PC factions
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I have been wondering for a while about what the community thinks are the most important factors to consider when forming a PC faction.
I'd like to hear any ic issues rather than ooc ones (like active players).
What do you like to see?
DM involvement? A rigid hierarchy? Gear provided? Potential pvp? -
Common Goal is absolutely key and, I think, the reason a faction survives any length of time.
Without the common goal, the faction dissolves.
Without a faction, a common goal can often wither on the vine. -
1. Have common core objectives that are both achievable in steps, and popular over a spectrum of player concepts
2. Have an active and available leadership, constantly performing events, quests and interacting
3. Distribution of authority or objectives to achiever PCs, while providing entertainment to follower PCs
4. Do all three, and you win -
Common Goal is absolutely key and, I think, the reason a faction survives any length of time.
Without the common goal, the faction dissolves.
Without a faction, a common goal can often wither on the vine.This is bang on. The group needs to have a well formed goal that they can work towards with or with out the leaders about.
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From personal experience it's best if you don't have only one single driving member of a PC faction.
The DM factions are consistent. They're still here because the DMs, any DM really, can pop on and point at you and say, "Go and do this or I flay you alive!" It's well known by now that DM attention can make or break a faction, and that's a lesson that can be applied to a PC faction as well.
The most solid PC factions I've seen or been a part of have all had 2-3 people who were mover/shaker types, or possibly 1-2 mover-shaker types who simply persevered past the general flakiness of people gaining and losing interest. What drives Mover/Shakers? Goals. Totally agree with Lamancha. Taking it a step further, the factions themselves need to be interesting, and they need to be self-sufficient.
Where a lot of Factions lack umph is that they're fun in the beginning, but they don't seem to offer much benefit for doing things with them or staying in the faction. That's something the lead mover/shaker needs to figure out. Sometimes it can really be as simple as 'I get to interact with a fun character', or it could be a faction base, or some sort of special plot or special knowledge or involvement that makes it fun.
So it not only has to be a goal, it really needs to be a group goal that the characters commonly hold or believe in, there needs to be a tangible reason that the faction even exists at all (the goal must be a GROUP goal that one or two people can't just accomplish by themselves), and then there (optionally) needs to be a reason to stay in the faction after the goal's been addressed because if the faction's going to survive, it needs a way to generate NEW goals or purposes. I don't think I've ever seen a rag-tag PC faction stay together for long, there's gotta be a VISION.
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Having viable builds that can go out and survive places like Underdark and Helmlands and also quest successfully is key. A faction of wizards and rogues won't get very far hunting that plot item without a fighter or three with them.
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There's two main styles of player faction I've seen do well. Not to say they're mutually exclusive, but people have made one or the other and everything inbetween.
Mercenary Faction e.g. Iron Wings, Gilded Gauntlet
-Recruit broadly
-Have a strong sense of community, sometimes of exclusivity (look at our shiny uniforms etc.)
-Make it rewarding (in the sense of faction ranks) for players to engage with them
-Create fun IG by giving people a goal to achieve (join the faction / advance in rank)
-People know if the faction is involved in anything, there will be players to interact with
-Quite a few have had memorable times on CoA without significant DM involvementControversial Faction e.g. Banite Police Trio, Red Scarves, Theur Everae
-Instigates rivalries with a controversial agenda
-Tends to draw DM involvement in as they talk about one-upping everyone else, and everyone else talks of one-upping them
-Unlike controversial PCs who can similarly draw DM attention, a group gets across that initial hurdle of "do more than two or three people even care about this?" more easily due to sheer numbers.
-Can be more controversial than a lone PC without being completely sidelined as they will always have each other to bounce with if relations go really bad.Having viable builds that can go out and survive places like Underdark and Helmlands and also quest successfully is key. A faction of wizards and rogues won't get very far hunting that plot item without a fighter or three with them.
This was basically the Mage's Guild for a good while. A group of a dozen with one fighter between them and he was some fighter/wizard abomination. Every encounter was the end of the world. "I will invis and scout them out" "no, I have two summons left, let me send in the clockworks to explode first" "FIREBAAALL" "oh damn, there he goes again, I'm stoneskinning myself".
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This was basically the Mage's Guild for a good while. A group of a dozen with one fighter between them and he was some fighter/wizard abomination. Every encounter was the end of the world. "I will invis and scout them out" "no, I have two summons left, let me send in the clockworks to explode first" "FIREBAAALL" "oh damn, there he goes again, I'm stoneskinning myself".
This is my idea of a good time.
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This was basically the Mage's Guild for a good while. A group of a dozen with one fighter between them and he was some fighter/wizard abomination. Every encounter was the end of the world. "I will invis and scout them out" "no, I have two summons left, let me send in the clockworks to explode first" "FIREBAAALL" "oh damn, there he goes again, I'm stoneskinning myself".
