Designing original factions

[LordOfShadows]

So, we've taken Venice as our base, now we need to change it enough, so that whoever looks at the description won't simply think you've taken the encyclopedia entry and switched names.


First, let's change the geography. Let's move our city-state to an island. This gives almost the same set of advantages and disadvantages. Lets say the city is on the northernmost tip of the island, with a deep water harbour, protected by a breakwater extending from tall solid cliffs.

What ad- and disadvantages does this shift in reality give us? First, the city is going to likely have to maintain granaries in case of emergency such as famine or seige, and they will be importing grain - islands are usually poor farmland. A large amount of ships will likely be owned by the state, much like in venice. Trade will be the lifeblood of the city, pirates will be hated, and rewards will be posted regularly for particular pirates heads, preferably detached from their bodies.

The nobility are stupendously wealthy compared to the poor, and there will likely be a culture of conspicuous consumption - that is, if you have it you wear it, or else you are assumed to not have it. The middle class - what in venice were the guilds-men and arsenal workers (where the football team take their name from, I believe), will live in communities bound together by blood and trade. Families were large, and everybody worked, whether at a trade or in the home. the nobility and masters of the guilds will mix only a little. The lower class work tremendously hard, and are incredibly devout.

The venetian navy was also it's trade fleet, or it was kept dry in the arsenal, and this system makes absolute sense with this level of tech, so simply move it across wholesale.

How much specifically christian stuff do you want? For instance, if you want to keep a large religious presence, but of a fantasy religion, then to take the basic structure organization of the roman church is a good idea, as it is itself taken from the roman state religions. or you can move it to a cultic type religion, with each family having it's own ancestral gods and a priest either chosen by lot or being an office that rotates around the head honchos of the clan.

If you are dropping christianity, then banking gets a big boost - as for a while banking was not exactly in the best of graces in religious thought. This brings in the idea of the corporation, a legal fiction, which will boost trade.

Sorry if I'm bouncing around, but everything impacts on everything else and I ain't to good at setting down my thoughts in order quickly.

Going back to the geography, the tall cliffs will give an enormous defensive advantage, plus it will mean that the island is stone cored, so lets say there are quarries to the south of the city. Now there will be quarrymen, masons guilds, stone carvers and architects in the city.


I hope I  have give you some idea of how to go about building up your fantasy city/state/nation - I find that just letting one idea keep on running until it hits off more works best, and it will eventually give you a society.

 

[Roach XI the Magnificent]

Hello all history buffs.

I'm designing factions for a new mod and I may need your help. Hopefully this is not off-topic here, as it is intended for people knowledgable in medieval history and cultures.

The general idea of the mod is that it happens in an original medieval world. It's realistic as it gets for a made-up world, but some low fantasy is not forbidden. The focus is on playing through a story set in pretty realistic settings for medieval times, hard-nosed politics and interactions with the one dominant religion, where people and factions are vying for power and there are no villains and heroes.
If you have to compare it to Calradia, factions should have more originality, depth and developed histories, and not be barely disguised copies of historic nations, with really not much to distinguish between them except troops and architecture. Religion, entirely missing in Calradia, is central to the story and the world, and is designed as a single dominant Church, with heretic sects and competing internal Church factions.

To get to the point, I need help in designing original factions.
From my experience, the best faction design follows the formula of mixing two or more historical cultures in an original, yet plausible way. For example, you can have a Middle Eastern faction that is a mix of Ottomans, Persians and Afghans, with cultural traits and customs picked from each (like the D'Shar in Prophesy of Pendor).
I want to avoid two things with my factions:
- barely disguised historic nations (like Scots with cavalry, only called differently)
- implausible fantastic nations (like a primitive tribal group that invented guns)

So, I need your ideas about interesting original factions.
Maybe think of a world where history took an alternative route. What could have happened to the medieval nations? How would they be different from the ones we had in the feudal era?
What would be an interesting, original and plausible mix of cultures?

I'd particularly like to ask for help with designing an Arab/Middle-East-themed faction, as I don't know much the Arab world, but want to reuse the game's equipment and architecture. (I can't do models for **** and will rely on OSPs and game assets )

Grateful for every response (and good spelling),
MV

By the looks of it, you aren't particularly well versed in Middle Eastern history - Ottomans+Persians+Afghans, of all people=Arab world???? No offense.

