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Wait... Are you telling me that your adventuring parties are so uncooperative with each other that no one just ASKS the other party members for help with their own faction objectives that you had to force everyone into the same faction?
@@theDMLair It's what you implied. By not bringing this possibility up when you where complaining about you not wanting to split time between players and you preferring to focus on group activities , it suggest that none of your players where willing to help the others with individual objectives so you turned it into group objectives instead.
@The DM Lair Hope you see this 2 years after posting this video but I have a question about how you communicate this to your players. Are you open about the numbers behind the favors or is this more for your oversight? Are they known to the fact that they lose favor with a faction based on a certain action (besides the obvious ones where they are actively aggressive)? Basically, how do you communicate to the players how their standing is with each faction?
@@theDMLair If a celetrial or phuto-dragon seems to trust a person, I feel more inclined to trust that person; because celestrials are allmost allways good, and in the lore, phutodragons are unlikely to trust any but the most benevonent humanoids.
Another thing you could do with the individual faction system is have a couple of faction missions running at the same time, perhaps in conflict with each other, and have certain players who aren't aligned with either faction choose which side to be on for the time being. This way, you could still involve all your players and introduce a little interpersonal conflict without necessarily derailing the main campaign too heavily
Aside for establishing motives, I DO have an idea for where factions would gather for meetings, handing out quests, etc. 1. Divine temple for Paladins & Clerics 2. Magic school for Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards 3. An underground "sanctuary" for Rogues (Thieves/Assassins) 4. A location in a forest for Druids, Rangers and (maybe) Barbarians 5. A military base-like location for other Fighters (knights) 6. A different type of temple for Monks Please let me know if I left any out
The Neverwinter Nights game has a "faction" system but it has a slightly different purpose. It determines how the NPCs behave toward each other and toward the players. There are standard factions such as: Commoner: Your standard flavour NPC who usually just wanders around and looks pretty. Merchant: NPCs who sell stuff. Yeah, I know, it's an awesome concept. ;) Defender: NPCs who defend anyone in the above two factions. City guards, scouting patrols, etc. The Player Faction: All players are automatically their own faction, hence it's one faction and several factions at the same time. Hostile: The Monster NPCs. They attack anyone in any of the above factions on sight. But if you make your own custom modules, you can make your own custom factions. One example of a custom faction is a "Collaborator" faction which is initially friendly toward both the Player Faction and the Hostile Faction, and the Hostile faction is friendly toward anyone in the Collaborator Faction. There are also scripting commands to allow temporary or permanent adjustments to be made to a player's Faction Reputation with a particular faction, so it's possible for a faction to start out being friendly but become hostile either permanently or temporarily, and vice-versa. It's a limited system of course, since it's mechanical and has to follow strict rules, but it still allows for a lot more versatility than you might expect from a mere video game. I forgot to add, the faction system works on a 0-100 basis where 90+ equals friendship (will help you if you're attacked), 0-10 equals enmity (will attack on sight) and anything in between is neutral.
This may seem obvious to some, but if you're going to run a faction heavy campaign pick up a copy of Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. No matter the campaign world, that book has the tools to run faction/guild campaigns. The ten guilds of Ravnica are fully detailed and provide a wide array of tangible benefits to players. If you're not running the game in Ravnica then simply rename the faction in that book. The lord's alliance = the Azorious senate. The flaming fist = the Boros Legion. The Harper's = house dimir, but not evil. The emerald enclave = the selesnyan conclave. The zhentarim = either the Orzhov syndicate or also house dimir. The cult of the dragon = the Gruul clans. Each Guild's description comes with full write ups, a background tied to agents of that guild, and rewards players earn for gaining enough renown to rank up in the guilds. Plus the back half of the book is practically its own monster manual.
@@theDMLair when it was announced there was a lot of nay saying over it coming out before the Eberron book and not mixing the D&D chocolate with the MtG peanut butter, but realistically that book has everything you need to make backgrounds and factions as big a part of character development/concept as class and race.
Yeah and people where saying it was a money grab or a way to get MtG people into DnD or vice versa. (And even if it were, who cares. Lots of people like the book.)
Great timing, I just finished mapping out all the intrigue and factions at play in my main city. Really looking forward to implementing much of what you've talked about here!
i never understood the concept of sending assassins... i mean, unless the party are extremely over-leveled in comparison to the other potential adventurer parties in the setting, you could always have a faction set up a bounty for the PCs. Think about it. Why would a faction waste manpower, especially the no-doubt valuable services of hand-picked assassins, on a troublesome party when they instead could be using those particular services for things more aligned to their goals (e.g. kill a rival faction leader, or whatever)? The PC party is usually little more than a noticeable distraction (at first) when they start to directly interfere with any particular faction, so why would said faction personally hire assassins or use their own when they instead can just name a price and send out fliers? Let someone else do the dirty work, the faction has more important matters to attend to. And then if the PC party still manages to interfere further, keep hiring the price until either it's no longer affordable or it cannot be ignored by even the most uninterested of people. For instance, Lord Paxton (did i spell that right?) seems like they type of individual who can afford whatever he could need, so he's got the resources to set such a price. You could easily have someone like him write down enough zeros that'll make even the friendliest of towns into a most dangerous place to traverse for wanted men.
The rationale for me is quite simple. And adventuring party has been decimating the Lieutenant's and other allies of a faction. What if action just sit by and do nothing while that adventuring party continues to pick off all of their allies and faction members one by one? That doesn't make any sense to me. I think a faction would probably send people to take out the adventuring party.
