Faction Creation

A Faction is a group of people (or a single person in very rare cases) that can exercise influence on a larger scale.
What a Faction can be is really determined by the context that the world is considered in.
In the context of the dungeon, a Faction could be a tribe of goblins, a powerful troll on their own, or a group of miners who’re trying to unlock the dark secrets of the lost dwarves.
Factions can also have inner Factions: the goblins could be split between loyalty to their priest and loyalty to their chief. The miners might be split by those who’re starting to doubt the wisdom of unearthing ancient secrets.
Really, it’s Factions all the way down to the individual level.

Faction Number

Starting out, you should have one Faction for each monster type in the dungeon, although you can group similar monsters that work together as one (like goblins and hobgoblins), only splitting them into two Factions if the players go out of their way to get involved.
If you only have one monster type, you should have at least 2 Factions that represent inner strife within that Faction.
In this case, having something that physically distinguishes them is important as it clues the players in that there’s something more going on under the surface.

Faction Outline

An example faction can be found here

Factions are defined by the following things: Theme, Motivation, Current Agenda, Power and Characteristics.
Breaking each down further:

Theme

Theme is the general category a Faction falls under. It largely tells you about the Faction’s place in society is and what methods they have for enacting their will.
The basic themes are as follows:

Religious

templars, chantries, cults

Government

nobles, mayors, jailors, bureaucrats

Sundry Guilds

carpenters, smiths, bakers

Exotic Guilds

alchemists, universities, inventors, lizard-rider

Criminal

thieves, smugglers

Weird

wizards, augurs, magical universities

Military

guards, war schools, army cohorts

Monstrous

A Faction can cross over these lines, but they tend to favor one over the other – a hobgoblin tribe can be both monstrous and military, but a military-dominant tribe should play differently than a monstrous-dominant one.

Divine Factions

You'll need to start by reading this article to get the direction that the Welgrft Sagas go with the gods. Ideally, you'll read all the parts.
This close relationship and interest in the Middle Realm is represented by Divine Factions, which behave slightly differently than normal Factions but are built on these principles:

1. The Divines/Ancestors aren't omnipotent nor do they have the power/desire to get directly involved in everything to their full power, therefore, giving them a Power of 10 doesn't really make sense.
2. They still have the collective power to level a Faction if they all unite (so someone who blasphemes against the Divines is guaranteed to get screwed)
3. The Divines/Ancestors should also be shaped by the communities they live in. The same god can be worshipped in two different villages but in different aspects, which I think is similar to how ancient polytheism worked

From there, Divine Factions have the following changes. An example of a Divine Faction can be found here.

They have a collective power rating = to 2.5 * the number of worldly factions, however, it is divided between them

So, if there are 6 factions and 3 Divine Factions, the Divine Factions will have an average of 5 Power ( ( 6 * 2.5 ) / 3 )

If one Divine Faction drops a Power, another automatically gains a Power so the balance is shifted and Divines can rise and fall in a community but Divines themselves can never lose all their Power

Every Divine who has a temple will have a Faction and the temple believes who shape the specifics of the Divine Faction. The Divine Faction isn't the temple and the temple has to be apart of worldly faction.

So, the Gate of Morjana in Kystinlagir, dedicated to Morjana, means that there is a Morjana of the Gate Divine Faction, who is interested in the protection of travelers.

There is always a Divine Faction that represents the other Divines that are popular in the area but that don't have a dedicated temple.

It's often called (Settlement Name) Minor Divines

Village saints and small gods might also have their own Factions, if they're large enough to have a temple and priesthood.
Divine Agendas The Powers That Be don't have Current Agendas. Instead, they are just content to express their opinions on (help or hinder) other Factions' Current Agendas.