For a middle eastern faction my suggestion is: Have separate recruitment trees. Tribal javelin/bow/lance cavalry (i.e. real life's Turcomans/Bedouins) and crappy infantry from villages, slave soldiers (i.e. RL mamluks) from castles - really expensive heavy cav, basically,  and professionals (RL Halqa) from towns - spearmen, archers and good cavalry. This will basically give a good representation of a generic middle eastern army. You can then freely make various styles of equipment and stuff as long as you keep this basic army structure, and it will be a good representation of middle eastern troops.

A few pointers on equipment:
1. DON'T use plate armor, or that ugly vanilla mamluk armor;
2. DO rely mainly on light armor (none, padded or lamellar)
3. Only use heavy armor (mail) for elite troops;

As for geography, I suggest a semi-arid climate, with mountains. No open desert, unless along the frontiers, since that's bull**** (most middle eastern civilizations were on at least partially fertile grounds, not the Arabian desert).

 

[Swordmaster]

Or instead of slavery, simply using foreigners. The motivation would be something like them not having any roots/connections here, they would not be as willing or as able to start rebellions as someone born in the land and so on. Essentially, the king would be surrounded by foreigners, which would make him VERY distanced from his people.

Foreign slaves work pretty well. In addition to what you've said, they'd also be very grateful and forever loyal to their king.

 

[Hawkwood]

What about a small mercantile yet feudalistic state? In most fantasy worlds I've heard of, the "knightly" country using large amounts of noble heavy cavalry tends to be rural and roughly based on France. While the more mercantile states draw inspiration from the infantry-heavy states ruled by a strong citizenry (like Flanders).

What if the nobles embraced trade rather than relying solely on rural villages to make up their source of income? Basically something similar Venice, Genoa or Flanders, but ruled by a nobility of the French/Swadian/Bretonnian variety, rather than having a highly powerful citizenry like the Netherlands/Rhodoks.

 

[Haresus]

Or instead of slavery, simply using foreigners. The motivation would be something like them not having any roots/connections here, they would not be as willing or as able to start rebellions as someone born in the land and so on. Essentially, the king would be surrounded by foreigners, which would make him VERY distanced from his people.

Foreign slaves work pretty well. In addition to what you've said, they'd also be very grateful and forever loyal to their king.

Well, the thing about slaves is that you either have to train them yourself, buy trained slaves (Rare or expensive), or do with loyal but inexperienced (And depending on the job, incompetent) slaves.
If you use proffesional foreigners you would not have to worry about any of that, because they would already be trained.

As a minor note, these proffesionals would probably be sons to nobles or rich persons with no chance of inheriting any fortune, but with enough money in the family to get a good education.

 

[xenoargh]

The thing is, history's full of intriguing and odd situations that are certainly worth fleshing out into entire factions.  It just takes a little imagination and a willingness to jump into the unknown without looking back. 

Just looking at armies, here are some random ideas:

Greek phalanxes with bullet-proof shields with blades affixed to the boss, primitive pistols and Rococo styling and color choices.  They use three-edged trench knives as their backup weapon and crouch with their shields to receive cavalry.

An army from a jungle area that specializes in poisoned weapons that are very effective, but is forced to build their armors out of brass and carefully-made wood and fiber mats due to their native climate, so they're either slow or nearly naked.

Mounted crossbowmen who use a version of the Chu-no-ku with a reduction gear, ratchet and an adjustment slider to achieve a weapon that can adjust between high tension and rapidity of fire.

Wooly mammoths didn't go extinct, and a swarming nation of corn-growing slaves serve the Mastodon Lords, who ride caparisoned beasts into battle like walking hills of maille.  The slave-troops have spears and bows made from cane and carry shields made of corn-husks woven into thick mats and then lacquered.

Viking-like raiders whose primary weapon is a huge glaive and whose secondary weapon is a chain bola that can immobilize the enemy or kill horses that makes a scary moaning sound when they wind up to throw it.

...etc.  Now just imagine the culture that produces them, et voila, you have a fantasy culture



I really think the biggest trap you can get into is looking at things from too large-scale of a perspective; when you say, "like the French and the Spaniards", for example, it's putting together two regions that were, in this time period, really a bunch of different feudal states with different characteristics into one giant generalization. 

Instead, go specific; look for articles about a particular place and time, such as what life was like for 14th-century Londoners for inspiration.  Read up about what happened when the Moro met the British; look at all the odd tribal cultures and imagine what might have happened if they'd figured out the core technological tricks and were contenders.  One of the things about this whole time period is that there wasn't that huge of a gulf between, say, the Spaniards and the Aztecs; had the Spaniards not brought the terrible diseases of Europe with them, in all probability the Spaniards would have had to mount a huge campaign to defeat them.  That history took such a weird and winding course instead of being "fair" is just how it actually went; it's not just or logical, and it doesn't always make sense.