It's worth pointing out that a "hit squad" isn't necessarily a highly trained assassin, nor even a group of assassins... Whatever caliber of NPC's they are, there's more available to the mechanics of "sending" them to dispatch (or attempt it) a troublesome bunch of Characters. The actual craft of assassination has lost a lot from the history. We (today, IRL) can put a gun in someone's hand and he can then manage that weapon in a matter of weeks or even months... firing over distances approaching a mile with precision enough to strike a human sized target. The older craft assassin had several methods and spent years to master his or her skillset... There was simply more to it than steady hands and good vision. There were different types of assassins, too. Some specialized in venoms or toxins, others learned silent weapons and sneak attacks like strangulation, so as not to rouse the locals to the job. Still others worked with specifically thrown weapons or crossbows and the like... BUT they also had "back up" in case their primary choice was unavailable or rendered useless. A hit squad, is basically (traditionally mind you) roughly on a par with gangsters and bandits, just specialized enough to manage a brutal force for most "guaranteed kill" jobs. Think bounty hunters who specialize on the "dead" part of the "dead or alive" bounties... It's not to say they weren't skilled or competent, but the "fair market value" is different for the difference from "proficient" to "mastery" (another term that's lost its zeal for overuse in recent times). ;o)
With players being members of different factions, what I typically suggest is making sure that other players can, at least, help the other player in some way. For example, let's say a Paladin and a Rogue (who is a bounty hunter) happen to be in the same party. The rogue checks with the guild and looks for bounties and finds one they like. This is technically a bounty hunting guild quest, but there probably isn't an explicit reason why the Paladin can't assist the Rogue in tracking down their quarry.
Yes, this right here! There's no reason that the other players can't/won't/shouldn't help each other for different faction objectives. The "You help me with my thing and I'll help you with your thing" is one of the MAIN reasons to form a party after all.
If using individual factions, yes ideally they would become group efforts. The main reason any group I've ever been in has formed a party was to go on adventures together.
In fairness there are reasons... BUT none of them are good. AND just for the record, if a guild-quest or "faction sponsored operation" became a group effort for more than one or two members, I would certainly count it as an adventure, and be sure to create some reasonable ways for any PC's left out to earn XP on their own "erstwhile activities" or manage them a net benefit to balance things out. Side quests help with scheduling conflicts as well... Many times a larger group could only manage to free up the time together maybe once a month, while individuals could show up for a session or three in the meantime... SO we divided up the party and let side quests and smaller adventures still get Players together with a GM to play, earn XP and create stories... Then the once a month could roll around and we'd share notes while on something considerably "more epic" in nature... Matt Coleville has a video from some time back that explains how he does this, too. I just saw the DM Lair's take on scheduling destroying more groups and being a number one complaint... SO if you have a large unpredictable lot, you can use these sorts of things to keep everyone Playing D&D and the adventures and Character arcs can get even more interesting when one of the guys or gals has to rush to the group and warn them, "Um... I think I might have f***ed up royal.... oh... and I maybe started the apocalypse about a week ago. Help..." ;o)
@@theDMLair I don't know why but TH-cam never showed you replied. So at this point I'm sure it's too late. But I'm doing okay. Not terrible. Not super. But trying to be well. :)
My current game was supposed to just be a dungeon diver to pass the time between waiting for a couple people to get off work for my other campaign, but the quarantine hit so my dad, my brother and I just decided to play this one more now and so we finished the dungeon and now I had to like add a bunch of factions, but basically now the campaign is a gang war. I love mafia stuff so it’s perfect :).
My current campaign has a character and his faction in charge of the undercity of the city the players are in. He has taken a very high level of interest in the players and tried to help them and give them quests. He’s seemingly been trying to increase his favor with the player faction. Since this flips the usual dynamic, the players have been very confused and haven’t murdered him despite him giving red flags and the chances the players had.
I was recently running a Star Wars campaign (set more or less in the same time period as The Mandalorian, between Ep 6 and 7). Factions in the galaxy recovering from the Empire were definitely at the forefront of their adventure.
I have a cult of Orcus that the group is at odds with and I never classified them as a faction but it is interesting to see it be used in this way, thank you for this.
I am a first time DM and I have been binging your videos for weeks😂 your advice is so good and also easy to watch as opposed to hour-long info dumps😅 Do you let your players know where favour with each of the factions or is it just something you keep track of? If you tell them, how much do you tell them or in what way??
Awesome well thank you for binging on the content. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying it. :-) yes I do tell my players what their favor is with each faction. I just tell them the straight-up numbers and they keep track of it. I think it's part of the fun for them to know what their favor is with each faction.
In my Grim Hollow campaign, our party learned about 5 magical roots (plants) spread throughout the continent. They ended up accidentally getting one themselves. Several major nations have different views on how the roots should be handled. There is no real end to the game. The players decide on how they want to handle the roots themselves and how they choose to work with the various nations. At the moment, they believe the roots need to be destroyed. So pretty much every faction is their enemy...
@@theDMLair and OH MY GOD I need to write my english with more attention. Sorry I keep sending you post during you lives and in the comment that's missing words :P I'm french, so sometime my brain doesn't compute correctly :P Thank alot for your content ! Keept at it ! :)
Perfect Video for me. Playing Chapter 2 of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist tonight with evil players. Teifling and Drow. I prepared Bregan D'aerthe, Zhentarim and Xanathar's Guild as the factions. Included many side quests for my players to go on and to let them choose which faction(s) to join. They declined all loan offers last session and wanted quests to get coin to fix up Trollskull Tavern.
Factions are a great way to populate your campaigns and give a bit more character to some NPCs your players find dull Example: a bakers guild that's actually a cover for a local crime family smuggling stuff in and out of the city in bags of flour, an NPC the players can interact with is the mill owner now they are viewed as disposable until your players find out that they are a high ranking member of the bakers guild.
The word you're looking for is "flour" although bags of flower(s) would be interesting... maybe they're harvesting poppies supposedly for the seeds to put on muffins, but they're also extracting you-know-what from the rest of the flower?
@@Empressofnight English spelling can be a *lot* strange. :) I'm a native English speaker and can write well, but even I find some spellings strange. And it gets worse when you get into the strange regional differences between the USA and the rest of the English-speaking world.
I am so glad I found this video. New to DMing and was feeling overwhelmed just thinking about factions. This makes so much sense to me! I do have a question. I'm running the waterdeep dragon heist module and am figuring out how each faction will view each of the quests of the other factions. However, I'm finding that certain factions, ie. Lords Alliance would look favorably on most of the quests. Would you only do certain ones give favor? Or allow all of the quests to give 1 favor in such factions?
4 fingers and a thumb. This video came out just in time because I was trying to figure out how to do exactly this yesterday as I was writing basics for my own home brew campaign setting. I will be implementing this system in my current campaign! Thanks Luke, though I do have a question, to you also have a set of rules that determine how much favor a situation is worth?
Awesome video 👍 I didn't even know about factions until now, and my players have alot of bad stuff coming there way they are now known as the slayer of priest. Don't get me started on that 😂
If you need to generate factions and political powers VERY fast, I have a dirty system that can do that in a matter of a couple hours. First, make a list of 24 personality traits, pair them off randomly. Then have 24 buisness or government functions for them to have control of, such as armies, valuable mines, or patronage of a trade guild. Now roll 3 D12's for each list, removing duplicates, for six factions. These can be nobles or independant groups, as you see fit. Now, pair off rivalries for four of them. These are the overt personality conflicts, such as Sadists vs Idealists, or two groups with a Business conflict (such as one with a major iron mine and another with control over major blacksmiths). The other two become manipulators in those conflicts, so for each conflict, you have someone that is either trying to profit from the conflict, encourage further conflict, or attempting to resolve it. Lastly, do the same for 3 more groups. These are your thieves guilds/underworld influences. One is a smuggler group, the second is a thieves guild, and the third are the local hit-men/assassins/hired muscle. Because these, too, have business influences, you can establish relationships with the main factions. Now add in a cult, the main temple(s), and the 'powers that be' that rule the city/region. Build the flavor from the framework. Perhaps the party's favorite tavern in the low-rent end of town is run by someone with an affiliation with the smuggler group, or the merchant's guild's main patron is a Principled, yet Greedy Sadist, turning them from 'just a business' to a major source of conflict as they try to wield that influence to viciously exploit the vulnerable.
Interesting! If you want a cool alternative or to add to this, look up Hexed Press' video on hacking Pandemics (a board game) to use as factions' mechanic!
Hey what's up ketchup. Because my cats don't like to be picked up. You would basically see me in a cape struggling to hold a cat who is violently trying to scratch my eyes out. So yeah that's why. LOL
the DM Lair I don’t like being carried off by giant tigers so I understand. Maybe I’d let one giant tiger carry me around- but only my special giant tiger. I bet I’d scratch like hell
ok, I have an issue with not wanting to have individual goals. I actually encourage my players to have individual goals that they want to achieve during the game. If the rogue wants to start an orphanage wherein the orphans are taught skills like blacksmithing during the day, and to be spies at night, (I did this btw), why would the rest of the party want to get involved with that? Each party members overall goals can help guide the behaviors of that player. Sure, they are all working on the group goals at the same time, but incorporating how that group goal will help the player achieve their goals.
Luke's acting is so good that when the thumbnail started playing I honestly asked myself for about half a second "hmHow did he all the actors together during quarantine?"
Luke I love your content and they've helped me a lot along the way. But your intro is just not my style of entertainment, and I don't mean this in a bad way at all. I actually think you're very talented. I just wish you'd put a card on your videos so people like me could skip the intro a go right to the content.
I'm getting ready to join an adventures league game once the craziness settles down a smidge. How exactly do players in it select the faction they are apart of? I mean do you just write it down on your history and if the DM approves it your cool, or is it something you have to select kind of like your background where you choose if you were a street urchin/ criminal/sage/noble/ etc ? I have tried asking this question several places ( amongst some other ones I can't find the answers to anywhere even the AL FAQ) if anyone could take the time to answer me (and maybe answer one or two other questions about AL) I surely would appreciate it!
I may have missed it, but your faction chart - is it hidden information or is it information the player's can see? Good video! Reminds me of Baldur's Gate reputation :)
@@theDMLair Its a list of all sounds a human can consistently produce, organized by their location, which you can use to create languages, or more importantly for most DMs, pretend that they've created a language.
I’m currently in the process of practicing DMing on my main R20 account by having my two alt accounts be the players (who have not once metagamed). I pretend each alt account is two separate players (totaling four) so that I don’t need to make six accounts for a reasonably sized party (and I only trust the four biggest browsers anyway). This DM practice is with Lost Mines of Phandelver, so spoilers I guess? The party managed to lose all their shit to the goblin ambush, then immediately after they bought replacements in Phandalin, they got captured by the Redbrands (the only males in the game were two latecomers who were killed, and one latecomer who’s still fairly close to Neverwinter, so that’s why the main party wasn’t killed). The party’s Fighter managed to pull off the Stacy’s Mom gambit TWICE (the first time, the Redbrands she turned traitor were killed outside the taphouse by other Redbrands and they were recaptured, and the second time, the second set of traitors were also killed but the party managed to defeat the bugbears and escape Phandalin the next day). They’re now at the Cragmaw hideout to get their old stuff back, but they freed the goblin slave from the Redbrand’s bugbears and the de facto goblin leader decided it was the last straw, that they didn’t care about holding Sildar anymore and just wanted their boss bugbear gone (which is already the case as written but the circumstances here made the goblins more favourable). If everything goes as planned, after the party gets Sildar and their stuff back, the goblins will begin planning a rebellion against the bugbears while the party goes back to finish off the Redbrands, whose numbers dropped so drastically that Glasstaff has made further contact with the big bad for help.
