I really appreciated how you used specific examples. Far too many D&D creators stick to a 'big picture' view when describing this stuff and I've found it very helpful when you get into the weeds.
Factions can definitely add a lot of spice to a game, as well as give it direction if the players are less than proactive. Even players who don't join factions can make enemies simply by associating with a faction on even a superficial level... definitely something worth developing!
The Worlds Without Number (fantasy) and Stars Without Number (sci-fi) games by Kevin Crawford include a great system for GMs to manage running factions between sessions that is definitely worth checking out and aligns well with the ideas in this video.
@@YourBlackLocal I think the base games are free however I do not know if the faction rules are part of the free versions. The Far Verona campaign had a faction turn of the stars without number system that was streamed by a now disgraced content creator if you would like to look into that.
@@jtyranus The faction rules are indeed part of the free version of both those games. Looks like UA-cam won't let me post the links, but they both can be found on DriveThruRPG
Just for my own - and anyone else who finds it useful - quick reference, cause i keep coming back to this video: 0:32 Strategic Imperatives 2:45 Assets 4:02 Grand Strategy 5:27 Putting it all together (e.g. mechanics)
Honestly this the best channel for DM advice bar none. These are real and actual steps to setup factions. I am always taking notes during these videos. The information is too valuable!
I often use a calendar as to track when events are supposed to happen so events the players don't get involved in still occur and have game world effects. And i follow the changes what they do makes. A small crossroad town they helped early in the campaign has over a few years because they convinced a migrating Hobgoblin tribe to work for the town as mercenaries and settle a nearby abandoned castle. Become a major trade hub and safe zone on a long trade route. The party came back to find its grown from maybe 2000 villagers and 800 hobgoblins into 25000 mixed races.
Really liked this one man, it provides a great way to organize prep that can be used across a variety of games and situations. I think we've seen pillars of it here and there, but I would be interested in seeing your full prep process. Maybe one about how you personally go about pitching a campaign and then one about how you turn that into your session to session prep. Cheers.
Another fun idea is what happens when factions have mutual ideological foes. For example, both the Assassin's Guild and the Trade Confederation hate the Brotherhood of Trotsky, a fraternal group of socialist necromancers seeking to redefine labor in a magical world. Do they team up? Does the Guild try to manipulate the Confederation into dealing with Brotherhood?
@@SebastianFNemo for this crowd, definitely worlds w/o #. Stars is pretty good but the space magic turned me off for the longest time. I've come around to the rest of his sandbox methods
@@vincentcleaver1925 you don't have to use the magic stuff, infact it's essentially presented as optional anyway (they do create a separation between the psychic stuff and the magic). That said I still play Traveller instead of SWN most of the time for space stuff myself, and don't use the psychic stuff in that or anything lol. I still use the Faction Turn system from SWN for basically every game I run which is pretty similar to what's described in the video here. Worth taking a look at for sure.
Your videos have been pretty much exactly what I've been wanting for my own worldbuilding, this was very interesting and I'll try to build my factions with these ideas in mind. Thanks
I've downloaded your worksheet, and already I've come up with some great quest ideas. And all I've done is simply list the factions strategic imperatives. I have a feeling I'll be using this for a long time to come!
I'm applying Baron's factions worksheet to key NPCs in a new sandbox I'm running. Stuff for early quest hooks, like a local botanist, resident wizards and a shady tavern owner in the home base. It's working really well and I'm just so pleased I came across his videos last year. My factions will have their worksheets also, but these approaches just really help create such a full, breathing world and his faction worksheets can really help with key NPCs as well. This is all such great stuff. I love the Baron's work.
You can break down building a good faction into a series of videos and use them to explore how to develop quests, how to develop allies, how to change a region over time based on the factions actions while your players are off spelunking. This is one of those things that I think 5e modules tend to neglect extensively (except maybe WD:DH).
