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TheOneHawk
2013-08-15, 10:34 PM
So I'm working on a homebrew where one of the players in a prince and around level 3 the king is murdered and the a wizard takes over his kingdom. The idea is that they run off and set up base elsewhere and slowly work their way up to taking back control of the kingdom at a significantly higher level. My question is, aside from clearing out a safe hideaway, finding allies in hiding and rescuing people from the oppressive new ruler, what can they do to fill the levels? What are ways they can destabilize the government and have little mini victories en route to the eventual showdown?

Any ideas are appreciated :)

Mr Beer
2013-08-15, 11:02 PM
One way is weaker opponents. Flesh out the wizard's minions. They might run individual provinces of the kingdom and thus be minor versions of the wizard himself or have specific role based responsibilities (Minister of War; Master of Supplies; Heirophant of Homeland Security etc.). Either way they need thwarting and are easier to beat than the puissant and cunning wizard.

The other is indirect conflict. Guerilla campaigns. Harrassing supply lines. Fomenting rebellion. Encouraging neighbouring kingdoms and other enemies to act as catspaws. Spying missions. That kind of thing.

Berenger
2013-08-16, 02:56 AM
The pure physical possession of the royal regalia (crown, scepter, sword...) bestows a certain amount of legitimacy to the claims of their wearer, be they magical or not, and are necessary for the coronation. Steal them back!

BWR
2013-08-16, 03:57 AM
I've run a game like this. It was pretty fun.

This is a bit of a pickle for said prince. If the wizard is smart (he should be) he knows that an heir of the last king is one of his most dangerous political rivals and would do anything to get rid of him. Hopefully the wizard already believes him dead. Otherwise there should be some good reasons the wizard isn't gunning for the prince: more powerful nobles that need to be put down first, neighboring countries wanting to invade in the chaos of the coup, a magical experiment gone awry, etc.

First of all, determine what sort of shape the kingdom is in at the time the PCs start adventuring. Typical beginning level adventures work here too. Helping locals from goblin attacks etc. stopping or aiding banditry.

Once the PCs start to gain a few levels they will be noticed by others in power. If there are nobles or other political/economic/military power blocs in the kingdom, these groups are always interested in competant members. Finding the ones that are most likely to support the heir, gaining their confidence and revealing (and convincing them of) the prince's identity can be the focus of many adventures.

Taking down the wizard. By this time the wizard probably knows of the existence of the prince, if not sooner. Perhaps the prince must start a rebellious guerilla army, perhaps some nobles are in open revolt against the wizard. Either way, things will quickly come to a head.
It depends on how you wish to do this. Large battles culminating in a many-on-one combat is traditional, but minimizing damage to the country and making a surprise attack on the wizard is often desirable. Once the prince has some sort of support amongst the powerhouses of the kingdom, he must work to undermine opposing groups, either directly weakening thim or making sure they will stay out of the upcoming conflict. Raids on hostile forces, making deals with nobles in exchange for support or non-interference, defending against assassins sent by the wizard (lots of summoned monsters, probably). The final conflict should be showy and have many witnesses. Doing it in front of lots of people will show everyone who wins and how and make things a lot easier for the prince to press his claim.

In my campaign there was a big demon invasion nearly 20 years before the start of the campaign and in the aftermath the emperor was defeated by a upstart noble who claimed he was a descendant of the former imperial line, thought extinct. After a short purge of any groups that could claim loyalty to the deposed emperor, the usurper enacted harsh penalties for the groups that didn't initially support him, leaving the empire drained after a costly war and increasing inequality amongst the nobles, and peasants being treated worse than dirt. The poor didn't have the resources to do anything against the usurper but had plenty of ill-will. The young heir, believed dead, was raised in a distant temple, kept ignorant of his heritage until he came of age.

He started his career by wandering the empire, seeing first hand the state of the empire. The increasingly haughty and distant lands of the supporting nobles, the rife banditry on the borders between the rich and poor lands, the squalor and hopelessness in the bad areas, especially the punishment details. There are still some demons wandering the lands and the supporters of the deposed emperor are sent there to combat them with minimal resources. this makes for hardened, desperate and cruel people, but the ones who will support anyone who will get them out of that job. Apart from banditry (either fighting them or making a Robin Hood-esque career), general do-gooding deeds like helping the poor, smuggling food and arms to the punishment details, making friends with lots of local leaders.

After showing valor in combat against demons and aiding a number of nobles cozy with the usurper (under various guises), prince gradually worked his way up in the estimation of the various powers. Several members of his extended family and loyal supporters of the deposed emperor learn of his heritage and start plotting to depose the usurper. Many of the plots have been planned in advance but now they have a legitimate heir to use. Some are more interested in using the heir as a figurehead, some are truly loyal but for now they work together. The true economic and political powers in the empire still supporter the usurper. Adventures include fighting big demons to gain a reputation as a powerful warrior, and learning the ins and outs of politics, sounding out possible friends and enemies, making alliances, etc. Lots of social politics, blackmail, assassination of obstacles, buying off important positions, showing that he better understood and lived up to the ideals of the various groups of the empire than the usurper were the main problems facing the heir.

