Building a Clientele

Recently I introduced a discussion of the endgame in cape-and-sword roleplaying games, the point in a campaign at which the player characters become authority figures in the game-world, where conflicts transition from the physical to the political and power comes from one's position at least as often as from one's sword arm.

First up was social standing and influence, followed by the pursuit of wealth and then networks of relationships. Up to this point, the discussion of relationships between player and non-player characters focused on adventurers in the service of, or otherwise aided by, non-player characters, but one of the first significant transitions to the cape-and-sword endgame occurs when the player characters assume the role of patrons and build their own networks of clients, the clientele.

The clientele in cape-and-sword roleplaying games bears a passing resemblance to the adventurer-henchman relationship in classic D&D. As described in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide, a henchmen are "useful as a safety measure against the machinations of rival player characters, provide strength to the character and his or her stronghold, and lastly serve as a means of adventuring when the player character is unable to do so." Henchmen are recruited and agree to serve in exchange for compensation including a 'signing bonus,' upkeep, and a share of adventuring rewards, usually treasure. In a cape-and-sword campaign, this relationship between adventurer and henchman is closest to that of a pirate or privateer captain and his crew.

Sharon Kettering is one of my favorite historians of the 17th century, and her book Patrons, Brokers, and Clients in Seventeenth-Centuy France is a frequently referenced source for my Flashing Blades campaign. Dr. Kettering describes patron-client relationships as, "a reciprocal exchange relationship in which patrons provide material benefits and protection, and clients in return provide loyalty and service." This relationship may feature, "a wide range of possible interactions, or services and benefits exchanged," and, "The relationship is continuous, more than a single isolated exchange." With respect to the analogy of the AD&D adventurer and henchman, the swashbuckling patron and client relationship offers rewards of status and social mobility and protection from rivals as well as wealth.

Flashing Blades characters with Advantages and Secrets like Contact, Favor, and Secret Loyalty are effectively part of a non-player character's clientele at the start of the campaign, or may become so during actual play. A couple of patronage opportunities, such as, "The Patron wishes the character to protect him, or someone who is dear to him, in times of danger," and, "The Patron offers the character a permanent position in his service, with some sort of special deal or pay for services rendered," create a npc patron-pc client relationship as well.

As player characters rise through their career hierarchies, they may also find themselves in a position to distribute patronage, in the form of positions. Aside from the obvious benefit of admitting or promoting other player characters, an adventurer may also distribute positions as patronage opportunities to non-player character allies as well.

In the military, top echelon (general) officers may select aides to serve them.

Each [top echelon officer] is also assigned one or two Aides, from the ranks of the Regimental Officers (these may be chosen from Player Characters, if desired).

Aides have the highest bonus to rolls for promotion, so naming a character as an aide is a significant benefit. Regimental commanders may also promote sergeants and subalterns at will.

Bishops exert vast control over their bishoprics and may distribute many positions as patronage.

A Bishop governs his Bishopric almost like a province. He has the right to choose or dismiss members of his Curia (advisory council) and he may appoint or dismiss Curates and Pastors within his Bishopric.

Again, Church careers are both among the most lucrative and the most temporally powerful in the France of Flashing Blades.

The royal bureaucracy also offers opportunities for offering positions as patronage, but perhaps not as many as one might expect.

The Minister of War appoints and controls the Field Maréchal.

The Minister of State is, with the exception of the King, the most powerful man in France. He may appoint or dismiss all Court Ministers, except for the Ministers of Justice and War. He controls the entire Royal Bureaucracy, and his petitons are virtually assured of being granted by the King. In addition, he may, at any time, raise of lower a character's Social Rank by one (no lower than one, or higher than 15) simply be mentioning him, favorably or unfavorably, to the King (only once per character). Once per year, he may have a character of Social Rank 4 or above Knighted and/or admitted to a Royal Order (again by mention to the King). He may deny any character in the Military, Clergy, Bureaucracy, or in an Order their promotion (although he may not prevent them from buying Rank).