How do I know if I’m overthinking the world building process. The way I’m going about it is I have to make the skeleton of the starting kingdom so who’s the royals what areas of the kingdom are there I’m only going in depth on the one the group is going to be in. However I’ve written down ideas for the rest of the continent and only really names the other continents of the world. Right now I’m making a faction that works in all kingdoms haven’t figured it out yet. However the reason I’m writing this is because my friends I try and bounce ideas off of say I’m overthinking/ planning too much any thoughts on what to do
Yeah not everything appeals to everyone you know. My argument has always been that if you don't like the skits you skip ahead to the rest of the content. But not doing the skits gets robs like the 90% of people that do like them.
My DND world is FILLED with the worst factions possible, a pit of chaos amidst the desert. The Factions are all fighting to see who can be more horrible and cruel, the players love this chaos!
Sono sugestion for implementing factions um curse of Strahd that talks more with Barovia tham the Forgotten Realms ones in the Werewolfs on the Mist at the beginig of the book?
That's probably gonna be pretty difficult to add realistic factions into that kinda setting because of how how isolated it is... I'd recommend a browse of r/CoS though, you might find some stuff you like in there.
While I like the content, I mostly don't appreciate the intro with party talking characters. I just skip it to the interesting part because it feels it's kind of dumb (not the characterization, it's the dialogs I have problems with). I know it's supposed to be for comedy or something like that... Anyone sharing my feeling or is it just that people actually feel that kind of dialogs is representative of their tables?
Sorry you feel that way. It's pretty easy to skip ahead if you don't like the skits. I can tell you that by looking at the analytics and data, most people like them and do watch them.
This background music is really annoying. I just now realized that for the past couple of months you've added in background music. For some reason it wasn't as overt in previous videos as this time - maybe a different track, or the balance between music and voice channel is different. But now, I notice the music in your other recent videos. It works okay for the skits, but really doesn't add anything to the essays.
I don’t understand the rational of making a mechanic for tracking faction favour. It feels overly gamey and artificial to me, especially if they’re a player facing (unlike yours). Sure video games do this but it’s because they don’t have a thinking human being who can just roleplaying the reactions of NPCs.
My rationale is pretty simple. My players and I enjoy doing it. We find it to be fun unless we do it. I don't think you need much more than a reason that. There are lots of groups to do things for no other reason that they find it fun. You know but hey at this isn't your cup of tea then you know you don't got to do it. Different things might be more fun for your groups and for you personally and that's totally cool.
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Wait... Are you telling me that your adventuring parties are so uncooperative with each other that no one just ASKS the other party members for help with their own faction objectives that you had to force everyone into the same faction?
Is that what I said?
@@theDMLair It's what you implied. By not bringing this possibility up when you where complaining about you not wanting to split time between players and you preferring to focus on group activities , it suggest that none of your players where willing to help the others with individual objectives so you turned it into group objectives instead.
@The DM Lair Hope you see this 2 years after posting this video but I have a question about how you communicate this to your players. Are you open about the numbers behind the favors or is this more for your oversight? Are they known to the fact that they lose favor with a faction based on a certain action (besides the obvious ones where they are actively aggressive)? Basically, how do you communicate to the players how their standing is with each faction?
If Luke ever shaves:
"Hi, I am a dungeon master since highschool..."
Everyone - so what? Since yesterday?
He'd have to shave his arms, too, lest they give him away, for no mere high-school boy would be displaying such a sign of manly testosterone...
“I’m not worthless I have a cat” 😂
You know A wise man once said a person's true worth is determined by how many cats they own.
@@theDMLair So if that Druid has a cat and could have several more, DEAR GOD, THAT DRUID'S WORTH THOUSANDS!
@@theDMLair If a celetrial or phuto-dragon seems to trust a person, I feel more inclined to trust that person; because celestrials are allmost allways good, and in the lore, phutodragons are unlikely to trust any but the most benevonent humanoids.
@the DM Lair What if a character *_IS_* a cat?
@@Gemini-Lion If the character is a Tabaxi then the Druid is WORTH MILLIONS
four fingers one thumb. Just now getting back into D&D after about twenty-five years. Boy has it changed.
Yes. I love 5e though.
"but how do we keep our cult secret?"
"easy. We use a name that no one can say."
Another thing you could do with the individual faction system is have a couple of faction missions running at the same time, perhaps in conflict with each other, and have certain players who aren't aligned with either faction choose which side to be on for the time being. This way, you could still involve all your players and introduce a little interpersonal conflict without necessarily derailing the main campaign too heavily
I will choose to ally with the faction backing Gwapo in preparation for the coming cat nobility house wars. Glory to Gwapo ruler of the Dm's lair!!!
Yeah Guapo is adorable!
@@theDMLair charisma is definitely not his dump stat.
@@theDMLair That's why you named him Guapo!
Aside for establishing motives, I DO have an idea for where factions would gather for meetings, handing out quests, etc.
1. Divine temple for Paladins & Clerics
2. Magic school for Sorcerers, Warlocks and Wizards
3. An underground "sanctuary" for Rogues (Thieves/Assassins)
4. A location in a forest for Druids, Rangers and (maybe) Barbarians
5. A military base-like location for other Fighters (knights)
6. A different type of temple for Monks
Please let me know if I left any out
The Neverwinter Nights game has a "faction" system but it has a slightly different purpose. It determines how the NPCs behave toward each other and toward the players.
There are standard factions such as:
Commoner: Your standard flavour NPC who usually just wanders around and looks pretty.
Merchant: NPCs who sell stuff. Yeah, I know, it's an awesome concept. ;)
Defender: NPCs who defend anyone in the above two factions. City guards, scouting patrols, etc.
The Player Faction: All players are automatically their own faction, hence it's one faction and several factions at the same time.
