>the Emperor of the Evil Empire is actually a decent, compassionate person who is kept ignorant and tightly controlled by his ministers, who oppress the people in his name
Is this a lame plot twist for a campaign where the PCs are rebels fighting against the empire, or would it actually work?
It might work. It kind of did in the Time of Troubles.
How and when do the PCs get access to the emperor?
Isn't that what's going on in deltora quest?
So you're asking if Akame ga Kill would work as a setting? I guess, if you fleshed out all the holes Takihiro left in worldbuilding.
>the obligatory dumb plot twist is that everything is played straight
I'm thinking like halfway into the campaign. The first half is a straight-up "rebels good, empire bad" plot where the goal is to kill or depose the Emperor.
Then during the siege of the imperial city the PCs commando their way into the imperial palace, meet the Emperor, and realize he's actually just a figurehead and a prisoner in his own home.
From there I'm going to present the option of the PCs throwing in their lot with the Emperor, helping him reclaim his realm, and becoming his advisers to fix all the problems the ministry has caused; or they can kill him, topple the empire completely, and see what can rise from the ashes.
The 1st option seems to vary entirely on the ethics of your party.
Are they a bunch of cutthroat brigands willing to take any chance for profit, or are they altruistic do-gooders who fight for justice? If the first, you can expect them to do anything, but I imagine a stable government is more profitable than an anarcho-wasteland. The second may lean even more to keeping the emperor alive.
No one in the party is particularly ruthless so I'm betting on them helping the emperor.
Just come with a reasonable way to cover up the Emperors lack of involvement especially if the PCs can look back and see that he was never actually involved in any of the things they saw that inspired them to "Take the evil empire down"
Make the Emperor an ex-adventurer. You should do this for a couple reasons.
The most obvious one is it kind of gives some context into how such a powerful man became so easily manipulated and deceived: he has the power to 'lead', but not the patience to 'rule', so being a humble hero he created a council of -whom he originally thought to be- fair and unbiased individuals to help him rule the world with justice and peace.
The second reason is a little more personal in that it would make him (hopefully) more relatable to your group on the basis that THEY'RE adventurers and if the situation is explained, they could most likely see themselves falling to such an issue as well. They don't want to worry about the price of bread, taxes, or wine imports, they want simple problems that can be solved with direct confrontation either social or physical.
>the Empress appears a vain and cruel manipulator
>she's a paranoid depressive mess who spends every day on the verge of self-destruction
>because of her efforts, the empire just about manages to hold together
>because of her personality, the empire is on the verge of exploding completely
How would you respond to this scenario?
Isn't that just the Emperor of Nilfgaard, OP?
In my experience, the players just get pissed at the king for not knowing what is going on in his kingdom.
I DM'd a campaign where they save the king just for the ending to have the wizard kill him to marry his wife. When asked how he could possibly pull it off politically he responded with
>"Dude was a bad king. He married an elf as part of a political campaign instead of for love."
They didn't even bother to investigate the backstory I had made for them. The king and queen had a daughter who was going to inherit the throne, but now the wizard player has pushed her to the wayside so that their magically-formed son can rule
Maybe that's how his advisors keep people in line: By pretending that the Emperor, who makes active attempts to help his people, is more in command than he is, and pretending that they're actually following his orders when they're not.
So when the tax collectors come around and nobles skim off of it, the people blame the high taxes and low results on misfortune and the emperor blames the low returns on the taxes as the poor condition of his country's productivity.
Maybe he decides to push the Empire towards conquering or purchasing land from other states to increase his own people's prosperity, and that gives nobles the opportunity to exploit the enemy.
An elaborate illusion that the PCs are in the position to shatter. I suspect the Emperor would be so ashamed for not figuring it out he would abdicate, but would gain some other position due to the fact that the people care about him and knows he cares about them.
Glass her. Psychos shouldn't be given so much power
>Make the Emperor an ex-adventurer. You should do this for a couple reasons.
>The most obvious one is it kind of gives some context into how such a powerful man became so easily manipulated and deceived: he has the power to 'lead', but not the patience to 'rule', so being a humble hero he created a council of -whom he originally thought to be- fair and unbiased individuals to help him rule the world with justice and peace.
I have to agree with this. Make him a mage of some sort, and exploit the 'no sense of right and wrong' stereotype that's well earned by wizards. You can go full Fire Emblem and have a midboss who's a loyal confident of the Emperor, like a paladin or such, who sees how much work his friend puts in and refuses to let the party hurt him.