The Minister of State is unquestionably the most powerful person in France whose last name isn't Bourbon, but only the Minister of War can also name a character to a position, and then only one. This reflects the pervasive infuence of venality, the sale of offices by the crown, in the bureacracy of the Ancien Régime, but it also suggests another opportunity for distributing patronage, which I'll get to shortly.

The easiest way to distribute patronage is by becoming an officer of a club or a noble or royal order.

A Club Secretary looks after Club records, membership lists, payments of dues, etc. He may admit his friends to his Club as he wishes.

The Club Treasurer looks after Club finances. He may also admit his friends to the Club.

The Club Chief is the head of his Club. He runs the Club, and may manage it in any way he likes. He may admit his friends, and/or promote them in the Club.

The Secretary of an Order manages the bureaucratics of the Order, makes up rosters of members, organizes Order companies and Battalions, etc. He may admit one friend per year to the Order (provided the friend meets the minimum Social Rank requirement).

In addition, a Master of an Order may admit his friends into the Order, provided they meet the minimum Social Rank requirement of the Order.

[The Grandmaster of the Order] may admit his friends into the Order, and promote them automatically when openings appear.

Club membership is an abundant, easily accessible perq to offer; membership in an order, which includes the opportunity to command a company of knights as well as the potential for entry into the peerage, carries with it more significant benefits, however.

Many of the positions, particularly in the military or the bureaucracy, may be purchased; indeed, venality is what the distribution of positions in the bureaucracy to the highest level of royal ministers. In my campaign, I permit open positions to be purchased on behalf of another, if a prospective patron wishes; in this way bureaucratic offices in particular are available as patronage rewards as well.

Player characters may, in lieu of providing a position as patronage, offer their influence to a prospective client instead. The relationship, from the perspective of the non-player character client, becomes similar to that of Contact or Secret Loyalty from Advantages and Secrets. This clientage relationship can be useful when a client lacks the necessary skills or Social Rank to accept a position as patronage, as a prelude to an offer of a position at a later date, or simply to cultivate a mutually benefician relationship without extensive overhead. Though direct compensation, such as wages, isn't required, the pc patron is expected to pick up expenses when the client is called upon to provide a service; failure to do so may lead to the loss of the client and invite betrayal or retribution. A patron is expected to use his influence to protect a client as well, with similar consequences should the patron fail to do so.

The patron-client relationship which is the building block of the clientele shouldn't be confused with obligations owed by dint of duty. For example, a soldier may command anything from a company to all of the field armies of France, but the officers and men who serve under the character are not clients by virtue of this relationship. The same is true of the knights in a knight-captain's company, or of the fusiliers in the service of a provincial governor or city mayor, or of an ambassador's entourage. It also differs from the mercenary contract noted earlier between a pirate captain and his crew; the conditions under which a pirate crew serves are spelled out in Flashing Blades' piracy supplement, High Seas, and with a few tweaks these rules work very well for other forms of enterprise, such as raising a band of highwaymen, a gang of bravos or cutpurses, or even a company of mercenaries.

Unlike AD&D henchmen, clients are not recruited by posting broadsheets or hiring criers. Prospective clients will usually be found among the non-player characters known to the adventurers; a player character bishop may offer to make a friendly npc priest a member of his curia, or a pc major-general may extend an offer to a npc colonel with whom he's served to be his aide. Players should attempt to identify prospective clients - non-player characters who are helpful and trustworthy - as they move up through the ranks of their career hierarchies in preparation for building their own clienteles, which means the referee should be prepared to run a variety of underlings and peers for the adventurers.

Prospective non-player character clients should also seek out patronage from player characters, particularly when the adventurers move into positions where they can fill positions as noted earlier. My house rule is that if domestic commerce is good for the year, then I roll 3D6 and subtract the result from the player character patron's Social Rank and the difference is the number of potential npc clients who come calling; if domestic commerce is average or poor, then I roll 1D20 and subtract the result from the patron pc's Social Rank to determine how many would-be clients tender their loyalty in exchange for patronage.