Hostile: The Monster NPCs. They attack anyone in any of the above factions on sight.
But if you make your own custom modules, you can make your own custom factions. One example of a custom faction is a "Collaborator" faction which is initially friendly toward both the Player Faction and the Hostile Faction, and the Hostile faction is friendly toward anyone in the Collaborator Faction.
There are also scripting commands to allow temporary or permanent adjustments to be made to a player's Faction Reputation with a particular faction, so it's possible for a faction to start out being friendly but become hostile either permanently or temporarily, and vice-versa.
It's a limited system of course, since it's mechanical and has to follow strict rules, but it still allows for a lot more versatility than you might expect from a mere video game.
I forgot to add, the faction system works on a 0-100 basis where 90+ equals friendship (will help you if you're attacked), 0-10 equals enmity (will attack on sight) and anything in between is neutral.
This may seem obvious to some, but if you're going to run a faction heavy campaign pick up a copy of Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. No matter the campaign world, that book has the tools to run faction/guild campaigns. The ten guilds of Ravnica are fully detailed and provide a wide array of tangible benefits to players.
If you're not running the game in Ravnica then simply rename the faction in that book.
The lord's alliance = the Azorious senate.
The flaming fist = the Boros Legion.
The Harper's = house dimir, but not evil.
The emerald enclave = the selesnyan conclave.
The zhentarim = either the Orzhov syndicate or also house dimir.
The cult of the dragon = the Gruul clans.
Each Guild's description comes with full write ups, a background tied to agents of that guild, and rewards players earn for gaining enough renown to rank up in the guilds. Plus the back half of the book is practically its own monster manual.
Dude that's one of the few DND books I don't own. And you just made a convincing argument for me to go out and get it now. LOL
@@theDMLair when it was announced there was a lot of nay saying over it coming out before the Eberron book and not mixing the D&D chocolate with the MtG peanut butter, but realistically that book has everything you need to make backgrounds and factions as big a part of character development/concept as class and race.
Yeah and people where saying it was a money grab or a way to get MtG people into DnD or vice versa. (And even if it were, who cares. Lots of people like the book.)
Interesting! I didn't know about that! Thanks!
Great timing, I just finished mapping out all the intrigue and factions at play in my main city. Really looking forward to implementing much of what you've talked about here!
i never understood the concept of sending assassins... i mean, unless the party are extremely over-leveled in comparison to the other potential adventurer parties in the setting, you could always have a faction set up a bounty for the PCs.
Think about it. Why would a faction waste manpower, especially the no-doubt valuable services of hand-picked assassins, on a troublesome party when they instead could be using those particular services for things more aligned to their goals (e.g. kill a rival faction leader, or whatever)?
The PC party is usually little more than a noticeable distraction (at first) when they start to directly interfere with any particular faction, so why would said faction personally hire assassins or use their own when they instead can just name a price and send out fliers? Let someone else do the dirty work, the faction has more important matters to attend to.
And then if the PC party still manages to interfere further, keep hiring the price until either it's no longer affordable or it cannot be ignored by even the most uninterested of people. For instance, Lord Paxton (did i spell that right?) seems like they type of individual who can afford whatever he could need, so he's got the resources to set such a price.
You could easily have someone like him write down enough zeros that'll make even the friendliest of towns into a most dangerous place to traverse for wanted men.
The rationale for me is quite simple. And adventuring party has been decimating the Lieutenant's and other allies of a faction. What if action just sit by and do nothing while that adventuring party continues to pick off all of their allies and faction members one by one? That doesn't make any sense to me. I think a faction would probably send people to take out the adventuring party.
It's worth pointing out that a "hit squad" isn't necessarily a highly trained assassin, nor even a group of assassins... Whatever caliber of NPC's they are, there's more available to the mechanics of "sending" them to dispatch (or attempt it) a troublesome bunch of Characters.
The actual craft of assassination has lost a lot from the history. We (today, IRL) can put a gun in someone's hand and he can then manage that weapon in a matter of weeks or even months... firing over distances approaching a mile with precision enough to strike a human sized target.
The older craft assassin had several methods and spent years to master his or her skillset... There was simply more to it than steady hands and good vision. There were different types of assassins, too. Some specialized in venoms or toxins, others learned silent weapons and sneak attacks like strangulation, so as not to rouse the locals to the job. Still others worked with specifically thrown weapons or crossbows and the like... BUT they also had "back up" in case their primary choice was unavailable or rendered useless.
A hit squad, is basically (traditionally mind you) roughly on a par with gangsters and bandits, just specialized enough to manage a brutal force for most "guaranteed kill" jobs. Think bounty hunters who specialize on the "dead" part of the "dead or alive" bounties... It's not to say they weren't skilled or competent, but the "fair market value" is different for the difference from "proficient" to "mastery" (another term that's lost its zeal for overuse in recent times). ;o)
With players being members of different factions, what I typically suggest is making sure that other players can, at least, help the other player in some way. For example, let's say a Paladin and a Rogue (who is a bounty hunter) happen to be in the same party. The rogue checks with the guild and looks for bounties and finds one they like. This is technically a bounty hunting guild quest, but there probably isn't an explicit reason why the Paladin can't assist the Rogue in tracking down their quarry.
Yes, this right here! There's no reason that the other players can't/won't/shouldn't help each other for different faction objectives.
The "You help me with my thing and I'll help you with your thing" is one of the MAIN reasons to form a party after all.
If using individual factions, yes ideally they would become group efforts.
The main reason any group I've ever been in has formed a party was to go on adventures together.
@@theDMLair Are you saying that faction quests don't count as adventures?
In fairness there are reasons... BUT none of them are good.
AND just for the record, if a guild-quest or "faction sponsored operation" became a group effort for more than one or two members, I would certainly count it as an adventure, and be sure to create some reasonable ways for any PC's left out to earn XP on their own "erstwhile activities" or manage them a net benefit to balance things out.
