I'm gonna start running WFTC in a few months, but I've become increasingly frustrated with the political situation in the game (Eutropia is too much of a goody two-shoes for a Game of Thrones style story, and Pythareus's claim is way too weak), plus my players are interested in playing foreign agents so will need added motivation.
To that end here's the edited situation, and please let me know if you have any suggestions!
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Taldan political situation—what players know!
Power players:
Grand Prince Stavian III: Current ruler. Coocoo for Coco Puffs, but you shouldn’t say this if you want to keep your head. Hates his daughter, is terrified of military coups.
Arch-Strategos Maxillar Pythareus: Descendent of a bastard brother of Stavian I, who was the founder of the current line of Grand Princes. Immensely popular military veteran and commander, but has weak active support among the nobility. Wants to build up the military, engage in some military reforms, and press border claims to restore Taldan hegemony over the region. Not the most socially progressive guy in the universe, and doesn’t actually plan to change anything outside of funding the national military more, but recognizes the ability of lower-class people and is a firm believer in Taldan traditions including the promotion of exceptional commoners to nobility (authoritarian with meritocratic flavor basically). Stern, still physically powerful, and a commanding presence. Every inch the ideal Taldane man. Deliberately avoiding the American politics overtones of the character as written because fundamentally he isn't Trump, structurally narratively or in terms of character, and this should not be a Princess Hillary vs. Evil Warlord Trump story as my friend described it.
Princess Eutropia: Young and attractive daughter of Stavian III. Pushing for a pragmatic sanction, which the Senate is backing, by a moderate margin thanks to some lukewarm supporters being coaxed to her side of the debate. More classist in a dismissive/naïve way than Pythareus and disdainful of “rank democracy”, but has a plan of byzantine complexity for social services once she’s done reforming the legal system to ensure more #girlbosses and rationalize the insanity of hundreds of years of succession laws that are completely inconsistent across the kingdom because of hundreds of years of rulers and feudal lords who hated various relatives and messed up the laws to screw with them. Backed by a slim majority of the Senate due to support and popularity among the upper nobility (who just want this f***ing legal drama fixed), but has a broader majority including many fence-sitters on board with the rationalization of succession laws. Regarded as charming and beautiful in noble circles.
Duke and Senator Panivar Lotheed: Important nobleman, but reclusive. A bit weird.
Prince Carrius: Stavia’s late son. Killed in an accident, and attempts at resurrection failed.
Milon Jeroth: Maxillar Pythareus’s new aide, and rumored fixer.
Martella Lotheed: Eutropia’s friend and ally. PCs know that she’s Eutropia’s fixer, which is widely rumored but not certain to most.
The Problem:
Eutropia has a majority of the Senate behind a pragmatic sanction, but Pythareus sees her as insufficiently pro-military and is afraid that she'll ruin Taldor. Thus he is pushing to have Stavian adopt him so that he can legally challenge the pragmatic sanction when it passes the Senate and take the throne.
Spoiler:
Stavian's actions in Crownfall throw a wrench in both schemes and leave the country in chaos.
The Players:
Fia: Ex-Kintargan turned Andoren teen mom/Oathsworn (Oath of the People's Council) paladin. Has a kid back home in Andoran and is fully committed to democracy, to the People, and to the Revolution.
Mane: Ex-Chelish angelkin aasimar Hidden Priest of Asmodeus who got out while the getting was good and is undercover as a tiefling. Cheliax imploded because the Ravounel revolution funneled arms to the Glorious Reclamation and so the majority of the Chelish state organization is right now getting a holy sword shoved somewhere uncomfortable.
Liviana: Aasimar bard, bastard daughter of a junior cousin of Maxillar Pythareus. Angry at her more closely related family members for how they treated her mother.
Costanzo: Arcanist, noble son of a rabidly imperialist and pro-Pythareus house. Only interested in his research, and is estranged over his support for rabid imperialism being perceived as insufficient.
We have a 5th player who's still working on her character.