While Dr. Kettering notes in her book that patrons and clients often engaged in florid correspondence, highlighted by lengthy affirmations of their mutual affection, loyalty, and interests, approaching a prospective client is pretty straightforward; the player character patron asks for the npc client's loyalty and service in exchange for the patron's influence or a position. In my campaign, this also necessitates a Charm versus Wit opposed check, with the half the difference between the patron and client's Social Rank applied as a modifier; if a position is being offered as well, then the difference between the npc client's Social Rank and the Social Rank associated with the position is added as a modifier, too. Success on the check means the offer is accepted and loyalty is determined as per my campaign house rules.

As quoted above, the henchman in AD&D may help to protect a player character not only from the dangers associated with adventuring but also from other adventurers - a positive affirmation of the expectation of player-versus-player conflict in classic D&D. A henchman also acts as a player character's surrogate when the player character is occupied or otherwise unavailable to go adventuring, as does a client in a cape-and-sword game. This allows a patron to act indirectly, and perhaps at a distace, through the client - frex, the provincial governor may dispatch a trusted client to deal with highwaymen threatening the king's roads through the province while the governor remains in Paris to be near the King's court - and a player may run the npc client in lieu of his player character while dealing with the highwaymen's depredations.

I'll get into more about how players may take advantage of their characters' clienteles, including gaining control of a rival's clients, later, but next I want to touch on that icon of the roleplaying endgame, the stronghold.

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Upstairs, Downstairs: The Help, Continued

Previously I wrote about servants in a cape-and-sword campaign, as seen in the source literature and the rules of a couple of swashbuckling games.

In addition to loyal lackeys and the wages of servants, Flashing Blades includes one more explicit reference to the help, under the section on property investment: "Upkeep is assumed to pay for servants, gardeners, furniture, etc." Each property type - townhouse, villa, small estate, large estate, and château - includes an amount in livres which must be paid annually, a portion of which is assumed to pay for the serving staff.

So how many servants does the owner of a townhouse or a château have, exactly? And what do they do?

History is a good guide, of course. The following is a reconstruction from payment records of the household of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland in 1539, as reported in The Household of a Tudor Nobleman.

Title	Number	Title	Number
Treasorer	1	Stables	7 p/t
Comptroller	1	Yemen Cokes	3
Gentylwomen Wayters	6 + 3 part-time	Gromes of the Kichen	4
Chapelyns	4 +1 p/t	Lardermen	2
Fyzytyon	1 p/t	Aumers	1
Secretores	1	Scullerye	1
Gentylmen Ussers	2	Garyners	2
Gentylemen Waters	9 + 1 p/t	Armerers	1 p/t
Scole Masters	1	Huntes	1
Clerks of the Kichen	3 + 3 p/t	Tillers	1 p/t
Yeoman Ushers	2	Caters	1
Yeomen Waters of the Chambur	8	Waryners	1
Gromes of the Chamber	5	Kepers of Haye	2
Seller	2	Slaughtermen	1
Pantre	2	Smythe	1
Buttre	3 p/t	Cowpers	unk
Ewerye	1	Shepherdes	3
Ussers of the Halle	2	Bargemen	1
Warderope	5	Women of the Laundre	5
Mynstrelles	2	Dare Women	1
Porters	2	Pultre Women	unk
Bakers	5 p/t	Kepers of Hallywell	1
Bruers	3 p/t	Kepers of Pastures	3
Myllers	3	Maser Scowrere	2
Joners	2	Waterdrawers	1 p/t
Glaysers	2 p/t	Carpentyrs	1 p/t + servant
Carters	2 p/t	Surgyons	1 p/t

In Flashing Blades terms, Lord Rutland is a count, a knight, a lieutenant general, and a court minister with the Wealth and Land Advantages - the latter more than once! - so while the example is instructive, it's also perhaps not representative.

