Recently I ran a political intrigue / investigation adventure called The Storms of Yizhao for a few groups. It has a few neat approaches to doing a political intrigue game that you might want to borrow for your campaign. So let's go over them!
(If you want to run the adventure yourself, I strongly recommend using The Yang Version of the module since it addresses a few problems the original adventure had. We've also done a conversion for Fellowship and Exalted Demake if you prefer those systems)
The adventure sees the demigod PCs investigate the titular storms of Yizhao - a supernatural curse that is ravaging the city. They are tasked to solve the problem by the local governor that will give them a sizeable reward for stopping the storms. The players quickly learn the storms are caused by an Altar of Heaven, an ancient artefact created by a diety that imposes its morality onto the people and punishes them for its transgressions. So that means someone in the city is doing something really bad to upset the local customs, and getting to the bottom of who caused it is the PCs' ultimate goal.
During their investigations the players will interact with a couple of big name NPCs, from the governor, through a philosopher sage, down to a merchant matriarch. And here the crux of the mystery and political intrigue comes in.
Each of the big NPCs the players meet will gladly tell the PCs what they want out of them and what their take on the situation is. The merchant matriarch wants the governor deposed, dead, or both. The local royal caretaker of the Altar wants to just blow it up and go be a movie star. The philosopher sage wants to brainwash the entire town into being perfectly loyal citizens. Many of the motives are extreme and in a normal game might be a reason to send some constables after the NPCs to get them arested, but this isn't a normal situation. The NPCs aren't hiding their motives because each one of them lacks something that they need the PCs to do for them to complete their plan. A censor needs some documents stolen. The philosopher sage needs the PCs to tresspass by the Altar where they are not allowed to go. The merchant matriarch needs the PCs to steal a shipment of taxes.
So the NPCs will gladly let the PCs know exactly what they want to accomplish and what needs to be done to fulfil their goals. This lets the players know exactly what is going on, who hates who, and what their chemes are so they can make a somewhat informed decisions on what to do without having to do a roundabout song and dance to figure the basics out. It gets them right in the action and making decisions within minutes of meeting a new NPC.
Of course, there are layers to the situation. Every NPC has a goal and a plan, but sometimes their motives are hidden. Each of the NPCs also has a lead on what is really going on in Yizhao that is at the root of the problem that they will disclose if the PCs complete their quest or find some other way of leveraging them. They also each have a bias to what truth they see.
The merchant matriarch hates the governor because of his high taxes. She wants the PCs to steal the tax shipment so she can return it to the people. This is a lie. She wants to pass the shipment onto the censor to frame the governor of trying to steal his own silver to get him executed. She will tell any kind of sob story to the PCs to get them to get the governor deposed, she will lie that he's embezzling the taxes, spending it on his vices and latch onto anything the PCs bring to her to pin it on the governor. The truth she knows though is that there are people going missing from all walks of life in the city, which is really strange...
The philosopher sage believes the lax morals of the common people are the reasons the Altar of Heaven is punishing everyone. She is biased and wrong in that regard, but she doesn't know it. She wants it to be true, so she believes in it wholeheartedly. She is convinced that by empowering it to turn all the commoners of Yizhao into brainwashed Upright citizens the truth will be inevitably unveiled because it cannot take root in such a moral society that will be created. In that regard she is right, at least if you lean into "ends justify the means" kind of thinking...
Of course, some NPCs are simpler and some are more complex. The royal caretaker will let the players know he wants to just be a movie star straight away and what he needs from them to help himself escape. He is also quite eager to talk about what he thinks about the Altar and what insight he has. There is no second layer to him. Meanwhile the merchant matriarch will gladly lie about everything just to get what she wants. She will gladly ommit that she's extorting the people for money, that she's in cahoots with the censor, that she will use the stolen taxes as means for getting the governor executed, that she doesn't know if the governor is doing anything unsavory and what have you. Some variety like that means players don't expect everyone to have exactly one fake mask on they need to get through.
The garnish to the adventure are the various lesser NPCs and situations the PCs can interact with. People that have small immediate problems that show the players what the more ordinary life is like in the adventure. You have some young man that is being publicly humiliated for disobeying his mother, a merchant that can't pay the new taxes and will be fined for complaining about it too loudly, some courtesan that tries to hex the demigod PCs to give her a singing voice, etc. I tend to pace the adventure so that inbetween meeting any big name NPCs the players run into one minor situation to have something simple to solve in five to ten minutes.
Having a good number of such encounters also lets you tailor them to what the players are thinking. If they think the governor is up to no good and you want to double up on that, show them how people are treated by the government. If you want to expose the merchant matriarch for being corrupt, give them some merchant that can't afford guild dues. If they have done most of the adventure but can't connect the dots, give them an encounter that steers them in the right direction.
Finally, this adventure has multiple off-ramps for the players to end it how they see fit. They don't need to solve the mystery to solve the problem of the storms. Based on character skills, they can destroy the Altar, modify it, empower it, get to the bottom of the problem and punish those responsible, or even just leave because this place is just misery. All of those are valid end points for the adventure, some can be achieved within an hour or two of playing it.
Conclusions
The Storms of Yizhao showcases a few interesting tricks to running a compelling political introgue game.
First of all, all the NPCs share exactly what they want out of the PCs and why they want it quickly and readily. They will gladly share what they think of other NPCs. This lets the PCs understand the political landscape of the adventure fairly quickly without having to pry information out of the NPCs.
Secondly, some NPCs operate on multiple layers of truth. What they tell the PCs might be a lie, it might be a biased view of things, or it might actually be true. The PCs have the means to figure out what is really going on with some effort, but no NPC holds the whole picture.
Thirdly, minor NPCs and encounters help flesh out the world and can shape how the players view the situation. There are more such encounters than the party will encounter in an adventure, and which one gets presented depends on what the GM needs at the time.
Finally, there are multiple off-ramps for the players to complete the adventure before seeing the entire picture that feel like a satisfying end. Those ends are always triggered by the players consciously going for them rather than something the NPCs do in the background.
While it might not be the only way to run political intrigue games, I do think the scenario is an interesting case study. The recordings of multiple groups going through it should eventually be uploaded to this playlist in case you want to see how it plays out in practice.
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