Hello fellow GM's, I am currently building my own campaign in the Katapesh region, with a small border city that the PC's will mostly be based out of. A second city will act as the second act (but they will hopefully remain in contact with suppliers and allies in the first city).
The city is run by 2 leaders of different factions and their small council of nobles (the majority of whom have no particular alliance, but are very sensitive to scandal). A third faction seeks to usurp one or both of these factions.
This is not a kingmaker game, my players mostly want to be independent, but they also seek ways to affect their world with quests, skills, and diplomacy.
I am hoping to have the party, acting as mercenaries, help political or guild factions tip the balance of power in whichever direction they see fit, but there are three factions in a game for 2 and one will have to lose.
The ultimate idea is the PC's shape the city, and gain a particular ally or 2 for the second act (or lose allies and make the second act more difficult).
The idea is each faction has a leader, with family strengths and weaknesses, and a handful of major allies that plot on their behalf. PC's would dig up secrets, sabotage deals, diplomacy at dinners, provide grand gifts, intercept messages, and protect from these same counter acts.
Faction 1 is the Farming and mining leadership and his close allies.
Faction 2 is the Dock owners and fishing fleet masters and his allies.
Faction 3 is a ruthless slaver master and his (very) few allies.
Faction 1 and 2 are in power, 3 wants in by any means. I was hoping to have each of the factions in power affect the markets, available quests, safety, and value of things in town. But representing faction struggles is proving difficult. I am hoping to be able to reduce things to PC actions as being major and immediate, or PC's idling or spending time away as letting the faction powers shift on their own.
I want faction 3 to be destabilizing, and clearly evil, he will attack both faction 1 and 2, while faction 1 and 2 mostly target each other in less ruthless ways.
This way I can roll a few dice and say in your (x weeks) away markets have changed, and costs have increased/decreased accordingly.
NPC traders for particular goods will come and go as their favoured faction is in power.
How do I represent these struggles in a simple way?
Is it better to have some kind of fixed metric (as 1 goes up, value of x goes down). Or just have specific points where if that faction hits x influence then event y occurs?
Do I have PC's single quest have immediate and large effects on power balance? Or are they more incremental (thus failure is a smaller drop)?
Is there a better way of showing this? and how can I implement something like this without allowing for (strong) market manipulation (horde items, do quests to increase item value, then profit)?
Or is this an ungainly idea and I need to look at something else?