Yesterday was the
last day that I had stuff for the funeral that I already mentioned so that will
be the last time that I don't post for a legitimate reason though I am now
working on catching up on all of the missed posts (including the one that I
numbered) for the sake of showing you all that I am serious about trying to
keep this updated regularly and to provide you with daily posts that will
hopefully help you in your stories.
Also a shout out
again to Graven Games for their recent article on FoW Aachen (I think that's
how its spelled) where they go through all the parts of it piece by piece and
what is good and bad about it. Make sure
to check out their blog with the link to the right to see all sorts of other
articles as well on great places for terrain for your games and everything else
to do with the hobby.
Moving on the next
step in fleshing out your planet is to determine what the powerful factions
present on your planet are. Note that
this is separate from government, I will be posting on that in a few posts, but
these are everybody that has an interest in the planet, what their stake is,
and how they are currently active on the planet or monitoring it with what they
might do if their interests are threatened.
Powerful factions are a real step in the direction of a completed planet
because they provide a tool for you to use in just about any situation. A particularly influential group could act as
an antagonist getting in the way of your characters or sponsoring the army on
the opposite side of the tabletop, they could have been the culprits who
manipulated events to have the Ork Waaagh! crash into the system to keep your
army or the heroes occupied, the faction could be part of an even larger
conspiracy that is system or sector wide.
Powerful organizations can also be positive as well with being a sponsor
of the good guys (providing weapons and equipment to the party, sending
bodyguards for particularly dangerous missions, pulling strings and calling in
favors to make sure no one interferes with what the protagonists are doing,
etc.) as well as giving a goal for what the party can aspire to in the form of
potentially joining the powerful faction and climbing its ranks. These are just some of the ways that Powerful
Factions can be used, in reality their functions are infinite.
When creating a
Powerful faction you need to remember everything that you have already done for
determining what would make sense on the planet. Ask yourself first what the group's purpose
is on the planet, what is their ultimate goal?
In general this is going to be to gain as much power and influence as
possible though this could be one of those rare organizations that are really
only working for the good of everybody, or it could be an entirely sadistic
group that wants to see the system brought down in flames with everyone
slaughtered while they simply watch.
After determining what the goal is you need to decide what type of
people would make up the group, are they all part of the planetary elite, is it
filled with thugs and crime lords, would it be composed of religious officials,
how do the majority of members identify themselves? An additional benefit to this is it means
that you could have a particularly interesting character that is part of the
faction that is noticeable because of just how he does not fall into the normal
niche and how he clearly has something to offer the group that they need even
though they may not like having him with them (though necessity in the end
triumphs over their desires). Similar to
what the goal of the group is you need to determine what the interests of the
group are, how are they planning on achieving their penultimate goal? This could include valuable minerals,
forbidden xenos-tech that is being smuggled onto or off of the planet,
figureheads in the government that are being used by the high echelons of
society, or even other groups on the planet such as perhaps the people
important to your story. What makes this
so significant in creating your powerful faction is that you need to decide at
what point will they act to protect their interests, how will they act, and
with how much force? This goes with the
final piece of creating your powerful faction and deciding how much power and
influence they have. This is fairly
obvious as you already decided that they were powerful (lesser factions will be
discussed in the next post) but you need to determine what the greatest thing
they can do or influence is, set boundaries so that you are consistent when
utilizing the group and don’t try and cheat your players (if an RPG) out of a
well done plan if it was not what you were hoping for. Scale the influence of the group with other groups
you are planning on creating as well so that there can be interesting tension
and political dynamics between competing groups that are all vying for
dominance in the area, especially those factions that are competing over the
same things. Perhaps you can incorporate
a little comedy into your story by having these groups, who are all fighting
and slaughtering each other wherever possible, pursue the exact same end so
that all would benefit by the end result without them realizing what the others
are doing.
Designing powerful
factions 3 is a very good number because 3 allows for a better competitive
aspect than just two because alliances can form and break quickly and without
warning and so no one faction can be lax because of how it so clearly dominates
the other faction. Feel free to make
more than 3 but I simply suggest 3 because then you are not overworking
yourself and burning yourself out of what you are doing because you had too
much ambition. I will only create one
group as you only need to witness the process of it. For the jungle planet one group is interested
entirely in bringing this planet into the fold of Chaos, trying to corrupt
everyone and to open up a warp rift to allow their masters from the Immaterium
onto the planet and to have total rule over it for they are just their lowly
servants. The people involved are those
powerful figures in society, several mighty crime lords, a few influential
priests of the God-Emperor, a couple military officers and generals, several
administrators, and even an Ordos Malleus inquisitor. They are working on their plan by
manipulating key figures of government, controlling the desires and actions of
certain parts of the military, and funding themselves with drug smuggling. The full extent of their power is they can
bring the planet to war with any other planet or group if they so desire for at
least 5 years, after which point the government and others will question what
the purpose and gain is and call it off if there is not obvious gain or threat. In general the protect their interests by
subtle manipulation and a deployment of military forces to prevent problems
from occurring or quiet assassinations of dissenters or those that are
questioning their motives.
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