Ideas for Fleshing out my Small Corrupt City

[nakedonmyfoldin]

I've posted a thread about this before, but it took a turn from what I intended.

I'm looking to make a campaign that centers around a small trading city located on a river delta. The King will more or less neglect his responsibilities as a ruler, leaving the de facto rule in the hands of his trusted advisor, who uses this power to further his own secret agenda. I'm thinking some rival factions carrying out gang flavored violence in different sectors of town. These factions could control certain aspects of trade, and be fighting for more control/money/power/etc.

So I have a few questions:
1. What would cause the King to neglect his position? age? "Theodin Syndrome"?
2. What does the advisor have going on?
3. What are some other aspects of the town that would help further the idea of a truly corrupt city?
4. Are there any aspects of my plan so far that you feel would have a negative effect on the PC's experience?

Thanks to everyone in advance for the help

[FallenGeek]

Perhaps the king is heartbroken - having suffered the losses of not just his second wife but also all of his children except his infant son. The monarch is out of his mind with grief. This might also allow the PCs to at some point to break the king out of his depression and retake his throne.

[Tovec]

1. Perhaps the king is new, with an advisor who has been that way since he was born - and doing a good enough job insulating the king that he has no idea how the people feel.
2. High taxes, or slavery, or anything evil he can keep from the king - go nuts. Maybe even trying to set himself up as king, when the current one gets nosy or when he can get the nobility/people on board.
3. Warrentless arrests, the guards on the take/killing people in the streets, again high taxes or some other "hand of the king says so" goings on.
4. Huh?

[ArcanistSupreme]

The advisor has been left as regent while the king is gone on a long military campaign. Think Robin Hood.
Lining his own pockets, executing those who oppose him, extravagant feasts that strain the coffers of the city, and raising taxes to pay for his life of excess.
Friends of the advisor having carte blanche to do whatever they want, including things that are blatantly criminal. Sufficient money going into the advisor's pockets will excuse any action.
Depends on the players? I'm not sure I understand the question.

[Corneel]

1. The king might simply not be interested in ruling and prefer to spend time partying with his friends and lovers or more interested in a not very kingly hobby like locksmithing.
2. The regent might be of relatively low birth and be anxious to a. enrich himself, b. marry as much of his family off to nobles and/or well-off merchants.
3. Offices (Head of Customs, Judge, Captain of the guard) are basically for sale. And of course once in office these people sell the offices below them. People in lower offices have to give a cut of the bribes they receive to their superiors.
Guardsmen randomly stop people for invented offences, but let people pass for a small "fine", for which, of cours, you won't get a receipt (asking a receipt doubles the "fine").
Public buildings have doorsmen whose palms need to be greased or they won't let you in (even if the building is officially open to the public).
If the guards can't find the suspect of a crime, they throw one or more members of their family in jail, until the suspect gives themself up.
4. ???

[DMwithoutPC's]

I've posted a thread about this before, but it took a turn from what I intended.

I'm looking to make a campaign that centers around a small trading city located on a river delta. The King will more or less neglect his responsibilities as a ruler, leaving the de facto rule in the hands of his trusted advisor, who uses this power to further his own secret agenda. I'm thinking some rival factions carrying out gang flavored violence in different sectors of town. These factions could control certain aspects of trade, and be fighting for more control/money/power/etc.

So I have a few questions:
1. What would cause the King to neglect his position? age? "Theodin Syndrome"?
2. What does the advisor have going on?
3. What are some other aspects of the town that would help further the idea of a truly corrupt city?
4. Are there any aspects of my plan so far that you feel would have a negative effect on the PC's experience?

Thanks to everyone in advance for the help

1. the king is obsessed with something. (Studying, an ancient religion, a woman) and devotes all his time to this.
2. A lot of great things have been named allready.
3. I think a great way to make this city seem completely corrupt if there is an upperclass (merchants, nobility) who are all part of the corruption. In every layer of the government, mony disappears and if this Trusted Advisor would by killed, another would instantly replace him. everybody is looking out for his own, nobody thinks about the community.
4. What do you mean?

[Nevershutup]

1, 2, & 3: Plenty of stuff has been suggested already.

4: It depends on the PCs and how you start the campaign. If you're starting it with them as the rebels(or conquerors), keep going. If not, then you need to really look at how they would get around, having to pay someone off everytime they sneeze.

[Malachi Lemont]

I think for a corrupt city campaign, it would be cool to have at least one of the characters as a member of the aristocracy. It would be up to the player whether to try to keep the peasants satisfied, sacrifice some personal comfort to benefit the city, or just sit back and be corrupt and let the taxes come in.

