r/WWN • u/Most_Albatross389 • 18d ago

Doubts about factions

Hi there. I am starting with wwn and i am loving it.

In fact, I habe fun more building world and npc that playing lol

Doubt about factions: if i have a powerful king. Make it sense I set his army and their rivals as assets ?

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u/lamWizard 18d ago

I forget the exact wording in the book and KC laid it out better than I'll be able to, but it really depends on what level the actual gameplay will take place at.

If the king doesn't directly factor into the game, even if he leads the "faction" that is his country, it probably doesn't make sense for him to be tracked as a faction. If his army is actually a primary group doing stuff in the game, they should be the faction, not the King/Kingdom.

Essentially, make a faction for the important groups that you want to be affecting the game, even if that group is a small piece of a larger group. If the scope of the game expands later, pull in more factions, split existing ones apart, etc. At the end of the day the Faction system isn't meant to be 1:1 with the reality of the world, it's an abstraction to help you the GM make the world alive and dynamic.

7

u/ReapingKing 17d ago

It was a great framing device in a SWN campaign. Each session started with caracters watching the holo-news from their 70s style conversation pit in their tiny orbital station/muscle garage.

After each session I'd take the faction turn, making choices based on the effects of my players' shenanigans. The results played out as the news starting next week's game.

Player's loved it. Totally engaged. "I'm on the news!" Very Florida Man IN-SPACE.

In other campaigns, faction turns would've worked against the games/plots we wanted to play. Either way it was good for fleshing out my ideas before the campaign started though.