A Book of Orders and Rules, written by Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu, for the management of his own household, is perhaps a better guide. Lord Montagu lists thirty-seven positions to be filled for the equivalent of a large estate or château. Assuming average wages of ten livres per person-month for a staff of forty, that works out to 4800 £, which vastly exceeds the total upkeep required for any of the properties in Flashing Blades, however.

So let's hold onto Lord Montagu as our ideal for a large property owner, and take the upkeep required for property as representing the minimum threshold below which, like the baron de Sigognac's château in Capitaine Fracasse, the place begins to crumble around the owner! For normal living conditions with the barest modicum of respectability, the cost of operating and maintaining the various properties may be assumed to pay for a number of servants up to no more than 50% of the annual upkeep. At least one servant and one cook are required for every two residents. At least one coachman or groom keeps up to two horses on their property, with an additional coachmen for every two additional horses. The owner of a country property must also keep a certain number of laborers as groundskeepers: one for a villa, two for a small estate, three for a large estate, and four for a château. Failure to pay for the laborers may result in a decline in property value as necessary repairs aren't made.

So, the owner of a château, living alone or with a spouse and no other dependents and keeping a horse, must provide for one body servant (120 £ annually), one cook (120 £), one coachman (96 £), and four laborers (48 £ each), for a total of 528 £ annually. This come is slightly under half of the château's annual upkeep of 1440 £, allowing him to pay for an additional body servant, or an additional groom if he also has a carriage and the four horses necessary to draw it, without paying additional expenses beyond the annual upkeep assumed in the property. Any difference must be made up by the property owner.

But again, bear in mind that this is the minimum requirement, and far from ideal - indeed, a character who keeps only the minimum number of servants is will likely receive comments from non-player characters, perhaps serving as the butt of jokes.

So how many servants should a character have to avoid calumnies? As a guideline, the owner of a townhome should have a number of servants equal to half his Social Rank; the owner of a villa or small estate servants equal to his Social Rank; and the owner of a large estate or château servants equal to twice his social rank. If that sounds hideously expensive, bear in mind that the ostentatious display of wealth is a hallmark of aristocracy. Its absence should invite notice.

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The Help

Servants sharing their masters' adventures are a fixture of many cape-and-sword tales. The Musketeers have their lackeys - Planchet, Grimaud, Bazin, and Mousqueton. Garnache, from Rafael Sabatini's Saint Martin's Summer, has Rabecque. Valmont, from Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, has Azolan, and Bardelys, from Mr Sabatini's Bardelys the Magnificent, has Ganymede. And Íñigo, the narrator of the Alatriste saga, is the captain's mochilero during the campaign in Flanders in 1625.

Some cape-and-sword roleplaying games include the option of having a servant for a player character. Honor + Intrigue's Boons, for example, include the Trusted Companion, while Flashing Blades characters may take a Gentleman's Lackey (or Lady's Maid, for women swashbucklers) as an Advantage. Both games also offer the opportunity for players' characters to be servants - H+I characters may choose the Servant/Housekeeper career; FB characters simply take jobs as such, provided they have the requisite skills or attribute scores.

So while the cape-and-sword trope of the servant sidekick is covered in these games, what about servants who are not an extension of the player character? Servants are ubiquitous in the society of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and many characters who do not take a Trusted Companion or Gentleman's Lackey should arguably have servants as well, albeit not quite so loyal.

My curent house rule for my Flashing Blades campaign is that a player character has a number of servants equal to his Social Rank - 1D6; the cost of these servants is subsumed as part of the character's monthly expenses. These servants are associated with the character's place of residence and are typically unavailable for adventuring.

But I'm not wildly satisfied with this rule for a couple of reasons. First, various servants and their wages are listed in the aforementioned section on jobs for characters, and they're a poor fit for what the player characters are paying in monthly upkeep.

For example, here's what servants make, in livres (silver coins) per month, in Flashing Blades.

