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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Creating Factions: Large or Small?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7533183" data-attributes="member: 16814"><p>Factions need to serve the game, not be real-world viable. My objectives with any faction creation (including player created) is that they have clear points of conflict and that they serve the scope of the game. Small, local factions are worthwhile only as long as the focus is small and local. Factions either need to grow with the scope of the game or be part of larger factions. D&D, with it's zero to superhero scope, doesn't really support factions on the local scale for long, so putting effort and time into them as purely local is a waste on both sides of the screen. A player investing in a faction only to rapidly outgrow it counters the goal of the PC being grounded in the fiction.</p><p></p><p> So, either have a small scope limited game with local factions, or have a way for player investment in factions to continue to matter when they've outgrown the local stuff.</p><p></p><p>As a further aside, I've mostly abandoned that level of worldbuilding myself and instead farm it out to the players to tell me what they care about. Then I incorporate that. I'm "prepping" a Planescape game where I've sketched a blurb about the wards of Sigil, a few short statements on themes, and a sentence thumbnail of the political factions in the city. That's the extent of my prep until we have our first session and do character building. They'll flesh out or add things according to their PCs histories/goals and we'll start play from there focusing on those. Everything else will remain a thumbnail until it's needed in play as a foil. One thing I don't care about is canon or establishing it outside of play. I have some ideas I think may be cool, but we'll have to play to see if they come up.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ovinomancer, post: 7533183, member: 16814"] Factions need to serve the game, not be real-world viable. My objectives with any faction creation (including player created) is that they have clear points of conflict and that they serve the scope of the game. Small, local factions are worthwhile only as long as the focus is small and local. Factions either need to grow with the scope of the game or be part of larger factions. D&D, with it's zero to superhero scope, doesn't really support factions on the local scale for long, so putting effort and time into them as purely local is a waste on both sides of the screen. A player investing in a faction only to rapidly outgrow it counters the goal of the PC being grounded in the fiction. So, either have a small scope limited game with local factions, or have a way for player investment in factions to continue to matter when they've outgrown the local stuff. As a further aside, I've mostly abandoned that level of worldbuilding myself and instead farm it out to the players to tell me what they care about. Then I incorporate that. I'm "prepping" a Planescape game where I've sketched a blurb about the wards of Sigil, a few short statements on themes, and a sentence thumbnail of the political factions in the city. That's the extent of my prep until we have our first session and do character building. They'll flesh out or add things according to their PCs histories/goals and we'll start play from there focusing on those. Everything else will remain a thumbnail until it's needed in play as a foil. One thing I don't care about is canon or establishing it outside of play. I have some ideas I think may be cool, but we'll have to play to see if they come up. [/QUOTE]
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