Veeky Forums i'm in a pickle

>all of their characters are made for combat and nothing else
>they're from the video game generation and barely roleplay
OK, honest question. Are you sure it's intrigue they want in the game? I don't know. Maybe they want a more detailed political/social landscape, but from a worldbuilding perspective. They don't necessarily want to be players in the intrigue, but rather something like said?
You might want to clarify that with the players, or you risk doing a lot of work just to hear them say, "this is boring, when do we get to giht some monsters?".

to a wsmall extent. the spells and skills work differently, the way stats and DCs are set up are different, so you have to avoid most of the information. You may as well read GURPS Illuminati, because it has setting agnostic information on how to run an intrigue game.

Start littering your dungeons with cryptic objects. Listen to what your players say about them and use their best ideas as the explanation for these objects. Examples:

>hollow glass cubes, 6' a side and too fragile to move.
>a set of 12 copper discs inscribed with spiraling patterns
>a ledger book showing regular payments from "H."
>a human skeleton, chained to a wall and wearing a heavy iron mask (if they try Speak With Dead or whatever have the spirit be too crazy to give any reliable information, just ranting about how "They took it all!")

how do people have trouble with dming like this? design your own duengon crawl with mystifying puzzles and shit, hidden doors everywhere, traps, few enemys that are tough to deal with alone, ghosts, really organized goblins that use tunnels to get around and pop out at inoppertune moments, use stuff like stranglevines and darkmantles. quicksand in a desert temple, pitfall traps.you know what, i think you should go watch national treasure and indiana jones. take some ideas from stuff like that.

Factions within the dungeon are fighting each other: the orcs vs. lizardfolk vs. the goblins (who are the most numerous, but who are also split by a civil war over leadership). These faction may bargain with the party for help, or may even save the party from an ambush in hopes of pointing them at their enemies. Additionally, somebody from the nearby human kingdom may be secretly giving support to one or more of the factions -- maybe it's a duke who wants to stir up trouble to weaken and potentially usurp the king. But several religious orders have also gotten involved in the whole mess. One of them is fighting hard against the raiding humanoids, but is so brutal in their methods (burning alive anybody even suspected of conspiring with the humanoids or their allies), that they're making enemies of the people (and between the humanoid raids and the scorched earth policies of this religious sect, the peasants are nearing revolt). Meanwhile, another religious order that has long been at odds with the first doesn't have the military strength to directly oppose it, but has called a people's crusade against the humanoids, hoping to swamp their rivals and steal their glory (and maybe even paint them as secretly conspiring to take command of the humanoids). Meanwhile, a merchant prince is making a killing off selling arms and is in league with bandits, who are making a killing in this time of instability. But the merchant prince has an important ally on the court, the king's daughter, who he has seduced, which could make moving against him dangerous. But the princess never got along with her younger brother, who is more religiously inclined, and he's perhaps looking to undermine her power by allying with the scorched earth fanatics. Etc. Etc.

In the end, you don't need the PCs to whisper schemes in the ears of courtiers in the great hall of the king in order for their to be intrigue afoot. Just bake it into the setting and have them encounter its results.

And much of this can just being background stuff until you think that something or someone they deal with could tie into it.

Guys you're overthinking this. Literally all OP's party is looking for is some dude who acted as their ally to shout 'I WAS EEEEEEEEEVILLL ALLLLLL ALOOOOOOONG!" and then get killed by them, thus foiling his master plan

Your players become mercenaries serving a brilliant commander with aims to overcome his commoner heritage and even become king some day. He is charismatic, and makes full use of their talents in various missions.

Unfortunately, things eventually take a strange turn...

You should tell them to fuck off and fight a dragon, but have an actual cohesive story to it. I think that's what your friends mean, since they sound like the types to go "THIS BORING I KILL IT"

Sadly, you're probably right.

OK, this is the thread now.

>a shred of fine lace caught between two bricks
>a bag of knuckle bones, one of which wears an encrusted ring
>six skulls lined up, each with a lit candle on top; the rightmost skull's candle has already burned out

No! No! Fuck that and fuck you!

>OK, honest question. Are you sure it's intrigue they want in the game?
Fucking this.
Talk to them, IN DETAIL, about what they want.
Make them descibe compared to a tv show, to a movie, and to a video game if they no use words good to elucidate ideas.

Judging from your post, what happened is that they played Dragon Age or watched Game of Thrones and think they'd be good at intrigue by themselves. Tell them to roleplay and stat for it correctly, or shut the fuck up.

On a related note, what would your intrigue party be composed of, guys?

The gruff dwarf npc they've been dealing with was actually a woman all along and wants to have beautiful bearded children with one of the male party members.

>my players told me that they want more "intrigue" in the game
No they don't. They want to feel better about themselves because they heard that their fun wasn't the right amount of fun, so they want you to apply a "fix" that they don't actually understand. The second you do they'll ignore every plot hook and try to play the way that they've been playing so far, because people don't just change playstyles at the drop of a hat. If they really wanted intrigue, that would have been made clear in how their characters would have already attempted to interact with that part of your world. So you'll end up making a bunch of shit that they don't actually care about and blame yourself because you assume that it's your fault and come back to us in a month trying to figure out what you're doing wrong, and we won't be able to help you.
Have fun.

Yuan-Ti conspiracy

>if it were PF there would be hope.

For characters and players new to intrigue, you really got to make it personal; the players or someone very close to them has to be swept up in a plot or conspiracy. Make it a frantic investigation.

Kidnappings, assassination plots and such make really good pressures and let the players brush up against players in the intrigue without having to necessarily play the game their way.

Tell them to stop watching game of thrones