My favourite faction is the Mok-Mok trade federation. It can trace it's roots back to ancient times, when a group of heroes maddened them while a goblin clan called the Mok-Mok was slapping paddles on the water to attempt to create a tsunami. The heroes, who were my at the time party, were chased down by them literally anywhere. They fought themselves through everything the players didn't kill themselves, sometimes hired assassins and made high contacts wherever they left. Most arcs wound end by the Mok-Mok entering a city just as the players are already fleeing the town guard or the crumbling of the dungeon or something like that. Now, in my current campaign, all the contacts that they made really became useful, and after a long written down arc of self exploration, the clan stopped the chase (as the players saved them from the end boss) and they returned, discovering how powerful and influencial they got. My current campaign, set 800 years later, still has the Mok-Mok trade federation. (MMTT). They are a massive enterprise full of lawyer hobgoblins, bugbear thugs, multiple races of mercenaries and even vaults protected by dragons, ropers et cet... . They fit quite well in the darker themed 2nd campaign. They are lobbying, tricking, blackmailing and sueing everyone all the time. But it's the background that makes it so much fun for the players. Their leaders and council look a lot like they used to when they were chasing down the players, just different names. I have about 35 non-nation factions in my world. 14 of which whose leaders are in the circle, which is like the adventurer's guild/illuminati. The Mok-Mok aren't part of the circle, but still by far the funniest faction.
That's fantastic, thank you. I'll be implementing this in my world immediately. I already have several factions in mind, by detailing their strategic imperatives, and assets, will go a long way to keeping them interesting and creating a living breathing world.
I gotta commend you Baron, you probably provide some of the best actually actionable advice for GMs on UA-cam. Also as a regular Blades in the Dark GM.l, I see you. I should have guessed your inspiration for this when the assassins were called the crows
Your comment about assets and allies really stuck with me here. I'm gonna use this for my adventure I'm writing atm and would love some more in depth in the kinds of assets different factions might be expected to use
A great point about how complex things seems just because you know a faction was working on something sense last the PC interacted. Also, everyone love a faction to have a resource that is a little atypical. "Don't worry I know a guy," and instead of a small town constable or local magistrate, you get a mob fixer.
Character backgrounds are also a great source for Factions, creating interesting scenarios where possible Patrons come into conflict or where characters loyalties are tested.
Great video! Another tip I learned form some video I forgot the name of is to create a list of all the factions in your game. Then you roll on that table twice, the two factions that you picked now have had some interaction good or bad. Good for it you are in a rut for new things to happen in the world.
Always love your videos, sometimes I have to watch them a few times because you talk fast but you are loaded with good information. Thanks again for your efforts, while I can't support you on patreon due to finances, I do support you here on youtube by liking and subscribing.
Baron, get on of my head, dude. I swear every time I start pondering how to go about something at my table, you drop a video on it. All jokes aside, wonderful content.
It's funny how close the tips in this video come to the way factions are presented and run in the WotC books Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. If you take the factions/gods in those books and the tables and tools for how to run them and play them off each other, you have 25 factions you can rename and drop into any setting you like.
I enjoyed this video a lot. Thanks for sharing it! I don't think I am likely to roll weekly for the success of each faction towards their goals. I'll just make the near term history up according to my preferences, but taking the player characters' actions into account of course.
I love dealing with factions. I guess I’m more into intrigue. Don’t necessarily love being restrained by factions but I love interacting with them. Most of the games I have been in that feature factions have us in the party being something of our own outlier faction or, those of us joining in as already part of a faction, being something of outliers of our original faction. A few examples. - our party was unwillingly co-opted by magical beings (thing of as near deities type, very esoteric) to travel between worlds. The home base world had these portals shut down unwillingly on their end and were frantic to get them open….well, some were. As my party completed missions in each world these gates would reopen in the home base town. This put us directly in the middle of that town’s council who were supposed to be mouthpieces of these entities I mentioned before. Some wanted us to open the gates, some insisted we not do so. We ourselves are saying we don’t really got much of a choice (besides the fact that we all had our reasons to travel). So factions formed around us and our tasks. And well…besides the fact that we were dealing with those factions, we had many to deal with in those worlds we got tossed into. - for another faction I started in one, the cobalt soul of exandria, a very official one. Except….my character is only sorta a researcher. If anything my character is more treated by the faction as something to be studied than a researcher though my character is also a researcher. So I come into this already aligned with that. I then am dumped into a situation with a conquered city state (long time ago thing) that is dealing with their ruling empire putting pressure on them and stealing sacred items from places of great value to the locals. Due to my character’s elf heritage, skills, and research focus, the dm and I conclude that the cobalt soul would have sent my character out there with a request to do research in a noninvasive way. They want the knowledge but they don’t