Players' associates:
Sir Daniela Montanari: Shelynite paladin of the Order of the Redwing Thrush, now retired. Former mentor to Fia, and ex-girlfriend (friendly breakup). Fia’s handler in the Andoran government’s Revolution Exportation Department (military intelligence). Wants a big win to show up her friendly rival, that half-elf who moonlights as an opera singer, who assisted the Silver Ravens in the Ravounel Revolution.
Objective: Ensure that Eutropia or a sympathetic ruler leads Taldor, to keep a potential threat off of Andoran’s flank. If possible, introduce and implement a degree of democracy. The Supreme Elect and the Presidium of the People’s Council are riding my ass on this, we can’t have Pythareus going on a conquest spree with tensions on the Galtan border on the rise.
Salvatori “Solutions Sal” Clemenzero: Asmodean priest on the run from the Cheliax cataclysm. Mane’s contact. Blowing all his assets on finding his ex and their kid. Imagine the greasiest, cheapest, most stereotypical mob lawyer possible.
Objective: Find my wife and kid and promise that this time, this time I’m for real, I’m going legit, honest! I’ll pay you big, sonny, I swear, I’ll have all the money next month!
Arch-Strategos Maxillar Pythareus: Liviana’s cousin (her great-great grandfather’s grandson, they’re descended from the founder of the Pythareus cadet house). He is not so crass as to pull strings for family, but it’s an open secret that he re-wrote his will to reduce the status and payout to those who were especially nasty to Liviana’s mom.
Objective: Come back to the right side, my dear girl. I do not wish to have to put you to death as a traitor, but I will do what I must for Taldor.
Martella Lotheed: Eutropia’s fixer. Offered Costanzo an in to the Princess’s favor in exchange for a touch of library access, after his lukewarm views on Pythareus led to him getting in hot water with the family.
Objective: Help Eutropia gain the throne, and you’ll get a nice cushy research fellowship with all the supplies you could ask for.
What the PCs don’t know:
Spoiler:
After months of futile war, Pythareus in book 4 plans to make Liviana his heir. “No matter what happens today, Taldor will be united under the rule of House Pythareus. If you die, I will mourn you as I would any honorable knight, and then restore order to the land. If I die, you will be rightful ruler of all Taldor, now that Milon has discredited the line of Stavian.” Since Pythareus and Jeroth discredited Eutropia’s claim in favor of Pythareus’s, this means that Liviana would be “rightful” queen in the aftermath. From a Doylist POV this is to justify Pythareus nuking Eutropia's claim even though it nukes his own claim as adopted heir of Stavian III; since here he's a descendant of a bastard brother of Stavian I, he claims that his ancestor was the real legitimate one and Stavian I was the bastard, and he disinherits everyone but Liviana from his family before his death because they "betrayed the fatherland" one way or another by fleeing or committing some crime Pythareus can't forgive
General plan:
Every adventure I'm going to give characters a chance to interact with their contacts. Mane is probably going to have some significant character growth over the course of the story.
this is going to be a bit darker/more shades of grey than as written. Taldor is F***ED as it stands; its nobility is incredibly out of touch, incompetent, inbred, and venal, its government is broken, its foreign relations are abysmal, its finances and military are weaker by the day, and nobody in charge has grokked ANY of this yet. Eutropia is objectively the best option long-term for both Taldor and the region of SE Avistan as a whole because she won't blow the country's remaining power on the equivalent of Byzantine-Sassanian Wars before getting Yarmouk'ed or Manzikert'ed by Qadira, but she's still far from the best person or ruler (she ain't gonna be pulling an Aurelian anytime soon).
Pythareus's death doesn't mean the end of the political drama, and book 6 is going to give the players a chance to determine the succession themselves. They'll basically be able to decide between supporting
Spoiler:
the original heir, the more competent and less traumatized boss they've been working for, or one of their own with a background that the nobility won't like
.
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If anyone has suggestions, please tell me!
IDK how helpful my suggestions would be given that some of the things you suggest here seem already baked-in to what your players will have agreed to. But I'll give them. For reference, I'm running a 2E-adapted version of the AP and we're about midway through Book 2. (We're presently on a break as we're alternating this campaign with a long-running Starfinder campaign.)
