I run a homebrew and am designing a large town to center my next campaign from. I like the concept of factions in PFS and want to know if anyone's ever used this in their home games and if so, how do you do it?
Do I need a mechanic similar to the Prestige Points, or can I just promise rewards? For example, their first mission is to go to a ruin and explore it to recover a hero's blade; two of the other factions know of the party's mission and will ask them to complete other tasks in the ruin. Can I just have the NPCs say "I'll owe you" or should I have some kind of reputation track?
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Ideally, IMO, the whole notion of prestige points should be a behind the scenes sort of thing that the players know nothing about.
The Faction Guide gives a solid idea for what to spend them on, but much less clear guidelines on how / when / in what quantity to hand them out, making it seem very much like a fuzzy GM call anyway.
I'd go with promised rewards over prestige points, and use it as one of those GM tools to unskew wonky WBL situations or whatever. That being said, if someone is playing the hell out of their 'quest-givers' / faction mentors' missions, and someone else is pretty much ignoring the whole concept and just going along for the ride, the one who is embracing the concept is going to end up with the higher track rewards, while the moody loner is going to get shiny bupkiss.
How many factions for a Large Town? I'm loosely basing the social structure of my town off of Saltmarsh from 3x. As far as I can tell, that town had 9 "societies" operating in the town, if you count religions as their own individual organizations.
Currently I have:
- The Lantern Watch: elite mercenary guards who act as a special police force and go on missions for the general welfare of the townsfolk
- The Order of Ironspire: scholarly monks supporting knights, adventurers and others in a crusade against the occult (think of the Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman)
- The Eldritch Society: a "skulls and bones" type secret society of elitists from the town's university who intend on using the organization for their own gain
The town has the "Insular" quality meaning it's kind of isolated from other civilization, so I didn't think I'd include much foreign involvement, but maybe there's some outside group trying to get a foothold in town? I don't know, this is the first time I've ever tried anything like this.
I would use something more like the Reputation Points System from Land of the Linnorm Kings.
And I have a Small Insular Town that has 5 Major Factions and 10 Minor Factions.
@ AF: what's the difference between Major and Minor? Do you have them send the party on quests and if so, do you do the thing where different factions might have different things the party needs to do?
Ex: one of the "first steps" PFS modules I'm thinking of using has the party exploring a tower where they meet a ghoul who offers to help them. My Order of Ironspire will ask the PCs to destroy all undead they meet, creating an RP challenge.
Major Factions are the larger of the Factions and have large influence over something.
-The "Merchant" Guild: Handles all commerce in the city.
-The Soldiers Guild: Is in charge of the City Guard and deals with the Military whenever they show up.
-The Adventures/Explorers Guild: They scout out the Wilderness and handle any odd-jobs in the town. Such as defending the Woodcutting and Mining Camps.
-The Mages' Guild: The local branch of the Mages' Guild.
-The Thieves' Guild: This guild is more in the Background than the others but is partnered with the other guilds save the "Merchant" Guild.
Minor Factions are more of sub-factions or newly formed factions. These usually have little to no influence.
-Crafters' Guild.
-Farmers' Guild.
-Woodcutters' Guild
-Miners' Guild.
-Religious Factions.
-ETC.
Quests: This is determined by the PCs choices.
@ the helmeted one: then your "major factions" are more like 3x "organizations"; groups typically empoying the PCs and offering potential bonuses from association that might be payment for jobs or ongoing skill and trait/feat availability. The "minor factions" then are like 3x "guilds"; groups that exist in the fluff of your world and typically employ NPCs, but might provide one-time benefits from association like a single boon or payment for services.
Is that accurate? How do you/your players use these factions (if at all)?
I was thinking of more the PFS model, where the factions whould actually be groups to which the PCs would belong and that long-term association might unlock skills, resources or abilities which then might be developed as the PCs advance in level.
My Woodcutters' & Miners' Guilds might be a minor Faction but it allows the players a discount to crafting as long as they are in good favor with the guilds.
To get into favour with the guilds you might just have to take a job such as guarding a camp.
My factions grant different bonuses depending on the level of Reputation they have. Some it is just a scaling bonus others it is simply multiple advantages.
My Soldiers' Guild typically grants the Party a number of NPC warriors to help them by protecting the party's Caravan or to supply equipment for the party at a major discount.
It is really a mix of Organizations, Guilds, and Factions.