Monday Mashup #9: West Wing
Bryant’s comment:
I think the most interesting thing about West Wing is watching the relatively inexperienced crowd deal with power.
Okay, I can work with that.
Setting: Fantasy city-state. (I’d end up using Caercala a.k.a. Haven)
System: Fantasy system of your choice.
PCs: 1st-level characters.
In this scenario, I’d borrow from Henry 4 and Henry 5 a bit, mixing liberally (har) with West Wing. The central character in all of this (who, in this setup, would probably be an NPC) is a young man suddenly thrust into the role of Arch-Duke of the City-state. Like “Prince Harry”, the fellow grew up as something of a hell-raiser and a ne’er-do-well: lots of natural charisma, but not a lot of good common sense.
When he’s thrust into the role of Duke, he’s suddenly surrounded on all sides by stodgey, old, stuck-up advisors who, in his opinion, are one of the main reasons that all of the same problems keep cropping up year after year. We continue in this vein for a few sessions until the Duke gets fed up and kicks out the Old Guard (with the exception of one really cool mentor-type Uncle played by Brian Blessed) and brings in all of his old drinking buddies to be his Council and help him Fix Everything Up.
The fact that they aren’t entirely qualified, are quite scared by the idea, and frankly don’t want the job doesn’t seem to bother him very much: they’re the people he wants running things, and if they screw up or (gods forfend) he’s somehow usurped by one of his sinister relatives, things will probably be even worse than they are already.