Things I Wouldn't Change:
Comparing it with Game of Thrones: I... wouldn't? The AP owes a lot more to Dumas and The Three Musketeers than George R.R. Martin. It's meant to be about averting an all-out civil war; GoT is about what transpires if such an effort fails. It's a substantial change to the tone that will require lots and lots of changes to the specifics, which in practical terms might nullify any time you might save by running a published scenario anyway. For a sense of an historical not-quite-civil-war scenario that you could model all this chaos after, I would personally recommend reading about The Fronde in 17th-century France.
Eutropia's Character: The AP's description of Eutropia doesn't much focus on her looks, but more on her intrepidity with the sword and willingness to stand up for herself. Given that the core identity of the AP is fundamentally about an (embryonic but still real) confrontation with sexist laws and traditions, I personally prefer that approach. I also don't see the necessity of editing Eutropia to be less of a "goody-two-shoes" since one of the AP's basic mechanics is about how the methods the PC's employ directly influence the kind of ruler she ultimately becomes (and not all of the options are benign).
Eutropia's Goals: The past, especially the high fantasy fictional past, is a foreign country. Eutropia supposedly being interested in expanding the bureaucracy for more "girlbosses" makes no sense in the setting. The size of the Taldan bureaucracy is not one of the points of conflict between the factions and this angle smacks of inserting modern conservative-vs.-liberal political shibboleths into the proceedings. "Size of government" is something a certain slice of the American political landscape of today obsesses about, it's not visibly something that Taldans are obsessed about, in part because the bureaucracy in question is a gravy train and a source of careers for the whole nobility who are running everything. It feels extraneous to the point of immersion-breaking.
Pythareus: As the Exaltation Day Massacre makes clear, Pythareus is running an extremist faction that has reached the end of its rope. His claim on the throne being "weak" isn't something that particularly needs correction: he's an illustration of how far the traditionalists will go no matter how thin the thread of their actual legitimacy. If this is removed from the picture, then frankly there's no real reason for the Massacre to happen at all. It's certainly unlikely that Stavian III could pull off an atrocity of that scale without collaborators. Be very careful that any edits you make to the plot don't insert one implausibility by ostensibly "fixing" another.
Making a Player a Potential Heir: The AP explicitly cautions GMs against doing this, and I can see why. If the AP becomes a quest to put one of the characters on the throne, a lot of the "social reform" theme of the whole adventure (however incomplete it might be) can very easily become lost. Even with the best-intentioned of parties from the outset, it's easy to see how this can quickly turn into "murderhobos quest for the throne" and it would be structurally much harder to avert that dynamic if it develops.
(The political drama already continues after Pythareus' death in the AP as-written, played out against the Immaculate Circle and finally their planned puppet, Prince Carrius. I can see adjusting this if you want to; I wouldn't make adding one of the players to the succession struggle the means of doing so.)
Adding a Lot of Custom Contacts: Until I got into the AP, I really had no concept of how much data-tracking, NPC-tracking and just massive information load it imposes on GM and players alike. I have added one or two custom characters of my own to the mix for specific purposes, but the more people you add, the more work you're making for yourself.
That's not to say that there are things I wouldn't edit or change myself. The AP is contending with a lot of prior lore from Taldor, not all of which totally makes sense, and there are specific story beats that I am considering changing, or explaining in different ways.
Things I Would Consider Changing... or Have Changed:
Pacing: One thing I don't entirely love about the AP is the habit it has of introducing incredibly dramatic stakes and then whisking the PC party off the central stage to do dungeon crawls or go gamboling around the countryside. This is hard to alter in the first two books without totally rewriting them, but I am at work on changing the venue of Book Three in order to raise the stakes a bit, work in some foreshadowing of a certain gambit that turns up in Book Five, and to make the "Qadiran raiders" subplot make geographical sense. I'm considering some similar alterations for Books Five and Six, since I also don't love that the AP puts the players on another plane to prevent them from interceding in Eutropia's assassination.
