The Value of Being Factionless

[kalani]

While I would love if PCs tracked favor with the various factions separately, that is not how it's done. You only earn renown with one faction, and only one faction. While the Zhent's in your above example may look more favorably on the non-Zhent PC in future interactions, this is handled by the adventure sidebars which say "if any of the PCs played X, Y, or Z mission - this NPC knows the PCs and reacts [in this manner]". Renown represents your standing within the faction itself. As such, only members of that faction earn renown with that faction.

Sure, your example PC above may be a close ally of the Zhent's (and has favor with them), but they aren't a Zhent. Even the lowliest Zhent grunt is more of a zhent than their allies are.

Renown =/= Favor
You can curry favor with anyone (the best example of this is the faction chart in Rise of Tiamat​, which tracks how each faction views the actions of the party overall). You can only earn renown with your own faction.

 

[MwaO]

I know it isn't done that way - just that a PC who rescued a few artifacts for the Zhents(in exchange for gold) is probably more important to the Zhents than some random grunt who says all the right things, but hasn't done a whole heck of a lot.

And not saying the renown would translate into a rank - just it gives mods a quick way to translate 'hey, this guy has done a lot of favors for the Zhents in the past and the Zhents care about this - see if he'll try to pick it up for us...or maybe try to recruit him into the faction...'

 

[Pauper]

I know it isn't done that way - just that a PC who rescued a few artifacts for the Zhents(in exchange for gold) is probably more important to the Zhents than some random grunt who says all the right things, but hasn't done a whole heck of a lot.

It is an interesting alternative, as well as being more in line with how the DMG describes renown -- the 'you can only gain renown with one faction' is an Adventurers League rule, not a general D&D rule.

And not saying the renown would translate into a rank - just it gives mods a quick way to translate 'hey, this guy has done a lot of favors for the Zhents in the past and the Zhents care about this - see if he'll try to pick it up for us...or maybe try to recruit him into the faction...'

Though, using that system, there's no reason you couldn't have an unaligned PC immediately rise to the rank equivalent to the renown he earned as an unaligned PC once he actually joins the faction he's been 'helping out'.

In fact, that might end up being an advantage of being unaligned -- you can earn 'ally renown' with all five factions, though you don't get the actual benefits of a faction member (or perhaps you can use lesser versions of the actual faction benefits) until and unless you actively join a faction, which burns your bridges with the other factions. That would feed into the idea that part of the benefit of being unaligned is the freedom that comes from not being tied to a specific faction.

--
Pauper

 

[Cascade]

I have one character that is factionless (a cleric of Bane) just because it seemed appropriate.

I really like the idea of not being forced into a roleplay situation, unlike Pathfinder where you have to be "in the club".

It might be nice to see future options for an "un-aligned" or a factionless group option, but I understand the need to start the campaign for party coherency.

 

[Steve_MND]

I'm starting this as a separate thread because I wanted to ask a few questions without it being lost in the other discussion (and muddy the waters of both).
1) Other than RP choices, should there be more/any benefits to being factionless?.
2) If there should be benefits, what would they be?
3) What else could we do to encourage players to choose a faction for their characters?

While these are all fine questions, I think it sidesteps one of the larger issues in the campaign, I feel -- that of a sense of investment.

With precious few exceptions, I've found very little to be invested in within the AL campaign as a whole. Sure, one can come up with personal RP reasons why a character might be tied to the region, but little in the campaign itself provides that anchor.

I feel that players don't have much of a reason to be invested in the locale. The Moonsea is, but all indications, a lousy place to live. Hard, rough, corrupt. And the various cities have shown that to be the case. You start out in Phlan, and I thought, okay, well, a once-great city, under a harsh government, maybe this could be a 'make the city great again' campaign then.

But unfortunately, that didn't really happen. Things went from bad to worse for the town, and largely outside any of the average player's control. You seldom interacted with the common folk for much, and it was a largely rotating cast of supporting characters -- you helped this one person, and if you were lucky, maybe you interacted with them again in another mod five months down the line. You didn't feel a lot of sympathy for the city, because there was little emotional connection made. Most of the players at my store were not all that heartbroken when the season 1 twist came around near the end of the season.

And it's largely continued the same way there. You're shuttled from one lousy, unsympathetic city to the next around the Moonsea. Nobody I played with cathartically wanted to see the enemies of Mulmaster burn. Nobody I played with wanted to have anything to do with Hillsfar and their unsavory policies.

