Duets
Setting the Stage
The focus on a political campaign is roleplaying and machinations. You should have some action and adventure but it's the decision making process and persuasion of NPCs that defines this style of campaign. In other words, it's a very tactical style of campaign except instead of battlefield tactics it's the tactics of politics. One of the advantages of political campaigns for duets is the risk of life and limb is far less than a more military campaign though the stakes are often far greater. Additionally, politics has a moral component, which is great for roleplaying.
Start Small but Think Big
There are a lot of reasons to begin with a rather contained situation. The most obvious is that it's less work for the narrator, but more importantly is an opportunity to assess the ability and interests of the PC. However, it's good if you can create a situation where the PC will have lots of opportunities to pursue a broad tapestry of options. So you want a tight situation that opens to a broader world -- which can be as hard as it sounds to pull off. I think an example is warranted.
Barony of Calagard
This is a classic fantasy setting with a barony on the frontier of a kingdom bordering a wilderness region and a rival kingdom. Just that description alone should start you thinking about dozens of adventure ideas. Remember what a player wants isn't a brand new original adventure idea all they want is an adventure that will engage and empower their PC to be a hero. Narrators need to focus on solid execution not outlandish new ideas. As for our example, our PC could be the child of the Baron and Baroness and can have any class/profession/training desired by the player. Working together the player and narrator can come up with a background story, but the PC will have responsibilities to his noble family. It is these responsibilities will define the campaign. The responsibilities of the PC could involve investigating mysteries, fighting wars, settling disputes, representing the barony in tournaments or negotiations, dealing with an arranged marriage, appeasing angry gods, exploring ruins, etc. The scope is huge and that's what you want in the background, but for your first adventure you want something tight. For example, the PC is asked to investigate missing persons from the villages on the Border Forest, which is a simple and focused adventure but from here you can get a sense of the ability of the PC and player's interests for future adventures. This adventure may seem like a typical non-political adventure but let's say the local lord is sacrificing people to his cult, slavers have infiltrated the town, or that really people are leaving the town to join a village in the forest free of the taxes and rule of the Barony. These are all political adventures as the PC comes to town with genuine authority. Remember that's the first rule of political adventures -- the PC has to have some degree of power or it doesn't work.
Personalities Not Statistics
DO NOT DRAW UP IMPORTANT NPCS! I know this seems counterintuitive but if you spend 30 minutes drawing up the PC's father and expect that to give you an effective personality to roleplay you're sadly mistaken. Trust me, the PC isn't going to challenge his father to single-combat. Whereas with group campaigns you have players that love to go rogue, in duets the player takes the campaign very seriously as it's his campaign. So how do you come up with a personality, well, I do it lots of ways. Writing a biography isn't bad, but there are two better approaches. First, you could write a paragraph about how another character would describe the NPC. This actually can help you understand two characters with one effort. Second, you could write a vignette about the NPC that in some way encapsulates the character of the individual. Also these little efforts can help flesh out the setting as well. Roleplaying is simply about understanding a character and statistics do not help you understand a character as well as trying to get into the mind of the character.
Barony of Calagard
From the Baroness (Option 1): "You know your father; he agonizes and deliberates over his decisions for days, but when he finally decides -- it is final. He will join the Queen on her crusade to free Nesyr. The Queen personally requested his service and as you know he has never refused a request from the Queen, so he will go and fight one last war. He won't admit it, but he doesn't expect to return but I believe he underestimates his chances. Still we must pray for his safe return. We have also decided you will remain her to assist me in preserving the Barony. That is your duty."
From the Baroness (Option 2): "You know your father; he has good days and bad days. Lately it's been mostly bad days, he was babbling about evil in the realm, you know his usual paranoia and delusions. He sent dozens of letters to the Queen; hopefully, I intercepted all of them, because we don't need the Queen knowing your father is unhinged. Well, he said he had to talk to the woodland spirits. I tried to keep him here, but he slipped out at night with your sister Merise, she is as unhinged as your father, thank the Gods you take from my side of the family. That was ten days ago, once again he's left us in quite the situation with the tournament fast approaching."