want to anger the locals like the empire is. My character does get caught up in the unrest there and the party does too (this was how my character was introduced actually so seperated at this time). The party gets caught up in a coup by the young elves and my character is caught up in finding their local guide and friend and skirting the empire’s minions that have suddenly swarmed the city. We do join up and learn our common enemy and my character making friends in the area with their noninvasive research allows the party access to the elf faction’s resources. Anyway so yeah that is still a precarious situation we are dealing with and one where several of us are in other more nuanced factions too (like my character having Dynasty ties and another having Empire contacts). - and I guess another faction to play with, my party has been tasked with a mission by the god of death whom several of us have pacts (warlock and a cleric respectively) with and a few others have aligning reasons to stick with us. However we are not aligned with the cult that is associated with our god and our god doesn’t really like this cult either. In fact, it’s run by the person we are tasked with hunting down (a warlock who went rogue on death, that warlock’s patron). Our presence has started creating a fracture in this cult though since we are talking like we are official too, and have even shown our gifts off that could only come from our patron. This has led to some factions forming on those wishing to ally with our party and those who are fanatical about believing us imposters. Our party is on neither side as we don’t like either one and their “ideals.” But yeah we took advantage of these factions a few times. -oh and actually one of my earlier encounters with a faction. We were storming a stronghold to take down a mad king before he destroyed the area with his massive weapon. As we do so we notice that there seems to be a faction for the mad king and another for the woman he is trying to woo. We end up using this divide to get access to the mad king and down him and then set up trade between the almost-bride and her people, those who remained of the citizens of that king, and the locals my party was protecting. Not the only faction my group had in this campaign but it’s definitely the one that had some of the widest reaching influence other than us befriending an ancient dragon close to the end of that campaign. Frankly I love a well implemented faction. I think they can lend a lot to the world building and immersion for players. My main advice is don’t ham fist them into a narrative. Have them make organic sense and put a few out there that could appeal to different characters and see what sticks. The party may join up, they may pit them against each other, or they may negotiate a deal between the two and broker peace. Or many many more options. Skies the limit here.
This is a solid basic system. If you're looking for a bit more, I recommend checking out Blades in the Dark, an industrial fantasy crime rpg with an incredibly robust but easy-to-follow faction system, including progressing and tracking their projects/plans/schemes.
Another great way to gamify faction actions is to use the faction mechanics of the World Without Numbers RPG. It's a little more complex than the system you're proposing, though. It's kind of like a full-fledged board game. Especially if you play it with friends. Perhaps you should take a look!
Currently running an Elder scrolls campaign at the time of the dragon crisis. Doing this will help me make the world feel more alive, and less like a tabletop version of the computer game. This, mixed with being for ordinary people and not the dragonborn, should make for a very interesting campaign.
Great video! Though I am struggling to understand how all of this can be made visible to the players. It feels like in a typical campaign, it would be hard to let players see more then the tip of the iceberg. Faction play feels to me like something happening mainly behind the screen as a quest generator/creativity tool for the GM. How do you bring more of that to the forefront and to the players?
Whatever the factions do between game sessions, have npcs in the town square and the taverns talk about when the PCs arrive. Have them complain about how the local news impacts the npc. "My boss, the foreman at the new fort being built, went missing three nites ago and we haven't heard from him. Nobody is getting any work done at the job site and I worry I might not get paid" is a quest hook to get the players involved with the assassin guild that will have your players salivating
Wow, this felt like a university lecture distilled into 10 minutes. Watching this at midnight while sleepy made it hard to follow. I feel like I need to watch it again and take notes! I'm pretty much a know nothing in terms of geopolitics, can you recommend any books/reference material that might help me improve working out what factions want? Or something with some good examples for inspiration?
If you've ever played Stars Without Number, it has a really interesting faction system that treats factions kind of like NPCs that have turns that play out between sessions. It's pretty cool EDIT: Looks like the comment section is chock full of Kevin Crawford fans. Absolutely based community
What do you think is a good number of factions in a game? Obviously, it depends on scale but in a game spanning multiple continents does it make sense to have a lot of factions?
I know this is focused on D&D but I was wondering if you could expand the framework with LARPing in mind? My group is very interested in properly framing and assessing the strategic goals, asset's and capabilities of our competitors do you have any advice or resources that you would suggest?
I wish you would write a book on campaign/world/setting building. I like the videos, but reading is far better for me and I doubt I am the only one. I'd pre-order your book immediantly.
Kevin crawford has faction turns in his games but they’re too complicated for a DM to run in his spare time. They’re like old school play by post civ games
Apparently the 'type' this community is grows further. Not only is it IT Professional that runs D&D games and loves world building, BUT ALSO that they were into Guild Wars.