Motivation

Motivation is the overarching reason that the Faction is willing to fight. It can be tacked onto the Current Agenda with a “because” after the objective.
This Motivation means that, once a Faction has completed their Current Agenda, you’ll know where they’re headed next.
Since this is a dungeon, the Faction’s Motivations can be simple: no need to complicate it since they tend to be 1) evil and 2) stupid.
Multiple Motivations You might even want to have multiple, stack Motivations to take a higher concept Motivation and drill down until you can get workable Agendas out of it.
So, for instance, the Ashborn Acolytes might have the Motivation “To return dragons to their former glory” but that’s a huge goal with a lot of steps so having a secondary Motivation “Stop the mining” is something more concrete, if still very high concept.
Parasite Factions It might also be tempting to have every Faction’s Motivation center around a larger theme or want something that’s specific to the area.
So, if your setting is centered on a gold rush, every Faction might have a Motivation linking them to the gold.
But you can also have “parasite” Factions, or Factions that don’t directly relate to the main theme but instead hang off other Factions.
For example, in that gold rush setting, having a Faction that’s not interested in making money off the gold but, instead, making money off the miners, either by selling equipment or selling a service they’d want.
Parasite Factions add more layers and depth to the setting so having a couple wouldn’t go amiss.

Characteristics

Characteristics describe an organization: their beliefs, convictions, and reputation. Describe the Faction or the average Faction member; those are its Characteristics.
Each Faction should have about 3, although you can go up to 5, if you’d like, or down to 1 for particularly dumb or single-minded Factions.
Characteristics not only help with Faction play, but they also serve as a nice foundation for creating NPCs on the fly that are part of that Faction.
Filling in Characteristics as You Go While having 3 Characteristics right from the get-go is a good, you can always leave them blank and fill them out as you go because, realistically, the players aren’t going to be able to pick up on those Characteristics anyway.
You can run a Faction basically from its Theme until you get more familiar with the setting and the NPCs of that Faction, filling in Characteristics as they become needed.

Current Agenda

Current Agenda is the concrete manifestation of a Faction’s Motivation and uses this template:

[Faction] wants [objective] however [obstacle] therefore [scheme]

This is what allows the Factions to influence the world and for the players to see their Motivations in the “real” world.
Note that a Current Agenda that the Faction attempts may not actually get the Faction what they want, and it might even be counterproductive – that’s okay; as long as the Faction thinks it’ll get them what they want, it’s fine.
In fact, asking why a Faction thinks a counterproductive Agenda would help them can often reveal insights into how that Faction works and thinks.
Current Agendas will also be modified and replaced as the Faction game goes along.
For the following sections, I’m going to use this Agenda to show what makes a good and bad one and how to fix issues you might come up against:
The Ashborn Acolytes want to stop the mining however, the Mint won’t listen; therefore, they are trying to get the town to attack the Mint.
Good Objectives When creating an Agenda, the first thing to ask yourself is “what can this Faction accomplish in 1 week?”
That will narrow down the scope quite a bit but, beyond that, you’re looking for concrete actions. If you can picture it happening in your mind, it’s a good Objective.
Avoid specifics on how they’re going to do it if possible.
So, let’s say our example Faction is this: The Ashborn Acolytes want to stop the mining…
That is not something they can reasonably accomplish in just one week and it’s certainly not a concrete action, so we’ll need to change it so it is:
The Ashborn Acolytes want to stop the latest shipment of gold from the mine…
That is something that they could accomplish in a week and it’s something concrete: you can see it in your mind because there are physical components to the Objective: the gold from the mine and the shipment itself.
Note that we could have said:
The Ashborn Acolytes want to ambush the latest shipment of gold from the mine…
The problem here is it suggests how they are going to do it. I actually had that originally, but I revised it when I realized that I could keep the concrete parts but open up the possibilities.
Good Obstacles Good Obstacles represent passive problems that the Faction has.
This could be from other Factions, but it also doesn’t need to be since active opposition is represented during the Faction turn by the other Factions adding points against the roll.
If you have a strong, concrete Objective, Obstacles will tend to suggest themselves. You might even end up revising things as you go.
Obstacles will also start to suggest Schemes, so each part works off the others.
Following on from the last example, the next line was:
…however, the Mint won’t listen…
This is okay but it no longer applies to our new Objective.
Given that the Acolytes want to stop the shipments, what would prevent them from doing so?
It could be that there are caravan guards or, perhaps, the Mint, knowing the Acolytes’ aim, has instituted a policy of keeping the times of the shipments secret.
Both are things the Mint is already doing and so they’re not actively opposing this Agenda.
So, our Obstacle becomes:
…however, only the foremen know when the shipments are going to go out…
This adds another concrete element to play with: the foremen and their knowledge. It leads to follow up questions like: how are they told, do they write it down, are any trustworthy?
Good Schemes Finally, good Schemes lean into the Faction’s strengths, essentially their Theme and Traits should involve a concrete action, which should be easy to devise since you have a lot of concrete things to work with.
So, the final line of our example is:
…therefore they are trying to get the town to attack the Mint.
So, this has a problem of being unrealistic in that the Acolytes probably aren’t going to be able to turn the town against the Mint in 1 week, but it could be repurposed as a lower tier Motivation because it’s very interesting.
But let’s change it so that it makes a good Scheme.
The big thing is the Obstacle; the foreman and the secret knowledge of when the shipments go out.
We already know a lot about the Acolytes based on stereotypes about cults: they’re sneaky and manipulative so, without even looking at the Characteristics, we can guess that they’d target the foreman and try and convert them.
So, our final line becomes:
...therefore they’re trying to convert one of the foremen.
And that’s it: you now have:
The Ashborn Acolytes want to stop the latest shipment of gold from the mine; however, only the foremen know when the shipments are going to go out; therefore, they’re trying to convert one of the foremen.
You can almost see how things would play out: one of the foremen is seen talking to strangers or people he’s been unfriendly with before.
Perhaps, he’s suddenly more secretive and aloof than he was. Maybe he’s even happier, having put aside drinking that he’s had as a vice for years and explains he’s found new meaning in his life but is evasive when asked about it.
Note that all these things can be things the players directly interact with, or they can be used as part of the News-of-the-Week, which is discussed in the Rumors chapter.
The Example Untaken I want to go back and make the assumption that the Acolytes are more militaristically bent, so instead of conversion to get their way, they’re going with an ambush.
In this case, the Obstacle might stay the same, but the Scheme becomes:
…therefore, they’re positioning a group of men on the road to attack anyone heading to the mine.
With the idea being that maybe they’ll seize some important information or possibly make the roads so dangerous that the shipment will be delayed for that week.
Or you might change the Obstacle to:
…however, the Mint always guards the shipments…
In which case, the Acolytes will need to find a good ambush spot or seize weapons, while the non-militaristic Acolytes might bribe the guards to look the other way or convert the guard captain instead.
There are basically endless ways to tweak the Agenda so play around with it. Just remember:

It must be able to be accomplished in one week.

The more concrete things you can picture, the better.

Power

Power is how powerful a Faction is. We’ll talk about it more in the Faction Turn section in the Faction Play chapter of part 3 but suffice to say that the more Power a Faction has, the more likely they are to succeed.
This Power rating should be somewhere between 1 and 10.
Determining a Faction’s Starting Power There are a couple of ways we can use to determine how powerful a Faction is out of the gate.
The first is by comparison: line them up with the most powerful Faction at the top and the least at the bottom.
How far apart are they in power? Is the most power Faction’s dominance absolute? Give them a 10. Are they just barely ahead? Give them a 6 or 7.
Is the least powerful Faction about to get destroyed? Give them a 0. Are they just barely behind? Give them 4 or 5.
It’s okay to have Factions have the same Power.
The other option is to roll 3d4-2 (minimum 1) to determine their power and then rearrange as needed.
Stagnant Power Structures If you feel like the Factions in your setting have nothing left to do and nowhere to grow, perhaps it’s time to roll back the clock on all but one of them, creating a clearly dominate power but having new Factions being introduced from outside.
For example, if we have a boom town situation, we might have set up a crime family, a group of bankers, the nobility, and a cult that are all firmly established.
But, we could roll things back and make it so that the nobility is the main Faction and the crime family, bankers, and cult have just rolled into town.
Having them backed by an outside power means that, even if they drop to 0 Power, they can come back. In fact, it might be interesting for an NPC that the players have been getting friendly with get assassinated and the bank close down for a few months before the Guild of Bankers sends another representative (with more guards) to reopen it.
Those little touches give the setting a sense of being a part of something greater.
Additionally, having new Factions come in means that you can create 1 or 2 NPCs that come to embody the Faction and vice versa so, when building Agendas, instead of asking “What does this Faction want and how do they get it?”, you’re asking “What does this person want and how does she get it?”, which can help when thinking of ideas.

Optional Things

You can add further detail as needed by answering the following questions:

Where are the Faction’s bases of operation?

Who are the Faction’s leaders?

How are they organized?

What are the Faction’s treasures?

What is something the players can use to easily identify Faction members?

