Creating Factions: Large or Small?

[Shiroiken]

So I've started looking into making factions for my Greyhawk campaign, and I'm not sure if they really need to be multi-national, as the ones listed for the Forgotten Realms. It seems that national or even local factions are much more likely to have an impact in the average game.

For example, one of the factions I've designed is the local noble House. Obviously you don't have to be a noble to be part of it, as they have soldiers, bureaucrats, spies, etc. that all work towards the House's ends. Having a PC that is part of the faction might benefit the party if they need help in their area of influence. Alternatively, they can be an opposition faction if the party supports a different noble house. Unlike the example factions, however, they will have little to no impact outside of the country of origin.

Also, one thing I've considered is to make each Church (i.e. faith) into a faction as well. The interesting aspect of this is that all of them would have the same overall goals and motivations (based on their deity), but local churches are going to have different issues to contend with based on their location. The downside of this is that requires me to make a LOT of factions, most of which will likely never matter.

I've also created two multi-national factions that are in opposition to each other. They are basically the spy network of an empire in decline (Great Kingdom), and the states that are in rebellion against that empire (Iron League). The area the party is based out of is allied with the Iron League, but the PCs could decide to support the Great Kingdom. In either case, a lot of intrigue is happening between the two factions in the region, so they seem important enough to create.


TL;DR: do factions really need to be huge organizations, or is it better to have a mix of large and small factions that will have an impact on the PCs?

 

[Ovinomancer]

So I've started looking into making factions for my Greyhawk campaign, and I'm not sure if they really need to be multi-national, as the ones listed for the Forgotten Realms. It seems that national or even local factions are much more likely to have an impact in the average game.

For example, one of the factions I've designed is the local noble House. Obviously you don't have to be a noble to be part of it, as they have soldiers, bureaucrats, spies, etc. that all work towards the House's ends. Having a PC that is part of the faction might benefit the party if they need help in their area of influence. Alternatively, they can be an opposition faction if the party supports a different noble house. Unlike the example factions, however, they will have little to no impact outside of the country of origin.

Also, one thing I've considered is to make each Church (i.e. faith) into a faction as well. The interesting aspect of this is that all of them would have the same overall goals and motivations (based on their deity), but local churches are going to have different issues to contend with based on their location. The downside of this is that requires me to make a LOT of factions, most of which will likely never matter.

I've also created two multi-national factions that are in opposition to each other. They are basically the spy network of an empire in decline (Great Kingdom), and the states that are in rebellion against that empire (Iron League). The area the party is based out of is allied with the Iron League, but the PCs could decide to support the Great Kingdom. In either case, a lot of intrigue is happening between the two factions in the region, so they seem important enough to create.


TL;DR: do factions really need to be huge organizations, or is it better to have a mix of large and small factions that will have an impact on the PCs?

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.

 

[aco175]

Just one at a time. Take one church and add some ideas. You will expand to another church that helps or is in opposition. You can have regional ideas that may focus on one aspect of a god or large national groups. I tend to think that the larger the group, the easier it is to get into and the less strict the rules and goals.

You can have groups associated with a profession similar to guilds. A frontier grange association will have different goals than one in the city. Regional farmers may gather under a leader to find better trade. You may want to focus on things the players will be interested in.

 

[Krachek]

A faction can be anything between a « small street gang «  and a « centuries old organisation that fight evil over the multiverse ».
The fisrt fit for low level pc, the second fit for high level pc.
But in all faction you can apply the same concepts for rank, loyalty, advancement.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Also, one thing I've considered is to make each Church (i.e. faith) into a faction as well. The interesting aspect of this is that all of them would have the same overall goals and motivations (based on their deity), but local churches are going to have different issues to contend with based on their location. The downside of this is that requires me to make a LOT of factions, most of which will likely never matter.

You only need worry about the churches that the players will interact with. At least to begin with. The rest can be drawn up as the plot thickens....

 

[Shiroiken]

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.

Well, it's a Grey Marches type game, so there will always be PCs of lower level, keeping the local scene important. Even at higher levels, I don't know how much beyond the national level the game will really go. This is why I thought that having all multi-national factions seemed unnecessary, but all the official example I've seen have been presented that way. I'm mostly curious if others have created local or national factions, and seen how well they've worked.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, it's a Grey Marches type game, so there will always be PCs of lower level, keeping the local scene important. Even at higher levels, I don't know how much beyond the national level the game will really go. This is why I thought that having all multi-national factions seemed unnecessary, but all the official example I've seen have been presented that way. I'm mostly curious if others have created local or national factions, and seen how well they've worked.

I've done local stuff and had it quickly become unimportant due to campaign scale.

 

[Baldurs_Underdark]

Everything is a part of a bigger picture. Always. Perhaps a local noble house seems to act independent, but if the king demands it they will be loyal. A local gang rules the streets of a town, but they may still pay tribute to a larger syndicate, or export stolen goods to a different town.

However, as long as the players don't interact with that faction, its relations to the rest of the world are irrelevant.

I typically don't think at the scale of the world at the start. Far too tiring, and my players usually take a direction that I didn't expect anyway.

I give them a plot hook. Then I imagine a few groups that might also be interested in this plot hook. For example, news breaks that a ship has sunk off the coast, loaded with trinkets. Multiple local factions then race to loot it - and the players are (hopefully) one such group. As the players interact with the world, they take decisions and perhaps one of these factions becomes more important in the game.

I start placing this particular faction into a bigger picture only after I find out which factions has become more important... otherwise I have to place them all into a bigger picture and my players never find out 90% of the work I did.

tl;dr, I let my players interact with the world first, and fill in the big picture only when I know which direction the players are going.

 

[77IM]

You can have it both ways if you create a hierarchy. Every minor local faction pays up to some larger, more powerful faction. The largest factions are more like ideologies than organizations; the local groups demonstrate how those ideologies play out in the campaign world. So for your game, decide what sort of ideological or thematic conflicts you want to explore and create large factions for them. Then in the local area of the game create factions that answer up to those larger factions.

 

[Krachek]

You can also use the numerus tools made for npc to build a faction.
A faction can have a bond, ideal, flaw, alignment and other characteristic used for npc.