By the time the heir had several groups solidly behind him and a couple more leaning his direction, he uncovered and presented evidence of honorless behavior by the usurper and how his claim was fabricated out of thin air with several collaboraters fro mvarious groups. Though unable to convince the most powerful of groups supporting the usurper, this new evidence removed the a large faction of the military might of the empire from the equation (since one of their high-ups awas part of the deception and brought shame on the entire faction - but they didn't like the heir and vowed to stay out of the resulting conflict as much as they could) and reduced the religious groups to only nominal support for the usurper due to his sacriligious actions. When open war erupted the heir had only the weakest groups supporting his cause on the battlefield at first. The prince secured the support of much of the navy by marrying the daughter of their leader.

The usurper, jealous of the growing support for the heir and fearful of losing his power, made the mistake of declaring the neutral parties and the groups who (unofficially up to this point) supported the heir as being in rebellion and declared war on them. While he still had the upper hand in economic power and a powerful faction of the armies still under his control, as well as lots of religious support, the resulting conflict dragged on longer than it could have had he played it a bit more carefully, giving the prince time to plan an assault on the palace. A small group of heroes (30 or so powerful warriors and casters) broke into the imperial palace, fought their way through the guards and magical wards that protected the place, losing member after member until only the heir and 3 loyal retainers were left. Breaking through the final obstacle, the heir confronted the usurper and defeated him in what was supposed to be single combat (the usurper cheated a bit lot). Standing in the ruins of the throne room, the heir reclaimed the imperial swords, declared his name, lineage and his ascencion to the throne, and a beam of sunlight broke through the roof, reducing the rest of the enemy combatants to ash while leaving the heir healed and restored. In light of this obvious divine endorsement, the remaining nobles immediately submitted to his rule.

DrewID
2013-08-17, 09:58 AM
This is a bit of a pickle for said prince. If the wizard is smart (he should be) he knows that an heir of the last king is one of his most dangerous political rivals and would do anything to get rid of him. Hopefully the wizard already believes him dead. Otherwise there should be some good reasons the wizard isn't gunning for the prince: more powerful nobles that need to be put down first, neighboring countries wanting to invade in the chaos of the coup, a magical experiment gone awry, etc.

Perhaps the wizard has never read The Evil Overlord List?

DrewID

Ring_of_Gyges
2013-08-17, 03:09 PM
One individual, no matter how powerful, isn't going to be able to run a kingdom by himself. The kingdom is going to have power structures that control things, an army, a church, peasants, trade groups, things like that...

To really control things the evil overlord needs those groups on his side and swaying them away from his control can be the source of plenty of adventures. Maybe he's fooled church leaders? Maybe he's killed the head of the army and replaced him with a doppelganger, do the peasants secretly yearn to rebel or are they kept happy with bread and circuses.

Once you settle on the method he's using to control power blocks, the adventures write themselves. Say the head of the army is a doppelganger. One adventure could be going to a trusted retainer in the army for help and discovering that he has been arrested on trumped up charges. A prison break is a classic adventure structure. The next might be that he tells the party about weird things happening in the army leading them to sneak in somewhere to investigate. Once they know the truth another would be exposing him.

If you think you'll need more adventures you can just add more power blocks. Maybe there is a powerful magical academy he's suborned. Maybe there's a secret service. Maybe there isn't one main religion in the region but two or three.

That's how I'd go about it.

Flickerdart
2013-08-17, 04:51 PM
The nobility of the realm isn't going to be happy about a legitimate ruler of royal blood being replaced by an upstart commoner with a pointy hat. If they don't immediately rise in open rebellion against the throne (seeking either reinstatement of the previous guy, another royal, or independence) they will at least be plotting and not actually doing all that much work for their new liege. The government wouldn't need external influence to be destabilized.

TheOneHawk
2013-08-17, 05:37 PM
The idea behind the wizard being able to maintain control of the kingdom is that he's a master of mind manipulation spells, and has convinced most of the actual witnesses as well as many powerful figures in the land that the prince killed his father. He wouldn't be a commoner, but the chief advisor to the king and is holding the throne as a regent for the good of the country.

All these ideas are really useful, thanks. What kind of adventures could I use to convince neighbouring kingdoms to lend their aid? I have an idea of one nearby kingdom helping the prince if he takes out someone gunning to take over their kingdom, and perhaps having the option of talking to the guy and helping him instead (he'd have a good reason why he should be king, of course) and you could get different kinds of help from each of the possible kings.