Explaining the Stakes: One of the big flaws with the Loyalist cause is that it isn't really clear how the succession, beyond averting general chaos, is supposed to change life for the everyday Taldan. The Law of Primogeniture appears to apply strictly to the Lion Throne: it doesn't affect how inheritance works generally. And in the rest of Taldan society, women are upwardly mobile and possessed of power to a not unimpressive degree.
My way of reconciling this was making a point of the Law of Primogeniture (yes, I know it's really a law of agnatic primogeniture, but that's more of a quibble) exerting downward pressure on the rights of women in wider society. Noble families and social climbers alike are free, in the patchwork nature of Taldan society, to use their own rules of succession: but plenty of them emulate the tradition of the Grand Princes, and the prominent women we see in Taldan society are the exceptions to that downward pressure. Other marginal groups in Taldor hope for better treatment from the Loyalists, who otherwise seem less suicidally warlike than the Imperialist faction, but most of those hopes are aspirations.
What Eutropia otherwise holds out is the hope of government that's more directly in the public interest, and less concerned with feathering the nobility's nest, than the traditionalists are comfortable with. The aristocratic arrogance powering Pythareus' faction in particular is something with direct parallels in lots of history (and of the present), and one reason I didn't change Book Two is that the sorry state of Meratt really brings home the consequences.
Avoiding mention of what doesn't make sense: A big motivator for the action of Book Two is supposed to be that Eutropia's family wealth is trapped in the Imperial Palace. This makes no sense, really: a society where flying pamphlets are normal doesn't have moneylenders and instruments of credit that someone with Eutropia's broad support could access in an emergency? So I mostly ignored that in favor of the base-of-operations rationale. Likewise, while I'm keeping the rather odd claim of Stavian illegitimacy that emerges in Book Five -- its weirdness is as much a feature as a defect -- I won't be attributing the release of that information to Pythareus' goons, because even by their standards of illogic it just doesn't fit.
Planning for beyond Book Six: I want to run the campaign to Level 20, which means setting up baddies who go beyond the schemes of the Immaculate Circle. I came up with my own solution to this, a kind of shadowy faction beyond even Taldor's secret societies and creatures like Thassritoum, and where I have introduced new NPCs it's mostly as tie-ins with this faction. (In part, I confess, this is also because I found the Circle themselves rather underwhelming as bad guys: they're more pathetic to me than they are menacing.)
Yeah, one of the biggest issues I have with the AP is that the fluff makes it out that women are barred from succession (agnatic succession), but then there are plenty of women ruling in their own right on lower levels. So I'm making Eutropia's position be "Sort out a byzantine mess of succession laws that don't make a lick of sense or have any standard, then repair the international reputation of our outdated joke of a country". (IDK where you got size of government angles? I'm a socialist anyway playing Andoran's military establishment as significantly more left-wing that I think it's intended to be, the idea is that Eutropia wants to codify absolute (cognatic) primogeniture as the mandatory succession law at every level of Taldan society, which the majority of the Senate is behind because succession wars have contributed to the collapse and stagnation of Taldan society. Eutropia doesn't want a vast bureaucracy, she wants to prevent/ameliorate a situation where nearly every marriage between mid-level noble families causes a succession crisis that clogs up the courts for years and leads to internal civil unrest)
I don't want Pythareus to be some moustache-twirling villain. He should be the most legitimate and respectable possible figurehead of the militarist/imperialist faction. He's still a VILLAIN, he's an authoritarian warmonger who is fanatically nationalistic and a danger to every neighboring country and indirectly to his own population, but he is an honorable, courageous man who possesses not inconsiderable virtues of his own. Somebody who the PCs can respect even as they oppose his goals, and who can theoretically rally a nation. Same with Eutropia--she needs immense personal charisma and the ability to serve as a figurehead for her own faction.
I want both main candidates to be elite aristocrats in an organ-waving contest that does nothing but hurt the common people at the bottom, and both of their ideals stop before they really start thinking about the common good. Neither candidate is a GOOD ending for the proletariat because the systems and institutions that dominate Taldan society are still there and still suck. The options are "no series of wars screwing up the country, people can live their lives in relative peace" and "a series of pointless imperialist wars that gut the country before Qadira or some new faction invades and takes the best parts of Taldor with little effort, and the common people there give the Taldans the middle finger as they're forced out".