Job	Pay
Laborer	4 £
Body Servant	10 £
Coachman	8 £
Cook	10 £
Herald	20 £

A player character with Social Rank 7 - the upper end of commoners in the setting - pays 21 £ each month for upkeep. Under my current house rule, that character could have as many as six servants; assuming two coachmen and four body servants, that's 56 £ worth of servants out of a budget of 21 £, which also covers housing and subsistence!

However, one of my assumptions is that the SR - 1D6 rule doesn't represent the player character's personal servants, but rather servants associated with the character's place of residence. The four body servants and two coachman available to the player character might represent valets, maids, and stablehands at an auberge or hôtel the character calls home, for example - their upkeep is spread among the various guests and residents, rather than borne by the player character alone. It's also why these servants aren't available for adventuring alongside the player character - a stablehand will keep your horse fed and brushed, and he might deliver a message for you across Paris, with a few extra sous for his trouble, but he won't be your equerry on campaign in Spain or drive your coach on a diplomatic mission to Venice.

So, with a little additional consideration, I think the house rule works tolerably well. On the other hand, if a player character wants a servant who will accompany him during his adventures, then the character needs to pay the servant's wages, out of his annual allowance - annuities, inheritance, sinecure, pension, or the like - or wages earned from a career or job, at the rates specified above.

The decision to keep a servant is then shuffled off to the player, but given their prevalence and significance in the historical setting of the campaign, should the game-world also incentivise keeping servants? For example, a servant, or better still a staff of servants, is both a sign, and an expectation, of status in the society of the game-world; remember that one of the first things d'Artagnan is urged to do once he has a little money in his pocket is hire a lackey, for a gentleman without a valet is scarcely a gentleman at all.

Flashing Blades hints at this in a different rule. Player characters with a noble title of baron or greater may visit court, but they must have a carriage and team to do so. Since a nobleman visiting court is unlikely to drive his own carriage, this suggests the character must pay for at least one coachman as a driver, and should probably hire a second as footman as well. That's one or two servants implied right there. It's a reasonable extension from this to say that a character at court must be attended by, at a bare minimum, one body servant as well; in fact, a more appropriate number might be equal to one-half of one's Social Rank, or risk penalties to reactions from other nobles at court.

Incentives in the game-world need not come attached to rules, however. Soft pressure in the form of snide or pitying comments from non-player characters on a player character's 'lack of means' may lead a player to choose to engage servants in order to present an appearance more appropriate to his character's station.

All of this assumes that a character does not own property - a townhouse, a villa, an estate, or a chateau - of his own. With property comes servants, per the rules in Flashing Blades, so the question of how many and what kinds of servants, and how they are supported, becomes more involved. I'll dive into this in part two.

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Non-Player Characters and Conventional Wisdom

Our Saint Patrick's game-day fittingly featured the Franco-Irish - Hiberno-French, really - King's Musketeer, Riordan O'Neill, in a five-against-five cavalry duel before the walls of the fortress city of Casale in Monferrato. It turned out to be a wild melee of flashing rapiers and sabers, blazing pistols, dropped and broken swords, chokeholds, and trampling by horses. In the end the French were victorious, killing three of the Imperial soldiers and capturing one, escaping under a hail of musket fire - in one round I rolled twenty-four twenty-siders for the musketeers' attacks - from Spanish troops on the far side of the Po River.

Riordan was the best swordsman on a field of good swordsmen, with no less than five masters among the ten combatants, and the Musketeer aquitted himself bravely and resourcefully, having two swords shattered during the duel - and stabbing a hulking Cossack in the throat with the broken end of one of them - rescuing two of his comrades who found themselves in dangerous straits, and single-handedly carrying the captured Neapolitan cuirassier from the field.

But it was perhaps the comte de Challons, Riordan's commander during the campaign in Savoy these last six months, who emerged from the duel "covered in glory," as Riordan's player eloquently put it. Shot three times with pistols, Challons nonetheless gravely wounded both the graf von Hentzau, the Imperial officer who issued the challenge to the comte and his men, and the cuirassier - both of whom were better swordsmen than Challons, in fact - and though both men would fight on for a time, this would prove decisive in the battle.