You can set the context of the conflict in the wake of a former corrupted kingdom the Emperor took command of (perhaps he married the Princess who he rescued from her mad father). The nobility that gave him his support could be the very reason for the previous corruption, but hid it well enough from him to make him believe they were really on his side.
I see this a lot but nobody ever explains what this means.
Basically the plot twist is that there is no plot twist.
'Played straight' means that there's no subversion or gotcha trick, it's exactly what it looks like. When the dragon kidnaps the princess, he's really a dragon, she's really a princess, and he really did kidnap her.
>Tfw the anime was such a disappointment near the end
They should stick to what's being printed or not bother making it
An even better one would be the emperor is actually evil but convinces the party he isn't, if he can convince them, sacrifices his minister as the "evil guy" to stall out the rebellion and have them waste time against his enemies helping him secure power.
If you're gonna plot twist fucking do something other than a quick gotcha, make it elaborate but if the players are clever enough can unravel themselves.
I would like to remind you that there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Not saying you're wrong, just saying that the manga went downhill pretty fast as well after Wild Hunt. Wild Hunt itself was a giant waste of time with next to zero impact on the plot overall and the climax was only marginally better than the anime's.
This is a good idea, but frankly imo the whole trope is overused.
Countries aren't good or evil just because the leader decided to be a dick that day. You can have good or evil leaders, and cultures that according to DM/setting judgement are evil or good overall. But IMO national characteristics that are evil usually make some kind of sense in light of the country's history, geostrategic position, or culture. Stuff that stems purely from evil/crazy/incompetent rulers tends to be short-lived.
So the Kims ruling North Korea are in power because of the superpower standoff between the USA and the PRC, and their brutal methods stem originally from Communist ideology about rebooting culture to create the New Soviet Man. They persist because any relaxation of their grip will snowball into a revolution. In their view, that's why the Soviet Bloc fell, and so that's the lesson they take away from it.
America's national experience of the run-up to WW2 was formative, too. The lesson they took was that ignoring a problem leads to it getting worse, that diplomacy leads to Munich agreements, and that you get more done with a kind word and a 2x4 than you do with just a kind word. OTOH, Vietnam was a huge historical scar on America's psyche. So America is quick to charge in because WW2, and quick to pull out and run away because Vietnam.
Russia's lesson from constant invasion, subversion, their multiethnic empire, and no firm national borders is that neighbors are either threats to be destabilized, or unstable basket cases in need of absorption, or dangerous enemies. They're paranoid about things that historically have often been used against them, and which they use in turn as well. Hence why Russia's foreign policy looks similar whether it's under the czars, the Soviets, or Putin. Russia has only been stable and prosperous when ruled by an autocrat, so Russians are tolerant of autocracy.
I can go on but you see the point.
Have to disagree with America being quick to pull out seeing how long the 2nd gulf war lasted
This is good shit user
>the emperor brainwashed all his innocent loyal ministers into being evil, and just pretends to not know what's going on when adventurers show up
>In the face of multiple revolutions, regime changes and political massacres the emperor remains in charge as a "figurehead" because everyone likes him so much
what is thailand
ill take lakes and rivers for $300
>Emhyr
>oblivious to the shit happening in his empire
he‘s called „the white flame dancing on the graves of his enemies“ for a reason, user.
It seems a little silly. If the empire is evil enough to be an Evil Empire then it seems really unlikely that the king would be completely unaware of the goings on. It also seems unlikely that a council of all evil dickbags would be able to work together effectively to keep the emporer in the dark. It would be more likely that one or two would leverage the emperor against his enemies. Or use the threat of informing the king of evil dealings of his opponents as a means of power.
Even if all of his advisers had managed to form a cohesive cabal then there is little use for the emporer. They could pick an heir who is sympathetic to their style and make him emporer, or pick a young heir to be groomed into a proper puppet.
But it's just too precarious a situation to last for any meaningful amount of time. The power of Emporer is just meaningful to not be dragged into some sort of plot. An innocent emporer would need to be very young, a baffling idiot or imprisoned or otherwise removed from the kingdom.
Now it could work in an isolated branch of the empire that is largely overlooked by the empire, where the ministers had gone rotten. They still claim to be working under the word of the emperor but really haven't had an honest communication in years and he's too preoccupied with running the empire proper to check.
>The Empire isn't really evil but to damn big that it can't even build a pave road without going through a big bureaucratic hell hole
>On top of that the old emperor is near death and he still haven't appointed a heir
>Civil War seems a very possible outcome to happen when he dies and a Kingdom that's right next door is looking to get in with the act
>Heroes are loyal to the empire and will do their best to help the the empire from falling
Who would play something like that?
That was the original plan for the Star Wars empire.