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Ultimate Factions
 
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Ultimate Factions
Publisher: Legendary Games
by Thilo G. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/26/2018 04:33:55

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This supplement clocks in at 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of introduction/how to use, 1 page ToC, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 19 pages of content. It should be noted, though, that much like in every LG-book, these pages are chock-full with text and information – we get a ton of content in these pages.

So, what did I complain about regarding kingdom building? What did people really want to see there? What’s a big weakness of the base kingdom building system, even after LG’s massive and glorious expansions like Ultimate Rulership? Well, it represents kingdoms as cohesive entities, when both in fiction and reality, they never behaved as such. The vizier wants to be caliph instead of the caliph, religious cults and mage guild vie for control, and the noble families are plotting.

Now, I am perfectly capable of plotting complex machinations of a ton of factions in the background of the campaign, seeing the information in tiny nuggets. My players like piecing together complex happenings – but what happens when a large group of NPCs in a kingdom-building game exerts its influence, either under the control of PCs or in opposition to them? In the more abstract kingdom-building, seeding hooks and the like becomes tougher. Enter this supplement.

As an aside, this also acts as a bridge of sorts between regular and kingdom-building gameplay: The PCs could e.g. begin using the rules for large organizations in kingdom building as well as Ultimate Intrigue’s organization influence rules to influence organizations, via them kingdoms…and perhaps actually become caliphs instead of the caliph. (Kudos if you got that reference, btw.) This allows for a more organic playstyle – from rags to leaders, to kings, this book allows for a linear progression and acts as a synthesis between Ultimate Intrigue and Campaign.

Okay, so how do factions behave? First thing you’ll notice is that factions actually get tangible benefits from their alignment: Lawful factions get +2 resources, chaotic ones +2 power, good ones get +2 reputation and evil factions +2 to power. Neutral factions get +1 to reputation and power, while true neutral factions get this bonus, obviously, twice. If the combined size of a kingdom’s factions exceeds 10 times the kingdom’s size, it’ll get +1 unrest during upkeep’s Step 4. Goals designate the faction’s endgame; operation denotes the means by which the organization seeks to achieve its goal.

Power, Reputation and Resources are pretty self-explanatory and constitute the attributes of the organization. A point of size roughly represents 25 members, and in a cool twist, we get Ultimate Rulership-synergy here. If the members are dissatisfied with the faction’s leadership, then this leads to tension, which translates to a scaling penalty to faction checks. Factions may have types and measure their wealth in Wealth Points (WP), each of which is worth approximately 400 gp, or 1 BP in kingdom building. WP may be purchased during the income phase.

In order to create a faction, you first calculate its size. They begin with a size of 0, and buildings in the kingdom increase the maximum initial size. A MASSIVE table of a detailed building-list provides an easy 1-page-stop-reference for the sizes, and, once more also covers Ultimate Rulership’s buildings. Factions may start as a smaller size than maximum, should they choose to do so. This table also the 9 types of factions – for example, an academic faction obviously benefits from an academy, while a military or religious one does not. These 9 types, just fyi, each convey a total of +2 to the faction’s attributes, though obviously, some of them split the +2 bonus between two attributes.

As an aside: The engine allows, as presented here, for pretty easy changes of faction type: Wanted to subvert those religious fanatics via wit? Change the type of the faction. Looking for a representation of growing fanaticism and radical thinkers, or an increasing enlightenment? Type-changes can provide an easy means to write a new chapter of your faction’s history. After the type, you determine the secrecy of the faction –a faction may be open, covert or disguised. After codifying different basic types of possible goals, we take a look at the scale of the goal, which obviously may range from local to encompassing the whole kingdom. Note that public and covert goals may be different from another! Goals have a basic DC 15 to achieve, with aims, scale and privacy determining the DC-modifier to achieve a goal.

So that’s the base engine for the faction. From here, we proceed to take a look at the faction turn. A faction turn takes place during the kingdom turn sequence, after the Edict phase. Results of the faction turn should take place before the start of the Income phase. All factions perform each faction phase before moving on to the next phase. Power acts as an initiative of sorts for factions, and on a tie, the smaller faction goes first.

First, we have the upkeep phase – here, we check tension. If tensions become particularly bad, we may well see a splintering of factions here! After that, we pay upkeep costs.

After that, we move on to the operations phase: Here, factions may act, with their sizes governing how many operations can be initiated. Operations happen in a contiguous sequence, not parallel: First OP #1, then OP #2, etc. The sequence may be freely chosen. Here, gp can be converted to WP and income is determined. Operations are classified in two categories – active and maintenance. These include advancing a goal, abandoning one, aiding factions, earning wealth, pursuing alliances, engaging in faction conflict, recruitment…you get the idea. These interact in meaningful ways with the kingdom building rules.