Concise as always! Demonstrating various factions' moral ambiguity to the players will also help them to determine who to help and who to thwart, or at least make them strongly question and analyze those decisions with more care. A cleric may begin devout to his order, but if it continually uses questionable means to achieve its goals "for the greater good" the cleric may choose to no longer support or outright oppose their order's ends. The same could be true of a thief's redemption arc, a paladin's fall from grace, a fighter's ambition growing beyond the battlefield, or a wizard's decent into an obsession with power. Such factional interactions will help increase party discourse, tension, and sense of accomplishment and vitality of interaction with the game world.
i have 4 factions im working on now in an openworld dungeon world seetting of ancient israel (2ell not that ancient but ..namely : the might of rome jewish resistance christian samaritans hippie druse and then i have north african , greek and even roman immigrants thrown into the mix for good measure w different sentiments or none at all from friendly to neutral to hostile and everything in between on a scale and all of this u have to navigate through or between as a player 😊
I commented on an earlier video that I really don't care for Baron's tone or presentation style, but I have to say, it's a good fit with Geopolitic/Faction videos like this one. Also, I appreciate that the Geopolitic style vids also have really specific actionable items.
Even factions that are aligned might have political and military conflict. They may not agree on all goals or methods and come to disagreements & even blows.
Factions are terrible keep that shit in the grave with goddamn planescape. It never fucking work and then you got pcs working with a powerful group to kill off all the factions...trust me it always happened when I brought sorry ass factions in my game..had to take them out, they always detoured from the main plot
Bruh, that's your issue, you're playing a different game. Most of this guy's content is OSR related, factions like he is stating are more for west marches style campaigns and don't have an firm overarching plot. Factions like these create more of an large meta-situations of the world and the GM makes small adjustments after every session, you adjust the situations and mechanics that they interact with(such as the random encounter tables after a faction has made it's mark on the area) generally after the PCs have an effect. It's much more loose than a structured narrative and is meant to be highly dynamic. Games like Worlds beyond number, Beyond the Wall and Mausritter are built with a system like this to drive the games. Mausritter especially has a whole setup pretty much word for word with this video. Narrative games like Blades in the dark also base their games on a similar system. You may want to just explore the above games and see how they work just to get a different flavor, it's likely a whole different enchilada than you are used to.
Also, why do your players always resort to violence when they ally with a faction? Why is every faction's modus operendai violence? Make ideologically peaceful factions?
I really appreciated how you used specific examples. Far too many D&D creators stick to a 'big picture' view when describing this stuff and I've found it very helpful when you get into the weeds.
If I can't explain it well enough to demonstrate its use, it's not useful
Factions can definitely add a lot of spice to a game, as well as give it direction if the players are less than proactive. Even players who don't join factions can make enemies simply by associating with a faction on even a superficial level... definitely something worth developing!
I love adding factions to my games.
The Worlds Without Number (fantasy) and Stars Without Number (sci-fi) games by Kevin Crawford include a great system for GMs to manage running factions between sessions that is definitely worth checking out and aligns well with the ideas in this video.
Do you have a link to where I could find an explanation of the systems without having to buy the games themselves?
@@YourBlackLocal I think the base games are free however I do not know if the faction rules are part of the free versions. The Far Verona campaign had a faction turn of the stars without number system that was streamed by a now disgraced content creator if you would like to look into that.
@@jtyranus The faction rules are indeed part of the free version of both those games. Looks like UA-cam won't let me post the links, but they both can be found on DriveThruRPG
@@JulianShanahanMusic Thank you, will give it a look.
Glad to see so many people mentioning SWN/WWN in the comment section. I don't see enough people discussing Kevin Crawford's games
Just for my own - and anyone else who finds it useful - quick reference, cause i keep coming back to this video:
0:32 Strategic Imperatives
2:45 Assets
4:02 Grand Strategy
5:27 Putting it all together (e.g. mechanics)
Honestly this the best channel for DM advice bar none. These are real and actual steps to setup factions. I am always taking notes during these videos. The information is too valuable!
