5 Things Every Great D&D Faction Needs

Comments · 103

• ST

  @StephaniePlaysGames · 1 year ago · pinned

  ✨ Don’t forget to check out Scorched Basin and their super cool factions - they even have a free sample for you to download!<br><a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/homieandthedude/scorched-basin?ref=9yj2am">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/homieandthedude/scorched-basin?ref=9yj2am</a> ✨

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• MA

  @Matt-je5hn · 1 year ago

  &quot;Factions are tied to conflicts&quot; is absolute gold! Don&apos;t throw away your work, just make your work.... work!!

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• CH

  @chrisg8989 · 1 year ago

  I think the Magic number is 5. You need an Odd number because otherwise it&apos;s easy for it to slip into a 2 sided conflict. 3 is too few, because it&apos;s too easy to become a 2v1 conflict. More than 5 becomes convoluted and crowded.

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• UN

  @UnhingedWizard502 · 1 year ago (edited)

  I really think most DMs would benefit a ton from picking up Stars Without Numbers’ faction turn system. It keeps factions fresh and active, and helps you keep your world turning in the background. So that anytime a player interacts with a faction, that faction feels alive and dynamic. I don’t even run the full system, just a sort of shorthand version of it… and it improves my games tenfold. Players want to reject a story arc that a faction is involved in? Okay, well that’s going to have consequences a month or two from now.

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• MA

  @macoppy6571 · 1 year ago

  Pro tip: recruit a friend to run the faction “in secret”

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• CI

  @CitanulsPumpkin · 1 year ago (edited)

  It&apos;s worth mentioning that the three Magic the Gathering 5e books are without a doubt the best faction guides and toolboxes a DM could ask for.<br><br>The ten guilds of Ravnica, fifteen gods/churches of Theros, and five magical colleges of Strixhaven all are well defined, have goals and focuses that tie into any number of conflicts you could build the campaign around, and both the Ravnica and Theros books are full of useful tools for running each faction, generating allies and villains from each faction, and using those tools and tables in Ravnica and Theros as guidelines for building factions will help flesh out the colleges in Strixhaven as well as teach DMs to brew their own. Pick any five faction from those three books and drop them in your campaign. Give them new names and a reason to go after the same plot mcguffin as the party and you&apos;re set.<br><br>One tool that&apos;s crucial for factions is random tables. Once you have your factions, make a random table full of combat encounters for each faction. Roll any two of them together or one or two of them alongside any environment/terrain based tables, and the idea that random tables don&apos;t tie into the story of the campaign will vanish.<br><br>The royal guard and their VIP escort are being attacked by 3d6 wolves. <br><br>The agents of the Broken Crown are attacking a survey team from the college of Lost Interplanar Multifaceted Principalities on a field trip.<br><br>Three factions that have been indifferent to the party are fighting over a shiny rock while being picked off by goblin archers and rock slingers who clearly have been using the rock and its haunted clearing in the woods as a kill box. <br><br>Do the players kill all faction agents? Do they pick a side and tip the scales? Do they try to mediate between factions? There&apos;s so many outcomes to scenarios generated by rolling two or three random tables together and each one will tie back into the over arching plot because each faction is only there to look for the part of the plot they care about.<br><br>Or if worse comes to worse, use the table for the faction the party has antagonized the most every couple random encounters to show that the party is being actively hunted by that faction.

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• CA

  @CaseyWilkesmusic · 1 year ago

  There’s lots of good in reading the dm section from blades in the dark and ironsworn.

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• TH

  @theokogod6711 · 1 year ago

  Factions seem to be a big talking point on D&amp;D YouTube this week. Ironically, complexity was one thing I had to learn to scale way back. Early into a campaign I’ve been running for the past 2 1/2 years, two of the PCs discovered that the church they were affiliated with had different schisms, mystery traditions, heresies, and synods based on Byzantine orthodox Christian history and ancient Greek mystery traditions, which was far more complex than the genetic medieval “church” they were expecting. One player enjoyed it. Another had a harder time. By now, the politicking between different elements of the church, the mages group in my world, and rival Dwarven clans is something the players all have a good grasp of but it took some time to really let them marinade in the politicking of it. The best thing I did to help them get it was having them testify as witnesses at a government council where NPCs they met all spoke on behalf of different factions in a very Small Council/Council of Elrond scene.

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• SA

  @SabbothArt · 1 year ago

  It feels like all my favorite ttrpg-tubers are suddenly dropping super great videos lately that fit perfectly right into the brand new campaign my group just started. A big feature of this new campaign is a much heavier focus on factions and that grey area of who&apos;s the good or bad. There&apos;s an empire trying to conquer the whole continent, a splintered faction of tribe nations trying to unite against them, a faction that refuses to take a sides while letting themselves get conquered, and a massively expanding cult who on their face is assisting the tribes but with secret ulterior motives. Definitely watching this vid a couple times while prepping my sessions lol.

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• MI

  @MichaelHeide · 1 year ago

  What do you mean, &quot;Thieves Guild&quot;? I don&apos;t have that in my world! I have an &quot;Adventurers Guild&quot;, that&apos;s a completely different thing entirely!<br><br>Narrator: &quot;It is NOT a completely different thing entirely.&quot;

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• GK

  @GKahla · 1 year ago

  Agreed with the comments about an odd number of factions; just not too many. Your specific observation that &quot;Factions are tied to conflicts.&quot; is brilliant! So many sandbox games are full of exotic flavor in culture, environment, and the like... but then leave the conflict behind. You&apos;ve got to have a reason for these murder hobos to vent their spleens outward into the world! Cheers 🍪☕

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• GE

  @geekalpha · 1 year ago

  Can confirm. &nbsp;My last very long-running campaign had many factions that shaped player choices, because they saw that their actions changed their opportunities and options.

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