Flickerdart
2013-08-17, 08:43 PM
The idea behind the wizard being able to maintain control of the kingdom is that he's a master of mind manipulation spells, and has convinced most of the actual witnesses as well as many powerful figures in the land that the prince killed his father. He wouldn't be a commoner, but the chief advisor to the king and is holding the throne as a regent for the good of the country.

All these ideas are really useful, thanks. What kind of adventures could I use to convince neighbouring kingdoms to lend their aid? I have an idea of one nearby kingdom helping the prince if he takes out someone gunning to take over their kingdom, and perhaps having the option of talking to the guy and helping him instead (he'd have a good reason why he should be king, of course) and you could get different kinds of help from each of the possible kings.
Look up the Russian Time of Troubles (the interregnum between the Rurikovich and Romanov dynasties). The first ruler of that period was indeed the regent for the young tsar, who may very well have been responsible for his charge's death. Then he got booted out by a guy claiming to be the heir who survived, and Poland-Lithuania got all up into Russia's business because of it. That guy got killed, but it doesn't have to play out that way in your game.

TheOneHawk
2013-08-19, 08:06 PM
Anyone with any ideas of how to convince foreign rulers to help in the rebellion?

Berenger
2013-08-19, 09:46 PM
Off the top of my head:

1. Bribe them with the promise of land and riches.
2. Bribe them with the promise of trade rights (lowered tolls, safe harbors for their merchants etc.).
3. Bribe them with the prospect of an advantageous political marriage.
4. Remind them of some ancient oath of mutual protection.
5. Convince them they are the Wizard Kings next target when they don't help to strike him down.
6. Convince some high priest to call for a Holy Crusade, if the Wizard King is evil enough. It will be a matter of honor for the faithful to help.
7. If convincing the ruler fails, aim lower. Hell, young knights LOVE war. It's their way of life, their way to prove their worth, hone their skills, earn their reputation and hopefully get rich. Just send some bards over the border to sing about the glorious battles of your righteous struggle, it will attract at least some of them plus their retainers.

There must be a hundred other ways. :smallsmile:

Flickerdart
2013-08-20, 01:48 AM
Rulers are always fond of putting the commoners where they belong (to help legitimize their own power) and a jumped-up regent definitely qualifies as a target. Simply remind them that there are other wizards out there who might start getting similar ideas about other kingdoms.

elliott20
2013-08-20, 12:07 PM
One individual, no matter how powerful, isn't going to be able to run a kingdom by himself. The kingdom is going to have power structures that control things, an army, a church, peasants, trade groups, things like that...

To really control things the evil overlord needs those groups on his side and swaying them away from his control can be the source of plenty of adventures. Maybe he's fooled church leaders? Maybe he's killed the head of the army and replaced him with a doppelganger, do the peasants secretly yearn to rebel or are they kept happy with bread and circuses.

Once you settle on the method he's using to control power blocks, the adventures write themselves. Say the head of the army is a doppelganger. One adventure could be going to a trusted retainer in the army for help and discovering that he has been arrested on trumped up charges. A prison break is a classic adventure structure. The next might be that he tells the party about weird things happening in the army leading them to sneak in somewhere to investigate. Once they know the truth another would be exposing him.

If you think you'll need more adventures you can just add more power blocks. Maybe there is a powerful magical academy he's suborned. Maybe there's a secret service. Maybe there isn't one main religion in the region but two or three.

That's how I'd go about it.
^This.

Your job is not to give the players the exact things he needs to do get his kingdom back, your job is to simply set up the situation and just let the player figure out how he wants to get there. But you can't do that without laying out the situation.

You need to really consider the different players in the whole equation and how does tradition / law / might factors into all of this. You get that, you will already have 90% of your seeds in place.

When I do this sort of thing, I try to split it all up into factions. Keep in mind, you don't need to fill out every one of these with a unique faction of it's own. A single faction can occupy multiple slots here, which changes the trajectory of how the players will tackle taking them down. On that same token, there could be MULTIPLE parties in a single slot, trying to become the dominant one. (i.e. religious influence could be a tug of war between followers of different patron gods / religion) And of course, don't feel constrained by what I put down here. If you can think of a creative faction roles that you can stick in there to make things interesting, that's all well and good too!

Factions that you need to think about
The current ruling power: The Wizard, in this case, as per your post
The old ruling elite: nobles from the older generation, surely they would have something to say about all of this
The ambitious old ruling elite: They might have their own Kubota who is vying for the throne
The commoners: they don't necessarily have power per se, but they do augment the way the different factions act. Best way to handle this one is to have an NPC who might not actually have power over the commoners, but simply express their sentiment through proxy.
The slaves: as commoners
The military
The religious: again, multiple parties can be involved here, as different religions / patron gods might use this as a chance to strong arm their way into power
The arcane
The merchants
The criminal elements
Foreign interests: I actually would try to keep this to a minimum if you want to focus on the internal political factioning, as having too many foreign powers butt in can greatly diminish the role of not just the factions, but the players as well.

