Faction Rules - What do we like?

[zottel]

For factions, I really like the presentation used in Mausritter.
An Example from the book/SRD:

It's concise and to the point, and I think it would be usable as is during play, although I have had no chance to use it yet.
There are rules to advance, players can have direct impact, and it shows consequences quite well. When a goal is reached, it becomes a resource, and help reaching further goals.
Of course, the goals get immediately intertwined with other factions, without getting overly complicated. I like it quite a lot.

 

[VHawkwinter]

The difficulty with factions is often that it really hard for the players to get a solid grip on. Here I'm talking about games with multiple factions. Complex webs of relationships are tough to portray at the table.

Those are my preferred campaign type.

The character would have an intuitive understanding of who likes who, who hates who, how they're likely to react if X and so forth. To provide an approximation of that same knowledge for the players requires some tools.

I think my usual way to approach this has been to have the players learn it ingame, and start out as characters who don't know the city. But I don't mind knowledge checks, and then I would build and consult a lookup table to determine how rare local knowledge is and if it's limited to a specific subset of the local populace, whether the PCs are in it.

And to have some ways to learn things In game is also good.

There's a reason it's so much easier to run a city when the PC are outsiders - you don't have to worry about local knowledge.

Very true.

A lot of games where the players are supposed to be locals devolve into frustrating mother may I sessions.

Also a risk. This is a good discussion. I think strategies on how to reduce the arbitrary fiat-ness of handling local knowledge is a good topic. I have some opinions I can share in ~12h but I would be interested to hear what others think on the topic.

 

[Fenris-77]

For factions, I really like the presentation used in Mausritter.
An Example from the book/SRD:
View attachment 433246

It's concise and to the point, and I think it would be usable as is during play, although I have had no chance to use it yet.
There are rules to advance, players can have direct impact, and it shows consequences quite well. When a goal is reached, it becomes a resource, and help reaching further goals.
Of course, the goals get immediately intertwined with other factions, without getting overly complicated. I like it quite a lot.

I should have mentioned Mausritter in the OP - those faction rules are slick.