latest episode, in which a powerful prince was assassinated by a conspiracy of

>random courtesan
>strong bastard daughters who don't need no man

in his own garden, with the consent of his personal guards, and apparently the entire country.

Why was he so unpopular? Because he didn't immediately embroil the country in a war it couldn't possibly win in revenge for the lawful death of his brother. Apparently the ruling house is so beloved, that for the crime of failing to uphold its own honour there was a popular revolution that slaughtered every last legitimate member of the family.

Yes. This is how mediaeval politics works. Sure.

Oh and:
>land enclosure has happened
>economies resemble modernity
>even the idea of industry does not exist

>Medieval warfare

>Major naval battles

The books much more closely resemble medieval politics (notably, all this bullshit plays out completely differently there). The show did too until like season 3 or 4 when they rapidly started running out of book material.

It could still end up a fun game, it just isn't going to involve much actual political intrigue.

Realism is a poor excuse for bad game design, and a game where everyone but you gets bored because nothing happens is designed badly. If your group feels like it, go ahead.

Turn it into a setting mystery/horror game.
Some gribbly thing is stalk the camps, carrying men off into the night. For some reason none of the officers want to address it, in fact they pretend nothing is going on at all. Some larger conspiracy is afoot and it might just threaten the lives and souls of both your army and the city!
It's up to the party to find out what's going on. They'll have to navigate the chain of command and the social circles of the soldiers. Deal with turncoats and commoners. Make dirty trades, learn even dirtier secrets, finally venturing into the city and the dark heart of it all.
A NEW POINT AND CLICK ADVENTURE GAME BY THAT PSYCHONAUGHTS GUY COMMIG+N TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU!?

1. Maybe you could point the DM in the way of some easy to get into literature on medieval politics

2. If you think he is the kind of person who would accept some help (and you feel you wouldn't step all over his toes,) then why not offer him some assistance?

3. Play a few sessions and see if his efforts are really all bad, or if there's no fun there at all. If so, you can bring it up with him, but if the rest of the party don't care/mind as much as you do, that won't work out so smoothly

>trying to literally knock down stone walls with catapults or trebuchets
>pleb-tier tactics
>not catapulting over diseased animals and feces

>tfw run political intrigue
>tfw players don't know how politics or nations work
>tfw they have been outmaneuvered by an old baron three times already, the one they were supposed to defeat and move past to bigger and better things

The old man has indirectly sent the party on a fool's errand in order to get their influence out of the city so he could send his own representative in to influence the young mayor. He funded the party's enemies to cause strife in the country side so as to sow a sense incompetence with those observing the party among other nobility. Finally he married one of his wards in order to ensure he could keep a military presence in an important city.

>political intriuge campaign
>uses D&D

The first seasons and the initial project of Martin (which was about to last 3 only 3 books and include a love triangle between Jon, Arya and Tyrion) were based on the War of Roses. Now we're heading to the 6th book and just started the 6th season, there's no war of the roses anymore, just dragons and ice zombies.

>players don't know how politics or nations work
> they have been outmaneuvered by an old baron three times already, the one they were supposed to defeat and move past to bigger and better things
Why don't they just level up a bit and kill that fucker?

To be fair with a lot of these types of games using D&D means rolling up a character and then never actually using it because it's all free form.

There are so many every day threads about political intrigue, and in only two variations:
>players want political intrigue
>players complain
and of course this one,
>DM run political intrigue
>DM is bad

Is it really that fun? It seems like

user, do you think mount and butter would just lie like that?

For one we're not playing D&D so it's not as nearly easy as it would be in that system. Also the Baron known he is in relative danger and as such knows to have defenders around him.

>trying to starve put a city
>clerics prancing around curing diseases and magicing up feasts
>attacking force sacrifices hundreds of virgins to some deity to put an AMF over the whole city

You could cut him some slack and play a long, maybe help him out or something or suggest what faction A might do if the party helps out faction B. Really anything is probably less spergy than complaining about it on Veeky Forums

You still want to take the castle or fort as quickly as possible. There might be enemy reinforcements coming, or the reason you're taking that fort is so you can push into another area. Besides, if you don't attack, the enemy's morale will stay higher than if you continually assault them and keep them worried and tired.

Honestly a lot of player groups just aren't good enough for advanced campaigns like political intrigue or grand strategy.

