Faction Structure
Power Relations in TTRPGs | Talzur Factions
Last year I began work on a fantasy campaign set in an urban metropolis, my world’s version of Sharn or Ankh-Morpork. I needed it to feel alive, pulling the wool over the eyes of anyone who looked at it to simulate a vast and complex society that held 2 million people (some of which are wizards, weird medieval punks and rat people made from trash). The key word here is appear, as it couldn’t be a genuine simulation of a city, it needs to help facilitate a game rather than hinder.
Factions are obvious means of illustrating this depth. Guilds, gangs, colleges and secret societies are all real social groups that exist in real life and offer promises of membership, antagonism and more. If you’re simulating an interesting and dramatic world these factions probably have opinions of the other factions in this world, some allies and some enemies.
Problem is, keeping in-depth tabs of too many of these smaller factions is difficult and increases in difficulty the more factions you add into the mix, even before you add in fantastical elements like spellbooks and magical creatures.
How do you map power relations? What’s the simplest relationship between groups, and which one is most ideal for designing interesting settings?
My answer is to put 5 factions in your game. Five really well-thought-out, fleshed out and dynamic factions that are important to what your players want to do, and relevant to any overarching plot. I arrived at 5 because it’s a much more complex web than only 3, and because they can be arranged on a star. Look:
Each faction in this web of relations and power have neighbors. Two close or adjacent neighbors that function as allies, and two far or opposed neighbors that function as enemies. In this example here, Faction A is allied to Factions B and Faction E; Faction A is firmly opposed to / at war-with Factions D and C. This lets you display all the important factions in one image as well as how they interact in the setting.
This doesn’t mean every faction that exists in your setting needs to be put on a map and webbed-together, nor that these five factions are the only ones around. There could be a dozen little different groups in your fantasy world: goblin tribes, scholarly groups, mercenary companies and more that are all either a) too small to matter compared to “the big five” and b) their influence is either diminished or in realms beyond the scope of play. Going too lost in that sauce gets you something like the type map from modern Pokémon games that are borderline un-parsable:
This method or process of five important factions can be used for both small-scale and large-scale purposes. It’s how I created the five important factions for the fantasy metropolis game I’m running at my table, but also in the future I think I will absolutely follow this model when creating established settings in TTRPG products.
To show you how this method plays out (either at your table or in creating a setting for someone else to use in a product) let me give you a concrete example.
My fantasy metropolis is called Talzur, City by the Sea and center of the known world. It exists on a vast trade network of sea lanes and overland routes across farmland and savanna, and anything or anyone from anywhere can be found trawling its streets. There’s adventure abound in the sea-serpent filled waves, deadly politics being debated in the city’s senate halls and wars for dominance between two sea-faring empires on either side of that great expanse. Yet, our heroes find themselves fighting at street level clearing out basements full of rats in the greatest city in this - or any - age. Here are the five factions most important to street-level rogues:
The Port Authority are Talzur’s city watch. They get their name from the city’s clear connection to the Serpent Sea, but also as an in-joke for my players (my city’s real life public transit used to have the same name, so the buses and fantasy cops are both notoriously late). They are allied to The Interfaith Council because they are both dedicated to maintaining the status quo and a non-violent peace. They’re allied to The Consortium because the wealthy merchants find themselves buying more and more of the city watch to defend their interests, increasingly prioritizing the wealthy over taxpayers.
They’re enemies with The Banu Khaldun because they are thieves who steal from the rich, and this puts them further in the pockets of their Consortium allies. They’re enemies with The Alazhar Compact because they jockey for authority over enforcing the city’s laws. This wizard guild called The Compact were given special dispensation to regulate arcane spellcasting, and while the compact and The Port Authority often work together, they butt heads over who is truly in charge when it comes to rogue wizards lighting potion shops on fire.
With just one in-depth explanation, you can see why I like the system. You have to already know who these groups are, but once you arrange them around one another, new stories emerge from why they like X but hate Y. Because The Consortium ended up on the opposite side of the church faction, they probably hate each other because these merchants import and traffic substances the church views as profane, and both rely upon (or suck up to!) the city watch to try and jockey for dominance.
And these five aren’t the only factions that exist in Talzur. There’s a whole political system of councilors and local parties within the city. There’s the Hermetic Brotherhood of Alazhar, the cults of Ioun and The Rat God, lodges of riflemen and athletes and troupes of performers who re-enact ancient battles in old amphitheaters….but they’re in the background. I can describe their names and what they’re doing but they’re not important to a) the player’s interest in this ttrpg campaign and b) not important to the plot ticking in the background. You can put as many factions as you like in your setting, but only bring five of them into life to create a living and breathing fictional world.
There’s enough adventure from five living breathing factions butting heads!
Thank you for reading. I am going to be posting new issues of Hearthside on Mondays, taking a page out of Scott Lynch’s Lynchline (of which I am a huge fan). Next week I will run through the creative process I undertook when I made my “living” fantasy metrpolis Talzur, so be sure to subscribe and keep a look out for more. I have yet to post a #dungeon23 update but it’s simply because I’ve been having enough fun just doing it on my own.
Keep writing!
Great writing and advices. I look forward to use these tips for my game.