Also, reading the fluff of the first two adventures, I've gotten the impression that Pythareus is supposed to be the Thankfully Former Dear Leader of my country and Eutropia the politician Thankfully Former Dear Leader beat about five years ago in an election, and I found even the slightest comparison of Thankfully Former Dear Leader to a respected and honorable military man to be insulting to the fictional military man and in poor taste. Thankfully Former Dear Leader was only able to do what he did thanks to the broken systems in my country, because he's an idiot, incredibly lazy, and a coward. Fixing his mess is as much about fixing the broken systems as it is about cleaning up the fecal matter he flung around. (I don't want to name names or get more into politics, but this is a very strong impression I'm getting and I want to rejigger it to be more to my group's political tastes--thus STAVIAN is the Thankfully Former Dear Leader, who's able to do his dirty deeds because the organs of state are rotten to the core, and neither candidate is really fully capable of grokking the magnitude of what must be fixed (though I am a fan of letting the PCs especially Fia the paladin change that))
The choice I want to set up
Spoiler:
is meant to take the temptation of putting a PC in charge and turn it on its head since the PC in question is explicitly illegitimate, of a species typically suspect in Taldor for association with a rival country, and has a very tenuous claim, plus has been working for Eutropia the whole time.
Basically "there are three imperfect options, one of which is obviously a bad idea".
Also everybody in the group is either an anarchist, a socialist, or a more moderately left-wing socdem. So I think my group will prefer big societal change to be necessary, but not achievable in the form of either of the two big swinging pieces having their slap-fight for the throne.
So I'm making Eutropia's position be "Sort out a byzantine mess of succession laws that don't make a lick of sense or have any standard, then repair the international reputation of our outdated joke of a country".
Those would make sense as long-term objectives.
Quote:
(IDK where you got size of government angles?
My bad. I was somewhat misreading the passage "has a plan of byzantine complexity for social services once she’s done reforming the legal system to ensure more #girlbosses" and what followed. Thanks for clarifying.
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I don't want Pythareus to be some moustache-twirling villain. He should be the most legitimate and respectable possible figurehead of the militarist/imperialist faction.
I mean, the basic issue is that if you have the Exaltation Massacre -- which needs a big operation to make happen -- then the faction responsible for it isn't that likely to be particularly legitimate and respectable. That whole part of the scenario is pretty much purpose-built to evoke protofascism.
(Yeah, I get that this calls up uncomfortable echoes of recent history for some, understandably so. But it's worth remembering that Pythareus was originally an analogue to a reasonably common breed of would-be military dictator and any other resemblances are likely incidental. We also do get to see in Book Four that Pythareus is not inherently evil so much as being driven to the edge of madness and paranoia by the Circle, so I wouldn't be too concerned with his moustache-twirler status? That applies to the people manipulating, and most of them do get to have actual character motives, too.)
As for Pythareus being able to rally a nation: it's Eutropia who is swimming upstream and really needs the extraordinary charisma, the Strategos has the benefit of inertia on his side. Analogous figures manage to rally political support despite not necessarily being all that personally impressive, there's no reason Pythareus shouldn't. But basically there are just a lot of moving pieces attached in the AP to Pythareus and his motives and actions, I would just be wary of messing with them too much: you might find there are unintended side-effects.
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I want both main candidates to be elite aristocrats in an organ-waving contest that does nothing but hurt the common people at the bottom... [remainder snipped but not ignored]
Okay. Well, I just think be forewarned that when introducing even the potential angle of a PC heir, that caution in the AP is probably there for good reason. Given that the AP is already structured to provide a contrast between an imperfect option and a worse one but also to give the players' actions specific input into what the "imperfect" option actually winds up looking like, I'm not sure there's much benefit to be had from further complicating the picture given the potential pitfalls.
Of course you'll have to do what you feel is best. Of all the "things not to change" flags that went up for me, that does happen to be the biggest one, is all I can say. Good luck!
