Faction Chooser
Kingyak
I tend to run very sandbox games, so I rarely plan adventures. Instead, I come up with a bunch of NPCs and factions, figure out what they're up to, and then let the players stumble across their schemes, hopefully in a way that encourages the players to either join them or oppose them. Sometimes, the factions are obvious, sometimes they’re not, but you have some general ideas about what purpose the faction will serve in the story or how they operate. The Faction Chooser tool lets you answer a bunch of questions based on what you already know about the game and eventually narrow everything down to a specific type of faction.
For illustrative purposes, I’m going to offer at least one example for each faction type. Rather than mix and matching or trying to find a ficton everyone knows that has all of the different faction types, I’m going to pull a fantasy city out of my butt as I go along. It’s called The Red City and it’s located on the frontiers of a vast and decadent empire, far away from the center of power. The Red City is a major trade hub at the junction of a large river that flows from the capital to the sea and a trade route that leads through the Badlands of Kor to the Eastern Kingdoms. The ruler of the Red City in name is Prince Pharoshad (“Prince Ferrethead” to detractors), the Emperor’s son by one of his less favored wives. Since Pharoshad prefers enjoying the privileges of imperial birth to rulership, most of the day-to-day business of government in the Red City is carried out by his minions.