Overloading the Faction Relationship

Dan is working on a small game between bigger projects so obviously that means he needs to write a whole blog post to justify the inevitable scope creep!

I Like Factions. A lot of my favorite RPGs lean really heavily on them. From the Icons of 13th Age to the criminal outfits of Blades in the Dark and the hordes of Mausritter rodent societies. Putting the factions of the world front-and-center really helps me understand how a person, place, or thing fits into the larger framework. They don’t need pages of lore, a handful of free floating faction ideas are usually enough for me to start getting the game engine started.

I’m writing a sequel to Neutron Axe which I am affectionately calling 2tron Axe. The original used the relationship to a handful of broad factions in lieu of attributes. You were only as strong as your favor with the Mutants, only as clever as the Hackers enjoyed your company. So now I’m thinking about factions again.

Join me, won’t you? As we see what all we can do with the faction relationship.

Your Network As Your Net Worth

I love how Mythic Bastionland doesn’t have money, simply your social standing as a knight and your willingness to do favors for people. It’s not hard to imagine your faction relationship, abstracted as a number, as the weight of your social capital that can be spent and gambled. Instead of spending tens of thousand of gold on your fortress you could instead cash in your relationship with the local lord for some land and builders.

For regular stuff, however, I really like how Blades in the Dark implies a supply line of common gear. You have a lockpick guy and a lockpick budget, once you get home its assumed you’ll be able to replace them. Instead of tying your presumed gear to your playbook you can tie it to your faction relationship once you’ve acquired a Sponsorship Deal. You’re doing work for them, after all, so keeping you stocked with health potions and armor is a small thing if they have any real influence.

Making New Friends

Factions are made of people and people have attributes and inventories and such. Aside from just a handy way to organize your Creature Compendium, its a useful shorthand to have some ready-made bandits for when you go to war with the Bandit King. 

They’re also really useful in reverse! If the Bandit King has taken a shine to you, it's fairly reasonable to expect the Bandit rank-and-file will be willing to ride along if they don’t have more important work to be doing. Especially if they’re getting a share of the loot. This also adds some weight to their safety. If they don’t come home, your reputation might suffer.

Working For Exposure

One of the assumptions baked into Neutron Axe was the idea that the factions have the monopoly on something. If you wanted to modify your body to be stronger then the Mutants are the only game in town. If you want to get smarter you better start bequeathing crystals to the moon so the Witches like you better. Building faction relationships can open up a lot more interesting activities for advancement beyond the typical XP options.

I think this idea can expand based on the assumption that these factions are having to train up their own experts. Assassins are made, not born (even for the Assassins guild!). Letting you audit a few courses at the secret assassin school is something the faction can dangle as a carrot to get freelancers like yourself interested.

It’s a small jump from there to basically anything else a character unlocks when they level up or tick a box on a playbook. The court of the forest king won’t teach just anyone how to speak the secret language of wolves but for friends like you? After all, you furthered their agenda to drive out the loggers AND keep bringing them animals from the zoo.

Writing your Resume

When I’m making a character and I don’t really know who they are yet I usually frame them around the factions they worked with. Forget alignment charts, if I want to know what I am gonna do I get a lot more based on who I know.

We’re already replacing levelling with faction relationships, so lets use it for our starting class too? Pick one faction to have a sponsorship deal with, one faction who likes you, and one faction it's complicated with. Now we have a baseline for your qualifications, some ideas about the scrapes you’ve been up to, and a good assortment of stuff you have access to.

Secret Societies

What I like about the direction this is going is that it’s modular and extensible. You can have factions you know about but they don’t know you until you do something to get on their radar. You can have factions that you’ve never even heard of until they reveal themselves to you. You can have factions INSIDE of factions, forking your advancement as you get involved with their agendas.

And because you’re expanding your network of Factions that will talk to your adventuring party, that means you’re expanding your options for character creation and advancement. Suddenly you have an expanding roster of character options for when your current adventurer is ready to hang up his spurs (or is hung up by them [in death.])

OK now I need to make an Overloaded Faction

I’m using this post to get my thoughts together so I can sit down and start figuring out what the faction relationship actually looks like. Thanks for coming along, and I’ll post a follow-up when its done!