DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 34B: Webs of Ambush and Betrayal
Tor, scarcely slowed by the lightning that had seared him, reached the spider-like creature. He cut a gash along its other side, causing it to cry out. “Gavele! Help me!”
Gavele shook her head. “You’re on your own Ibulli!” She slammed the door shut – thwarting Tee, who had just bounded back to her feet once again.
“Damn you, bell bitch!” The spider-thing skittered up the wall of the tower.
In most RPGs, the players form a team that works together to overcome the challenges that the game world presents to them. The world, of course, is created, controlled, and played by the GM.
This means, of course, that there’s a fundamental opposition between the players and the GM at the table. Yes, the GM is also acting as a neutral arbiter. And, yes, there are other layers of interaction in which the GM and the players are all cooperating towards a common end.
But this doesn’t mean that the opposition doesn’t exist. It just means that, like a high-grade steel, it is tempered and alloyed.
Of course, when the opposition is NOT tempered and kept in balance, all kinds of bad stuff can happen at the table.
One of the most dramatic examples of this is the antagonistic GM or killer GM, who believes their job is to crush, mangle, and destroy the PCs in the name of “challenging” them. This doesn’t work, of course, because the GM controls the world, making it trivial for them to destroy the PCs if that’s their goal.
But there are subtler traps that this fundamental opposition can trick us into as a GM.
For example, it’s quite easy to accidentally transition from GM vs. players to world vs. players.
But the game world, of course, should be more fractured and complicated than that. All of your NPCs may have their actions masterminded by a single puppeteer, but they don’t know that!
I’ve previously talked about how you can place your PCs into a nest of friendly factions, but you can get equally interesting play by making sure your enemies are factionalized, too. (And the difference between friend and foe, of course, may be anything but clear.)
Having enemy factions working against each other can provide a rich engine for generating new scenarios in your campaign. For example, think about how a police force needs to respond to a gang war. Or the opportunities for created for shadowrunners during a hostile corporate takeover. Or the infinite skullduggeries unleashed during a political campaign.
The friction between factions also provides all kinds of grist for the roleplaying mills, as can be seen in the interaction between Gavele and Ibulli above. PCs can obviously also be drawn into these interactions, whether to choose a side, negotiate a peace, or simply try to weather the storm.
Even better, PCs who learn about these divisions and rivalries will have the opportunity to take advantage of them! Dominic, for example, does so in a rather blunt (but nonetheless effective) fashion:
The charge came close to routing them, but then a ratling and a ratbrute emerged from the building. The ratbrute was unslinging a greatsword of leviathan proportions while the ratling lowered another of the dilapidated dragon rifles and—
“Two hundred gold pieces for each of you if you attack the dwarf instead!” Dominic was still struggling in the goopy web, but he shouted out the offer in a voice laced with sincerity.
The ratling hesitated. Then he turned to his companion with a sly grin. “I never liked that dwarf anyway.”
The ratling started to lower his rifle and turned back towards the building.
“TRAITOR!” the ratbrute cried in a thick, lumbering voice. It brought its greatsword crashing down towards the smaller ratling, who barely managed to turn the skull-crushing blow into a merely laming shoulder wound.
The ratling stumbled back, shooting at the ratbrute with his rifle. The shot went wild, but a second shot – coming from the interior of the building – struck the ratbrute in the chest. The stench of burning rat fur filled the air.
As can also be seen directly in this session, adding faction-based play to a dungeon can deeply enrich the experience, adding whole new dimensions to your scenario.
Along these lines, you may also want to check out Keep on the Borderlands: Factions in the Dungeon.
Campaign Journal: Session 34C – Running the Campaign: Ornate Chokepoints
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
Your book’s guidance on factions is really great. I’m trying to put together a large continental faction based campaign, and have been pilfering from Drakkenheim’s rundown on factions as well as Chapter 6 in the Ptolus sourcebook, Organizations. Trying to manage the relationships between factions however is a little excessive and I’d like to know if you have any templates for factions in a campaign that centers around their relationships, particularly with the players.
As a rule I’ve been grouping faction relationships into broad categories and each faction has a disposition based on those categories, with an exception or two per category. So a lawful dwarven kingdom might be generally hostile towards the category “Uprisings,” but has an exception for the Triton “Uprising” since it injures a rival kingdom.
My problem I suppose is recording/managing these in a coherent way that is as easy to check or as easy to modify as what you have in your one-sheet. I think the diversity of factions adds significant depth to the setting, but I have no idea how to make it work beyond the single dungeon.