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Build a Campaign-Unique Faction List

by Mike on 10 March 2025

Build a list – or several lists – of the gods, factions, campaign icons, and historical figures of your campaign world. Roll on this list to flavor items, monuments, NPCs, or locations. Use these factions to flavor your world as your characters explore it.

Without the unique story and lore of our game world, one game can seem much like the others. Lore sets apart one campaign from another. It wraps the framework of our RPGs in tapestries depicting many worlds beyond this one.

Such rich lore can get away from us, though. We can feel like we have to fill three-ring binders with ancient histories, deep theologies, and interwoven political factions without knowing how this lore manifests in our game.

One lazy trick to manage this lore is to build a faction list. A faction list contains major individuals or groups that matter to the world and to the characters. Often this list includes gods, historical figures, major political factions, and world-changing icons.

Like Secrets and Clues, a faction list turn our world's lore to specific things the characters interact with during the game. Faction lists turns fuzzy concepts into a practical list we can use in the next game we run.

Here's an example faction list from the City of Arches:

Arazuun, Fallen Prince of Revvia
The Black Hand
Elvenya the Star's Song
The Archkeepers
God-queen Sett
The Hunger
Ibraxus of Choul
Karigulon the Dread Fang
Lady Straythe
The Lower Twelve
Mother Avanta
The Nameless King
Predalion, God of Travel and Trade
Sulin, Goddess of Light
The Three Sisters
Vithra the Serpent King
Vrys the Fallen
The World's End
Xereth – Oblivion's End
Xrake Fiendblood

Whenever the characters stumble across a monument in the Endless Warrens, I can roll on this list to flavor the monument. Maybe it's tied to the Hunger – the ancient elder evil lurking in the deep lake to the north. Maybe it has a connection to Oblivion's End or God-Queen Sett. Suddenly those static monuments become something more – something drawing characters into the history and world of the game.

For other example faction lists, see my 1d100 Eberron Factions or my 1d100 Forgotten Realms factions.

Mix your faction list with more general lists of random items, magic weapons, monuments, locations, NPCs, and more. Faction lists stack onto these other lists to make them something else.

If you want something more detailed, break out your faction list into separate groups: gods, political factions, historical figures, and big campaign icons. This separation lets you decide if you want a faction with an older or newer history – something that makes more sense for the location or object you're tying the faction to. If it doesn't matter, roll to see which table you roll on or build one big table containing everything when it doesn't matter.

To make your faction list even more useful, note what symbol or icon the faction uses. A noted symbol makes it easier to improvise what the characters see when they look at the object tied to the faction. That bloody defiled fountain of Saint Cuthbert can be identified because of the etching of Cuthbert's starburst on the side of it.

Whether running a published campaign setting or building your own setting – write a numbered list of factions you can roll on to inspire unique creations in the world. Use this list to flavor the specific objects or people the characters run into so that unique flavor is always in front of them.

Bathe the world in fantastic fiction.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

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Fantastic Locations in Contemporary Worlds

Last week I also posted a YouTube video on the Shrine of Isis – Dragon Empire Prep Session 15.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Don’t be afraid to have out of game conversations about in-game character dynamics and relationships.
Let players retreat from battles gone wrong, escaping with any downed characters but with a potential story loss.
Run easy fights.
Use tools that help you improvise during the game.
Build battles first from what makes sense in the situation. Tune them for the fun of the game.
Have the outcome of a TPK in mind when running hard battles. Where does the story go if the characters all drop?
Write a list of ten to twenty factions you can roll on to flavor items, monuments, and encounters.

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