Here’s a light-crunchiness intrigue system for a MU game. There are five steps, which I’ll expound on at the end of this post.
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Roleplay in AresMUSH scenes as normal, except you have the option to conduct a secret exchange with any character in the scene. If you both agree on an exchange, anyone in the scene can protect the secret via being clandestine or by standing guard.
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Play as many scenes as you like!
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Use your class’s special abilities throughout the week as desired. More on those later!
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At the end of a week, conduct covert actions. Relish in excitement as secrets are revealed.
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At the end of a month, spend influence on Royalty. Gasp at which Royalty survive and who gets the axe.
PREFACE
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There’s nothing in here regarding worldbuilding. You can invent your own Kingdom, all the House customs, Royalty naming conventions, etc. and layer it all on top of this system. This is only the crunch that gets things rolling and gives every player something to do.
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This system is untested and likely unbalanced. I came up with this in only a few hours. I have no idea how well it’d play out. But it comes with just enough moving parts that it’s easy enough to slip in balancing fixes as needed.
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Characters in higher positions aren’t meant to hold their positions forever. This allows for political shifts and eventual turnover. The lower you are on the hierarchy, the easier it is to get by.
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All scenes with secrets in them are public for everyone to view, except for the secret. Public scenes can be considered IC knowledge when read.
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Messenger scenes (AresMUSH text scenes) are secrets themselves!
Suggestions and questions are welcome! Please forgive me if I use the wrong term somewhere, haha.
CHARACTERS
Each character is a member of one of 5 different social classes. Some classes are separated into two or three designations: Independent, House, or Court.
Independent - An independent character holds no loyalty to any House, and therefore can make deals that benefit anyone with little risk. Conversely, without House support, your character does not receive any wealth each week.
House - A House character is loyal to a specific House. As a reward for their loyalty, they receive weekly wealth. In general, as part of a House, your character should be focused on supporting the other members of your House. Your character can take actions against someone in their own House, but every coup comes with a risk.
Court - A Court character is part of the Kingdom’s council, responsible for uncovering conspiracies and maintaining peace among the Houses. They’re a neutral party, or are supposed to be. Bribes are always a thing; it just takes the right character to accept them.
CLASSES
Here are the 5 classes, ordered from lowest to highest.
Vassal - Independent only.
You are among the lowest class. Your home may be part of a House’s land, but you owe loyalty to nobody. You can pack up and move anywhere and be anywhere in a day’s time. You aren’t competing with anyone at the higher classes, but they’ll always come to you when they need something.
Special abilities:
Crafting - Roll to create materials based on the location of the scene you’re in. Can be used once per day, but also can be saved over time for a better roll. This can be done in a Vignette or part of a larger scene.
Escape Artist - You can’t be arrested.
Class Change - With enough wealth, you can buy your way into a modestly better life, moving into any other class except Royalty.
Merchant - Independent or House.
You’re the reason everyone else above you doesn’t have to worry about the minutiae of the world. You keep things moving so they don’t have to. It’s an ideal position for anyone who doesn’t want trouble.
Special abilities:
Manufacturing - Combine materials into salable items that the other classes want or need (to be determined). Each type of manufacturing needs its own production facility.
Construction - Use materials to redecorate, upgrade, and expand land (rooms).
House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, in addition to weekly wealth, you’ll have free use of the House’s specialty facilities.
Enforcer - Independent (Mercenary), House (Guard), or Court (Seneschal).
Secrets need muscle to protect them, and princesses need muscle to uncover those secrets. If you want a steady position that won’t be derailed by politics and you don’t mind getting a little dirty from time to time, an enforcer’s life is for you. If you don’t care to be dictated by anyone, you can work outside the constraints of Houses as a Mercenary. However, if you crave more dictation, you may act as a Seneschal for the Court.
Special abilities:
Lay of the Land - When infiltrating a physical secret, you bypass Stealth checks if nobody is assigned to defend it. If part of a House, this cannot be used on your own House.
Armory Access - If you spend your influence on a coup, it gains +1 influence.
House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, you will receive weekly wealth and your pick from the House’s arms. Additionally, guards have the responsibility of carrying out arrest attempts of colluders within your House.
Court Advantage - As a neutral party among competing houses, your goal is to sniff out conspiracies and bring to justice anyone who may cause unrest in the kingdom. You receive weekly wealth and some of the best tools to carry out your mission.
Diplomat - Independent (Messenger), House (Noble) or Court (Inquisitor).