Remember in a political campaign black and white isn't good. Yes, there will be villains but politics by its nature requires give and take. Important NPCs shouldn't be stereotypes they need to have some depth. This doesn't mean they need to be likable, just that they need to be understandable. The PC Needs to Care
One of the biggest challenges for narrators is to get the PC invested into NPCs, a setting, an adventure, and a campaign. Group campaigns have their own momentum that carries them along as long as the group dynamic isn't dysfunctional, but for duets you need to be able to pull the heartstrings. Here are some classic tricks to getting the PC to invest.
1. Friends. Duets just have a PC and NPCs so you need to make some of the NPCs into friends of the PC to give that camaraderie that defines roleplaying. It also gives the narrator a tool to advise the PC and a means for the PC to delegate. With a political campaign PCs often need counsel and advice and this is where their friends come in. My advice is for narrators to use friends to point out obstacles and bits of solutions to the PC. For example, a friend might warn the PC against angering the Duke but could suggest that the Duke has a love of horses that could be useful. That's all you would need to do to get the wheels in the PC's mind turning.
2. Make it personal. Make the adventure matter to the PC and it will matter to the player. A lot of narrator thinks this means "kill off beloved NPCs" but that's a poor strategy and can ruin a duet campaign, plus it's a clumsy heavy-handed approach. Making it personal just means it's about the PC. What if the PC's brother has joined a cult and she has to rescue him or maybe the PC has to arrange a marriage for herself. Group campaigns are often about the grand plot, but duets are about the PC. Related to this is responsibility. If the PC is named lord of a small village then the PC is going to be involved in the management of the village and will want problems to solve and situations to improve. Progress is what drives political campaigns, so always make sure you have a good number of problems in any political campaign.
3. Interesting NPCs make the best hooks. If you want to a hook a PC then put some time into thinking about the messenger. Pull out all the clichÈs if you want from poor peasants in need, damsel in distress, old friend in trouble, etc. However, make the NPC interesting, simple things like being really nervous about the heroic PC or superstitious. A little humor also goes a long way; a NPC that makes the player laugh is a keeper.
4. A little mystery goes a long way. Hold things back; don't reveal everything, but drop clues. Mystery keeps the player thinking about the situation. Here is a little secret -- sometimes it's best if the narrator isn't even sure what's going on. Sure you might have an idea that the Duke is plotting something and you drop hints and clues here and there, but maybe you aren't sure what the plan is. Honestly, be flexible you don't need all the answers, in fact, if you have all the answers you might let them slip too easily. Ignorance is a powerful tool for narrators it gives you more flexibility and can surprise you. At some point you will know what the Duke's plan is and it will be impressive, trust me.
5. Don't force the plot. If the PC isn't biting then drop the hook. Switch to some filler material as you regroup, but never force the plot. This is very different from group campaigns, but I can't repeat this enough -- the player has to control the path of the PC not the narrator. Certainly, consequences for actions can force results but that's the result of the PC's choices not narrator fiat.
Adjudication
With combat the rule is to roll dice for the exciting stuff and to flavor text the boring stuff. If the PC can slaughter the two goblin lackeys without any trouble then the narrator should just say it is so and save the dice rolling for when it matters. Now for politics, which is roleplaying, the rule is the reverse. ONLY roll when it's not important and roleplay out without dice the important stuff. So haggling for a new sword in the marketplace can be handled with a dice roll, but arguing for the release of a friend from prison should be roleplayed.
I have heard it many times that requiring roleplaying disadvantages less capable players. It's sort of a moronic argument for a lot of reasons, but as duets are focused on one player and the narrator can adjust the difficulty level for the abilities of the player it's not really an issue. The whole point in a political campaign is to do battle with words and ideas and you shouldn't roll dice for this as that's kind of pointless. I have run many duets with many players and have yet to find one not willing to jump into the roleplaying. With duets you should generally roll a lot less dice than with group campaigns.