During the duel, our other player character, the physician and polymath Guillaume Sébastien, observed from a small rise overlooking the battlefield, guarded by three Monferini soldiers. Noticing that the sergeant in charge of the other two was eyeing him and his surgical case, Guillaume rashly decided to try to sneak out the dagger he concealed in it before the duel began. The sergeant spotted the doctor's attempt at sleight-of-hand and disarmed him instead, then, as the musketballs began to fly, the soldier turned and shot the doctor in the chest. The ball entered the armhole of the doctor's cuirass and would've ended a lesser man's life, but the sturdy Guillaume survived the shot; left for dead by the soldiers who then stole his instrument case and supplies, he was rescued after the battle by another Frenchman from inside Casale.

According to some, this makes me a lousy referee.

First, one of the player characters spent most of the duel on the sidelines, and his small part in the action of the day ended ignominiously, disarmed and then shot and left for dead.

And second, a non-player character was allowed to overshadow the contributions of a player character.

If I listened to the conventional wisdom, offered over and over from game designers and gamers, in game books, on blogs and on forums, this is one of the unpardonable sins of refereeing. It's the player characters who are the 'stars of the show,' they say, and non-player characters exist either as foils to be defeated or as support for the heroics of the adventurers.

The devil with that, says I.

I'll tell you why I think I get away with thumbing my nose at the conventional wisdom. First, I'm told by players that I do a good job running the non-player characters in the game-world. One gamer called it a rare gift, that my npcs were people he wanted to meet and get to know. I make a concerted effort to present non-player characters as individuals with talents and quirks and flaws and opinions and agendas, even when they are heavily archetypal, and who truly inhabit the game-world, fitting into the context of the setting. As a result, what I've found is, rather than seeing npcs as resources to be exploited or threats to be avoided, the adventurers are more likely to respond to them as real people in the game-world rather than metagame constructs. One of my greatest pleasures as a referee comes from the players' characters seeking out npcs for help or advice or even just to hang out together.

I think the advice that many referees offer is that npc allies in particular should have little to say, so as not to unduly influence the players decision-making, is backwards. Non-player characters should have opinions, strong ones at times, and npcs should be able to disagree with the adventurers and one another - yes, npcs should interact with each other as well as the player chaacters, and no, this doesn't mean the referee need engage in a lengthy monologue while the players stare at their character sheets or stack dice and wish they were home playingAssassin's Creed instead. One of the prime skills a good referee should develop is the ability to put aside the omniscient view of the game master and put one's self in the mind of a non-player chaacter, to see the game-world from that character's perspective. This is the key to avoiding metagaming.

Second, I roll in the open, for everything. The players know that when an non-player character succeeds where they fail, it's right there on the table in front of them. At least one forum denizen I know dismisses this, observing that as the referee still makes up the stats for the non-player character which is ultimately more important than the dice rolls themselves. I can see how he comes by this opinion, particularly with respect to games with significant differences in relative power between player and non-player characters. With most of the games I play, the range between the novice and the master is more recognizably human, but even when I played games like Dungeons and Dragons, I avoided the perception of a world full of Mary Sues by presenting engaging, believable npcs who made sense in the context of the game-world.

Third, I have the good fortune - and the good sense - to play with gamers who have the emotional maturity and the patience to accept an ebb-and-flow of events in the course of the campaign. I believe this comes from having a stake in the campaign that goes beyond what happens to one's character at any given moment - it extends out-of-game to the other players and me as the referee, and in-game to the relationships between the adventurers and to the non-player characters in whom they're invested.

