Empire
Roleplaying The Empire
The presence of the empire is divided up by its Factions. It is more important getting your supporting characters in front of the players than the overall schema of each faction. The elements of a Faction include placement, distinction, and interaction. Placement is where there is the possibility of running into a specific faction presence. Distinction is the story guide’s and player’s understanding and application of knowledge to act on behalf of their characters. Interaction is the actual scene between the story guide and the players.
The most important two of these elements to be solid on are placement and interaction. As a story guide you’ll want to be consistent for the sake of the setting on where players might meet these faction members and be prepared for the interactions going forward to manage plot directives and situational roleplay. Player’s characters already know the general location and have a clue to where they might run into members of these factions.
Distinctions on the other hand are the function, policies, public view, and histories of the factions. Distinctions don’t always apply to all the supporting characters and player characters who are members of the factions. Distinctions are good to know for both the story guide and the player to have a particular idea of how a situation may play out or what strings might be pulled in the moment.
Interactions will almost always override distinctions, because supporting characters are individuals which seemingly represent the whole but they always have more than one affiliation. A supporting character’s affiliations, like player characters, may be wildly variable based on all their background elements. Species, origin core, nemesis, and a variety of other factors like social circles, hobbies, and family ties may connect them in many different ways to the world around the table.
That Panrike Diligence guard is in a book club, he doesn’t talk about his job while on his patrol, but the book one of the players is carrying sparked his interests. That’s right, he approached the party walking down the street not because they broke a law, but because he saw that book and just had to say hi and talk about it. Whatever the party assumes as he approaches may follow the distinctions, but the story has other plans. Even if your group just robbed a small store and has it on good assumption the approach is because somehow they got busted.
Theory Craft on Factions
Observing the structure of an empire requires us to take a study of all moving parts. The needs of the many are facilitated by persistent structures which change over time. These structures tend to be hierarchical in nature and first exist due to the needs of survival, then later motives develop when the foundation exceeds the baselines for preservation. Complex cultural evolution is the result of spare time for activities beyond the labors required for survival. Beyond this, cultural evolution is defined by a mix of tradition and heritage.
Facility and Purpose
The structure of facilities which withstand the test of time are those which fill the needs of the people. Each of these facilities work together to allow the empire to function. The result is the support of millions of denizens across all of Ager Ethe. We refer to these facilities as Factions. There are six major faction types categorized by the general collection of survival needs they facilitate. These labels with a glance tell of their importance to the structure of the empire.
As with any hierarchical system with distinct separations over a myriad of factors, there are deviations across borders. There is always a chance for the ambitions of a few within the structure to change the operation of policies for the good of the people. In worse cases we have patches of corruption. These conflicts are the story drivers found across factions we like to call Plot Directives.
At the lower echelon, faction dynamics are cooperative. Each of the long established factions have mingled dynamics, every one of which serves a function which supports the empire and each city as a whole organism. The general sector and performance of the major factions have significant conflicts as the world changes, better ways are found, worse ways are found out, and across time growing pains reveal good enough for now isn’t good enough forever.
Faction Types and Roles
We categorize the factions of the empire into six distinct groups; Unions, Radicals, Organizations, Militant, Charities, and Cabals. There are both mechanical reasons and roleplaying reasons for these general types.
“After the wars we performed a few experiments. We found a non uniform system was beneficial to the population at large. Having many influences drives diversity at scale, and we need ways to deal with what is coming.”