But these are optional.
You’ll find that, as the players interact with a Faction, you’ll need to naturally answer these questions, as well as add NPC members of that Faction, but, unless you really love that sort of stuff, keep your work to a minimum and only fill in those details as needed.

Keeping Factions Personal

You’re going to be given tools to run Faction games to keep the world dynamic and shifting but it’s important to remember that the real reason and purpose is that Factions generate ideas, rumors, and adventures for the players to get interested in.
So, remember to always keep the Factions active on the player-scale, meaning that players should feel like the Factions affect them and vice versa.
Who cares if the wizard’s guild is making a grand move to seize power over the alchemical reagent trade in the west of the kingdom if the players are in the east and not buying reagents?
The easiest way to do this is to have every NPC your players come across be a member of a Faction and, therefore, an extension of their ideals and goals.
This also makes defining NPCs easier because the work is partially done.
The other thing to keep in mind is “who is the guy above this guy?” or, when the players go up the next scale (from goblin tribe occupying a dungeon to the goblin horde that’s been plaguing the area, for example), who is the next person up in the chain of command because at the goblin-horde level, the players will then be interacting with them.
You don’t have to build them until you need them but keeping things in the back of your mind is useful so you can start fleshing them out and foreshadowing them to the players.

Faction Relationships

Factions are a great way to create dynamic environments that players can use and get immersed in. Part of what makes factions so fun is their relationships with each other, but it can be hard to vary the ways in which factions relate to one another.
Provided below are the different relationships that factions can have and a random table that you can use to implement these connections easier.
In nature, you have a lot of different relationships that you can have which are summed up in this handy chart and can be applied to factions:
Each type of relationship is further defined below as well as two others: mimicry and obligate.
Note that your most powerful faction isn’t always going to be at the top of this chart: they can easily have a parasitic relationship with all the other factions.
If you’re not sure what the relationship should be, go ahead and roll on the following table:

Threat	Relationships
1	Mutualism
2	Commensalism
3	Parasitism
4	Neutralism
5	Amensalism
6	Competition
7	Mimicry
8	Obligate

Mutualism

This means that two factions have a reciprocally beneficial relationship with one another: both get something out of the relationship.
We, as humans, actually have this with the bacteria in our gut: the gut help us digest things faster and we provide it with food.
In a dungeon, this could be outlaws and a crown-of-thorns bush: the outlaws tend and care for the bush and the bush, in turn, provides a layer of defense for the outlaws.
Or it could be a band of outlaws and kobolds: the kobolds provide a fortified lair and safety while the outlaws are able to barter with the outside world, providing the kobolds with materials they wouldn’t normally have access to.

Commensalism

This means that one faction benefits but the other doesn’t, but the relationship doesn’t hurt the second faction.
In the dungeon, this could be goblins and undead: the undead move through the dungeon, wiping out bigger threats and the goblins follower after which makes scavenging easier for them.
Additionally, it could be the relationship between hobgoblins and pit traps that drop them to lower levels: using ropes and ladders, they can use these for quicker movement through the levels.

Parasitism

This means that one faction is actively harmed by the relationship while the other benefits. This is typical of diseases and parasites (no surprise) but it can be employed by larger monsters because it is a classic predator-prey relationship.
In the dungeon, this could be infectious zombies and the living inhabitants of a dungeon. As the zombies kill more of the denizens, the zombies actively grow stronger, and the inhabitants grow weaker.
Or it could be a trap that feeds on blood, growing sharper with each drop.

Neutralism

This means that neither faction benefits nor is harmed by the other. They’ve reached some kind of stasis.
What makes this relationship interesting is asking ‘why’ the relationship is stable because peace is not a natural state for things to be in. Knowing this reason means that you know exactly how the players will screw up the balance.
In the dungeon, this could mean a truce between orcs and outlaws after the arrival of a third threat: both sides are really just waiting for the third threat to be taken care of or waiting for the other faction to show weakness before striking.

Amensalism

This means that a faction actively harms another but gains no benefit from it. It is truly the ‘dick move’ of the relationship matrix.
In the dungeon, this could be normal traps.
Or it could be hobgoblins who are naturally destructive to their environment, breaking stuff and desecrating places of worship just for the fun of it.