Abomination?
… how insulting.
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The gist of it is, with all of the Cormyrean loyalists around there seems to be little in the way of opposition from those loyal to Hardcastle and the citadel.
With my next character, should he be approved, I'm hoping to address this. Part of the approach will be to reform the 'Adventurers Guild of Arabel'. I've personally had mixed success with creating PC factions, and was hoping for as many factors as possible that I could influence that would lead to engaging as many of the non Cormyrean loyalists as possible.
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I've never understood the "loyalist" vs "non-loyalist". In the end, they all work together against evil threats and most become friends with disagreements being little more than cute "agree to disagree" arguments.
A true conflict between them would help define the directions and goals.
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I mean, the dust is still settling, so who knows where its going to go. But, right now is not a Loyalist vs non-Loyalist standoff. I would liken it more towards Bhaliir vs Thond then a civil war.
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@Leaders:
I mean, the dust is still settling, so who knows where its going to go. But, right now is not a Loyalist vs non-Loyalist standoff. I would liken it more towards Bhaliir vs Thond then a civil war.
This is definitely where I'm at. Things are changing, and I have no idea how they're changing, but I'd like to see lots of Loyalist - non-loyalist conflict inside Arabel and lots of Loyalist & Non-loyalist collaboration against outside threats.
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Just to clarify what i mean a little bit, the tension starts like this: Hardcastle has been Warden of the North for some time now with little interference from the king in the south. Now here comes these Nobles marching north out of nowhere, infringing on his territory and bringing a battalion of purple dragons with them. It started with Dracohorn, but now he brought his boys to the party too. That's pretty much where its at at this point. There's no war for the north on the cusp of breaking out or anything, everyone is cormyrian. It's just tension between nobles. That of course could all change in a heartbeat.
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While the server is usually roughly "evil vs good" it now seems to be "loyalists, including evil ones plus non-loyalists (ie, people who don't really care) vs the few other evil people".
To the avarage adventurer, wether Cormyr rules Arabel or Hardcastle rules Arabel, there doesn't seem to be much difference.
Watch here an educational video regardingpolitical partiescurrent factions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njYlAcJ ... 6&index=56 -
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The most important thing for a player faction is a story arc. It needs a foundation, a struggle, and an ending. Nothing that lasts for too long will ever stay popular, it will always stagnate. The best thing to do is to have some kind of end game planned, a struggle / conflict to reach there, and a strong beginning to draw interest.
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A faction needs flavor. Any faction that falls into generic tropes will get old real quick. It has to have something that appeals to people's curiosity.
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Exclusivity. Any faction that takes in anyone loses some of the special feel. There needs to be a feeling of belonging to something cool, rather than a community center. Obviously, it can't be too exclusive or OOCly exclusive, but there are ways to make this happen. Insist on a trial before joining, a trial that can actually result in failure. Race based factions, like the Bedine or the Theur. A faction of paladins unwilling to compromise on the slightest issue. Could be anything, really. This again, ties in with the first point, of having a real story arc.
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Classes are irrelevant. If a faction's really doing good, they'll get more stuff than they ever need to survive.
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Join the world. Pretty important. The faction needs to be a part of the world, not living in a bubble unaffected by anyone or affecting nothing around it. Anything that doesn't draw a reaction from anyone else is going to get dull pretty quick. A faction of wizards who do nothing but vague "research" and try not to piss anyone off or even do anything dangerous is dullness central. Would that really be something you want to read about in a book? A story should be something you want to read about later and go "hot damn, that was exciting."
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Claimable bases (which we'd love to add more of) are also a cool little thing you can use to help your player faction along. They grant you (close to) DM faction level perks to an extent.
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Claimable bases (which we'd love to add more of) are also a cool little thing you can use to help your player faction along. They grant you (close to) DM faction level perks to an extent.
Most of the crafting systems were designed to be far easier to pull off as a group than alone. Having access to high level crafting may not seem worth it because by the time you can make the stuff you may have found something better for yourself, but it's very useful in the sense that your faction can make gear for its newer members, and exactly the type of armor/shield/weapon.
Claimable bases like Zool said are also a very handy perk, combining the two things together means that you can both house and equip the members of your faction, if you add a potion brewer or wandcrafter to the mix then you've got some pretty gnarly perks going on.
If your faction makes alliances or finds npc sponsors ontop of all that then your pc faction pretty much has the same feel as a high end dm faction seeing as it's got reasonable loot for new members, lodging, discount prices on consumables, unique perks and possibly powerful allies and backers.
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In my opinion, the most important activities in PC factions boil down to involving and sharing.
People join factions because they want to bond with other players and do stuff together. So if you can consistently involve them (no matter if in DM quests or just fun RP) and share your plots with them, that'd be enough. Heck, even if you don't have much of a great story arc but produce fun for people who play with you, you've already got a successful faction.