How did you explain the negotiations (book 6) to your players?

[Brenden Falke]

What did you tell your players about the mechanical consequences of the negotiations? Did you tell them about the effect it has on barzillai's influence over the city?

I'm not sure how much to tell them since I worry they're currently just so hostile to cheliax they're likely to just tell them to piss off. Yet telling them about the mechanical consequences feels both very spoilerish and might lead them to negotiate just to limit barzillai's influence and they might feel forced by the game mechanics to do something their characters don't like.

Somewhat related: does anyone have a good justification for why the negotiations with cheliax affect barzillai's manifestations? Now that he's dead, there's not really any link between the empire of cheliax and barzillai. I can't think of an in-world explanation for why one affects the other, and I know my players are going to wonder about it.

[Grankless]

It's symbolic, mostly. Kintargo isn't Chelaxian now, but it was for so long (for all intents and purposes) and Barzillai left his mark on it that he's linked with it. SOmething something psychic echoes.

I don't think they know about the manifestations at the time of the negotiations, but they should kind of just want to negotiate, right? If they refuse negotiations Cheliax has carte blanche to basically put as much pressure on them as they want without any restraint - it's unhealthy for Kintargo if they selfishly refuse to talk.

[Kasoh]

Politically, they have to negotiate. (Well, they don't /have/ to negotiate). But they are a small nation without a standing army who is geographically isolated, but still located next to two allied nations who have dark and troubling reputations.

The major buyers of their exports? Cheliax. If Cheliax refuses to do business with Ravounel, then they have to travel much further and with greater risk to fund the economy.

The only thing that Ravounel has in their favor is the Kintargo Contract, the area's limited value, and Cheliax's distraction with the Glorious Reclamation.

If they don't have a conversation with Abrogail's reps and hammer some things out, they are leaving the country weak and in a poor position to the kind of problems that cannot be solved by a group of level 15 adventurers.

As for the manifestations? I don't know. I ignored them. I only used the interesting ones regardless of how well they did in negotiations.

[roguerouge]

I was going to cut the mechanical consequences of negotiations--I was going to boost those encounters to be more challenging anyway. Also, it ceased to make sense at my table, as they engaged in guerrilla war with Cheliax. So, the negotiations were with Nidal.