Which brings me to my second piece of advice:  the second-biggest trap is the idea that they have to "make sense". 

This is something that a lot of people, especially left-brain types, have issues with; they get obsessed with it to the point that they just end up with a bunch of very generic "cultures" based on their poor understanding of history and the reality that, well, things don't really "make sense".

Real-world medieval cultures did not "make sense"; modern cultures don't really "make sense", if you examine them in any detail.  Cultures are full of rules that aren't logical or once had a real purpose but are still followed long after they aren't really important any more, like how we arrange silverware for a meal, what's the proper way to ask a woman to marry you, what names are "silly" to name your children, what's the polite way to talk about needing to use a restroom, etc., etc.  As countless travelers have found out over the ages, what "makes sense" in one place may be completely reversed in others, for no other reason than "it's always been done this way". 

This certainly applies to things where you'd think that logic would apply, like weapons and armor; the Japanese virtually froze their armor and weapon designs for a few hundred years, for example... why?  Because, is why.  We'll never really understand what the Tokugawa Shogunate was thinking, not really.  We just know what they chose to do, and that it was apparently pretty stable. 

The knowledge for how to build lots of technologies existed for quite some time, in a lot of cases, before finally getting used, all over the world.  Even now, in the Internet age, when all of the potentially world-changing technologies that are sitting around can be found instead of sitting around not being used, a lot of them probably aren't, because the inventors are obscure, patented their tech and then never found anybody to partner with to build it, etc., etc.  The world has never been a logical place, and a lot of things that were done back then "made sense" but not from a purely effectiveness POV, but from the standpoint of logistics.  Otherwise every European army would have had a contingent of elephants and wagon-forts and big wagons to carry all the troops so they wouldn't become exhausted doing route marches for hundreds of miles

And don't ever presume that they're just "minor differences of opinion", either; people have died in their thousands over these things that don't "make sense". 

So, basically, don't worry about it "making sense".  It's a trap, and getting too worried about it just gets in the way of doing a good job making the factions and their armies interesting and, more importantly, making them fun, at a game-design level.

 

[Devercia]

Irrational logic is still logic. Cultures don't do weird things "because." They have reasons, even if those reasons are stupid or arbitrary. The problem here is that simply creating stupid or arbitrary cultural features does nothing to explain why they exist in the first place, which is not a problem in itself, but leads to a generic result. For instance, it may seem stupid or arbitrary that a Sikh wears a turban until you consider that he has a bunch of hair to manage, and that he has that hair because he is religiously bound not to cut it. In this case, it is a rational solution to an irrational problem. But if you see in a game people wear turbans, without that back story, it just seems like your mixing up aspects of cultures into anachronistic hodgepodge. It does not feel like a genuine culture, just the result of a generic fantasy culture generator 1.3b. You end up with various planets of hats.

 

[xenoargh]

That's true, to some extent, but it really depends on how it's handled.  The Land of Hats only becomes a real problem if you waste a lot of time explaining things instead of creating things that are artistically styled to create a sense of culture without worrying terribly much about the how and why of their existence. 

Explain only things that are vital; if the Minions of the evil god Mograth wear the skulls of their enemies as helmets, guess what, that's all players need to know, really.  Let them fill in the blanks; say as little as possible, let the artwork tell its own story

 

[Arzeal]

I might toss in few ideas:
-  Arabic city states raised by the power of trade in the corner of desert, Separated with the continent by the ocean of waves and the ocean of sands, they would feature unique religion and distinctive army style.
- A prosper mercenary/trader/raider nation built by Norway seafarers in the middle of mountain area. They have played a critical part in an civil war that the King, upon regained his throne, bless them with lands and titles. Years have passed, more Nordic men have came, and the new Kingdom is brewing (again) in the flame of civic war, which calls for a chance of an Independent Norway Kingdom 5000 miles from home ...

 

[Mad Vader]

I'm very grateful for the fine ideas posted here. Unfortunately I can't reply to every interesting post, so I had to pick a few.

About what comes first, geography or factions, the chicken or the egg? From the design perspective (as opposed to how things went down in history), I think it's easier to come up with an interesting faction first then model its surroundings.
So, factions first, map later, but once both are roughly defined, they will influence each other as the design is fleshed out.
Example: You start with a major trading faction and place its capital on a river or a coast, in a central map position. Then you notice you can use nearby hills you randomly placed for mines and place a castle there to guard the area, weaving mining history into the faction background.

