Royal Court Political Intrigue Template

What's included

• ✓8 nodes: the monarch, two noble houses, two house leaders, a spymaster, a secret bastard heir, and the party PC node
• ✓Rivalry and succession edges between houses and their leaders
• ✓Hidden edges: the spymaster's blackmail leverage and the secret heir's true identity
• ✓Noble houses group node with color coding
• ✓3 quest goals: gain an audience with the monarch, uncover the bastard heir, expose the spymaster's network

Use cases

• Campaigns centered on political intrigue in a feudal kingdom
• Game of Thrones–style succession drama with full player agency
• High-stakes diplomatic missions in royal capitals
• Long-running sandbox campaigns where court politics shift as the story unfolds

Designed for Dungeon Masters running D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, or any game where court politics and noble intrigue take center stage.

More free templates

• Mystery Web — A web of suspects, clues, and secrets around a central crime.
• Faction War — Three factions in conflict — shifting alliances and hidden agendas.
• Heist Crew — A crew of specialists, the target, and all the complications in between.

Or see all campaign templates and build a map from scratch.

Frequently asked questions

How do I use this without my players feeling railroaded?

Don't plan the succession — map the pressures and let it resolve. The template gives you two houses who both want the throne, a spymaster with leverage over people, and an heir nobody has found. None of that specifies an outcome. It specifies who will react to what, which is what lets you run court politics with genuine player agency.

What do the hidden edges contain?

Two things: the spymaster's blackmail hold over a member of the court, and the true identity of the bastard heir. Both are marked hidden-from-players, so they sit in your view from session one and never appear in anything you share with the table until you reveal them.

Can I add more noble houses?

Yes, and courts benefit from it. Duplicate the pattern — a house node, a leader node linked to it as a subordinate, and rivalry edges to the other houses — and the force-directed layout will place them sensibly. Node grouping keeps each house visually distinct.

Does this work for non-fantasy settings?

Yes. The structure is any closed hierarchy where succession is contested: a corporate board, a crime family, a church, a noble court on a generation ship. Rename the nodes and the political relationships behave identically.