Once you have it all down, try to think about how the different factions interact with each other. I recommend using a relationship chart to keep it all straight. I spoilered an example I found.

http://nielsg.com/art/core/900x865xniels-relationship-chart.jpg.pagespeed.ic.tpvvrG5Mt7.jpg

I recommend that you try to make sure each entity / faction here has at least 2 connections with another faction, so you can really have a bit of interesting interplay here. i.e. maybe one of the religious factions support the new ruling power, and is at odds with another religious faction. A military faction could nominal support two opposing factions, and find itself wedged in between the two. It's also helpful to really understand the agenda of each faction as you create them. In fact, I recommend using a cheat sheet to give yourself a quick idea on the faction itself.

Faction cheat sheet

Name
Faction role (as in, military, arcane, etc)
Agenda / Goal
Strength: what does this faction bring to the table? use the faction role to guide this
Relationships
Interaction Point: who would the PCs be interacting with? You don't necessarily have to have a single person, but this is the person that forms the initial relationship with the PCs and frames their perception of the faction


Again, don't sweat about filling all of it in. The most important things are really the name, agenda, and role. The rest you can fill in as it comes up in play.

If you REALLY want to get the PCs hooked into this, introduce THEIR factions into this as well, and solicit PC input!

GungHo
2013-08-21, 09:41 AM
Factions that you need to think about
The current ruling power: The Wizard, in this case, as per your post
The old ruling elite: nobles from the older generation, surely they would have something to say about all of this
The ambitious old ruling elite: They might have their own Kubota who is vying for the throne
The commoners: they don't necessarily have power per se, but they do augment the way the different factions act. Best way to handle this one is to have an NPC who might not actually have power over the commoners, but simply express their sentiment through proxy.
The slaves: as commoners
The military
The religious: again, multiple parties can be involved here, as different religions / patron gods might use this as a chance to strong arm their way into power
The arcane
The criminal elements
Foreign interests: I actually would try to keep this to a minimum if you want to focus on the internal political factioning, as having too many foreign powers butt in can greatly diminish the role of not just the factions, but the players as well.
This is a good list.

In with the commoners, assuming they're not worthy of their own list... I'd add the mercantile population in. Despots may like taxes and tariffs. This may irritate merchants who may not have brute squads, but who definitely have the money to help buy mercenaries or smuggle goods, including arms. Then again, some merchants may like the new guy, particularly if he is focusing his oppression on one sector of the market rather than another, or if the previous nobility was preventing them from enacting a form of Magna Carta that codified a protection of their interests from the crown, whereas the new guy will play ball.

For the slaves... they may work with or against you, or may present no help whatsoever. Depends on if they're newly enslaved or if they were long time slaves. Or you can promise to free the ones who help you. But, such promises are very expensive... you could be facing a revolt as soon as you are installed, regardess of whether or not you follow through.

elliott20
2013-08-22, 09:51 AM
This is a good list.

In with the commoners, assuming they're not worthy of their own list... I'd add the mercantile population in. Despots may like taxes and tariffs. This may irritate merchants who may not have brute squads, but who definitely have the money to help buy mercenaries or smuggle goods, including arms. Then again, some merchants may like the new guy, particularly if he is focusing his oppression on one sector of the market rather than another, or if the previous nobility was preventing them from enacting a form of Magna Carta that codified a protection of their interests from the crown, whereas the new guy will play ball.

For the slaves... they may work with or against you, or may present no help whatsoever. Depends on if they're newly enslaved or if they were long time slaves. Or you can promise to free the ones who help you. But, such promises are very expensive... you could be facing a revolt as soon as you are installed, regardess of whether or not you follow through.
Ooo, good one. I totally forgot about that. I'll edit my post to reflect merchants / guilds.

The slave one, in my opinion, can be huge. Depending upon how the GM works the setting, they can either be a potentially huge boon, window dressing, or completely non-existent.

The honest illusionist
2013-08-22, 09:26 PM
You might also want to look into the consequences of insurrection as well. If you destabilize the wizards army, perhaps orcish raids on small farming communities become more common. Cut off the supply lines? Farmers are unable to trade. It'd be interesting to set up a dynamic where the heroes gain the means to overthrow the wizard only to find they've set their kingdom to ruin... Or worse, find that he has popular support for keeping order and infrastructure intact, while the prince committed treason for his own glory.

I mean, it'd be a strike against a kingdom full of innocent people (who may not care who the current king is) in order to get revenge on one guy.