Someone needs to run around and get everything done. If you love interacting with all levels of society, a diplomat is the perfect choice. Why should it matter if you read secret messages from time to time? You’re getting everything done for everyone, and growing your notoriety at the same time.
Special abilities:
Message Carrier - When infiltrating a messenger scene, you bypass Stealth checks if nobody was assigned to defend it. If part of a House, cannot be used on your own House.
Influence Trade - You may publicly publish secrets to gain 1 influence per secret.
House Advantage - If you choose to join a House, you will receive weekly wealth. However, your influence has restrictions – your influence cannot be used to sabotage Royalty in your House, or to support Royalty of another House. People know you, too – if you take part in a Conspiracy or Coup, your name will always be made public as a supporter, even if it fails.
Court Advantage - There’s nobody to hold you accountable for your actions except a Seneschal. Because of this, you’re typically expected to support your Seneschals.
Royalty - House only.
You’ve landed this seat; now all you’ve got to do is keep it. With an ever-increasing influence target to stay in power, you’re always one step away from being the target of the next coup.
Special abilities:
Bribery - You can secretly take wealth from any House to instantly have wealth available. This can be done in a Vignette or part of a larger scene.
Favors - You can grant up to 5 additional covert actions (below) to other characters, with a maximum of 2 additional actions to any one character.
Marriage - With the other character’s permission, you may promote anyone to Royalty of your House through a marriage with your character.
Above the Law - You can’t be arrested.
STATS
Each character has 12 stats, best organized in a grid, for their abilities to keep and find secrets. For example:
Physical | Social | Messenger
Stealth 3 4 1
Search 2 3 1
Strength 1 3 2
Support 2 4 5
The columns are the type of secret:
- Physical is any secret that involves transfer of physical items. They can be in exchange for wealth, secrets, other physical items.
- Social is any secret that involves a physical transfer of only wealth and/or secrets.
- Messenger is any scene carried out through messengers (i.e. AresMUSH’s text scenes) and any secrets transferred that way.
The rows are actions that can be taken on a secret:
- Stealth is your ability to hide a secret. Everyone involved in a secret gets to roll, except those who choose to protect it.
- Search is your ability to uncover a hidden secret after all protections are undone.
- Strength is your ability to protect a secret, or force your way past any protections.
- Support is your ability to lend support towards any of the above, for a scene you weren’t involved in. Think of it like having resources to hire or command someone offscreen to help.
I envision character creation to be something simple, like assigning one 5, two 4s, three 3s, three 2s, and three 1s. Maybe a bonus for starting as a Vassal, such as changing one 1 to a 4.
WEEKLY EVENT - COVERT ACTIONS (SPYING)
At the end of each week, you have X amount of covert actions, based on your class and any actions gifted to you by a Royalty’s Favors this week.
- Vassal: 2 covert actions
- Merchant: 1 covert action
- Enforcer: 2 covert actions
- Diplomat: 3 covert actions
- Royalty: 1 covert action
There are 3 actions you can take:
- Protect: Add defense to a secret. Roll Strength if you were in the scene, Support if not.
- Infiltrate: Remove defense from a secret. Roll Strength if you were in the scene, Support if not.
- Spy: Attempt to acquire a defenseless secret. Roll Search if you were in the scene, Support if not.
You may target any scene with a secret from the past 4 weeks with your covert actions. After 4 weeks, a secret can no longer be spied on. If you have multiple covert actions, they can all be used on the same scene, if you want.
Everyone has 2 days to submit their covert actions. After the deadline, all covert actions are resolved at the same time:
- Protect actions are rolled and added to the defense value of each secret.
- Infiltrate actions are rolled and subtracted from the defense value of each secret. (If the defense value was already 0 at the start of this step and you’re an Enforcer or Diplomat, check if “Lay of the Land” or “Message Carrier” let you skip the next step and you automatically acquire the secret.)
- If the defense value of a secret is now 0, Spy actions are rolled on that secret. If your Spy roll meets or exceeds the Stealth score, you acquire the secret. Otherwise, you can reroll Spying in a future week to add to your previous roll.
Normally, covert actions aren’t revealed, though I imagine there can be items developed by Merchants that do all sorts of exciting effects to add twists to covert actions.
Any secret in a scene your character was in that’s successfully protected for two weeks nets your character +1 influence.
If you don’t submit your covert actions in time, you can hold them over until the next week. If they’re not used by then, they’re gone.