I often use a calendar as to track when events are supposed to happen so events the players don't get involved in still occur and have game world effects. And i follow the changes what they do makes. A small crossroad town they helped early in the campaign has over a few years because they convinced a migrating Hobgoblin tribe to work for the town as mercenaries and settle a nearby abandoned castle. Become a major trade hub and safe zone on a long trade route. The party came back to find its grown from maybe 2000 villagers and 800 hobgoblins into 25000 mixed races.
i love when he uses old timey art. gives it a real feel of authenticity
Really liked this one man, it provides a great way to organize prep that can be used across a variety of games and situations. I think we've seen pillars of it here and there, but I would be interested in seeing your full prep process. Maybe one about how you personally go about pitching a campaign and then one about how you turn that into your session to session prep. Cheers.
Another fun idea is what happens when factions have mutual ideological foes. For example, both the Assassin's Guild and the Trade Confederation hate the Brotherhood of Trotsky, a fraternal group of socialist necromancers seeking to redefine labor in a magical world. Do they team up? Does the Guild try to manipulate the Confederation into dealing with Brotherhood?
Kevin Crawford has a very good Faction Creation System in his books.
Which books?
@@Gibbons3457 Pretty much all of his RPGs published under Sine Nomine, like Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Silent Legions etc.
@@SebastianFNemo for this crowd, definitely worlds w/o #. Stars is pretty good but the space magic turned me off for the longest time. I've come around to the rest of his sandbox methods
It's also worth to take a look in Godbound, which takes a bit more of a freeform to faction strength
@@vincentcleaver1925 you don't have to use the magic stuff, infact it's essentially presented as optional anyway (they do create a separation between the psychic stuff and the magic). That said I still play Traveller instead of SWN most of the time for space stuff myself, and don't use the psychic stuff in that or anything lol. I still use the Faction Turn system from SWN for basically every game I run which is pretty similar to what's described in the video here. Worth taking a look at for sure.
Your videos have been pretty much exactly what I've been wanting for my own worldbuilding, this was very interesting and I'll try to build my factions with these ideas in mind.
Thanks
I've downloaded your worksheet, and already I've come up with some great quest ideas. And all I've done is simply list the factions strategic imperatives. I have a feeling I'll be using this for a long time to come!
I'm applying Baron's factions worksheet to key NPCs in a new sandbox I'm running. Stuff for early quest hooks, like a local botanist, resident wizards and a shady tavern owner in the home base.
It's working really well and I'm just so pleased I came across his videos last year.
My factions will have their worksheets also, but these approaches just really help create such a full, breathing world and his faction worksheets can really help with key NPCs as well.
This is all such great stuff. I love the Baron's work.
You can break down building a good faction into a series of videos and use them to explore how to develop quests, how to develop allies, how to change a region over time based on the factions actions while your players are off spelunking. This is one of those things that I think 5e modules tend to neglect extensively (except maybe WD:DH).
Mausritter has a simple faction system that uses faction tools and goals, plus randomization, to advance the factions' power dynamics.
Yes, it's very similar to this.
Stars Without Numbers/Worlds Without Numbers has some incredible stuff for creating Factions and a system for advancing their plans that I swear by.
I've been looking for some procedures for running factions. Thank you for making this; I can't wait to try it.
My favourite faction is the Mok-Mok trade federation. It can trace it's roots back to ancient times, when a group of heroes maddened them while a goblin clan called the Mok-Mok was slapping paddles on the water to attempt to create a tsunami. The heroes, who were my at the time party, were chased down by them literally anywhere. They fought themselves through everything the players didn't kill themselves, sometimes hired assassins and made high contacts wherever they left. Most arcs wound end by the Mok-Mok entering a city just as the players are already fleeing the town guard or the crumbling of the dungeon or something like that. Now, in my current campaign, all the contacts that they made really became useful, and after a long written down arc of self exploration, the clan stopped the chase (as the players saved them from the end boss) and they returned, discovering how powerful and influencial they got. My current campaign, set 800 years later, still has the Mok-Mok trade federation. (MMTT). They are a massive enterprise full of lawyer hobgoblins, bugbear thugs, multiple races of mercenaries and even vaults protected by dragons, ropers et cet... . They fit quite well in the darker themed 2nd campaign. They are lobbying, tricking, blackmailing and sueing everyone all the time. But it's the background that makes it so much fun for the players. Their leaders and council look a lot like they used to when they were chasing down the players, just different names. I have about 35 non-nation factions in my world. 14 of which whose leaders are in the circle, which is like the adventurer's guild/illuminati. The Mok-Mok aren't part of the circle, but still by far the funniest faction.
That's fantastic, thank you. I'll be implementing this in my world immediately. I already have several factions in mind, by detailing their strategic imperatives, and assets, will go a long way to keeping them interesting and creating a living breathing world.
