Collaborative world building for your table: Factions

This is how I built my Spelljammer homebrew setting factions with my players (and how you can do it too!)

Tone, Themes, Concept, Content Rating 

I reviewed the original concepts from the Spelljammer 2E books and spent a good amount of time thinking about the tone and themes I wanted to explore in my magic spaceship game.
My original pitch for the game was:
Setting: 
  • Space. The Final Frontier with Giant Magic Sail Boats
Tone
  • PG-13 for gross OSR monster violence, no sexual content fade to black. 
  • Lighthearted, humorous but with serious stakes external to you that you get pulled into unfortunately.
Themes: 
  • Exploring unknown space and getting in over your head and over your pay grade 
  • The power of friendship 
  • Light is not Good, Dark is not Evil.
  • Galactic Conflict plus Existential Threats
  • Everyone is a Mess™️ but it’s funny AND somewhat lighthearted
  • Mass Effect style loyalty quests
  • The Astral Sea is a Harsh Mistress/Space is Dangerous and Anything Can Be Out There
  • The future as imagined in the 1970s

Create a space for collaborative worldbuilding

I built a discord server for the game a month or two before we were supposed to start. I invited everyone, set basic ground rules, and we began discussing characters they might be interested in playing. Because this is Spelljammer, we needed a Captain, Helm, Gunner, and Bosun. The players worked with each other to select roles. From that they pondered what type of character could fill that role and what faction they might belong to. 

I set guard rails and would occasionally shoot down ideas but overall wanted to create an open table where there was room for the creativity of the players to create in the world and have buy-in in the world. I'm not that interested in GM fiat unless it is necessary. The goal was (and is) for it to be a rolling conversation. 

The Steps

  1. Create a basic tone, rating for the campaign 
  2. Identify roles that each players wants to play (Spelljammer has ship roles but I feel like you could do this in a non-ship based game like "Face", "Tank" "Silent Warrior" "DPS" whatever language works for you). 
  3. Each player came up with a character based on that concept and the type of group/faction they might belong to. This could be as small as a clan or as big as a religion or royal dynasty. This is where the GM sets guard rails most. If you have strong feelings about factions you should be clear about what level of faction they can make re: size/influence. 
    1. Main info to figure out: name, philosophy/goals in a sentence, style, how influential they are. You can always build more later. I don't believe in lengthy campaign bibles. I think if it happens at the table its canon otherwise its...less so. 
  4. Determine relationships between the factions and that can inform relationships between the PCs. Example from my game: one PC is spying on another PC upon the order of the Space Pope. 

Here's an example from our campaign

The Protagonal Priesthood of the New Dawn
One player was very interested in Dune (one of my favorite books) and how we love the Bene Gesserit but hate the eugenics. The player suggested: what if it's all fake, birthing plans but its a scam. There is no magic genetic Messiah. It's just a multilevel marketing scheme wrapped up in a religion wrapped up in arranging marriages between dumb rich people. The character is a rich sweet dumb playboy spaceman from a wealthy family who have been roped into the messiah breeding scheme. He crashed his space yacht into a casino and is now being forced to marry the rich casino owner's daughter. He is on the adventure to avoid his pending nuptials. 

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