@Devercia: The use of forum games to create factions is quite interesting and fun. However, the end results depend a lot on the knowledge and creativity of the players. Only top people can make it work if you want top results, or I'm afraid you'll end up with common cliches and cheap lulz. (Btw, PoP uses roleplay threads to create lore and game events for the next updates.)
The "currency is evil" idea may be a little bit improbable, and if it makes the player barter for everything, I would rather skip it - but the principle of coming with an interesting idea and building a society on top of it is sound.

@Rallix: the list of cliche factions is quite good and funny (or sad, if you are jaded) - a list of faction designs to avoid - thanks. TEATRC had some great original factions and backstories, worth taking another look.

@Swordmaster: the idea of "retiring" old people seems more common and quite interesting - this kind of stuff makes factions fun, thanks. Purchasing or earning privileges and access to people and places makes a lot of sense for isolationist factions, another good one.

@LordOfShadows: Quite a nice demo of what could be done by taking a historic faction and tweaking it to something original. Maybe you could have merged in another historic faction like Cyprus, and add things about Cyprus, like being a frequent target of invasions and raids due to its riches, resulting in a more unique Venice/Cyprus faction (further tweaked beyond recognition if necessary).

@Roach: a sound advice for a Middle Eastern troop tree. (Trust me, I know who Arabs are, please read again carefully.)

@xeno: Whoa! That's the kind of original thinking that amazes people. I would surely like to see what you could do with a full faction design.
I agree that we are handicapped by reading history as it happened once and once only, there are quite a lot of events that are not pre-determined, but happened through chance or because of a personality. Everything can be explained in hindsight, but it takes some out-of-the-box thinking to imagine what else could have happened.
The minions of Mograth: agreed that players' minds are very good at filling in the blanks, but if you want any advanced interaction with the minions you need to supply some of your own lore. The principle is sound though: to make a faction more interesting and engage the player's imagination, intentionally leave mysteries and open questions. (The movie/TV dudes cynically do this only to set up sequels )

 

[AWdeV]

I think you can get more believable results if you start by making a cohesive, geographically probable continent and then place the factions into the mould created by the geography.

 

[Mad Vader]

I'm afraid working up from map to factions will somewhat limit the creative process, but it's really a preference. More visual types would prefer starting with looking at maps, I suppose.
For example, what can be done with this?
(btw, a clean PoP map - and generic enough: it has steppes, snowy parts and a desert)

隐藏

 

[Roach XI the Magnificent]

The thing is, societies and technology develop in accordance with climatic conditions. You aren't going to have manoralism in a desert, or huge centralized empires in the tundra.

 

[AWdeV]

I'm afraid working up from map to factions will somewhat limit the creative process, but it's really a preference. More visual types would prefer starting with looking at maps, I suppose.
For example, what can be done with this?
(btw, a clean PoP map - and generic enough: it has steppes, snowy parts and a desert)

隐藏

Everything or just the stuff inside the yellow border? Lakes, seas, rivers, hills, mountains, forests and, as roach said, climates all have their own influence on the people living there and their way of life and I think you can do a lot with these influences and by thinking logically and maybe comparing to real-life civilisations you can come up with some interesting things.
Having established that, you can then go on and think of societal influences and things the people came up with, for whatever reason.

 

[Mad Vader]

I think that's why you start with fun, interesting factions first, then draw a map that accomodates their background. Game design is not history.
Example:
Start with a basic idea of a nation that's a loose confederation of feuding clans. Clans develop when resources are scarce. So they will likely live in an arid or hilly country. So you make their part of the map full of hills and maybe some desert or tundra.
It's backwards from the normal historical process, but it's easier to do.

 

[FrisianDude]

When I originally read this thread two groups appeared in my head; Cathars and Almughavars. Not sure how to combine them (as the second is not actually a people), though.

Edit; perhaps fleshable-outable in a sort of Southern-France/Pyrenees/Spanish-like faction. With hermandades patrols and ****. I think I'm going to ponder about this one a bit more.

 

[xenoargh]

@MadVader: 

I'd love to design whole factions and I more or less did for Blood and Steel, or at least fleshed out what was there and made it more complete, but tbh if I do anything more with the Warband engine, I'd probably aim for a really cool dynamic SP/MP experience using some Advanced Stuff that wouldn't be amenable to the traditional modding approach; basically what I want to do would be much less of a mod and more of a conversion, fairly complicated.  I think the engine can finally be made to do what I wanted, though.  The question I have is whether it'd be worth the bother, and the answer is that it's probably not unless I could get Paradox interested, as it's something that can't be half-assed past the really early stages.