I gotta commend you Baron, you probably provide some of the best actually actionable advice for GMs on UA-cam.
Also as a regular Blades in the Dark GM.l, I see you. I should have guessed your inspiration for this when the assassins were called the crows
Lol I've never played blades in the dark. I dont even own the rulebook 🙃😂🤷
@@DungeonMasterpiece you might like it. The faction system is very similar to what you've designed here
@@StepBackHistory I'll check it out. I just based this on my Geopolitical analysis education.
@@DungeonMasterpiece oh yeah no accusations here! Just convergent evolution. But if you think about campaigns like this blades will 100% be your jam
Your comment about assets and allies really stuck with me here. I'm gonna use this for my adventure I'm writing atm and would love some more in depth in the kinds of assets different factions might be expected to use
Two minutes in: feels like you are talking about Godbound faction system
I've never played godbound but heard great things. I'll check it out
A great point about how complex things seems just because you know a faction was working on something sense last the PC interacted. Also, everyone love a faction to have a resource that is a little atypical. "Don't worry I know a guy," and instead of a small town constable or local magistrate, you get a mob fixer.
about to start working on a faction based adventure, great timing :)
Very interesting video. And those "punch" and "swing" words following the hammer analogy felt almost too subtle for the common folks ;)
Character backgrounds are also a great source for Factions, creating interesting scenarios where possible Patrons come into conflict or where characters loyalties are tested.
This might be my favorite video you've made. Very clear guidelines and fantastic examples throughout. Thank you 🙏
Great video! Another tip I learned form some video I forgot the name of is to create a list of all the factions in your game. Then you roll on that table twice, the two factions that you picked now have had some interaction good or bad. Good for it you are in a rut for new things to happen in the world.
Always love your videos, sometimes I have to watch them a few times because you talk fast but you are loaded with good information. Thanks again for your efforts, while I can't support you on patreon due to finances, I do support you here on youtube by liking and subscribing.
Makes me think of a more general version of the Faction Turns from Stars Without Number
Baron, get on of my head, dude. I swear every time I start pondering how to go about something at my table, you drop a video on it. All jokes aside, wonderful content.
I love faction presence in campaigns! Great Rules Lite Approach Baron! Looking forward to What's Next!
Running Dungeons of Drakkenheim and this is a well timed video for my thoughts. Thanks for the help!
It's funny how close the tips in this video come to the way factions are presented and run in the WotC books Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. If you take the factions/gods in those books and the tables and tools for how to run them and play them off each other, you have 25 factions you can rename and drop into any setting you like.
The best resource I can think of for creating and running factions is in Kevin Crawford's Worlds Without Number, which can be ported into any system.
I enjoyed this video a lot. Thanks for sharing it! I don't think I am likely to roll weekly for the success of each faction towards their goals. I'll just make the near term history up according to my preferences, but taking the player characters' actions into account of course.
BARON COMING IN CLUTCH FOR MY IMMEDIATELY UPCOMING GAMES AS ALWAYS
I've been hoping for this video
top tier info, highly appreciated!
I love dealing with factions. I guess I’m more into intrigue. Don’t necessarily love being restrained by factions but I love interacting with them. Most of the games I have been in that feature factions have us in the party being something of our own outlier faction or, those of us joining in as already part of a faction, being something of outliers of our original faction.
A few examples.
- our party was unwillingly co-opted by magical beings (thing of as near deities type, very esoteric) to travel between worlds. The home base world had these portals shut down unwillingly on their end and were frantic to get them open….well, some were. As my party completed missions in each world these gates would reopen in the home base town. This put us directly in the middle of that town’s council who were supposed to be mouthpieces of these entities I mentioned before. Some wanted us to open the gates, some insisted we not do so. We ourselves are saying we don’t really got much of a choice (besides the fact that we all had our reasons to travel). So factions formed around us and our tasks. And well…besides the fact that we were dealing with those factions, we had many to deal with in those worlds we got tossed into.