Side quests help with scheduling conflicts as well... Many times a larger group could only manage to free up the time together maybe once a month, while individuals could show up for a session or three in the meantime... SO we divided up the party and let side quests and smaller adventures still get Players together with a GM to play, earn XP and create stories... Then the once a month could roll around and we'd share notes while on something considerably "more epic" in nature...
Matt Coleville has a video from some time back that explains how he does this, too. I just saw the DM Lair's take on scheduling destroying more groups and being a number one complaint... SO if you have a large unpredictable lot, you can use these sorts of things to keep everyone Playing D&D and the adventures and Character arcs can get even more interesting when one of the guys or gals has to rush to the group and warn them, "Um... I think I might have f***ed up royal.... oh... and I maybe started the apocalypse about a week ago. Help..." ;o)
Man it’s been a long tine since a both useful and original system has been introduced. Thank you!
You are very welcome my man.
one of the best youtube chanels for dnd
vids are short AND pact with info
deserves more love
I love factions they really push cultures and games and I'm not good at expressing how much fun I have making factions for my games
Hey what up dude how's it going? I agree factions add something special to games. All of my games use factions now.
@@theDMLair I don't know why but TH-cam never showed you replied. So at this point I'm sure it's too late. But I'm doing okay. Not terrible. Not super. But trying to be well. :)
Hey, Sign me up! I'll join the Barbarian's Faction! :-)
I want the stuffed kitty-cat! :D
The only way to get it is to sell your soul to Mammon...
@@feedbacking6306 Yeah, I'm going to have to pass. It is a cute kitty-cat though... ;)
Cute kitty cats ftw. 😻
@@theDMLair Absolutely! The fatter the better!
Roll slight of hand and animal handling.
My current game was supposed to just be a dungeon diver to pass the time between waiting for a couple people to get off work for my other campaign, but the quarantine hit so my dad, my brother and I just decided to play this one more now and so we finished the dungeon and now I had to like add a bunch of factions, but basically now the campaign is a gang war. I love mafia stuff so it’s perfect :).
My current campaign has a character and his faction in charge of the undercity of the city the players are in. He has taken a very high level of interest in the players and tried to help them and give them quests. He’s seemingly been trying to increase his favor with the player faction. Since this flips the usual dynamic, the players have been very confused and haven’t murdered him despite him giving red flags and the chances the players had.
I was recently running a Star Wars campaign (set more or less in the same time period as The Mandalorian, between Ep 6 and 7).
Factions in the galaxy recovering from the Empire were definitely at the forefront of their adventure.
Awesome yeah I can see especially the Star Wars universe that factions would play a huge role.
I have a cult of Orcus that the group is at odds with and I never classified them as a faction but it is interesting to see it be used in this way, thank you for this.
Np! That cult would make a perfect faction. 😀
My first time DMing I did this... and it was awfully done... this makes me want to bring it back and do it right!!!
I've always wanted a way to increase the verisimilitude of my game!
I am a first time DM and I have been binging your videos for weeks😂 your advice is so good and also easy to watch as opposed to hour-long info dumps😅
Do you let your players know where favour with each of the factions or is it just something you keep track of? If you tell them, how much do you tell them or in what way??
Awesome well thank you for binging on the content. I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying it. :-) yes I do tell my players what their favor is with each faction. I just tell them the straight-up numbers and they keep track of it. I think it's part of the fun for them to know what their favor is with each faction.
In my Grim Hollow campaign, our party learned about 5 magical roots (plants) spread throughout the continent. They ended up accidentally getting one themselves. Several major nations have different views on how the roots should be handled. There is no real end to the game. The players decide on how they want to handle the roots themselves and how they choose to work with the various nations. At the moment, they believe the roots need to be destroyed. So pretty much every faction is their enemy...
I use factions a little in my games. Some good ideas in the video. I think I’ll borrow them, lol.
Really love the way you do the intro for your videos. Great content also!
Thanks dude! 😁
BarbarianDude, you have 4 fingers and one thumb painted on your face!
Great idea for group faction and tracking. I'll try it out when I finally DM.
So that makes a total of 12 fingers, right? 😀
@@theDMLair Fuzzy math says, "YES!"
Luke your skits are EXCELLENT !! :D keep it them :)
Thanks dude! 😀
@@theDMLair and OH MY GOD I need to write my english with more attention. Sorry I keep sending you post during you lives and in the comment that's missing words :P
I'm french, so sometime my brain doesn't compute correctly :P Thank alot for your content ! Keept at it ! :)
It's all good. 😀
Perfect Video for me.
Playing Chapter 2 of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist tonight with evil players. Teifling and Drow. I prepared Bregan D'aerthe, Zhentarim and Xanathar's Guild as the factions. Included many side quests for my players to go on and to let them choose which faction(s) to join. They declined all loan offers last session and wanted quests to get coin to fix up Trollskull Tavern.
The God of War Dual Sense I like.
Didn't know the new Controller was call a Dual Sense, Just called it DUAL shock 5
I've been missing the live streams, but OMG I love this video so much!😂❤❤
Ps... I need the different shirts you wear in your vids... they are epic.
Hi Penguin Butt! Good to see you.
That shirt I got from an AL group near where I live.
Factions are a great way to populate your campaigns and give a bit more character to some NPCs your players find dull
Example: a bakers guild that's actually a cover for a local crime family smuggling stuff in and out of the city in bags of flour, an NPC the players can interact with is the mill owner now they are viewed as disposable until your players find out that they are a high ranking member of the bakers guild.
The word you're looking for is "flour" although bags of flower(s) would be interesting... maybe they're harvesting poppies supposedly for the seeds to put on muffins, but they're also extracting you-know-what from the rest of the flower?
