Re: Re: [Adonthell-general] Sects and Factions

[Nils Fohrbeck]

> Leaving all these ideas we had so far aside, I think there is one
> question we have to ask: what is the purpose of a faction, and what
> effects do factions have on gameplay?
> 
> Before we don't know the answer, I don't think we can really decide how
> to handle schools of magic.
> 
> As far as gameplay goes, I think factions should have the following
> properties:
> 
> * The player may join factions. 
>   This shouldn't be required, but optional. It's partly along the lines
>   of your idea of letting the player develop his own story as he gets
>   along.
> 
> * Joining a faction offers certain benefits.
>   Other faction members are more friendly, of course. Some spells,
>   feats, songs, etc. might be faction specific.
> 
> * A faction offers additional side quests.
>   For one there are is the usual thing: some faction bigwig asks the
>   player to do something for the faction. But I would also extend this
>   to other quests. Some ordinary NPCs could hand out tasks only to
>   certain faction members. For example, a Ranger might be asked to
>   restore order in the forest, while they won't trust a Thief with
>   that.
> 
> * Certain factions exclude each other.
>   That's easy. You can't be Ranger and Witch-hunter at the same time. At
>   least not for long.

I think we canhave differnet kind of factions in Adonthell. Some of them are 
'real' factions, while others are 'fake' ones (sounds stupid, I know). The 
difference is the following: real factions really influence how others react to 
you, while the fake ones don't (still no goodexplanation). Let me give you an 
example: A character could join the city guard in Cirdanth (which is a real 
faction), but that also means he cannot join the thieves guild (actually we 
should not make it that black and white. Instead if the player does enough 
missions for the guard, he gains a high standing with them and he can then join 
the guard faction(a little bit like alignment)). A fact faction on the other 
hand could be pete's gang of evil pirates (a gang of kids) that 'fights' 
against jonnys avangers in some childhood game (we do not need any internal 
calculations here, the dialogue editor could handle the 1 or 2 occations were 
this matters).

One thing that just came to my mind is that we can actually combine factions 
and alignment. In fact alignment could be just another faction conflict (the 
good faction versus the evil faction) in much the same way in which rangers 
work against which hunters or guards versus thieves. But while alignment has 
some moral implications the other faction contrasts do not have to be that way 
(for example a guard might order you to execute an (innocent) criminal, which 
would lower your alignment but increase your standing with the guards). 

Up to now the system only allows for 2 factions to work against each other. Now 
we only need to come up with a way to connect 3 or more factions with each 
other.

What do you think?

Nils



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