I can see where the factions were initially designed to be a rallying point around which the players could anchor themselves, cry 'for the Glory of the Lord's Alliance," or some such and set off to do great deeds in their name. But that almost never happens. At best, you get a tangentially connected mission that you're going to wander into anyway that amounts basically to "hey, I heard you were going to be in the Village of Gwonk later today, mind if you stop by and milk Goodwife Sander's cow while you're there?"

It's all about investment. Almost every mod, you're introduced to a new, thematically-linked but otherwise unremarkable situation that ties into the current season's metaplot (often in the formula of "cultists aligned with [current season flavor] are up to something no good nearby! Go see what it is and stop it. Oh, and don't forget to stop by your Faction Representative on the way out for possible bonus sidequests.").

Now I'm exaggerating somewhat for effect, but not as much as I'd hope I would have had to. Note also that while the writing and adventures have been fun quite often, they are still almost all just 'standalone' episodes. The metaplot holding them all together is weak, at best.

How to change this? Not sure it can be. But here's what I would have preferred to have seen:

First off, have us in a single location that we can like, feel sympathetic for, and wish to see become prominent and important. Give us a base of operations that we can call our home, that we can put down roots and that we can fight for the honor of. Don't have us uproot everything every six months and trek halfway across the Moonsea to the next urbanized cesspool of humanity.

Secondly, give us recurring characters that we see and interact with almost every single mod. We need to get to know people in more than just a single mod or two. Make the good guys be people we want to protect, and make the ultimate bad guys recurring villains with subtle and grand machinations, and not just the Evil of the Month variety to be washed away as soon as the next season's theme comes around.

Thirdly, if you want the Factions to be something notable and worthwhile, give them rivalries. Make people want to cheer for their Faction. Make the representatives everpresent and front and center, and make the missions for them amount to something substantial in the mod -- put out some mods that ONLY can be run if there is a member of a specific faction there, and have those be strong and metaplot-altering.

Instead of shuttling us across the Moonsea and back, here's what I would have done. Phlan? Sure, it's the campaign's home city. The majority of the AL mods take place around or the once-great city, now reduced to a shell of its former glory. Have the ruler of the city be good-meaning, but overwhelmed by the corrupt forces working within the town. The factions are strong and seldom cooperative, and just shy of outright hostile to each other. The factions are seen virtually every mod, in some fashion, as are certain key NPCs.

Let players (and characters) work for the salvation of their city, both from threats within and without. See the city struggle back to a position of prominence. First season, the city is beset by forces working for the Dragon Cults. Have the PCs thwart various activities in and around the city. Give them regular NPCs that they deal with almost daily. That way, when they eventually are taken down by some unknown force, there is actual emotion behind the desire to see them avenged.

Don't throw the Season 1 twist in like that. That was a season finale kind of moment, that ended up with no resolution the following season. Don't uproot the PCs to trek halfway across the Moonsea to fight elemental cultists elsewhere... have the elemental dangers come to them. Allow them to keep that something, a place, a city, a home that's worth fighting for.

Have a larger, more involved plotline that stretches more than just the current six months and reference it at every turn. Living Greyhawk's regional administrators, when it started, had to submit a five-year metaplot for each of their regions. I seriously doubt that the AL campaign is thinking that far in advance. With the current WotC Marketing's six-month schedule, I doubt they CAN plan that far in advance.

Sorry for the long drawn-out screed here, folks. I just kinda got caught up in the writing. And I also understand that there is a big difference between the AL staff, and WotC, and what one can do with or without the other's blessing; take my comments about the campaigns what i would have liked to see as a whole, as opposed to what i would have preferred to see specific people do.

TL;DR: The campaign lacks investment.

 

[skerritthegreen]

First off, have us in a single location that we can like, feel sympathetic for, and wish to see become prominent and important. Give us a base of operations that we can call our home, that we can put down roots and that we can fight for the honor of. Don't have us uproot everything every six months and trek halfway across the Moonsea to the next urbanized cesspool of humanity.

Can't do that as WOTC specifically wants to explore all the different locales around the Moonsea, but we can go back. For example, in season 4 we will see some of the adventures going back to Phlan to deal with that situation and hopefully try to liberate the town.

Thirdly, if you want the Factions to be something notable and worthwhile, give them rivalries. Make people want to cheer for their Faction. Make the representatives everpresent and front and center, and make the missions for them amount to something substantial in the mod -- put out some mods that ONLY can be run if there is a member of a specific faction there, and have those be strong and metaplot-altering.