Today the doctor had a rough day, sidelined both by circumstance and by poor luck to be mostly an observer of the action. Nonetheless Guillaume's player remained engaged throughout the complex, three hour battle - by far our most epic to date - despite the mishaps of today's game. A few months ago, it was the doctor's day to shine, during the investigation of a disappearance - that same day found everything Riordan touched turning to lead, as a combination of bad rolls and poor choices conspired against him. The players exhibit the good grace to accept that sometimes their characters shine by virtue of their failures as well as their achievements. Gamers who take a short view, that every game day must offer an immediate payoff, seem to struggle with this. It's also why I think the campaign structure of traditional roleplaying games is an important part of what makes them work, that setbacks are an integral part of a larger experience.

So non-player characters may have their day in the sun as well in my campaign, and the players are pleased with their successes and failures rather than threatened by them, conventional wisdom be damned.

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Major Players

One of the oft-recurring elements in cape-and-sword stories is the relationship of the main characters to power and powerful individuals, often historical figures, in the setting. In The Three Musketeers romances, d'Artagnan is involved in the affair between the Queen-Consort and the Duke of Buckingham, then serves the Queen-Regent and her first minister, Cardinal Mazarin, during the Fronde, and finally is Captain of the Musketeers under Louis XIV. Gil de Berault is known to Cardinal Richelieu and tasked with acting as the Cardinal's spy against a Huguenot rebel in Under the Red Robe. Captain Alatriste, through his relationship with two courtiers of King Felipe IV, performs a variety of missions on behalf of the Spanish crown; he is also known to the Geneose general, Ambrogio Spinola, under whom Alatriste served on a number of campaigns. The Anglo-Dutch mercenary Percy Blake - ancestor of his namesake concealed behind the mask of the Scarlet Pimpernel - thwarts a plot to kill the Stadtholder, Maurice of Nassau, in The Laughing Cavalier.

The relationship of swashbucklers to persons of note carries into fictional settings as well, as in the relationship between distant cousins Rudolf Rassendyll and King Rudolf V Elphburg of Ruritania.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Introducing this element in cape-and-sword roleplaying games can be pretty easy for the referee and the players. For example, it can addressed through character generation in some systems. In Flashing Blades, player characters make take Advantages and Secrets such as Contact, Favor, or Secret Loyalty, establishing a relationship between the adventurer and a notable figure from the beginning of the adventure or campaign. 7th Sea offers similar Advantages to the adventurers, such as Connections, Patron, and Membership, selected during character creation.

Relationships between the adventurers and powerful non-player characters can also develop in actual play, of course. In more linear, plot-driven adventures, these influential figures may engage the adventurers to perform a service, possibly through the relationships established in their Advantages, or more directly, such as a secret summons or perhaps to escape punishment for an offense like dueling in defiance of royal edicts or courting the wrong man's mistress. In a more player-driven, sandbox campaign, rumors may offer leads to powerful figures in the setting, or the players may attempt to build a connection, such as seeking an introduction, presenting gifts or bribes, and offering service in exchange for patronage.

In my Flashing Blades sandbox campaign, I've populated different random encounter lists with named non-player characters, to give the adventurers an opportunity to spontaneously meet and occasionally serve some of the most influential figures in early 17th century France. The adventurers, for example, rescued the duchesse de Chevreuse and her lover, Lord Holland, from an attack by bravos in a Parisian alley, they danced with the ladies-in-waiting of Cristina Maria, the princess of Piedmont, and one of them is about to be decorated by the duke of Savoy for his service on military campaign.

So establishing relationships to power isn't necessarily difficult. Managing them as the campaign goes on requires some care, however.

First, the adventurers may be tempted to treat the non-player character as at their beck-and-call. In my experience, this is often by no means deliberate; it can actually arise from smart play and it's often perfectly fitting for the adventurers to seek assistance. Following a duel-gone-bad involving the Cardinal's Guards in our campaign, the players quickly ran down the list of non-player characters their characters knew in order to get access to the King before the Cardinal did. However, access to power should ideally come at a cost. In the case of relationships created through Advantages during chargen, the rules of the game may provide reasonable limites on the kinds of assistance which can be expected from a powerful non-player character. For example, the Advantage Contact in Flashing Blades indicates that the Contact will, "aid the character in times of need," but adds the caveat that a Contact, "will help less often the higher their [social] rank." A character with the Favor Advantage runs the risk of retaliation if the favor asked is "too great." In these cases, the rules provide a check-and-balance on the benefit provided by the Advantage.