Competition

This means that both factions are actively hurting each other. Most of the time this is due to competition over the same resources, but it could just be due to the fact that each creates a destructive environment for the other.
In the dungeon, this could be the relationship between a wyvern and giant spiders. The spiders weave webs which hinder the wyvern’s movement and visibility, and the wyvern destroys their webs in turn and may even snack on one occasionally.
Or it could be a large ogre that sets off traps as it goes. The traps hurt the ogre and the ogre breaks the traps or, at the very least, forces them to take time to reset where they’re ineffective.
A special note about competition: it can be within the same faction or species but, usually, this is resolved through social posturing (Confrontations, if you’re using the Bonfire ruleset) and doesn’t usually escalate.

Mimicry

This is when one faction is pretending to be another to harness the benefits of that faction.
In the dungeon, this could be goblins who’re pretending to be the dragon by mimicking its tracks and noises so that they scare more powerful enemies off.
Or it could be a trap that does the same thing: the players think they’re about to run into a dragon but it’s the trap making the sounds and perhaps breathing fire not to kill but to ward off.

Obligate

This means that one faction relies on the other for its survival. Without one faction, the other dies.
You’ll want to roll again on the table to see what the specific details of the relationship are beyond that.
In the dungeon, this could be a dragon who’s grown too big to leave and who feasts on goblins. If the goblins were wiped out, the dragon would slowly starve to death, despite its raw strength.
Or it could be a fungus in the water that cleans it, making it safe to drink. If the fungus is wiped out, plague will run rampant in the outlaw band, and many will die. On the flip side, the outlaws regularly drinking from the water actually keep the fungus from spreading: if they’re wiped out, the fungus will spread and become toxic to itself, killing it off.

Example

We’re going to take an average village with a number of factions and roll randomly to create their relationships.
In this village we have:

Mayor

Traders

Guards

Farmers

Priest

Pretty standard village – we’ll even decide that the Mayor is the most powerful faction and define all other factions by their relationships to him. When we roll on the random table, we get this:

Mayor – Parasitism

Traders – Mutualism

Guards – Competition

Farmers – Obligate

Priest – Neutralism

Why did I also roll for the Mayor? Because I was curious about his relationship to whoever put him in power because it tells me something about him.
So, let’s go over each faction and hash out a few details:

Mayor

The Mayor is a Parasite, which means that he’s benefiting off of harming someone else.
This can either be his relationship to the town he runs – he’s siphoning off of gold from the coffers of his people to fill his own private bank or he could be doing this to his boss who is perhaps the lord of the area.
Seeing that the Farmers have an Obligate relationship to the Mayor, I actually think that he’s actually siphoning off money from his liege lord and using it to fund, not himself, but the Farmers, who’ve just been having a bad time lately.
Perhaps the village is in particularly rough and arid land and so farming is tough at the best of times, but it’s been particularly hard lately, so the Mayor has been pleading on his people’s behalf for extra food to get them through the lean times.
Tells you a lot about the man and the area already.

Traders

Traders have a Mutual relationship with the Mayor – that’s pretty easy with what we know already, actually. Because the Mayor is bringing food and money into the area, someone has to transport that cargo, which would be the traders.
Additionally, even in good times, having a village there provides a stopping place for travelers and a market to sell goods at.
Both parties benefit from this arrangement.

Guards

The Guards are in competition with the Mayor. No doubt the leader of the Guards could be mayor themselves – perhaps they were even up for the nomination but got passed over. Now they want to undermine the Mayor’s authority.
But doing so weakens them as well somehow.
I think, in this case, the Guards are clearly thugs, and their heavy-handed tactics make the Mayor seem weak but also sours everyone’s relationship with them as well.

Farmers

So, we already know why the Farmers are obligate to the Mayor – the Mayor provides them with funds that help them survive through this particularly lean time.

Priest

Finally, the priest who is completely neutral to the Mayor. The Priest probably has his own sphere of influence that he’s struggling for recognition on – namely within his church. He’s looking to get promoted or find a cushion parish somewhere, so he really isn’t all that concerned about the village. Even if it dies, he’ll just be transferred someplace.

Filling Out the Other Details

From here, you can fill out the other factions’ relationships to each other – how does the Priest feel about the Farmers. You can either roll randomly for it or simply suss out what might make the most logical sense based on their other, predefined relationships.
You can also use this method to outline sub-factions, which is super great if your players are going to be interacting with a faction for an extended period of time. Do all the Guards agree with their leader and want the same things? Are there those that do agree with his methods but think that their candidate should be the one running the show?