Here are some things I found when one of the players decided (by accident) his character wanted to run for public office.

Background
In my Icar group, I have a character who thinks he is a revolutionary (think Citizen Smith, Rick from the Young Ones etc). For a bit of fun, he decided to leave the slum he lived in and try to run for public office. It occurred (fortunately) at the end of a session, so I had a week to plan.

Immediate concerns
The current campaign isn't about politics. The character's revolutionary spoutings were a nice bit of colour but not a core part of the scenario. I checked with the group and we couldn't see how the other group characters would 'fit' in a scenario based in politics - even in the run-up to the election.

The second concern was that once the character had been through the process, they would not fit into the campaign anymore - even if he lost. We decided that the best thing to do was to make the character a powerful NPC contact and the player kindly agreed to have a new character as a result.

Representing an election campaign
It's rather difficult to reduce a fictional campaign in a fiction far future where politics are very very different to today. Therefore, I selected a number of issues (such as industrial funding, power of state on a local level) and thought up a number of events that outlined the extremes of an issue. For example, regulation was restricting local farmers but protected trade. What to support? The character could then choose his standpoint. The events were roleplayed out, with supporting roles played by the other players.

The opposition
It's fun to wrongfoot the opposition. I made a little chart to show where the other candidates were politically (the Icar replacements to the then defunct Liberalism and Conservatism). At each event, the crowd would be against the opposition or for them, depending on where the speech would happen. The media reports everything in real time and the players get a chance to respond with ideas and statements.

The other characters
The other characters in the group are as legit as bag of £12 notes so they kept well clear and the players interjected with ideas and ways around the media. That worked for all but one of my players, who didn't enjoy it very much. It was a massive departure to our usual game.

Limitations
The election is in a finite (and short) amount of time and will only cover a couple of play sessions (last one and my next one next Tuesday) and the player who didn't have much fun is away next week. We can wrap it up and get back to normal before he's back. It's a bit of a break from the usual trying-not-to-die-while-having-fun character campaign and I wouldn't want to run it for too long. It's a bit of a spotlight for the player involved, so it will need following up with plotlines more centred around the rest of the group.

A good reference is The West Wing, which I found really helpful to gauge issue and to plunder for ideas of things that might happen on the campaign trail.

Anyone done this before? Found any pitfalls or better ways of doing it?

Never, but I'll watching this thread for updates.

Rob this was a campaign not a mini campaign.

Here's a brief outline of a political thriller campaign - The Day of Living Dangerously - I ran last year :

http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=46788&postcount=1

Partly inspired by the documentary Our Brand Is Crisis :

http://www.filmstransit.com/our_brand.html

and structured like the TV series 24. (Each session represented an hour)

Some observations about this particular campaign, which may be useful

Goals : Unlike most games political games IMO should have very specific goals (preferably discussed before play). For instance, in this campaign the players were hired by Big Pharma to ensure that one of their proxies got elected into office.

Resources :

• Who's funding you and why ? This is important because sooner or later players will find themselves either working against their patrons or not doing a good enough job that they find themselves cut off from the gravy train and deep indebt to various disparate parties.


• Access to Media. How much access they have to the various different kinds media determines how much they can influence public opinion.


• Dirty Tricks . The methods used to discredit your opponents. Leaking private information, blackmail , bribery etc.

Also if anyone is interested in running political types games in fantasy settings, get your hands on the WFRP adventure Power Behind the Throne.

Regards,
David R

Thanks David, some great thoughts in there. We did discuss the goal before we started. The revolutionary character always wanted to make the difference but thought that without funding, he'd never been able to. He got funding from a series of sources.

I have thought of a few reasons why he's being funded and they're not entirely pleasant. Being an anarchist by nature, those funding him tend to have less-than-savoury requirements.

Media is open in Icar, public influence is very fickle.

Dirty tricks is a good idea. I'll see if I can build some of that into tomorrow night's campaign.

What if he wins?
I mentioned before that if the character wins, he leaves the group but becomes a powerful contact.

What if he loses?
In some campaigns, this might ruin everything and really put a cloud over the game. How would your group react if they got to the dragon and it mashed them? Probably not good. In this case, the character will still be politically active and as the focus of the group is not the campaign, we can carry on without everything being ruined.

I have the next session tomorrow night, so I'll post up any lessons learnt and get some feedback from the players.

Quote from: Rob LangWhat if he wins?
I mentioned before that if the character wins, he leaves the group but becomes a powerful contact.

If he wins he leaves the group?

Isn't that just when the game becomes really interesting?

Gah, Judd (aka Paka), now you've got me thinking. The premise for the current campaign is a group of waster thrill seekers who do work to fuel their drug habit for more fun. The revolutionary character has ascended beyond anything anyone really thought possible. As often recommended (by you! , I had a good chin wag with the players and we decided that although it would be fun to run a political campaign, it was more fun to continue on the path they were going. also, the characters are low-skilled and useless when it comes to politics!

What we might do in the future, when short of players, run a session or two from the point of view of the councilman.

As for last night, we played the second half of the election. One of the player's characters really didn't fit (a pyromaniac), so he took the role of a hurriedly created adviser.

I decided to hit them with some past scandals. This was easy because the candidate character had slept with one of the other candidates, the mother of another PC. This came out and they had to bury the story. They did that really well. I was impressed. I tried questionning from the most filthy barrel-scraping point of view but they "kept on message".

Another event I threw at them was an assasination attempt. A few injuries but nothing fatal. That was another press hammering, followed by getting back on message. They correctly identified the people who didn't normally vote and then appealed to them. It was really well done. At the end, it was close but it came down to a dice roll. There aren't any Icar mechanics for politics so we decided that a good roll would seal. He rolled a 10 on a d10. That was it. Council chair for five years.

I could have built things up a bit more and make more of a crescendo for the finale but it was late at night and we were all tired. Everyone left with a smile on their faces and the player who played the candidate is already frothing with ideas for his next character.

So, a success and I recommend it as a little plot-esque thing in the future. I'd recommend removing any characters that don't fit by asking players to play different characters for the duration. I'd make sure that everyone agrees it's a fun thing to do.

Thanks for the comment, Judd!