My thoughts turned to GRENDEL MENDEL: Using Punnett Squares For Monster Design and Adapting Punnet Squares for Treasure on Mindstorm ... and why not use Punnet Squares?
In this case for politics one could go infinitely deep and subtle but since I have a crowd I need to make sense of, I'm going to just go with our Punnet set up.
Coming in to these courts I can work out lots of the players and what I need is a quick way to batch them up and figure what the groups and factions are. The quick method I am working to here is:
1. List who is present, NPCs, faction representatives, etc.
2. Place them all across the Punnet Square
3. Make sure factions have a representative NPC
4. Figure out what are the 'open court' and 'back channel' settings
Adapting the Punnet Square itself, I set one axis as positive/negative - I tag it 'admire/support' and 'fear/oppose' for a broad sense of the attitude of the NPC. The other axis is 'field/court' with 'open action' and political/intrigue on the other. This is more to reflect the persons strengths, not an exclusive box; you might run into them in open court or in backrooms but where they choose to act will be their preference.
I have written in the past about how I use factions; both as the framework to snap random NPCs to - see NPC motivations to meet player role-play preference - and as a way to explore cultural bleed and make the world feel lived in (see Reflecting the richness of the world in your NPC Encounters).
For this situation I had three groups to mesh together - the individual NPCs that would be present and known from before, the factions and groups present at the location because of where it was (the locals) and the groups present because of what activities were going on (effectively a winter court). Prior to this I had not figured out what any of these thought of one another, how they interacted, who supported whom, etc. To get that all sorted out quickly, I decided to set it all up as 'how they react to the players barreling into town' and let them all coalesce in support or opposition of the players. This was reasonable even on the realm-politics scale as the players have just come off completing an epic quest - in other circumstances maybe not *everyone* would have a view on a smaller party.
First I tagged in all the named and known PCs, mapping them to the Punnet Square; who will openly support and/or aid the party, who will oppose them openly and similarly who will support or oppose them covertly.
Next I look at all the factions, both local and realm, and see if any of the NPCs present count as a clear representative of any of them. Those factions get tagged with that NPC. For all the other factions I map them to where they fall on the grid - and some may just have no dog in this fight and be around in the background.
Once all the factions who would support or oppose the party are placed, I figure out a figure-head NPC for each of them - typically using my NPC personality creation workflow unless who they are is obvious or I have a good idea. The head of the local goliath clans is most likely going to be an elder goliath, for instance.
With all this done, the last thing to do is consider the arenas - where are these open and covert moves happening? Is there an open court? Or does all business take place in garden parties or around jousts? In a guild hall or outside a church? Where are people watching and being seen such that maneuvers, challenges and declarations of support are public? Similarly, where are the covert actions taking place - whispered conversations in castle corridors? Smoky feast halls? During hunts in the woods while others are out of sight? These two 'open court' and 'back channels' settings will vary place to place, even over time at the same place but looking at all the factions present will give clues as to what those are likely to be.
This helps me keep things coherent for high politics campaigns, particularly when a campaign changes gear and other levels of realm politics start to intrude. You do not need to track all the NPCs all the time, just make sure whoever you do run into are representative of their factions and the factions can be recurring foils or allies at different locations.
Some other thoughts and tools for this - Liche's Libram has a faction set generator Folks & Factions. A Blasted, Cratered Land has a local faction generator in Movers and Shakers. Throne of Salt creates a great houses grim history in You Remember Our Venerable House.... Mash the button on some of those then patch the different levels together using this Punnet Square to get your seething political court.
Finally, for your quiet power-plays we have courtly communications through the gift of rings in Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone: Using Courtly Rings In Your Game by A Distant Chime.
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