MONTHLY EVENT - USING INFLUENCE
At the end of each month (or 4-week period?), everyone has 4 days to spend their accrued influence on votes of support, acts of sabotage, or a conspiracy and coup. You may also purchase influence with your wealth, unless you’re a member of Royalty.
Each member of Royalty has a support goal they need to reach to hold their position. This number increases each month until it’s no longer sustainable. Votes of support are worth +1, and acts of sabotage are worth -1 when checking if the goal is reached.
If it’s reached, the member of Royalty keeps their position. If it isn’t, they’re deposed – stripped of their wealth, and sent to live as a Vassal.
A conspiracy and coup is a two-month action.
The first month is spent on organizing a Conspiracy against a member of Royalty. It requires at least 10 influence spent for a Conspiracy to be active. When this happens, the game is notified that there’s a Conspiracy developing against the targeted character. If the Conspiracy isn’t successful, nothing is announced, and all influence spent on the conspiracy is secretly refunded.
On the second month, influence is spent on pushing the Conspiracy to a Coup. The amount of influence spent on the Coup must be more than the amount of influence spent in support of the member of Royalty. If this number is reached, the coup is successful, the target is killed and the player gets to play out a death scene if desired. The voters of the Coup are kept a secret, and they can vote to promote a character to Royalty after the death scene.
If the Coup isn’t successful, however, the names of every character who voted for the Coup are revealed.
GUARD & SENESCHAL ACTION - ARREST
Each House has their own customs and goals, as well as opposing Royalty who may not have your character’s best interests in mind. It’s completely okay to break these rules IC to further your character’s goals or to attempt to ruin a Royalty’s day. When a Guard or Seneschal believe they have enough of a case against a character, they can attempt an arrest on that character.
When an arrest attempt is submitted, the targeted character can choose to go peacefully or make a run for it.
To make a run for it, the character abandons their wealth, then makes a plea to a specific House to be taken in. The Royalty of that House vote by the end of the week whether or not to take the character in. If a supermajority votes yes, the character becomes a member of that House at the same Class and is marked as “Wanted” by the previous House (if any) and cannot rejoin that House. Otherwise, the character is captured.
If going peacefully or captured, a Trial Scene happens where the arresting Guard or Seneschal presents their evidence. Another Guard or Seneschal is chosen to speak on the behalf of the accused. Both parties may reveal secrets that support their case.
After all evidence has been argued, the Jury may ask questions of both the accused and the accuser. In a Court Trial, the Jury is made up of Inquisitors who vote on whether the person under suspicion is guilty. In a House Trial, the Jury are the Royalty. If a supermajority is reached in favor of Guilty, the character is deposed – stripped of their wealth, and sent to live as a Vassal. Otherwise, the character is innocent and cannot be arrested for this matter again.
In a Court Trial, the arresting Seneschal gets +1 favor for a guilty verdict, and -1 favor for an innocent verdict. If their favor ever dips into the negatives, they’re deposed.
ADDITIONAL MECHANICS
More mechanics can be built on top of this basic system, like Merchants focusing on land expansion and building projects to influence Royalty income, but the goal with this outline is to be as simple as possible to give a little crunch to the L&L MU formula.
GAMEPLAY
With all of that out of the way, let’s summarize what we do with all of these game mechanics!
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Roleplay a scene with other character(s) and decide whether or not to conduct a secret exchange with them. All characters in the scene decide whether to protect the secret via Stealth (being clandestine) or Strength (standing guard), or decline to protect it.
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Play as many scenes as you wish throughout the week, but be sure to wrap up scenes with secret actions in them by the end of the week. You can open a continuation scene afterwards!
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Use your class’s special abilities throughout the week as desired:
- Vassal: Craft resources. Upgrade to another class.
- Merchant: Manufacture items. Construct buildings.
- Enforcer: Make arrests. Speak at a Trial scene.
- Diplomat: Publish secrets. Vote at a Court Trial scene if you’re a Seneschal.
- Royalty: Take bribes. Distribute favors. Get married. Vote at a House Trial scene.
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At the end of a week, conduct covert actions on any scene performed in that week, based on your available covert actions. Use items to cause special effects or boost your rolls. Relish in excitement as covert actions are resolved.
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At the end of a month, spend influence to raise or lower the reputation of Royalty, or try to bloom a conspiracy into a coup. Gasp at which Royalty survive and who gets the axe.
And above all, don’t forget to enjoy playing your character!
That’s all! Please feel free to pick this system apart at your leisure.
