Gameable Faction Archetypes
When is an Organization a Faction?
This week in my continued Lore24 work on my "Sablevine" region/setting, I ended up picking away at Factions. I realized that despite having a good sketch of the setting and powers-that-be, I was having a hard time translating these into more gameable Factions. Below are my attempts to codify gameable factions, by assigning archetypes to factions in fictional worlds that I find to have evocative, interactive factions. For this purpose I looked to Dolmenwood (here, "DW"), the Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind ("MW"), and Eberron1 ("E").
Ten Faction Archetypes
These don't all have to be present in every region, but there should probably be 1 teamable or joinable faction, 1 antagonist faction, 1 neutral faction, and 1 messy/dramatic faction.
Lawful Boring:
Easy to team up with and superficially beneficial to the PCs and the setting. Might be problematic under the hood.
Role in Play: Simple hook into questing in the setting. Often homogenizes contacts and encounters across multiple locations of the world. Opportunity for investigation into corruption or history of the Faction.
Examples: Pluritine Church in DW; Imperial Legion, Fighters/Mages/Thieves Guilds; Tribunal Temple in MW; Church of the Silver Flame in Eberron
Shunned Heretics:
Splinter group of a Lawful Boring (or other large) Faction but without the baggage, and you might eventually be opposed to that same LB faction. The degree of "shunned" varies. These may also just be opposed to a mainstream culture and not aimed at one specific Faction.
Role in Play: Fulfill the ostensible mission of another faction, usually Lawful Boring, without the baggage or corruption. Let the players be underdogs/vigilantes and then possibly rising stars.
Examples: Friars in DW; Twin Lamps in MW
Pure Evil:
Always bad, and they often attack on sight. Should be somehow irredeemable/inhuman--very little room for negotiating, except maybe with the Big Bad.
Role in Play: a known enemy to fear and fight against, and to provide an overarching plot. Can also help unite disparate factions against a common enemy.
Examples: Attanuwe and the Crookhorns in DW; the 6th House in MW; Cults of the Dragon Below, Order of the Emerald Claw in Eberron
Scheming Evil:
Very "evil," but not an imminent threat like a Pure Evil faction. Lots of Plotting, plenty of spies. The Ends justify the Means, but either the Ends or Means are destructive and undesirable.
Role in Play: A background evil that the players can investigate. This will provide less of a stand-up fight and more of an unraveling of plots. Might eventually lead to the "Big Bad". Can be foils to an Extrajudicial group.
Examples: the Cold Prince in DW; Dark Brotherhood in MW; the Cabinet of Faces, the Dreaming Dark, and the Lords of Dust in E.
Antagonists with a Hook:
Usually "antagonists", i.e. more assholes than pure evil, but have some trait that makes it so you might team with them, if only temporarily. "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole" -- and maybe wrong, too.
Role in Play: Antagonists to be opposed, but the PCs can parley with them, even if it is difficult.
Examples: the Drune in DW; Cammona Tong in MW
Insular Cryptic:
Could be considered a neutral faction from the outside but digging down there's some darkness, and dig deep enough there is a driving goal. Often stand-offish, but not assholes.
Role in Play: A less obvious choice to team up with and offer alternate paths to power. Can also be antagonists easily enough.
Examples: Witches in DW; Vampire clan in MW; the Chamber and the Mosaic Committee in Eberron
Dramatic Nobles:
A collection of mini-factions who cooperate and compete with messy human goals. Usually the mini-factions have regional power. You can assign faction archetypes to a few of the mini-factions to crank up the drama and variety.
Role in Play: Provide "courtly" drama, firey personalities, competing goals, and intrigue. They flaunt wealth and power, and possibly even give some to PCs.
Examples: Human and Longhorn Nobilities in DW; Great Houses in MW; Dragonmark Houses in E
Wild Cards:
Either a loose faction or an association of mini-factions. Hard to pin "good" or "bad" on them: "temperamental" is probably most accurate.
Role in Play: Dramatic Nobles turned up to 11, but tend to be focused on singular figures rather than a entire power structures. Like Greek gods on a smaller scale.
Examples: Daedric Princes in MW; Fairy Princes in DW
Underdogs with Old Grievance:
Mostly neutral, underdog faction with some deep history. They have an old, actionable grievance.
Role in Play: Lets the players dig into the roots of the setting and offer a worldview that can be counter to mainstream society, casting light on historical inaccuracies or lies.
Examples: the Ashlander tribes in MW.
Extrajudicial:
Secret, or secretive, military. They operate outside of typical justice structures, or possibly superjudicially (within but above the normal legal processes)
Role in Play: Let the players play the roles of avengers and spies. Or oppose them as vigilantes and infiltrators. Eventually provides access to select contacts or high tech a la James Bond.
Examples: the Blades in MW; the Trust in Eberron
This of course isn't meant to be a circumspect list, nor fully prescriptive. I will continue to mull on how to set up factions to be gameable from a blank sheet of paper through to play, but I think this will give me some framework to start to hammer factions into shape of specific roles to play off of for characters in an RPG.
Next steps are to apply these to the Sablevine setting.
Last edited 2 months, 4 weeks ago
Footnotes:
looking at a wiki, Eberron sure does have a lot of factions these days. Last I checked in was the warning days of 3.5E. for this analysis I cherry-picked factions that I either remembered as important and foundational factions, or that seem to be well-established and with concrete goals.↩