Factions!
My understanding of factions is that of however many movers and shakers your galaxy might have, these are the upper crust. The Galactic Empire, Weyland Yutani, etc.
What do you do with groups that are notable but not quite on the scale of factions? Say, Jabba the Hutt’s operation.
And how might you set up factions for a Star Trek-inspired game? Would you just use the major empires (Romulans, Federation, etc) as factions?
Ok, Star Wars nerdery here: the criminal empire headed by the Hutts extend across the galaxy. The Hutts homeworld of Nal Hutta is the “spiritual” center of a massive nexus of smuggling and piracy that extends into both Rebel and Imperial space. Most of the un-aligned planets (such as Tatooine) pay lip-service to the Scum. The criminal underbelly of the Starwars universe might not be as unified as the two other super-powers, but there’s still Might, Reach, Structure and Ideology of a sort.
For a Star Trek inspired game, I would start with local Factions, adding more as they become important on this stage. Like, if the game was set near the Alpha Quadrant DMZ, your main Factions would be the Federation, the Cardassians and the Maquis. If it was DS9, you’d likely have Federation and Bajorans as active Factions, with the Cardassians introduced as an active Faction later, followed by the Dominion.
The Borg are more of a Threat than a Faction, they have no concept of diplomacy, debt or favor.
In my game, I’ve just been keeping narrative track of debt/favors for individuals and “minor” factions.
I also reserve the right to “roll up” those minor things into the major factions, perhaps as a timely GM move. e.g: Remember how you owe Don Carlos a favor? It turns out he’s in deep with the Midnight Exchange, and they’re calling in that debt on his behalf…
Nice, Chris Wilson. I’ve used occasionally minor factions in my games, especially for local governments and small groups, but the “rules” around it were so situational and narrative and “loose” that there was no good way to codify it. It’s also a bit of extra mental juggling to keep a dozen minor factions in mind.
I really like that twist, btw, that the Debt gets “sold” to a bigger fish, who then collects. It’s… a little too realistic, when you consider the subprime mortgage crisis.
Chris Wilson I suppose maybe this would be one way to change the scope over time for a given campaign. You start owing a couple of ‘minor’ factions and wondering about the distant rumbling thunder of the Big Players. Then as the game goes on, you have to deal with bigger and bigger fish until the Imperial equivalent of Barry the Baptist and Big Chris come for a little chat.
(Hmm. Star Wars as directed by Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. Could be fun. To watch. From orbit. Around a completely different planet.)
Sean Gomes “The Borg are more of a Threat than a Faction, they have no concept of diplomacy, debt or favor.”
This comment is really illuminating, and I realize that this scenario has unfolded in my group. One of the factions (an expansionist theocracy specializing in weird-science biotech) has definitely turned out to be much more of a Threat than a proper Faction at all. Narratively it’s actually working out fine, especially since i don’t think any players bothered to start with any debt to that faction. But they’ve sort of evolved into a primary “big-scale” threat that the players are surely going to want to defeat…
Thanks Sean and everyone else. Very helpful. The answers here differ somewhat from the impression I got from the book (and my interpretation of the Hutts, but that’s another matter).
Yeah… Jabba’s Network isn’t the best example of a small potatoes organization.
For considering scale, there are a few options; the Gangs Mechanic is one… any gang can also be considered a small faction, the main cloud of it’s size can easily be said to have such influence on the smaller scale… in fact, the core of any given faction, is a strong gang — a wealthy powerful ‘family’ — that has ties to many other gangs/families/cults/guilds/state-chartered-agencies… etc… — zaibatsu, ne?
also; look at The Sprawl, for an alternative take on what might be a few tools for a middle-ground between the two abstractions of gangs and factions; sometimes looking at Pusher and Fixer for this…
William Mims that’s a really neat idea! I hadn’t considered that. A Crew is very much like a mini-faction, there are a lot of mechanic parallels. You Command them (Call in a Favor), and on a 7-9 you need to fix their grievances/problems before they’ll help you out again (Repay the Debt you incurred).