Thank you for this video! Im currently worldbuilding a continent where I am going to run a casual (once per month session) campaign in with the intention to bring my weekly gaming group to once they finished their campaign that takes place in a different continent. I had a country that was very central with limited access to natural resources and I had a hard time explaining why it existed and wasn't taken over yet by other nearby countries. But your idea of a magocracy where even the simplest people know some basic magic was a good excuse for this place's continued persistence.
Ohhh that works great! No matter how strong your military is, it's hard to get past a small army of wizards mass-casting Fireball. And if the generals are high-level casters, the invaders would just be Wished away the moment they crossed the border 😅
Love this! I’ve found that nothing has made my homebrew world feel quite so intricate and lifelike (and easy to populate) more than creating various factions throughout the world and figuring how they interact.
100%! So many great stories can emerge very naturally from just asking, "What would happen if these two factions were in the same sphere of influence?"
@@TalesArcane Exactly. My current campaign centers around a nation-wide uprising/attempted coup by conspiring necromancers in the Doctor’s Guild. In one particular city, the party had already largely stunted the efforts of the conspiracy before the uprising started, but they were tricked into killing the Baron in the process. When the uprising started, it was quelled quickly in that city, but the ensuing chaos gave the Thieves’ Guild-turned-mafia a neat window to seize control of the city’s fortress. Now they are parading as “freedom fighters” to “liberate” the city from the grasp of the tyrannical guards, who are just trying to keep the peace. My players have gotten really into it, and it’s amazing.
Yeah it's good to be posting the long form stuff, I find these ones really rewarding to make. The shorts are fun and they grow the channel, but long form is where it's at.
The two most underrated faction books in D&D are easily Guild Master's Guide to Ravnica and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Ravnica offers ten guild factions with distinct themes, goals, types of members, and all the tables, guides, and prompts needed to run any number of the guilds as working against or with each other or the party. Theros has fifteen gods, and the churches of those gods get the same treatment the Ravnica guilds got. That's 25 fully developed factions and the tools to run them in all kinds of roles in the campaign, ready to be renamed and dropped into any setting you're running.
That's so good to hear! I really hoped this series would be a good foundation for people jumping into the wonderful but slightly overwhelming realm of homebrew. Good luck with all the world-building to come!
Great video! Thanks so much! In Karameikos (Mystara), my players are foiling the Iron Ring's plans (hence, the Black Eagle Baron's and his court Mage's plans as well). Dethrone Tyranny! Also, the PCs are members of the "Emerald Knights" order. Best wishes, V
I'm always really pleased when people mention finding these videos cozy or relaxing, that's absolutely the vibe I want to go for on the channel. Thank you for watching!
A sidenote. Regardless of type, every faction is an interest group; they're there to do Thing. What is Thing? Why is that faction doing Thing? How is that faction doing Thing? And, last but certainly not least, who is their opposition and what are their motives? "But, wait!" I hear you say "What, How and Why are the exact same questions you ask yourself when writing an adventure!" Pre. Cisely ;) Factions drive conflict and plot, because they are made of *people* with motives and resources.
Hey, thank you, mate! I really appreciate you supporting my content, here and on Patreon. People like you are the reason my audio no longer sounds like it was recorded with a potato 😂
A thought on a ruling class of powerful mages: I would say that it would be more likely for a world like this to have magic become gatekept heavily and magic be a sign of noble blood, with common mages being identified at a young age and adopted into noble houses or by curtailing any lowborn mages in some way. keeping the power for themselves would be a more realistic or grim/low fantasy way of looking at it in my eyes, and presents an interesting challenge for characters in a world like that.
Just waned to say i love your videos and all them have helped so much in creating my home brew world for an up and coming pathfinders campaign. i always find myself referencing back to theses videos and have help me from over thinking on what i really need. Keep up the great work and i look forward to your next videos
I really appreciate the kind words, mate, thank you! Glad my content is helping with a Pathfinder campaign too - I use the terminology of D&D in most of my videos, but really the stuff I'm talking about works across most TTRPGs, I hope.
A really good example of rival factions are the Assassins and Templars from Assassin's Creed. Especially since in the game you often have to kill lower ranked Templars before the main target is available. As well, they have a really cool history that's tied together for thousands of years
Absolutely! The whole first AC game is a masterclass in factions, I think - working your way up, unlocking new abilities, gradually earning the respect of your other faction members.
@@TalesArcane Totally true. As soon as I heard about the factions you were describing, I immediately thought of Assassin's Creed. I definitely think working up a rival factions chain of command would be a really cool campaign. I've even thought of putting the Assassins and Templars in my world because the lore behind it is so cool
one thing that always puzzled me was how secular many games feel. like the biggest thing that feeds into this imo are general pantheons. Like instead of having religions tied to cultural identity you have a big list of Gods and everyone just picks a few they like. So instead of having a powerful faction in an institutional church you just have a bunch of epic level beings that people favor to different degrees.
Religion in general is very interesting in D&D, since it essentially requires no faith component. Gods are almost like very, very powerful aristocrats who can be entreated for favors or angered, but they seem to lose some of their compelling mystic as a result. No one doubts they exist - people may just doubt that one god is more powerful than another. It's very...transactional. I wonder if that's part of the reason that D&D "religion" feels secular, as you say.
@@TalesArcane for sure, I often joke that only clerics and paladins worship the Gods. The rest at best venerate them lol. That and idk it feels a little meta but a lot of people will be super anti-clerical. Like their character 100% knows what their God likes/ dislikes so they don’t need clerics to tell them any of that. Like why bother with a middle man when I know at some point I’ll interact with my super-friend and patron. Which feels odd to me lol.
Play the joinable factions as being smart enough to see the value in having contacts with their rivals. Don't play those factions as fanatics who kill each other on sight. If needed, give both factions a common enemy they can order the PCs to hunt down. The generic town guards and the generic thieves guild may be opposed to each other's goals, but they rarely go to war with each other. The guards know that if they ever actually take out the more mild-mannered thieves guild something worse might fill the void, like slavers or a demon cult. Likewise, the thieves don't like the hoops they have to jump through to stay ahead of the law, but they know the chief guard isn't going to randomly order raids on all the places their hideout might be. Also, the guards the guild leader has bribed aren't so bad. If your factions are going to war with each other, then that's the main focus of the campaign, and the players have to play Romeo and Juliette as the turf wars are causing full-blown chaos in the streets.