@@melkiorwiseman5234 thanks for the correction I'm not a native English speaker and the spelling can be a bit strange
@@Empressofnight English spelling can be a *lot* strange. :) I'm a native English speaker and can write well, but even I find some spellings strange. And it gets worse when you get into the strange regional differences between the USA and the rest of the English-speaking world.
I am so glad I found this video. New to DMing and was feeling overwhelmed just thinking about factions. This makes so much sense to me! I do have a question. I'm running the waterdeep dragon heist module and am figuring out how each faction will view each of the quests of the other factions. However, I'm finding that certain factions, ie. Lords Alliance would look favorably on most of the quests. Would you only do certain ones give favor? Or allow all of the quests to give 1 favor in such factions?
I'm planning on making a World of Warcraft campaign - factions. Lots of factions.
An insightful video. Thank you.
4 fingers and a thumb. This video came out just in time because I was trying to figure out how to do exactly this yesterday as I was writing basics for my own home brew campaign setting. I will be implementing this system in my current campaign! Thanks Luke, though I do have a question, to you also have a set of rules that determine how much favor a situation is worth?
Most adventures the heroes conplete is just worth 1 favor point. The goal is to increase/decrease favor slowly over an entire campaign.
Awesome video 👍 I didn't even know about factions until now, and my players have alot of bad stuff coming there way they are now known as the slayer of priest. Don't get me started on that 😂
The slayer of priest?
@@theDMLair yes they have been known to destroy priest
This is a great video topic today.
This video is very helpful I decided to Subscribe, thank you 🙏
If you need to generate factions and political powers VERY fast, I have a dirty system that can do that in a matter of a couple hours. First, make a list of 24 personality traits, pair them off randomly. Then have 24 buisness or government functions for them to have control of, such as armies, valuable mines, or patronage of a trade guild. Now roll 3 D12's for each list, removing duplicates, for six factions. These can be nobles or independant groups, as you see fit. Now, pair off rivalries for four of them. These are the overt personality conflicts, such as Sadists vs Idealists, or two groups with a Business conflict (such as one with a major iron mine and another with control over major blacksmiths). The other two become manipulators in those conflicts, so for each conflict, you have someone that is either trying to profit from the conflict, encourage further conflict, or attempting to resolve it. Lastly, do the same for 3 more groups. These are your thieves guilds/underworld influences. One is a smuggler group, the second is a thieves guild, and the third are the local hit-men/assassins/hired muscle. Because these, too, have business influences, you can establish relationships with the main factions. Now add in a cult, the main temple(s), and the 'powers that be' that rule the city/region. Build the flavor from the framework. Perhaps the party's favorite tavern in the low-rent end of town is run by someone with an affiliation with the smuggler group, or the merchant's guild's main patron is a Principled, yet Greedy Sadist, turning them from 'just a business' to a major source of conflict as they try to wield that influence to viciously exploit the vulnerable.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
Interesting! If you want a cool alternative or to add to this, look up Hexed Press' video on hacking Pandemics (a board game) to use as factions' mechanic!
Wen I saw this I’m like why didn’t you use one of your 6 cats in the house Luke for the Druid?
Hey what's up ketchup. Because my cats don't like to be picked up. You would basically see me in a cape struggling to hold a cat who is violently trying to scratch my eyes out. So yeah that's why. LOL
Hey Luke 😄 that’s understandable, but wouldn’t it be a little funny that the Druids familiar doesn’t like him? 😂
filip lykkegaard kastrup cats aren’t just bad-actors, they’re notoriously poor improv partners
the DM Lair I don’t like being carried off by giant tigers so I understand. Maybe I’d let one giant tiger carry me around- but only my special giant tiger.
I bet I’d scratch like hell
@@theDMLair I mean...I kind of want to see that...
ok, I have an issue with not wanting to have individual goals. I actually encourage my players to have individual goals that they want to achieve during the game. If the rogue wants to start an orphanage wherein the orphans are taught skills like blacksmithing during the day, and to be spies at night, (I did this btw), why would the rest of the party want to get involved with that? Each party members overall goals can help guide the behaviors of that player. Sure, they are all working on the group goals at the same time, but incorporating how that group goal will help the player achieve their goals.
"I have a kitty cat"
noooo.... you don't have a cat, a cat has you.
Luke's acting is so good that when the thumbnail started playing I honestly asked myself for about half a second "hmHow did he all the actors together during quarantine?"
Luke I love your content and they've helped me a lot along the way. But your intro is just not my style of entertainment, and I don't mean this in a bad way at all. I actually think you're very talented. I just wish you'd put a card on your videos so people like me could skip the intro a go right to the content.
I love the kitty
I'm getting ready to join an adventures league game once the craziness settles down a smidge. How exactly do players in it select the faction they are apart of? I mean do you just write it down on your history and if the DM approves it your cool, or is it something you have to select kind of like your background where you choose if you were a street urchin/ criminal/sage/noble/ etc ?
I have tried asking this question several places ( amongst some other ones I can't find the answers to anywhere even the AL FAQ) if anyone could take the time to answer me (and maybe answer one or two other questions about AL) I surely would appreciate it!
I may have missed it, but your faction chart - is it hidden information or is it information the player's can see? Good video! Reminds me of Baldur's Gate reputation :)
Players can see it. It's part of the fun for them to know where they stand.
This is why you spell out names phonetically (see the IPA chart)
IPA chart?
@@theDMLair Its a list of all sounds a human can consistently produce, organized by their location, which you can use to create languages, or more importantly for most DMs, pretend that they've created a language.
ðæts ə gɹeɪt īdiə!
Druid should have said, "I am a kitty-cat!"
Do you show the favour scores to the players or indicate in some way when they gain or lose favour with specific factions?
Yes, they know their scores. It's part of the fun knowing.
