Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 3873341" data-attributes="member: 43283">Me?I'd have the players run the faction combat, as well as their own characters. Just lay out who the factions are (A hates B, but is willing to work with C if it means D will get taken down too) and let folks take a faction each. Maybe let a player take on controlling some special critter if there's not enough factions to go around.Or if there's plenty of special critter to go around, you run the factions, and let the players run the critters. Maybe the critters will be well behaved not not snack on their owners, maybe they go wild and start lashing out at whatever is the nearest target.Just let the players cut loose and join in on the mayhem in some fashion like that, where they don't have to worry about their character getting snarfed in the middle of everything.The can beat the snot out of each other, and if/when their interest wanes, if there's any of their faction left over, you can "take control" of whatever is left, and decide what the survivors would do.As things go along, make sure to _explicitly_ ask what the characters are doing while all of this goes on. Who cares if the player(s) metagame a bit between the faction they're running and their character. The player will still likely feel invested, because they're actually getting to do something.Maybe break things up along the lines of a "double initiative" depending on how complex things are. First the PCs do their thing, and then the factions do their thing.I'd also personally abstract out the faction combat. While the factions fight amongst themselves, leave them as mostly mooks fighting each other. When it comes to PC vs Faction, then you can "zoom in" and go for the more detailed combat. That way things move along nice and quick, but when the PCs deal with individual members, they can see that the factions aren't push-overs. In other words, you're playing with the scale of things.Faction vs Faction, the people are relatively similar and you don't really need to worry about it. Faction vs PC, the Faction people aren't simply mooks, and therefore get the "zoomed in" longer combat.But I kinda like simple approaches to things, along with Players getting to do cool stuff in the game. So that advice might not be worth much to you.</blockquote>

Verification