When the average group of players SAY they want political intrigue, what they REALLY want is murderhobo in the noble quarter:

>a few diplomacy/intimidate/bluff rolls
>a few fights with assassins or retainers in bedchambers and alleyways
>an antagonist who never does anything smarter than the players and passively waits around for his simple plans to be exposed and foiled
>a predictable backstab from a shifty ally so they can say we totally called it from the beginning, we're so smart
>railroading with invisible rails

Allow him to run things exactly how he think they work. Embrace the strange politics of his bizarro-world. Have a good time with the strangeness this is bound to produce.

>When the average group of players SAY they want political intrigue, what they REALLY want is murderhobo in the noble quarter
No, they want to be the only Littlefinger in a world on nincompoops.

Good luck running a campaign without any major fighting. The average group gets itchy feet after a single non-combat session. It's sad but the most popualr ttrpgs today are skirmish wargames lite with a handful of social rules bolted on.

Nah, It's cause you write absolute shit npcs.

Yeah all I have done is proven to myself that my players only thing half a step ahead. I am barely thinking two and they just flounder. Also that the average charisma modifier on my players is negative and they can't deal with a charismatic NPC who is working against them and they can't just stab or roll dice at.

>I can't entertain my players
>My players are to blame
Like a true hack

To be honest, the video proves that the writer just picked up some random events and characters he liked to put them in his novel. Which is perfectly ok, but doesn't mean that the main skeleton of the plot is gonna work.

I enjoy GoT, but I think that the events of the real war of the roses are way more interesting and complex.

It was bound to happen as systems were steered further and further away from you, your NPC best friend, your retinue of 60 - >100 soldiers, support staff, and your IRL pals with their NPC best friends, soldiers, and support staff and towards you, your IRL pals, and MAYBE a wagon to haul your loot around in.

>They think they want it, but they don't.

More seriously, the problem is that there's a difference of perspective - players look at it from what they could do or take part in, while a GM looks at it more in an overarching sense and figuring out how all the little plots hook together.

A problem I've had in the past is that players just can't solve a riddle I think is simple. The same problem applies to intrigue - you think it's obvious, but that's because you planned it all out and planted the clues.

The problem is I have found people are just dumb. Whenever I play with my current GMs I am have to discern character back stories and motivation with relative little information and discern riddles.

How? Because I have consumed enough media that I normally have something to draw upon that's similar. Stories repeat.

No, I write great NPCs. My players are dumb. My players are the kind who'll try to strongarm a local ruler in the first encounter and be legit surprised that it doesn't work and they're now in a stand-off with the entire Royal Guard.

Oh I can entertain them. They enjoy simple murderhobo campaigns. Try a bit harder, kid.

>What is Lepanto

>Not catapulting your own soldiers directly over the walls.

It's always easier to make a hard riddle than to solve it. And the disparity in difficulty grows even wider if you make the riddle almost impossible to solve.

What you think you're making obvious is not obvious. This is your fault as the DM, because you have a poor sense of being able to see things as a player.

When it comes to riddles, political intrigue, or anything of that sort, the DM must take a step back and see things from a player perspective. Making riddles or intellect challenges that are solvable and challenging are much, much more difficult than the amount of effort that most of you will ever bother with. Calling your players stupid is a cop-out, and worse, it's your inability to accept your own poor judgement of what is challenging and what is near-impossible.

Can someone explain to me how the hell news spreads quickly without long distance communication? If I siege a town and manage to keep everyone inside, how does news break out?

>those were designed to take out people in the city or on the walls, not make a nice new hole to penetrate.

Uh, no. They were quite literally designed to knock out sections of the walls, or usually towers in the case of trebuchets. Trying to whittle down the defenders a few at a time by hoping you hit them with rocks firing blindly is idiotic.

People, traders, and merchants traveling by and seeing it?

It's even harder when you as a player have an eye for political intrigue and the GM doesn't. It's unbelievably difficult at times when you make convoluted plans within plans and the GM ends up accidentally breaking them because his NPCs are all straightforward and their actions the equivalent of sledgehammers.

Now, the GM did tell us at the start of the game that he was bad at political situations and all, so it wasn't a surprise. We knew what we were getting into. We just have to take things in stride.

The only way it would work is if you played it like Fantasy MASH

I find political intrigue about as difficult to write as any complex plot. While I won't say that I'm good at it, I think the best method is writing backwards. Everyone has a goal, and you just have to fill in what each person has to do or is willing to do in order to achieve it. Stories are all about adversity, so the real difficulty is in writing the obstacles that keep characters from achieving goals. It's a difficult balance to strike between making it seem too easy and too difficult.

Just my stance on the matter as a mediocre amateur author.

