Been a few months since I put some brainstorming into this, I know: Factions! But really more an ADHD walk through some of my design goals and plans. Idea is for a cyberpunk fantasy game, that can be relatively system agnostic, and a spinoff wargame.


Goal 1: Enough hooks to really get people thinking. Think Planescape, or Ravnica, enough factions to get pinballs bouncing for plots so people don't have to create every tiny group and item.

Goal 2: don't put so many faction details people can't make them their own. I like Eclipse Phase's style: Here's a setting note, and a mystery. Go make it your own, but here's a few suggestions.

Kinda aiming for the 'Downtown is very controlled, well patrolled, and responds to violent hijinx with brutal force.' and 'Weyland-Yutani is currently the leader in extraplanar expeditions and outposts, but they have gained an infamy for putting colonist safety second to trying to exploit paranormal fauna and flora for profit.'


So, factions, I should really consider more, and how the 'world' works a bit. But, i don't have to go super crazy into every full country, leaving a few 'here there be dragons' is probably for the best, but without further ado:

Coalition: It's one of the bads, the Coalition of Men is the good guy alliance of Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes. For the Coalition! Started out as basically the Alliance in WoW, and WoW is probably a big influence on the game as a whole. So, timeline wise, I should really settle things on when the 'Great War' that jumpstarted industry was.

I do kind of like 100ish years ago, and we've jumped from early industrialization to middle modern. It's probably not quite as fast, partly because magic. Magic enchanting can't really be industrialized(?), so the coolest, most badass things tend to be individual vehicles/mechs/ships loaded to the gills with artifacts/enchantings (what's scarier than an M1 Abrams. An M1 Abrams that can dimension door)

One fun thought is a very hacker vibe with enchanting, but that's another go at it. But tech wise, somewhere 70-80s cassette futurism. You got ornate cyberlimbs (sometimes really weird things, like living wood) and enchanted cyberdecks, and hovercars mingling with just, boring old tech. Gas/Oil/personal cars tends to be a bit less. Just hard to keep that up, and electricity has basically been magic'd up with portal powered generators. There's a very 80's/90's tech boom of computers.

I think we need a no nuke rule, you can get pretty close already with Wish, Meteor Swarm, Gating in a sphinx or dragon, etc. Magic ranges are longer in this game than D&D, or magic gets owned by some jackhole with rifle. (Maybe thats how the coalition initially won =D, takes forever to learn magic missile, takes probably a week to get someone to be able to load and shoot a M1 Garand and basic maintenance)

So, Coalition, hmmm. We probably have a 5 man leadership group. Head king(?) of each race, and appointed emperor(?). Very much one of those 'started with good intentions, but quickly spiraling to evil/fascism. Very human/man biased, but the individual species groups probably have some conflicts that could be interesting.

Semi-fuedal itself might make for an interesting vibe. Breaking down into Baronies and Counties. This also leads to fun like "This County was effectively taken over by the Weyland-Yutani Heavy Industry Consortium who run it as a company town" Monsanto branded knights =D

The extraplanar holdings definitely probably get held very loosely, in the 'royal holdings' style.

As for the other major faction.... Prboably not one on Terra(? Earth? Geography I should ponder. Earth LIke is fine,but I'm always leery of copying too close. PS, Penumbra is basically Seattle Metro area and geography =3)

But we want lots of NGOs, BIG NGOs. Yeah, sure, your fancy army of jet fighters and cruise missiles is awesome, but there's a lot of extraplanar space, and the royal spelljammer fleet is tiny. Plus you have Heaven, Hell, Faewild, and uh, what should the plane of Law be, Mechanus was kinda boring. Dragons need a cool setting (crystal desert vibes was one idea, but dragons taking over Mechanus as an obvious thing, hmmm....) but each cosmic influence wants to spread their flavor of ideology to the world, to get more focus, worshippers, and power/space overall.

A quick idea is a sort of Monster Legion. Coalition 'foreign' legion with a bit of a 'service guarantees citizenship' vibe could be interesting. Or at least, some sort of semi citizenship.

So super fast, buzz through the major races too. I don't want super stereotypes, but there should be some sort of 'culture vibe' too

Humans: we know em, come in all sorts of colors and shapes. Strangely, no patron god, no one knows why, worship almost every single god, even some of the other species patrons at times.

Elf: Harrumph, probably runnin' the knife ears as the classic. Live 200 some years, snooty, scheming, most likely to break off the Coalition, very traditionalist/magical, treesinging hippies at times(?)

Dwarf: Are all dwarves the same? I mean, everyone loves some 200 year old grumbling grognards. These probably need a bit of thinking, but I don't want to veeer tooo far off the beaten track.

Gnomes: Hobbits get smooshed into gnomes, probably as an extraplanar variant. But we got enough short races, and hobbits AND gnomes always felt overkill. Probably the ones who care the least for the Coalition as a whole. Artsy types is kind of a fun vibe, not all are, but get some of that chill homebody vibe.?

Minor races: probably all those extraplanar elves: high elves, dark elves, wood elves, hipster elves. Plus extraplanar vibed types, fae touched, shadowfel cursed, etc

Monster!
Kobolds: Thinking mole-like in looks, mostly for cute-em-up vibes. And for the anime influence. Current vibe: tribal, commies, the other major power, but kind of unintentionally. Tend to be 'be cool to us, we're cool to you'. Have a dragon worshipping subfaction sometimes at odds with their earthly cousins

Orcs: Pig orcs stuck between two worlds. Grumsh the One Eyed promised them glory, but they just lost the metaphysical eye with him. Cushed, scattered, their power base shredded and their diaspora is now scattered across the realm. Had a lot of the most warlike crushed in the great war, but also survivors. LOTS of mercs, extraplanar and not.

Goblins: Tempted to rat-ify into mice or something,but the usual goblin look is aso a good anime choice. Had some funny thoughts of things like goblin social networks and attention/social credit economy, even in things like raiding and piracy. Another one I probably ant to think a bit more on where their place is. The little gits =D

Minor races:
Ogres: Some thoughts of hippogres, maybe not quiite so dumb. But probably a minor race in things


And a bunch I haven't pondered much other than totally options:
Centaur

Satyr

Harpies

lizardfolk

Beastkin (general furries like tortles, tabaxi, etc)