That said this does put an awfully heavy burden on the narrator to adjudicate things. If the PC makes an argument how does it affect the target of the argument? If you remove dice rolling then how can the narrator handle this? Well, by using common sense and thinking it through. What follows is a system for adjudicating roleplaying from political machinations to negotiations.
1. Does the PC have a good plan or point? If the answer is "No" then you really don't have to do anything else but figure out the consequences for failure for the plan. If you are nice you might have a NPC point out the problems with the idea to give the PC a chance to come up with a new plan. If the answer is "Yes" go to the next step.
2. Analyze the Situation. This basically involves getting into the mind of the individual(s) being manipulated, because all politics involves manipulation. For some narrators this is pretty easy but for a lot it's hard and for that I will describe the Process I use.
The Process
First, you have to make a system of assumptions that fit reality or more accurately the realities of you and your player. Narrators who force their political views on a campaign with no respect of their player's political views shouldn't run political campaigns. This doesn't mean you have to incorporate the whacked out political views of your crazy anarchist player but it does mean you try to find common ground.
A system I use, that works more or less, is that all NPCs have a spectrum of views that define their actions. One spectrum is the selfish-egalitarian viewpoint. So first decide where a NPC falls on this spectrum, but you might want to make a note for the exceptions. Yes, the evil Duke is a selfish man, but he actually does love his daughter though probably not as much as a more compassionate man might, still in regards to his daughter his place on the spectrum is a little different than normal. Another spectrum is ruthlessness-honesty, which is fairly self-explanatory. Another spectrum is ambition-contentment, which reflects the drive of the individual. These three spectrums give you a fine enough foundation to understand the NPC and his reaction to a situation.
So let me explain this with an example. Let's say you want to make a deal with the evil Duke for him to release your brother from his dungeons in exchange for a payment of gold. We know the Duke is selfish and so a call for justice isn't going to work, but a ransom is probably a sound plan. Now the narrator would know if there are other reasons that the Duke may have to keep his prisoner. So you do inform the player that the PC's plan is good, but then when the Duke refuses to consider the offer you have signaled to the PC that something else is amiss. Now the PC has to find out what is holding the Duke back. It may seem in this example that the PC failed, but really the PC succeeded in the negotiation and we go to the final step of the process.
The PC has to deal with the crux of the issue. In every negotiation of political conflict there is a wide range of issues in play, but really the real crux of the issue is often one or two matters. It is solving these issues that are the political challenges in campaigns. Finding the issues is a big part of the process and then you have to solve it, but finding it is often the bigger challenge. Sometimes, and this is true in real life negotiations, the parties might not really understand what the real issue is, but it's rarely the obvious issue and almost never the money.
So in our example, the Duke has imprisoned the PC's brother because his daughter has fallen in love with the brother and he doesn't approve of their relationship. Now we have a real problem for the PC to deal with, a complicated one with no clear answers and lots of roleplaying potential.
The Player's Responsibilities
The last thing for political campaigns is a list of the player's responsibilities to make such a campaign work. Duets take two to be successful. Thus the player has some obligations as well.
1. Take notes. It is the player's responsibility to keep records of NPCs, information, and the like. As an aside to narrators and players -- don't worry about spelling just make a guess on phonics. Often as a narrator I will look at my player's notes and use her spelling of names and items opposed to what I originally wrote just to simplify things.
2. Communicate your thoughts and plans clearly. Share your thoughts with the narrator and try to make them understandable as this will help the narrator and his NPCs assist the PC. Also narrators will give a good well-thought out plan more credence. This is a note for narrators -- you want your players to think and if you don't reward good planning and strategizing then your players will have no incentive to think.
3. Don't take things personally. Bad things happen to PCs not to players remember this and give your narrator the benefit of the doubt.
4. Perseverance is the secret. In other words don't give up.
5. It's your campaign. If you really hate a story arc then signal this to NPCs or the narrator and give some options for a new direction to go. A lot of times players won't complain until they are at the breaking point and then it's more dramatic than it needs to be. Communicate! Also do tell your narrator when things are working well and you're having fun -- that's what makes it worthwhile.
That's enough for political campaigns and next month we'll tackle war campaigns.