Yeah, I'm deliberately making a tweak here that will leave the current "imperfect best" option as that, with the other options having SEVERE pitfalls.
Thanks for the advice! I'm already writing up quick-reference flashcards for who's who and their goals and personality lol. Complexity is expected.
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I mean, the basic issue is that if you have the Exaltation Massacre -- which needs a big operation to make happen -- then the faction responsible for it isn't that likely to be particularly legitimate and respectable. That whole part of the scenario is pretty much purpose-built to evoke protofascism.
I read it as Stavian demands this crazy thing and he has sufficient, sufficiently amoral forces willing to carry out his order that it gets carried out. I don't want this to be black-and-white, "heroic reformist vs. Evil Fascist Overlord", beating up an evil fascist overlord was what Hell's Rebels was about (and Hell's Rebels was AWESOME but it was also very different). I feel the succession war AP should be more shades of grey; "kinda OK" vs. "I mean he's not a sadistic monster but holy s#*~ this guy's plan is going to cause problems".
I read it as Stavian demands this crazy thing and he has sufficient, sufficiently amoral forces willing to carry out his order that it gets carried out.
Yeah, fair enough. The question that would come up for me is how Pythareus could possibly be kept out of that loop.
Perhaps, however, there's a possible candidate for that if you want to keep the full stench of the Massacre off Pythareus. My suggestion -- I keep bringing him up here because he's a big figure in Taldan lore but mysteriously absent from the AP -- would be the enigmatic maverick and canonical close advisor to Stavian III, Dominicus Rell.
(I just really like Rell as a possible villain, really. Is it partly the ring of the name? Yes. But he's also hyper-capable, he routinely outmaneuvers his fellow Masters from the Blades, he's in office when the Massacre happens, and he'd be someone who could coordinate an effort like that while successfully keeping it even from a highly-placed figure like Pythareus. And given how capable he's supposed to be, it beggars belief that this close advisor who had the Grand Prince's ear could not at least have caught a whiff of the whole thing. Just, y'know, food for thought. :) Enjoy.)
I read it as Stavian demands this crazy thing and he has sufficient, sufficiently amoral forces willing to carry out his order that it gets carried out.
Yeah, fair enough. The question that would come up for me is how Pythareus could possibly be kept out of that loop.
Perhaps, however, there's a possible candidate for that if you want to keep the full stench of the Massacre off Pythareus. My suggestion -- I keep bringing him up here because he's a big figure in Taldan lore but mysteriously absent from the AP -- would be the enigmatic maverick and canonical close advisor to Stavian III, Dominicus Rell.
(I just really like Rell as a possible villain, really. Is it partly the ring of the name? Yes. But he's also hyper-capable, he routinely outmaneuvers his fellow Masters from the Blades, he's in office when the Massacre happens, and he'd be someone who could coordinate an effort like that while successfully keeping it even from a highly-placed figure like Pythareus. And given how capable he's supposed to be, it beggars belief that this close advisor who had the Grand Prince's ear could not at least have caught a whiff of the whole thing. Just, y'know, food for thought. :) Enjoy.)
Oh, that's a neat idea, thank you!
Yeah, I want Pythareus and Eutropia to both be morally gray personally. Neither should countenance a wanton mass murder of political leaders. But one wants to rebuild the ol' international image, fix the most egregiously complicated parts of the legal system, and get the moribund economy going again with new trade deals. And the other wants to start a bunch of border wars that are liable to get into Byzantine-Sassanian Wars territory. Like, in person, they're both good-looking selfish jerks. In terms of what they mean for the country and the world, huge difference. Emphasis on systems and results over personalities, basically.
I'm pleased you like it. If you have any further requests for advice, I'll try to make any further responses more in the spirit of the improv commandment "Yes, and." :D
I have a player who is playing a disgraced noble with Pythareus as the murderer of his father. Eutropia is only really distrusted in my party by a half elf and elf who ar not super connected to society. The half elf is actively trying to influence her outcome. His elf mother is a spy and giving him advice.
So the Princess is not so gray to the players, mostly. Gonna be interesting.
