Making Factions Matter, Part I

Revisiting the "Building Factions" series from earlier 2024.

Dec 16, 2024

Earlier this year, I wrote a series of articles on factions and how to make them matter in your campaigns. I’m republishing that article for those who may be new here! Check it out (and subsequent Parts II and III) below!

Factions (and their conflicting goals) tend to be the framework for many ttRPG campaigns. It’s not hard to see why: factions give the players and the GM an easy tool to determine who’s on “our side” and who’s “against us”; not to mention a reason to go questing that unites the party.

Like most things, however, a little goes a long way. And when it comes to factions, you’re probably using way too fucking many of them.

Instead, try this: the Rule of Three.

You've probably heard or subconsciously noticed that three of any given thing is used more often than other numbers. Three Musketeers, Three Blind Mice, Three Fates, “Friends, Romans, countrymen”, “I came, I saw, I conquered”, “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, etc.

It may seem reductive to apply the same logic to your game world, but trust me: it works. I’ve both written and participated in games where worldbuilding elements were reduced to three entities and it’s just… better. The perfect amount of things so you don't forget anyone, while still offering enough potential dramatic situations.

You’re going to think you need more, but you don’t. You really, really don’t.

First, let’s make something clear: if you want factions to be important to your campaign, you need to make them rewarding for your players.
Not just rewarding in the sense of literal items or reputation, but also in creating new dramatic situations, evolving relationships, shifting power dynamics, and more. Players do a) what rewards them and b) what they themselves care about. So why not kill two birds with one stone?

Create three factions. Make them all want the same ultimate end goal, but go about getting there in completely opposing ways.
Have the player characters choose the enemy faction. Discuss with your players why their characters don’t like this faction and tie that to their personality.
Have the player characters choose their faction (as a group). If your factions are aligned with certain abilities, like thieving, spellcasting, or martial prowess, this can be difficult. Instead focus on themes and more mundane elements.
Whichever faction remains is allied with the player character’s faction. If a player is ruffling at being in the main player character faction, you can allow them to be in this allied faction instead.

Dead simple. You get the benefit of strong, representable factions that the players won’t forget, while allowing the players to feel like they’ve chosen their own destiny—which they have. Their choice on who to align themselves with is the biggest choice in the campaign!

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Example: Kingdoms and Rebels

Let’s make three factions in a campaign set in a war-torn kingdom: the rebels, the mercenaries, and the rulers. All of these factions want prosperity in the kingdom, but they accomplish these in wildly different ways—with prosperity meaning wildly different things.

If the players choose the rebels, they oppose the current regime and seek to topple it for a better future.

It’s probably safe to assume that the rulers are their enemies, but just the same the rebels could directly oppose a cruel mercenary group that intends to usurp the rulers and instigate even *worse* policies.
This would put the rebels in a very tough spot; support their current tyrants to avoid even worse ones down the line—effectively putting the fight off for another day.

If the players choose the rulers, they’re probably opposed by the rebels who seek to overthrow them.

Similar to the rebels, however, the mercenaries could serve as the unaccounted wild card. Like the rebels, the rulers could prefer the devil they know over the devil they don’t and choose to ally themselves with the rabble-rousing locals to root out a mercenary group that changes allegiances with the daily weather.

If the players choose the mercenaries, there’s reasons to have allies in rebels or rulers.

Hell, depending on your playgroup, the allied faction could change based on actions the party takes or directions given by superiors. This might put the player characters into difficult situations, where previous contacts one day might become enemies the next!

Next Time: Quests and the Mission Statement

Now that you’ve set who the movers and shakers are in the world, we can figure out not just what they want, but how they intend to go about getting it. Continuing with the theme of three, we’ll talk about how to set up quests that bring the factions into conflict and the overall mission statement we can set for factions to give them a unique and easy-to-recognize identity.

If you’re interested in reading some additional thoughts on generating conflict, which we’ll be touching on next time, see the following: