Running Political Intrigue Without a Spreadsheet

Intrigue campaigns live or die on whether the GM can hold the whole board in their head — or, more realistically, on a napkin.

The three things worth tracking

You don’t need a spreadsheet. You need three things per faction: what they want, what they’re willing to do to get it, and what they know about the party. Everything else is improv.

Letting NPCs act between sessions

The trick that made my table’s intrigue campaign click was resolving one faction move between sessions, off-screen, and letting the players discover the fallout in play rather than watching it happen.