- for another faction I started in one, the cobalt soul of exandria, a very official one. Except….my character is only sorta a researcher. If anything my character is more treated by the faction as something to be studied than a researcher though my character is also a researcher. So I come into this already aligned with that. I then am dumped into a situation with a conquered city state (long time ago thing) that is dealing with their ruling empire putting pressure on them and stealing sacred items from places of great value to the locals. Due to my character’s elf heritage, skills, and research focus, the dm and I conclude that the cobalt soul would have sent my character out there with a request to do research in a noninvasive way. They want the knowledge but they don’t want to anger the locals like the empire is. My character does get caught up in the unrest there and the party does too (this was how my character was introduced actually so seperated at this time). The party gets caught up in a coup by the young elves and my character is caught up in finding their local guide and friend and skirting the empire’s minions that have suddenly swarmed the city. We do join up and learn our common enemy and my character making friends in the area with their noninvasive research allows the party access to the elf faction’s resources. Anyway so yeah that is still a precarious situation we are dealing with and one where several of us are in other more nuanced factions too (like my character having Dynasty ties and another having Empire contacts).
- and I guess another faction to play with, my party has been tasked with a mission by the god of death whom several of us have pacts (warlock and a cleric respectively) with and a few others have aligning reasons to stick with us. However we are not aligned with the cult that is associated with our god and our god doesn’t really like this cult either. In fact, it’s run by the person we are tasked with hunting down (a warlock who went rogue on death, that warlock’s patron). Our presence has started creating a fracture in this cult though since we are talking like we are official too, and have even shown our gifts off that could only come from our patron. This has led to some factions forming on those wishing to ally with our party and those who are fanatical about believing us imposters. Our party is on neither side as we don’t like either one and their “ideals.” But yeah we took advantage of these factions a few times.
-oh and actually one of my earlier encounters with a faction. We were storming a stronghold to take down a mad king before he destroyed the area with his massive weapon. As we do so we notice that there seems to be a faction for the mad king and another for the woman he is trying to woo. We end up using this divide to get access to the mad king and down him and then set up trade between the almost-bride and her people, those who remained of the citizens of that king, and the locals my party was protecting. Not the only faction my group had in this campaign but it’s definitely the one that had some of the widest reaching influence other than us befriending an ancient dragon close to the end of that campaign.
Frankly I love a well implemented faction. I think they can lend a lot to the world building and immersion for players. My main advice is don’t ham fist them into a narrative. Have them make organic sense and put a few out there that could appeal to different characters and see what sticks. The party may join up, they may pit them against each other, or they may negotiate a deal between the two and broker peace. Or many many more options. Skies the limit here.
Useful examples, thank you. I have watched a lot of videos on DnD guilds and most are awful. Yours had some good tips, so thanks!
Nice work on the video!
Really great ideas! Thanks for the video
Great video! So if I understand it:
Goals + Assets = Strategies
Best video yet! Structured ideally for me. Immediately using this :)
This is a solid basic system. If you're looking for a bit more, I recommend checking out Blades in the Dark, an industrial fantasy crime rpg with an incredibly robust but easy-to-follow faction system, including progressing and tracking their projects/plans/schemes.
Another great way to gamify faction actions is to use the faction mechanics of the World Without Numbers RPG. It's a little more complex than the system you're proposing, though. It's kind of like a full-fledged board game. Especially if you play it with friends. Perhaps you should take a look!
very useful world building tips!
Oh man I've gotta get my old college buddies running factions in my world.
Currently running an Elder scrolls campaign at the time of the dragon crisis. Doing this will help me make the world feel more alive, and less like a tabletop version of the computer game. This, mixed with being for ordinary people and not the dragonborn, should make for a very interesting campaign.
I should add I really enjoyed the video!
Great video! Though I am struggling to understand how all of this can be made visible to the players. It feels like in a typical campaign, it would be hard to let players see more then the tip of the iceberg. Faction play feels to me like something happening mainly behind the screen as a quest generator/creativity tool for the GM. How do you bring more of that to the forefront and to the players?
Whatever the factions do between game sessions, have npcs in the town square and the taverns talk about when the PCs arrive. Have them complain about how the local news impacts the npc. "My boss, the foreman at the new fort being built, went missing three nites ago and we haven't heard from him. Nobody is getting any work done at the job site and I worry I might not get paid" is a quest hook to get the players involved with the assassin guild that will have your players salivating
Wow, this felt like a university lecture distilled into 10 minutes. Watching this at midnight while sleepy made it hard to follow. I feel like I need to watch it again and take notes!
I'm pretty much a know nothing in terms of geopolitics, can you recommend any books/reference material that might help me improve working out what factions want? Or something with some good examples for inspiration?
