They’re having a leadership contest over in the UK, don’t know if you noticed. A couple of has-beens are racing to become captain of the Titanic. One, Rishi Sunak, is known to have been jockeying for position behind Boris Johnson’s back before the leadership contest even kicked off. That seems to have given his rival Liz Truss the advantage, under the old political cliché ‘He who wields the knife never wears the crown.’
Although the phrasing is Michael Heseltine’s – he who famously drove a stake through Maggie Thatcher’s political career – the sentiment is one for the ages. It’s a generally accepted truth in coups, revolutions, and Shakespearean tragedies that the people who kick off the shooting match by taking direct action at the leadership do not survive the weeks, months or years of chaos that follows. Either the powers that be retain control, in which event there are bloody reprisals, or the knife-wielder ends up everyone’s target in the ensuing melee.
Oddly enough it’s a factor that you’ve seen play out yourself more than once, though you may not have realized it at the time. In every competitive game you’ve ever played there has always been a point where one player is clearly in the lead, at which point every other player joins forces to bring the leader down. Even those who clearly have no hope of winning themselves start cooperating with those who do, or might.
Of course, if you wield the knife you might at least be remembered, as Richard III has been remembered. Buried under a car park, mind you, but remembered nonetheless. Whether the annals of history matter to you while the worms gnaw your desiccated remains is a matter for conjecture.
Knife follows knife, more often than not. Julius Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon and defeated Pompey Magnus in civil war, only to die at the hands of men who themselves died on the battlefield. Robespierre saw Louis XVI to the guillotine and himself ended up under the guillotine, but he was not the last so to die.
In RPG settings there’s a lot to be gained from bloody revolution. It’s an excellent plot hook and motivates action. Of course, the characters are likely to be on the sidelines at first, perhaps hired by [INSERT NPC HERE] to be one of the Act 3 Scene 3 Murderers. Or perhaps something else, but whatever their actual role adventurers are used to being hired by someone else to Do A Thing.
If this were Night’s Black Agents, for example, it is definitely in keeping for the agents to be hired by [WHOEVER] to Destroy, Hit, Flip, Heist, or whatever it may be. They may not realize, or care, that they’re working for vampires, at least not at first. A job is a job, after all.
The problem comes when they’re forced to realize that it’s not just a job. That the Heist they were paid to take on was carried out in furtherance of someone else’s scheme. That the Nodes at Tier 2 of the pyramid are looking hungrily at the undead at Tier 1 and wondering if they have what it takes to overthrow the leadership. To become Caliph instead of the Caliph.
After all, if he who wields the knife seldom wears the crown, what do you think happens to the lackeys of he who wields the knife? Shakespeare doesn't even tell you what happens to the murderers in Macbeth. It probably isn't pleasant but if Shakespeare can't even be bothered to say 'dead in a ditch' - well, that's just rude.
An alternative which puts the players at the heart of the action is to have them being the ones actively seeking power. Cyberpunk 2020 or Cyberpunk RED has an obvious means of making this work: have the characters be important executives in a corporation. Probably a smallish one; not Arasaka, but maybe a weapons supplier or manufacturer. A corporation that might be bought out by one of its competitors. That way the characters have a honeypot to reach for: being the ones with all the shares when the white knight swoops in with cash in hand.
Swords of the Serpentine has a section in the early part of the book that talks about a similar group concept: the Family Business. I’m going to quote that section here:
You may be a prestigious member of the Ancient Nobility, the merchant princes behind a major Mercanti guild, or even a close-knit family of commoners who have taken up a life of crime. For you, family is everything — and when family and friends get threatened by personal or political enemies, you turn to heroics to get your own back. This style of game deals with family politics and social pressure as much as external threats; you may have just slipped into a rival’s office to poison their wine, but is that going to make your mother proud of you?
In Serpentine the Noble Houses can be powerful, influential, wealthy – but it’s just as likely that they’re decayed husks of their former glory. Yes, they have property and titles, but no, they have nothing of actual value. Plenty of glory, and no bread to eat.
With that in mind:
The Gritti Saga
The characters are either members of the family proper, or part of the mansion staff. Perhaps they even hold a meaningless title – Keeper of the Falcons, when there hasn’t been a bird in the coop for decades. Or Nanny, in a house with no babies. The Grittis have a splendid history and plenty of property deeds for houses and ships that either no longer exist or are well out of reach. A squatter’s haven in Sag Harbor that used to be a Gritti shipbuilder, or concession rights to a particular business that has long since been carved up by rivals who care not a snap for rights on paper when they have the rights in practice.
At the top of this tree is Tomaso Gritti, your beloved … well, perhaps not so beloved. The characters have all sorts of ideas about how to revitalize the Gritti line. They may have allies, loyal servants and the like.
What they don’t have is power. Tomaso is the one in charge and he will brook no defiance. Nor does he care very much for whatever scheme the characters have come up with. Why revitalize the house of Gritti? What need is there? Gritti is magnificent and needs no modification. Gritti shall be as it has always been - so long as Tomaso is in charge.
If the players are to achieve greatness one of them has to wield the knife. Which one will it be?
What will happen after Tomaso falls?
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