 

[Devercia]

The use of forum games to create factions is quite interesting and fun. However, the end results depend a lot on the knowledge and creativity of the players. Only top people can make it work if you want top results, or I'm afraid you'll end up with common cliches and cheap lulz. (Btw, PoP uses roleplay threads to create lore and game events for the next updates.)
The "currency is evil" idea may be a little bit improbable, and if it makes the player barter for everything, I would rather skip it - but the principle of coming with an interesting idea and building a society on top of it is sound.

There are certain forces that moderate these tendencies, depending on how its set up. Mostly it comes in the form of influence from other players who don't care about your societies sacred cow, who then proceed to muck things up in a delightful way. What typically happens is the outlandish "planet of hats" stereotypes mellow out as the events and actions of other players force societies to branch out their culture into areas beyond their hats. IN the example I gave, I started with a river dwelling ponderous people concerned with tinkering, and ended up with a society struggling to assimilate hostile neighbors who's culture was almost incompatible. It was similar to how the Dawes Act forced Indians to abandon communal ownership of land, and how the conceptual absence of that idea among them ruined them. Point being that I started out with a planet of hats and ended up with a far more fleshed out and balanced faction that had to deal believable and not so obvious issues given its nature. In any case, it is it's own effort to make one of these. Just throwing the idea out there.

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If you want to pursue the top-down method of concept -> context then it might be best to come up with some questions either to answer or keep in mind.

Is the dominant religion politically entrenched? Is it organized or lead by the flock? What is its theology? What are its taboos? How does it view supernatural possibilities or myths that fall outside of itself?

Are you looking for a lore platform for unit trees, or an in depth cultural story? will their be plot elements, quests and encounters unique to this lore? Is the Mod more story based than vanilla
M&B?

What are some technologies and concepts shared by factions? What is folk(limited to one) culture and pop(common to many) culture in the setting? If a faction is 100% unique, why has it not been influenced by its neighbors? Is it that xenophobic?

 

[Mad Vader]

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If you want to pursue the top-down method of concept -> context then it might be best to come up with some questions either to answer or keep in mind.

Is the dominant religion politically entrenched? Is it organized or lead by the flock? What is its theology? What are its taboos? How does it view supernatural possibilities or myths that fall outside of itself?

I'll try to answer as much as I can without giving out spoilers.
I have a 20-page design document that still needs fleshed out factions and NPCs. I can't make this public for fear of spoiling the experience of potential players and theft of cool new ideas about game mechanics (yes, this happens). The design was reviewed by few trusted modders.

There is a single dominant Church. It's modelled on the Catholic Church in its independence and mutually beneficial cooperation with the kings and nobles (there are sources of friction, though). The Church is polytheist and derives its hold on the people from its real ability to make predictions - it has a monopoly on prophesies, received from the Gods themselves. (There's much more about the Church, but that's for the player to discover as the story unfolds.)
It's likely that the nations had other old religions. As the Church spread, its Gods replaced any pagan deities by mapping the old to the new pantheon - this leads to regional differences to which Gods are more worshipped (historic example: the replacement of Baal with Saturn in Carthage).

Other religions are not tolerated (like a monotheist heretic sect). Any lay divination and soothsaying is persecuted.

Are you looking for a lore platform for unit trees, or an in depth cultural story? will their be plot elements, quests and encounters unique to this lore? Is the Mod more story based than vanilla M&B?

I'm looking for both - factions need both a defined culture that has visible in-game effects and unit trees that are based on local experience with warfare. The king and the leading nobles also need personal histories, as they are unique NPCs with custom dialogs.
I had some faction-specific quests in mind, like cornering the market on specific trade goods for a mercantile faction, or driving out heresy for a zealous faction.
The story mechanics is based on a sequence of quests with some branching to make for player choice and ultimately leading to four different endings. However, sandbox play is fine, and the player can choose when to advance the story.

What are some technologies and concepts shared by factions? What is folk(limited to one) culture and pop(common to many) culture in the setting? If a faction is 100% unique, why has it not been influenced by its neighbors? Is it that xenophobic?

Good questions, and another way to invent factional quirks.

 

[RalliX]

Well, firstly, you might have knightly orders which serve the church, and have specific roles. So therefore you could have a type of knight serving as a guard for a patron god's/goddess' specific jurisdiction. Like for example, there might be Knights who defend caravans, as a service to a god of wealth/prosperity.

All sorts of cool orders and such to be invented, similar to the Elder Scolls games.