[Alexkubel]

trying to think of suggestions,

maybe there isn't a king at all, the 'king' is just a nice looking chap who they dressed up to pretend to be king for ceremonies.
Consider this, the advisor is trying to rid the city of its debts, the lack of king is because, such a person can be incredibly expensive to maintain. the best way I can think of the advisor as in this context is Darth Vader, he thinks he's doing right but isn't actually at all. corruption
continuing from the previous one, the rest of the nobility is corrupt, therefor we could see what most think of as assassinations as actually killing off expenses, cutting down on the debt,
well my players would have a major issue, who to side with, they'd probably spend a lot of time figuring out who does what to who?

[SquidOfSquids]

3. What are some other aspects of the town that would help further the idea of a truly corrupt city?


The city is built on a river delta right? That means a constant demand for public works: levees, canals, bridges, aqueducts, sewers, landfill projects, etc.

Back in the day, all these marvels of engineering would have been the pride of the city. All around the city you would see the distinctive mark of the "King's Engineers" proudly carved onto sewer grates, bridges, and water fountains.

Post-corruption, the King's Engineers became more and more underfunded, so that you now have only a skeleton crew of proper engineers (mostly old and semi-retired) supervising chain-gangs of prisoners as they try to keep the city from sinking back into the swamp. Of course, the upper-class parts of the city would get priority maintenance, while other areas of the city would regularly flood, and slowly turn into disease-ridden slums home to all sorts of shady dealings.

Every so often, a rich noble would "contribute to the community" by funding the construction of new infrastructure projects. However, these projects are beholden to the whims of their rich patron, so they have a tendency to end up benefiting the noble's properties and businesses instead of ordinary citizens.

If you want, you could have a pseudo-democracy system driven by nobles who buy votes with promises of infrastructure projects. Over time, certain powerful nobles could end up with their own de-facto private fiefdoms in the city, where the noble's clout could override official laws (potentially even causing problems for the corrupt advisor/regent).

[Everyl]

1. The king's sole qualification is heredity. His more-qualified siblings all died under various moderately-suspicious circumstances, leaving a young king, untrained for rulership because nobody expected him to inherit, on the throne. The king might not even be aware that he's neglecting his duties - historically, most inheriting kings were groomed for the task from a young age, and a son who wasn't expected to inherit would have been given a very different education. As an extension of this, the advisor has to maneuver to prevent the king from marrying a strong-willed, well-educated queen who could pick up her husband's slack and displace the advisor in the city's power structure.

2. Desire for power. He is not of noble background himself, so he knows that the nobles/aristocracy will never recognize him as king, so he has set up a weak ruler to maximize his influence. Much of the corruption could stem from the deals he makes with various power centers to keep them out of his hair - giving generous grants to powerful nobles, tolerating at least one criminal organization, favoring certain trade organizations, etc. He might also try to empower other people of similar background to him - people from one specific neighborhood or narrow social class get advantages while everyone else suffers. Maybe the money being diverted from the King's Engineers is being spent on the military, which coincidentally is where the advisor's extended family makes their living, and it has the added advantage of preparing the city to make war on its neighbors. Wars are good for distracting people from trouble at home.

The advisor is playing a dangerous game, and it's in his interest to buy allies and play his enemies against each other, even if it ruins the city in the process.

3. First of all, what SquidOfSquids said. That's good stuff, I might borrow some of that for my setting.

After that, black markets. You need to think a bit about what would be contraband in this city, and it might not all be immediately intuitive. Weapons? Intoxicants? Magic items (probably of specific categories)? Exotic magical pets/guard beasts? Magical knowledge, like spellbooks and scrolls? Even just foreign goods that would normally be more expensive due to tariffs - you can bring this home to the players by making the legitimate, tax-paying shops charge more than standard prices for basic weapons, equipment, and maybe even food, but black markets sell the same stuff at PHB prices or a little less. If the smugglers are part of an organization that the corrupt royal advisor has his fingers in, then taking a cut from them lines his own pockets without needing to go through any tax collector bureaucracy first. To play up institutional corruption even more, have smugglers openly bribing guards and officials, or even have the guards and officials in on the deals - nobody's going to arrest a guardsman for selling illegal goods, right?

You could even have entire neighborhoods that the guards no longer patrol. Gangs or larger criminal groups enforce their own order there.

4. Be careful when making a city "corrupt" that you don't hit any of your players' triggers. Especially if you go with my idea of having thriving organized crime and black markets, you run the risk of hitting too close to home with issues like drugs, prostitution, or illegal slave trade. If you want to include any elements like that, you should probably discuss it with your players ahead of time, and be prepared to change things if it makes anyone uncomfortable.