With respect to adjudicating relationships between influential npcs and the adventurers which arise from actual play, it's important to remember that powerful non-player characters are powerful within the setting for a reason. They may hold important positions, command clients and servants, and control considerable wealth. The most basic guideline for roleplaying this relationship is quid pro quo - what are the adventurers prepared to give up in exchange for power exerted on their behalf? Imbalances in power relationships tend to drive the action in my games - put simply, if the adventurers are winning, then someone somewhere is losing, creating a dynamic balancing of assistance and influence. The adventurers should rarely get something for nothing in their interactions with the elite figures of the campaign. This doesn't mean that non-player characters should not act generously toward the adventurers, but such generosity should carry at least some expectation of reciprocity.

Second, the rules for social interactions in the game need to be considered carefully. It's not difficult to see how a player who optimizes a 'Face' character might be tempted to reduce an important figure in the game to a lapdog through incautious refereeing. Referees must be familiar with the ins-and-outs of how these skills work in their games, and what the characters can actually expect to accomplish from their use. For example, in d20 games there are limitations on when and how the Diplomacy skill can be used, such as requiring at least a full minute to make a pitch and allowing opposed rolls in negotiations and pleadings. I use opposed rolls, for example, when an adventurer is attempting to persuade an underling to perform an act on the adventurer's behalf, such as convincing a guard or a clerk to ignore their master's orders - the opposed roll is between the more powerful non-player character's skill and the adventurer's, rather than against a static DC.

In my Flashing Blades campaign, I use the difference in Social Rank betweeen player and non-player characters as a modifier to skill checks involving Etiquette, Oratory, or Captaincy, as well as opposed rolls with a patron's Social Rank and skill standing in for that of a client or créature like a lackey.

Game with magic make this particularly dicey - pun intended - and the referee should carefully consider what defensive magics a powerful and influential figure in the setting is likely to routinely employ to ward against enchantment magic.

None of this should be taken as a recommendation to swing the nerf-hammer at the first sign of the adventurers gaining an upper hand. Few things suck harder as a player than discovering that using the skills and abilities you developed over the course of the game are constantly blunted by the referee. Rather, it's another reminder that powerful npcs should be treated as powerful, not push-overs. Consider the results of successful skill checks in light of the quid pro quo outlined above - how can a non-player character who loses an opposed skill check give the players the reaction they've earned in actual play while gaining something for themselves in the exchange?

Third, the referee needs to be prepared to answer the question, what happens if the adventurers off an important, powerful non-player character? Some referees may choose to give influential, particularly historical, non-player characters some sort of story immunity to insure that historical or setting continuity is maintained. A 7th Sea game master, for example, could rule that the Empereur cannot be killed by the adventurers, though he may be inconvenienced; should the adventurers succeed in an attack on that curled and perfumed royal head, they could discover that they only defeated a look-alike standing in for his imperial majesty.

Others - myself included - prefer to let the dice fall where they may. For my campaign, I've considered what happens should Cardinal Richelieu, for example, or King Louis XIII die unexpectedly in the course of actual play. Part of my campaign preparation involves the possibility of spinning off into alt.history, particularly given that the career rules of Flashing Blades give the adventurers the opportunity to rise to positions of great power and responsibility themselves in the course of a campaign, potentially supplanting Mazarin or Turenne or Colbert.

In my experience, creating and building these relationships between the player characters and important non-player characters is fundamental to emulating the cape-and-sword genre. Players who enjoy swashbuckling tales are likely to find even a passing encounter with a famous character memorable, but the relationships they build and exploit with powerful non-player characters are the stuff that may drive an entire campaign.

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