Interestingly this is the exact opposite of the posts we got when we announced that there would be factions ("there better not be conflict between factions cause I hate pvp", "there better not be mods where you can't play if you're not in a faction cause I want to play everything", etc...). We could do more with the faction contacts and we could do more with "this encounter only exists if there is a member of X," however.

Living Greyhawk's regional administrators, when it started, had to submit a five-year metaplot for each of their regions. I seriously doubt that the AL campaign is thinking that far in advance. With the current WotC Marketing's six-month schedule, I doubt they CAN plan that far in advance.

We are general 1-2 seasons out. We know the general theme of what's 2 seasons out and are working on 1 season out (so for example we have season 4 completely planned and are partway through it now).

How would you deal with the story baggage issues that create issues to new players. For example in LG if you were a new player in year 5, you walked into a regional adventure with 5-7 important NPCs who you are supposed to have 4 years of history with and a dozen or so adventures who's histories you need to know and in the end it was pretty complicated for a lot of people. If we did do a five year arc where almost every Expedition matter that you played it with one of your PCs so you knew what was going on, I am curious to suggests on how you help new players into the campaign without saying go read a few hours worth of backstory and then maybe you'll be ready to play? AL is trying to strike a middle ground, though apparently not successfully.

Some NPCs have been following you from season to season (in addition to the faction contacts), and when one dies a new one often takes their place. DO you think it would be superior to just pick two or three and have at least one of them be in every adventure and it basically be about them and you helping them through their story? (which hopefully is about liking/helping the same thing that you want)

 

[Mirtek]

Heck, I've been at more than one table where an objective is described as being mutually exclusive between factions (two different factions each want the artifact the party is searching for, for example), and the DM simply hand-waved the outcome so that each faction was satisfied, allowing all the characters present to gain their renown points.

Which would that be? I never seen this happening yet. Maybe the DM portrayed the assignment wrongly

 

[Tyranthraxus]

THanks for starting this topic. I started the other Factionless topic, and you are spot on ..this topic needed to be on it's own.

To be honest, Ive found the Faction system to be more or less irrelevant. Very few players use the Faction downtime activities locally (but to be brutually honest very few people use Downtime to begin with). I run far more Tier 1-4 scenarios than I do 5-10s because its just not the player base I have yet.

When I build a character for AL, Faction is actually the last thing I think about. Sometimes one of them stands out, sometimes they do not.

Now when we originally started out, we were told that These 5 organisations were co-operating together to fight back against the Foul Cult of the Dragon and their machinations to do something (Im not sure the groups knew what the end goal was.. just that it was bad). And it kinda made sense if you made some links there in your mind.

Then we have EE, and the rise of the Elemental Cults (Cults appears to be a key theme). So the groups were again nicey nice with each other working towards the common goal of.. stopping the Cults from raising up the Elemental Eye. evil thingy.

Now we have Rage of Demons. The 5 groups are again teaming up this time to... well.. Im not sure this time. They are just working together towards something.

I just feel every season now that there is a slight disconnect on why the groups are STILL working together. It feels a bit like we had some PFS players in the development group saying 'Look over there, every organised play game has secret socities and groups.. we must have them too. Look at all the good they are doing in PFS.'

Having been a PFS player, I can honestly say actually no.. the Groups there dont actually do much.

Back to Factionless

My suggestions follow

A) Scenarios continue to give occasional entry points for a factionless character. Perhaps a certain NPC has heard about all these meddling organisations and will only deal with a Factionless character.

 

[Steve_MND]

Can't do that as WOTC specifically wants to explore all the different locales around the Moonsea, but we can go back. For example, in season 4 we will see some of the adventures going back to Phlan to deal with that situation and hopefully try to liberate the town.

It's unfortunate that WotC wants people to be moving around so much, and equally unfortunate that they want them moving around so often as well. A year-long season would be so much better, IMHO, to establishing a story than the six-months versions we have, but then that wouldn't fit in as well with WotC's marketing plans.

Interestingly this is the exact opposite of the posts we got when we announced that there would be factions ("there better not be conflict between factions cause I hate pvp", "there better not be mods where you can't play if you're not in a faction cause I want to play everything", etc...).