If you've ever played Stars Without Number, it has a really interesting faction system that treats factions kind of like NPCs that have turns that play out between sessions. It's pretty cool
EDIT: Looks like the comment section is chock full of Kevin Crawford fans. Absolutely based community
What do you think is a good number of factions in a game? Obviously, it depends on scale but in a game spanning multiple continents does it make sense to have a lot of factions?
In a small fit of coincidence, I did just play Guild Wars Factions
I know this is focused on D&D but I was wondering if you could expand the framework with LARPing in mind? My group is very interested in properly framing and assessing the strategic goals, asset's and capabilities of our competitors do you have any advice or resources that you would suggest?
Does this mean that Baron will be covering more than just "Geopolitics" of Eberron?
I can never get the links to work😢.
Anyone else have the same issue?
I need an Alistair plushy for the Vinnie mobile...
I wish you would write a book on campaign/world/setting building. I like the videos, but reading is far better for me and I doubt I am the only one. I'd pre-order your book immediantly.
Very inspiring indeed.
The "Support me on Patreon" gives a 404 error. Removing the dash goes to the Patreon page.
Kevin crawford has faction turns in his games but they’re too complicated for a DM to run in his spare time. They’re like old school play by post civ games
This is a great video. 🙏🙇♂️🇨🇦
Apparently the 'type' this community is grows further. Not only is it IT Professional that runs D&D games and loves world building, BUT ALSO that they were into Guild Wars.
What's the thumbnail art?
Where is this thumbnail from? 😊
Concise as always! Demonstrating various factions' moral ambiguity to the players will also help them to determine who to help and who to thwart, or at least make them strongly question and analyze those decisions with more care. A cleric may begin devout to his order, but if it continually uses questionable means to achieve its goals "for the greater good" the cleric may choose to no longer support or outright oppose their order's ends. The same could be true of a thief's redemption arc, a paladin's fall from grace, a fighter's ambition growing beyond the battlefield, or a wizard's decent into an obsession with power. Such factional interactions will help increase party discourse, tension, and sense of accomplishment and vitality of interaction with the game world.
How many factions is too much?
I am working on my campaign guys. Due in a month. Wish me luck.
Wait is this about building a faction or running a faction?
Holy sh!t... I envy your players AF.
i have 4 factions im working on now in an openworld dungeon world seetting of ancient israel (2ell not that ancient but ..namely :
the might of rome
jewish resistance
christian samaritans
hippie druse
and then i have north african , greek and even roman immigrants thrown into the mix for good measure w different sentiments or none at all from friendly to neutral to hostile and everything in between on a scale and all of this u have to navigate through or between as a player 😊
I commented on an earlier video that I really don't care for Baron's tone or presentation style, but I have to say, it's a good fit with Geopolitic/Faction videos like this one. Also, I appreciate that the Geopolitic style vids also have really specific actionable items.
You could just hand factions off to people that can't regularly attend
Have them interact with each other and the players
Even factions that are aligned might have political and military conflict. They may not agree on all goals or methods and come to disagreements & even blows.
To boost the vid
Did you say that guy is rich?
Damned city guard has Batman syndrome...
❤
i feel like i am mayb e too dumb to dm now hahahahahaha
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Dang bro slow down. Take a breath. Lol.
Factions are terrible keep that shit in the grave with goddamn planescape.
It never fucking work and then you got pcs working with a powerful group to kill off all the factions...trust me it always happened when I brought sorry ass factions in my game..had to take them out, they always detoured from the main plot
Stop putting factions in your game that have nothing to do with your main plot, then?
Bruh, that's your issue, you're playing a different game. Most of this guy's content is OSR related, factions like he is stating are more for west marches style campaigns and don't have an firm overarching plot.
Factions like these create more of an large meta-situations of the world and the GM makes small adjustments after every session, you adjust the situations and mechanics that they interact with(such as the random encounter tables after a faction has made it's mark on the area) generally after the PCs have an effect. It's much more loose than a structured narrative and is meant to be highly dynamic.
Games like Worlds beyond number, Beyond the Wall and Mausritter are built with a system like this to drive the games. Mausritter especially has a whole setup pretty much word for word with this video. Narrative games like Blades in the dark also base their games on a similar system.
You may want to just explore the above games and see how they work just to get a different flavor, it's likely a whole different enchilada than you are used to.
Also, why do your players always resort to violence when they ally with a faction? Why is every faction's modus operendai violence? Make ideologically peaceful factions?
Stars Without Number (Sci fi) and Worlds Without Number is said to have great tools for factions, and these rules are free on drivethrurpg.