M-Space provides a formal way to describe “circles”, or groups of people of various sizes and reaches, organized together for one reason or another, sharing common goals or beliefs (see MS p156). I decided to borrow this notion and its approach for my Classic Traveller adevntures for practical use. In my borrowing, I decided to call these things “factions” and in a previous post, I outlined how factions might be described along with some examples for factions in the Hounslow system.
In this post, I’ll give a bit more detail on how I’m adapting factions for Traveller.
Describing factions
As in M-Space circles, factions get described with a light set of mechanics. Here’s a bit more detail on what these mechanics mean, the range of values I’m using, and so on. Note what I’m going to write here amounts to detail about how I’m migrating those rules in Traveller, not re-writing them; for full use of these ideas, you probably want to get yourself a copy of the M-Space rule book.
sample faction. A faction writeup looks like this.
| Faction name | |
|---|---|
| Descriptive paragraph for the faction; should include both simple capsule summary of the faction's identity, as well as some identifying traits by which one could recognize membership. | |
| Ideas | List of Ideas for faction |
| UFP | Characteristics in hex form: - Influence - Size - Resources |
| Attributes | List of Attributes for faction in skill form (Media-1, Political-3) |
Infulence. Measures the impact a faction can have within the wider society.
| 0 | No influence. Faction's ideas are unknown to most people in wider society. |
| 1-4 | Very little influence. Concepts never reach the corridors of power. |
| 5-9 | Moderate influence. In favourable circumstances, faction's concepts can shape policy in wider society. |
| A-D | Significant influence. Faction's concepts regularly shape policy and set the agenda in wider society. |
| E-F | Major influence. Faction's aims and concepts capture the policy and agenda of wider society. |
Size. Measures the number of individuals the faction comprises.
| 0 | No members |
| 1 | Tens of members |
| 2 | Hundreds of members |
| 3 | Thousands of members |
| 4 | Tens of thousands |
| 5 | Hundreds of thousands |
| 6 | Miillions of members |
| 7 | Tens of millions |
| 8 | Hundreds of millions |
| 9 | Billions of members |
| A | Tens of billions |
Resources. Measures the wealth and prooperty a faction can bring to bear.
| 0 | Destitute. |
| 1-4 | Poor |
| 5-9 | Average |
| A-D | Affluent |
| E-F | Wealthy |
Type and Descriptor. Every faction belongs to one of five types: Organization, Ideology, Corporation, Location, Polity. When writing down the type of a faction, you also use a descriptor that further characterizes it, for example, “Corporation: Mining Conglomerate”. The first four of these are in __M-Space_; I liked the idea that a “nation” could also be modelled using factions, and so I added a “Polity” type to the list. Otherwise, I’m treating types and descriptors exactly as outlined in M-Space.
Ideas. I’m using the “ideas” as outlined in M-Space (see p156-7,166). I’m not treating their provided list as exhaustive as I don’t interpret their rules to suggest that its list should be. Accordingly, in my examples, I’ve added a few ideas that seem at the same general level of scope as the ones on their list, that more directly tie to my background:
Innovation – A notion of progress, especially technical progress is important to the faction.
Anti-Colonialist – The faction is explicitly not in favour of central Commonwealth authority and pits itself in opposition to same.
Research – Gaining more knowledge, especially through science, is a goal in itself for the faction.
Resistance – The faction is in active opposition to some other faction.
Pro-Commonwealth – The faction is explicitly in favour of central Commonwealth authority.
Characteristics. Every faction has three characteristics given numeric ratings just as with the properties of characters and worlds in Traveller: INFluence, SIZe, and RESources (collected together into a Universal Faction Profile or UFP).
The general meanings for these characteristics is the same as in M-Space; however, the value scales are adapted and specific to Traveller; two of the characteristics range across five groupings (INF and RES) as in M-Space, whereas SIZ is more granular and borrows directly from the population table familiar to the Worlds section of Traveller (the UWP population digit).
Attributes. Every faction has a variable number of attributes that work roughly like Traveller skills; they describe how a faction implements its ideas and how it reaches its goals. As with Traveller skills, we use that same rough rating system. A rating of 0 indicates only a very basic level of capability (rather than no capability at all), with a swiftly widening scale of capability as attribute levels increase.
I’m using the list of likely attributes from M-Space (on pages 160-1) as the basic list, but as with Ideas, I view the list as somewhat open-ended and so specific factions may have attributes not found on the M-Space list (for example, the Research attribute).
Rank. Every faction, as with Traveller careers, comes with a concept of rank, with values ranging from 0 to 6 (where the rank and file members of a faction all have a rank of 0 and those with some higher prestigious rank ranging from 1 up to 6). It’s up to the referee to determine when, and how, a character might raise in rank within a faction; as a matter of guidance, it’s quite rare for anyone with only a casual relationship with a faction to have a rank above 0.
More. M-Space also includes a number of other factors that can describe factions: benefits that a faction can offer its members; trait keywords that are neither precisely ideas nor attributes but similar in spirit; and a host of narrative details that comprise historical information about the faction, policies and requirements to join and leave, and so forth; structure to generally describe how the faction organizes itself.
Using factions
The use of factions in play is quite straight-forward and can follow the suggestions found in M-Space adapted in a Traveller spirit. This basically means if you need to make tests with respect to factions, use a standard dice throw (roll 2D6) and use attribute ratings in a fashion that seems appropriate to the circumstances; for example, you can add an attribute rating to the throw and use the result to help interpret the outcome of the test at hand.
For the most part, the idea of factions here is merely a way to formally describe a portion of the campaign setting, as one might do worlds, star ships, animals, patrons, and so on.