There's a difference between Faction Rivalry and Faction Conflict. It was easy to see how the Factions were originally envisioned as the equivalent of, say, LG's various regions. A metagroup that one could feel some connection to, that one could feel proud when they triumphed, and feel sad about when they faltered. But I don't see that as happening with the Factions in AL. At best, our faction mission briefing is three or four sentences about what we have to do, and, as mentioned before, is really only vaguely associated with the module itself. If you didn't do it, or didn't have any Factioned characters at the table, the mod would continue without even skipping a beat. That's fine in and of itself, but that's a sure indicator that the Factions, as currently implemented, are really completely expendable and irrelevant to the campaign. In fact, I can't think of hardly a single module where it would have been significantly different if there were no Factions present at all in the game world. Sure, maybe a few sidequests would have not been written, but that'd be about all. As others have pointed out, Factions are often an afterthought for many players, because there's no real reason for them.

And for the record, Faction-specific mods would be fine to have in the campaign, if handled properly. Again, rivalry, not conflict. They can still be working to a common goal, just through different means. In current mods, if there is a sidemission for the Enclave, that typically doesn't preclude the other non-Enclave characters from assisting those characters, and so on. Same thing could be done with Faction-specific modules.

We are general 1-2 seasons out. We know the general theme of what's 2 seasons out and are working on 1 season out (so for example we have season 4 completely planned and are partway through it now).

Understandable, but woefully inadequate for a campaign of this scope, IMHO. The very fact that you only know the "general theme" of what's 2 seasons out is disappointing, because you cannot create a decent metaplot without knowing the long term goals and situations. Again, not 'you' as in the AL staff, just 'you' as in the AL campaign as a whole. I am well aware of the sort of limitations and restrictions that WotC is putting in place on a lot of these things (which just goes back to my overall opinion I've made before that the campaign isn't structured properly by WotC).

How would you deal with the story baggage issues that create issues to new players. [...] If we did do a five year arc where almost every Expedition matter that you played it with one of your PCs so you knew what was going on, I am curious to suggests on how you help new players into the campaign without saying go read a few hours worth of backstory and then maybe you'll be ready to play?

Well, among several other ideas, you can have overlapping arcs. Example: first Dragon arc has elements that lead towards the overall metagoal. You run that through a year-long arc, tho. But six months in, you start up the Elemental arc, which has elements that also lead towards the overall metagoal, but which has its own year-long arc and runs parallel with the previous Dragon arc. Next, you pull in the new Underdark arc after the Dragon arc is finished , but the Elemental arc is still going strong. And so on. That way, regardless of when you come in, there's generally a new arc that new players can glom onto without having to have a Masters in League Theory, but you also have larger themes operating so long-time players feel a sense of continuity and cohesive progression. The trick is in the weaving of those separate arcs into the larger metaplot, like one weaves separate cords into a larger, stronger rope.

But again, that sort of approach needs a wider scale of operation to work than just the six-months-out window that the campaign seems to be operating at.

Some NPCs have been following you from season to season (in addition to the faction contacts), and when one dies a new one often takes their place. DO you think it would be superior to just pick two or three and have at least one of them be in every adventure and it basically be about them and you helping them through their story? (which hopefully is about liking/helping the same thing that you want)

The PCs are already basically just helping out the campaign's seasonal stories as tag-alongs anyway; we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is like a home campaign where the players can have a direct influence on where the campaign goes and what happens on a larger scale. If that were the case, we'd already have left the Moonsea behind a long time ago, I'd wager. But while we may be along for the ride, it would be nice if that ride had more familiar faces along the way (and they were familiar faces that we actually care about).

I'm not saying that doesn't happen here and there (a certain goat-acquainted little girl springs to mind) but it doesn't happen often or deep enough, IMHO, to make a noticeable effect. And certainly not with the Factions, which were -- presumably -- intended to be the rallying point around which characters would anchor themselves to in a shifting, chaotic campaign.

 

[Nevvur]

Tossing out an idea: factionless PCs gain renown and ranks as normal (no faction missions, obviously), ranks provide a bonus to certain social checks with certain NPCs, e.g. Rank 2 provides +2 to charisma(persuasion). Not sure about the criteria for which NPCs should or should not trigger this bonus. In any case, it's more of a general fame level than prestige within an organization.

To encourage faction membership, I recommend bumping downtime activities to Rank 2, and replacing Rank 3 with a very limited magic item trade. Something along the lines of one permanent, non-consumable magic in exchange for a +1 weapon or armor, or an uncommon utility magic item from a set list of items appropriate to each faction. I know many people are happy with the variety of odd magic item rewards available in current modules, but sometimes the group ends up with something truly useless (e.g. Rod of Pactkeeper, no warlock in group).