I run what I think of as political games. Games with lots of factions, complex situations with innumerable possible outcomes, lots of hidden information, and one of the big questions is "who's side should the PCs be on?" The goal of this is to teach other (at least somewhat experienced) GMs how to run a type of session that I tend to run. My motivations are a combination of ego, the desire to spread my way of doing things, that I'm probably finally good enough to write something like this, and that the Divide setting looks to need advice like this.
This isn't even remotely finished. It's a work in progress. I'm hoping for advice on how to better explain things, and what needs more explanation. And maybe help in fleshing it out. Or maybe people will decide that it isn't worth finishing; that's ok too.
The original post that started all of this is here. I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with it, if you haven't already.
My philosophy for writing this is a bit different than what I've seen elsewhere. I'm trying to teach a way of thinking about things, as well as give steps for actually running such a game (and thus gaining experience). As such, my examples tend to be quite broad, and are more focused on describing the outlines of things than giving specific details. I'm not sure if this is the best way of doing things, but it's the easiest way for me, so that's how I've done it in this draft.
Overview
A good social game has a great deal at stake, several competing factions, unclear objectives, and everything in a state of flux. Besides needing to both plan well and be a good off-the-cuff GM, you will want to be skilled at running factions who’s philosophies are not your own. A great deal of socialization comes down to NPCs trying to convince PCs that their ideals and methodologies are right. If you can’t give a convincing argument for every faction, you’ll have a hard time running them.
Building a social plot
The first time, follow the instructions in order. As you get better at it, you can skip around much more.
Step One: Crux
This is the core long term social disagreement which is causing the problem. It needs to be big, with multiple valid perspectives, important, and ideally long term.
Step Two: Factions
You’ll want four to eight factions or so. I’ll post example factions that can be used or modified to fit. Remember that lower power, low involvement factions are scenery and not really part of the plot (thus not counting towards the number of factions you’ll want). High power, high involvement factions make good arcnemesis in non-political games, but are a poor fit in a political game (since they make the situation simple).
Step Three: Hook
Once you know the factions and core plot, it’s time to write the hook that drags the PCs into the situation. This can be the core plot, or it can be the results of a faction’s actions, or the interaction of two factions. The hook will effect which side the PCs will perceive themselves as being aligned with at the beginning of the session.
Step Four: Running the Game
The players will be trying to understand what is going on, decide what to support, and acting on that information and ideals to change the situation to their liking. Your job is to make each part of the process interesting (challenging) and disrupt the order of those stages.
The Crux
Every political plot has at its core a crux. A core situation with many possible resolutions (each which benefit different people). Designing your crux is the first step in building a political game.
A good crux ties into the Core Values of the PCs, or at least the civilizations. Ideally, it plays Core Values against each other. Preferably in such a way as to cause some conflict in the party (by playing different PCs’ Core Values against each other), or within each character (by playing different Core Values from the same character against each other).
Using the crux to play Core Values against each other heightens the question “what should we be doing? / Who should we be supporting?”. A political game can certainly get away without this, but you’ll be losing a possible source of interesting conflict.
Some example cruxes:
Power Vacuum
A planetary government has just been rendered powerless or destroyed. Factions are trying to replace the government (with one of their own liking), or else influence society to have greater impact after the crisis. This may be a Cargo Cult, in which case, it may end up being merged into one of the Civilizations. It may be a world already owned by a Civilization. In that case, the factions are likely subfactions of the Civilization competing for power, possibly with backing and influence from other Civilizations. You can even decapitate an entire Civilization, although this is a better plot for a major story arc or campaign than a session.
Smaller scale power vacuums are also valid. Perhaps the local criminal organization of a planet was eliminated, and now other organizations are trying to fill in the gap. This could be made more challenging by having the old criminals be a necessary part of the planet’s economy; without replacement, the planet will slowly die.
Technology
A new technology has been invented. It may disrupt a Civilization or Society by playing its Core Values against each other (causing strife between subfactions which support and oppose it), or it may undermine one of its principals (say, violating Identity or breaking slave meshes). Here, various factions seek to proliferate the technology, or suppress it. Or they may seek to gain sole access to it for their own ends. In general, proliferation is much easier than suppression, so either the technology must be difficult to proliferate (or access to it must already be limited), or else the factions are seeking to influence the nature of what will happen when the technology does spread.
Social Change
(general case of Tech; need examples. (example: the Union influencing a world; any society pushing))
Emergency
A disaster is going to occur or is already in progress. For example, a nanobloom, plague, or nova event. If the disaster is preventable, most factions will be seeking to do just that. Otherwise, the crux is not the disaster, but the results of the disaster: the factions will be competing to shape the outcome by defining the resulting society. Some factions may wish to study the disaster or use it for their own ends.
Secrets
Faction A is doing something that they need to keep hidden (generally changing a society they are involved in, although it could also be anything from installing a wormhole hub some where secret to spying on an opponent). Faction B becomes aware of them, and wants to influence the situation to their advantage (either through out-and-out blackmail, or by subtly changing the outcome (ideally) without faction A being aware). Other factions may be aware of B but unaware of A, and trying to figure out what is happening and how they can change it. And, of course, you can have several different factions in B's role.
If A's activities are something that the PCs will likely oppose, they can resolve the situation easily by revealing what is going on*. There's two ways to avoid this. First, you can have A's activities be something the PCs would support. Second, you can have B's activities be something that the PCs would support, and they can only work if A remains hidden.
*This would still make a perfectly fine session, but it would be more about discovering what is going on, and much less about untangling the mess and figuring out what to do about it.
Note: just about any political plot is about social change in one way or another.
Hooks
I haven't yet written this. It'd just be a set of examples. A hook can lead directly to the crux (if you want to skip the "what is going on?" stage). Or, a hook can be the indirect actions of one of the factions (possibly responding to another faction).
Running the Game
When actually running a political plot, the players will tend to drive towards the following story arc:
Observation - First, the PCs will explore your plot, learning about the factions and the core Contention.
Decision - Next, the PCs will discuss the situation, decide what they want the outcome to be, and formulate a plan to cause that outcome.
Action - Finally, the PCs will enact their plan.
While this makes for a perfectly good story (about the PCs completely dominating a situation), there are other stories that can be told. As such, it’s your job to repeatedly throw monkey wrenches into this nicely ordered plot. I’ll explain how to do that a bit later. First; how to make each step interesting and challenging:
The Observation step asks “what is going on?” With comprehension, players can get a very quick answer to any question they ask. There’s two things you need to do to keep them from instantly unraveling your plot. First, make your plot so complex that a single comprehension use will only discover part of it. This is why you need so many factions, and several should be hidden; a single Comprehension will usually discover one hidden faction, or learn the motivations about one visible one (or, sometimes, a both at a single faction).
This section needs to get written. These are my notes to myself of topics to cover:
- hide info (may be obvious)
- factions which leak false info
- decision: take this time to think; keep factions in motion
- you can take 15 minutes to think any time you need. Most players will be very happy to have discovered that they’ve challenged you, and it’ll be a better game for it.
- action: asking “can you do it”. Answer: yes. This is SA, not some system that lacks twists. You can make it costly, of course. But political games stress the first two steps anyway.