I'd rather play as the city under siege desu

>City gets Located, ending the game.

Messenger birds? Signal fires?

It doesn't spread quickly, it spreads inevitably. You don't move an army anywhere without the countryside at large being aware of it, so the people who need to know probably realised you were marching for X and laying siege before you got there. And while you're camped outside a city for months you need a regular stream of supplies and you probably need to keep in touch with your forces elsewhere. The enemy doesn't need very efficient spies to keep abreast of your movements.

>>Illusion of choice

It's illusion of choice in vidya because it's literally impossible for game devs to make realistic consequences for every single decision you could ever make. You don't need the whole campaign published before the first session in PnP games, so unless your GM is shit, you have actual choice.

>Am a political scientist
>My players never look into my settings medieval political structure enough to suit me

>movie where people were starved into surrendering a siege
chinese movie called warlords did this
attackers and defenders both starving and thought they other side had food
some nice political betrayals in there too

I'm convinced that the writers are just part of the subset of fans who didn't enjoy Dorne in the books and decided to write it the way they wanted it to happen, i.e. more action and less political intrigue.

Nay, I think he would try to powergame.

I think it has less to do with "Fuck Dorne, I didn't like those bits at all." and a lot more to do with seriously slimming the cast so Joe Average doesn't have to remember so many characters.

This still sounds like no matter what they do they'll get into predetermined trouble.

>Any time the players are being too successful, toss an assassination in or have some noble publicly insult the party.
You thought you were clever? Wrong!

Literally /thread

GM is all, GM can do it all.

Railroading with invisible rails indeed! I think the worst though is when the players actually think they can just bullshit and occasionally RP as talking to their political rivals or whatever but mostly they're just waiting to make their next diplomacy check or whatever little challeng the dm throws them and nobody has a better system so it's just a few skill checks or whatever so obvious and or repetetive that the players can guess what they need to do to keep the railroad going

>tfw want to run em but know I have no idea how they work

At least he is trying.

None of you have anyfuck clue how any of that shit works so you'll never know if he does stupid nonsensical bullshit anyway.


Itll probably work fine, trpgs are mostly not intended to actually be realistic.

Pifft. Make him read histories, they're still biased, but at least hindsight helpsm

You don't need to be an expert, just do what you'd normally do over the course of your average CK2/EU4 game. Lie, marry, and steal your way to the top, smash in the head of anyone who might be climbing faster than you are.

That's what players always want, video-game-like pre-made results they can achieve by powering through and forcing they way, showing their "skill" and feeding their fragile egos. Few want o actually roleplay.

I honestly don't know any politics outside of the most basic shit. Where would I learn to into how a king would rule, and handle his food supplies, and command his armies, and the like?
I mostly just handle things like most mainstream fantasy does- politics just kinda 'happen', with a backstabbing or such here and there.

Find better players.

But it's mostly shit and the few good ones are as far as possible or downright retired, Celine-sama.

D&D are hacks hacking what it already was a magical realm fanfiction version of the war of the roses.

Not medieval that is for sure.

>so you'll never know if he does stupid nonsensical bullshit anyway

And if the shit he does is stupid and nonsensical, it's how shit is going down. You might think it's unrealistic for an event to unfold in a particular way, but if the DM says that's how it is, then that's how it is.

There's a special place in gaming hell for chucklefuck players who complain about something they think is inconsistent in terms of how they think the plot it supposed to play out. Yeah, you know, if you catch the noble doing something that is incredibly out of character compared to the character the DM has been presenting to you, or a political alliance breaks down out seemingly of nowhere, maybe it's fucking because there's more going on in the game than you realise. Heaven fucking forbid that you trust the unfortunate cunt trapped into running a game for you ungrateful little shits.

Has political intrigue ever actually worked?

Well, to be fair, the title has both 'ice' and 'fire' in it, and doesn't really mention flowers.

>Russian characters deserve so much better in D&D. I myself put down this concept for the future russian national character....

It would be at least as good as Game of Thrones.

You could at least mention the first and second Mongol invasion.

>And lol, good luck trying to literally knock down stone walls with catapults or trebuchets, those were designed to take out people in the city or on the walls, not make a nice new hole to penetrate.
Trebuchets could do it my man, they are described frequently as capable of knocking down conventional stone walls, though a more effective use was knocking out towers. Using a trebuchet to pick defenders off the top of a wall, which is a MUCH harder target then the wall itself is an amusing image. Traction trebuchets were for firing at defenders on walls or over the walls because they launched a shitload of smaller rocks.