I’m currently in the process of practicing DMing on my main R20 account by having my two alt accounts be the players (who have not once metagamed). I pretend each alt account is two separate players (totaling four) so that I don’t need to make six accounts for a reasonably sized party (and I only trust the four biggest browsers anyway).
This DM practice is with Lost Mines of Phandelver, so spoilers I guess?
The party managed to lose all their shit to the goblin ambush, then immediately after they bought replacements in Phandalin, they got captured by the Redbrands (the only males in the game were two latecomers who were killed, and one latecomer who’s still fairly close to Neverwinter, so that’s why the main party wasn’t killed).
The party’s Fighter managed to pull off the Stacy’s Mom gambit TWICE (the first time, the Redbrands she turned traitor were killed outside the taphouse by other Redbrands and they were recaptured, and the second time, the second set of traitors were also killed but the party managed to defeat the bugbears and escape Phandalin the next day).
They’re now at the Cragmaw hideout to get their old stuff back, but they freed the goblin slave from the Redbrand’s bugbears and the de facto goblin leader decided it was the last straw, that they didn’t care about holding Sildar anymore and just wanted their boss bugbear gone (which is already the case as written but the circumstances here made the goblins more favourable).
If everything goes as planned, after the party gets Sildar and their stuff back, the goblins will begin planning a rebellion against the bugbears while the party goes back to finish off the Redbrands, whose numbers dropped so drastically that Glasstaff has made further contact with the big bad for help.
How do I know if I’m overthinking the world building process.
The way I’m going about it is I have to make the skeleton of the starting kingdom so who’s the royals what areas of the kingdom are there I’m only going in depth on the one the group is going to be in. However I’ve written down ideas for the rest of the continent and only really names the other continents of the world.
Right now I’m making a faction that works in all kingdoms haven’t figured it out yet.
However the reason I’m writing this is because my friends I try and bounce ideas off of say I’m overthinking/ planning too much any thoughts on what to do
Great
So how does one, gain favor with the Blue Hand faction?
What happened to the Faction Favor System pdf? I'd love to check it out, but the link is dead.
Where is the link to the favour chart, only brings me to the store…
"The imagining brain part" hahaha pure comedy gold
F.I.V.E
I don't know what bizarre madmen dislike the intros, I for one love the intro skits.
Yeah not everything appeals to everyone you know. My argument has always been that if you don't like the skits you skip ahead to the rest of the content. But not doing the skits gets robs like the 90% of people that do like them.
My DND world is FILLED with the worst factions possible, a pit of chaos amidst the desert. The Factions are all fighting to see who can be more horrible and cruel, the players love this chaos!
Hey Luke, if your players ever defeat Lord Paxton, will he exclaim “Game over, man! Game over!!!”?
They did defeat him. I don't recall his final words though. 😂
Sono sugestion for implementing factions um curse of Strahd that talks more with Barovia tham the Forgotten Realms ones in the Werewolfs on the Mist at the beginig of the book?
That's probably gonna be pretty difficult to add realistic factions into that kinda setting because of how how isolated it is... I'd recommend a browse of r/CoS though, you might find some stuff you like in there.
This prove you are a huge fan of cat
let me guess, you have played a tabaxi and waiting for official leonin to come out right?
I have never played a Tabaxi. 😂
Poor druid, he just wants to have an army of cats
Indeed. 😀
Does 9 equal an army? ;)
@@melkiorwiseman5234 Quality over quantity, and these are 9 adorably ferocious cats
@@generousheal4169 And 9 cats makes sense. Between them, they have 9-squared lives. :D (81)
@@melkiorwiseman5234 Sssh, don't wanna publish the secret strats of Luke's army- ;D
I.E. see Critical roll Champaign 3, episode 29-33.
While I like the content, I mostly don't appreciate the intro with party talking characters. I just skip it to the interesting part because it feels it's kind of dumb (not the characterization, it's the dialogs I have problems with). I know it's supposed to be for comedy or something like that... Anyone sharing my feeling or is it just that people actually feel that kind of dialogs is representative of their tables?
I find it entertaining. It's good to throw a little humor in every now and then.
Sorry you feel that way. It's pretty easy to skip ahead if you don't like the skits. I can tell you that by looking at the analytics and data, most people like them and do watch them.
Seven fingers. You have seven fingers painted on your face.
And we have a winner! 😂
My DM must have seen this because he has 40 factions that we players literally don't care for because they're so convoluted and make no sense.
Lol...I use maybe 8, but only a couple are actually in the spotlight.
@@theDMLair I have one in my game. Though after watching I may want to weigh the pros and cons of having sub factions in that one faction.
I that an SCA helmet I see?
Sure is! 😀
You have four fingers painted on your face... five if you count your thumb.
Well done. I'll let the Barbarian know you know sometimes has trouble with this sort of thing. :-)
This background music is really annoying. I just now realized that for the past couple of months you've added in background music. For some reason it wasn't as overt in previous videos as this time - maybe a different track, or the balance between music and voice channel is different. But now, I notice the music in your other recent videos.
It works okay for the skits, but really doesn't add anything to the essays.
I don’t understand the rational of making a mechanic for tracking faction favour. It feels overly gamey and artificial to me, especially if they’re a player facing (unlike yours). Sure video games do this but it’s because they don’t have a thinking human being who can just roleplaying the reactions of NPCs.
My rationale is pretty simple. My players and I enjoy doing it. We find it to be fun unless we do it. I don't think you need much more than a reason that. There are lots of groups to do things for no other reason that they find it fun. You know but hey at this isn't your cup of tea then you know you don't got to do it. Different things might be more fun for your groups and for you personally and that's totally cool.
@@theDMLair Fair enough, I was asking because I genuinely didn't understand your thought process.
Yeah that's cool. I basically do it because It's fun and adds a simple mechanic that adds depth to the game.
oof these voices 😕