Now, I mentioned splintering factions before, and this indeed is a part where the intrigue component comes into play – you see, the pdf provides the tool to treat factions as organizations and vice versa, allowing you to switch between them with relative ease. This makes it very much possible for individual characters to matter and provides an uninterrupted line of player agenda from the personal to the kingdom level, which, to me, represents a HUGE selling point. This is also relevant, obviously, for the easy to grasp splintering rules. If you already have a kingdom in play, fret not – the book contains rules for creating actions for existing kingdoms.

Now, if we assume factions and PCs as a constant line of sorts, it should become obvious that PCs will sooner or later want to use skills in the context of factions, right? Well, the pdf provides concise rules there as well.

Does that all sound too complex for you? Fret not! Simple faction rules included. Now, the pdf is not content in just providing an unbroken line from intrigue to Campaign – it actually ALSO provides the means to use the downtime rules in context with factions! Yes, this is purely optional, but oh boy did I smile here. Of course, kingdoms may attempt to support or suppress a faction and, as noted, the faction/intrigue rules, are presented in a concise manner: The process covers approximately a page and is tight and was understandable on my first read-through. Considering the systems in question, that is quite an achievement.

Now, the book is content with just providing you with tools – it proceeds to elaborate on why factions matter and how you can use them in play – and, if you’re a lazy fellow like yours truly, you’ll certainly appreciate the 6 generic sample factions that allow you to throw factions into play without much hassle. The pdf concludes with a handy table-index.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting re top-notch, I noticed no glitches on a forma or rules-language level. Layout adheres to legendary Games’ nice two-column full-color standard. The artworks are in full-color and nice, though fans of Legendary Games will be familiar with all but one of them. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

WTF has just happened here? This is, to my knowledge, Ben Walklate’s FIRST RPG-supplement. As in: Freshman offering. At least I couldn’t find any previous rulebook. This pdf has no business being so darn impressive! I expected that this book would be good; after all, Legendary Games would not jeopardize the reputation of their phenomenal kingdom-building supplements.

Still, I did not expect this little book to actually succeed in such an impressive manner in a task that can well be deemed a squaring of the circle of sorts: We have a seamless progression from character to faction/organization to kingdom-building level, providing not only perfect synergy between Ultimate Intrigue and Campaign, but also with the must-own Ultimate Rulership. This is baffling. I mean it. The systems presented are organic, precise and, best of all, remain easy and painless to sue and integrate. Indeed, the rules presented herein sport an almost effortless elegance that, from a design-perspective, is a true achievement.

This book is a missing link of sorts; whether you take the analogue of Conan (Solitary PC -> faction -> king) or just kingdom-spanning intrigues that oscillate between the different levels, this book delivers; with transparency and much-needed interactions between the different levels, this represents an absolute masterpiece that allows you to tell a whole cosmos of new stories. There are very few book that attain this level of game-enhancing characteristics, much less in such a tight manner. Ultimate factions is a masterstroke and the single most impressive freshman offering I have read in a long, long while. My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars + seal of approval, and this qualifies as a candidate for my Top Ten of 2017. This is a must-have offering and should be considered to be an EZG-Essential for any games that want to blend intrigue and kingdom-building. This is a true masterpiece. Get it.

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Ultimate Factions
Publisher: Legendary Games
by Eric H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/26/2017 14:48:48

With this latest PDF from Legendary Games we return to both their 'Ultimate' and their 'Kingbreaker' lines. Ultimate Factions follows in the trails blazed by such fine products as Ultimate Rulership, Ultimate War, and Ultimate Battle in that it mainly deals with some new problems that can arise for the rulers of a nation.

Politics. We all hate them but we all have to deal with them too. They can make your life exciting, yes, but infuriating as well. However, they are part of running a nation and dealing with society, yet they rarely show up as a force in their own right in campaigns. Oh, they may be an enemy to be defeated or an ally or patron to provide work and aid, but rarely do we get much insight into what they specifically want and how they intend to attain it aside from what directly affects the PCs. Ultimate Factions was written in part to address these problems as well as a way to give the poor downtrodden NPCs a voice in the councils of the mighty. How well does it work?

The PDF proper consists of 28 pages. There's one for the cover, back cover, a splash page, credits, OGL, introduction, table of contents, an ad for the rest of the Ultimate line, and a basic rundown on what to expect, which leaves us with 18 ages of content. Like the rest of the series, they are eighteen well-done pages.

We first get a definition of 'faction' for the purposes of the game: 'an organization or group within a kingdom which is attempting to assert political, economic, or social control over the entire kingdom, or some part of it'. This covers a lot of ground for possibilities ranging from a thieves' guild attempting to reduce the effectiveness of the town watch to a secret society seeking domination behind the scenes to the patrons of a particular tavern seeking to keep their favorite watering hole open. It does get recommended that even the smallest kingdom have at least two factions to represent the interests of the leadership and the public.

Factions have alignments that affect their stats, much like kingdoms. They also have goals that they try to gain through operations, and for stats they have power, resources, and reputation. They also have size and type, for just what sort of a faction they are. As kingdoms have Build Points, factions have Wealth Points that the spend to achieve their goals. And while kingdoms have Unrest, factions have Tension. The higher a faction's Tension gets, the more difficult it becomes for them to achieve their goals. Eventually they may fall apart entirely.

The initial size of a faction is determined by both their type and what sort of buildings your kingdom has. The faction's type also influences their stats. For instance, a civil faction is usually a large group of citizens working to a common goal, and they get a boost on Reputation. A Judicial faction is working for (or against) the kingdom leadership and gets a bonus on both Power and Reputation. Other kinds of factions include Academic, Foreign, Military, Religious, Social, and Trade. Factions can also have different levels of secrecy. Some are Open, some are Covert like thieves or the secret police, and some are Disguised, pretending to one sort of goal on the surface while seeking something else entirely.

They also have Goals – Major Goals that can drive adventures or even a while campaign and Minor Goals that are more the day-to-day efforts. Goals further divide into Aim – do they want to control, boost, reduce, or eliminate something or one, and they all list what effect this has on various Kingdom rolls – and Scale, for how large a group they want to affect. Everything from one single shopkeeper to all trade in the land to the rulers themselves is covered. Goals can also be Public or Secret, with the latter much harder to achieve but known only to the Faction leadership.

We also get a new 'Faction Turn' meant to be set after the Edict phase of the Kingdom turn. First they perform Upkeep to see how well they're doing, then they do Operations to see what they can accomplish and how many WP they can add. Many operations can affect the Kingdom stats, but they have to be paid for with WPs. This can get expensive, but the faction can accept a lower modifier if they pay less WPs.

Operations cover a lot of ground. Factions can abandon a goal or advance it, aid another Faction or their Kingdom, make allies, fight enemies, get more wealth, spy on other factions or subvert them, subvert the kingdom, go recruiting, or even just engage in lobbying for ruler support, do a publicity campaign, or let their members know how appreciated they are so they stay loyal. The latter can be very important to avoid the Faction splintering or even falling apart entirely.

You can do a lot with these rules. A Faction can channel support and cash to another group. If, say, the citizenry faction likes what the leaders are doing, they can support them. If not, they can balk them at every turn. We also get rules for how to use skills to learn about factions and guidelines on how to create factions for already existing kingdoms. There are also very simplified rules for people who don't want more bookkeeping, allowing for the faction that does best every turn to affect one single aspect of the Kingdom or to weaken other factions. The kingdom Ruler can do the same to weaken or strengthen any faction. There are also rules for how to use factions with the downtime organizations from Ultimate Campaign or the organization rules from Ultimate Intrigue. There's even a new Edict for kingdoms to use allowing them to support a loyal or suppress a troublesome faction, at the price of dinging your kingdom Loyalty.

We get some guidelines on how to use factions in play. The most interesting idea here is that you should allow some players to control some factions, including ones that are working against their role in kingdom leadership. I can see this working great for some groups.

A section on why factions matter lays out some more guidelines for why and how to use these rules. Basically, until now, the people of a kingdom had little opportunity to let their desires or complaints be heard while your PC rulers were building the kingdom. Not everyone is going to agree with the rulers and their 'brilliant' ideas or agree with how much or little they tax everyone or just what kind of an army or diplomatic deals they try to make. Using the rules in Ultimate Factions, now their support or lack of it becomes something PCs have to deal with. It opens up the door for intrigue and (hopefully) non-violent interactions between the rulers and the ruled. If some of those subjects support you on one point but oppose you on another, it all just gets even more exciting.

The PDF ends with a list of sample factions to give you some ideas on what you can accomplish with the rules.

For people who like role-playing and the intrigue rules from Ultimate Intrigue, this PDF is a delight. It can help anyone who ever wondered what the ordinary citizens were doing while the rulers were running the kingdom. Or those who just think that the current kingdom rules somehow make things 'too easy' for PCs and want to make their rule a little more exciting. There are one or two minor typos in the book but those aside I noticed nothing that would interfere with using this PDF. This is one of those PDFs that will make you wonder why you never knew you needed it before reading it. I give it five stars, and if you use the rest of Legendary Games' Ultimate line, my unreserved recommendation.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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