The conclusions on Infernal Pact - that adding in a 'Domain play' layer has benefits and you can do that by thinking about factions - had a couple of questions that boil down to a checklist for gameable domain-scale factions:
- what factions?
- what resources are they using, where are their military assets deployed
- what are they worrying about?
- where are their weak-spots for a group of ne'er-do-wells to cause maximum damage
You can combine this with lots of other generators to help create the faction but you then need to confirm that you have those points of interaction clear as those are the handles on which the players will grab. Even if you do not nail them down to the map using An Echo, Resounding or Birthright or similar, you can get a good sense of who and what is in play.
This is also a good tool to re-tension a setting after maybe players have been off doing things for a while, checking who remains active, who may have been harmed or helped by the players actions and taking it from there. After the players have been in action for a while, they will have attention of some factions, have moved away from the spheres of concern of others, so an exercise like this is good for a mid-campaign check for where the adventures ahead might lie.
Another really good point made is how to see PC's - as a powerful asset across most of the spectrum who is much quicker than most other domain level actors - so they can stick their fingers in a lot of pies and put their thumbs on lots of scales.
Test Case
Using my Hexcrawl25 campaign as a template, let us run the slide-rule over that. I have been using 'dweller faction' as the hook for each hex, so let us see if these can be batched up along the lines of who gets
First we have some distant, stronger actors influencing the locality through a small fraction of their force, and then groups with local strength; the list below is first three 'big, far' factions and then three locals:
- the loyalist goliaths of the Hissing Valley
- the kirianshalee goliaths of the Meandering Mountains
- marchlords
- goblins
- nascent kingdom of Ashley
- harpy coven and their swamp-magician allies
The two goliath groups are head-to-head with each other and the Kingdom of Ashley is the players own faction so the three players in the region that are 'rivals/threats' are the goblins, the harpy coven and the marchlords.
Looking at these three big and small factions as a test of the Dom's questions;
The Marchlords
Nominally 'in charge' of this portion of the map, in reality a border watch along the east of the realm against the Kirianshalite nation beyond. Watched nervously as the Kirianshalites were crushed by the tundra-orcs and a new orc realm emplaced among the rubble and ashes.
What resources are they using, where are their military assets deployed
They are drawing on the western half of Hex F, mostly 'off-map' but supported by caravan-trails across the wetlands, straight through the centre of the map. Their key resources are the fortresses they sit in, the trap lines surrounding those, the poisons they harvest from the swamps and the beasts they have cultivated to make their surroundings unapproachable
What are they worrying about? The still bouncing mess from the recent conquest of the nation they were set in place to defend against and installation of a new realm. In addition things the old realm was keeping under seal have escaped and are roaming the wilderness, threatening their supply lines back across hexes A and C. A petty Kingdom setting itself up slap-bang across their rear area is cause for grave concern; can they be trusted or are they a cats-paw for some foe?
Where are their weak-spots for a group of ne'er-do-wells to cause maximum damage The caravans of proficient mercenaries and expert trap-maintainers, sappers, fortress engineers and others coming from the west. The roving patrols of poison-harvesters, trap-maintainers and scouts are also vulnerable to ambush. The Marchlords are prepared to face undead legions conducting massed assaults, not so much anything else.
The Goblins
- what resources are they using, where are their military assets deployed
They control hexes A2, A8, and AB, populated by blowpipers, toad-riders and spider-riders respectively. Apart from a few expeditionary raiders, the goblins have not got military assets deployed. The blowpipers are turtled up in their hex behind all sorts of poison traps, the spider-riders within the nests of their mounts wild cousins and the toad-riders barrel around within their hex looking for trouble.
The goblins also have support from the tundra-orc nation north of them, who find kinship in their beast-riding ways. While not vastly material, it means the goblins fear little from the north.
Their final advantage is that while these are concentrations of goblins, these patches of forest are just where they have been living for now, all the world belongs to goblins, if conflict grows to strong somewhere they will just move off and return once things calm or set up somewhere else.
What are they worrying about?
Keeping everyone else off their patch, all these adventurers poking around, the weird cults that seem to just suck people away from their homes and tribes into blood-thirsty service of mysterious newcomers.
Where are their weak-spots for a group of ne'er-do-wells to cause maximum damage
The well-springs of each goblin groups strengths - the spider-nurseries, toad-spawning grounds and poison-gardens - are relatively concentrated near the center of each hex. The goblins also struggle to work together quickly, only massing against the largest, most obvious threats.
The harpy coven and their swamp-magician allies
What resources are they using, where are their military assets deployed
They control hexes A1, A6, A7 and A13, the heart of the swamp and have extensive herbal and reagent harvesting activities. Their major components are a group of harpies, a tabaxi tribe, a fey court and a colony of raccoons. They have little in the way of formal forces - but count swamp hags and the druids, herbalist and 'non-affiliated' dwellers of the whole region as allies. A magic user with a personal retinue is going to be their 'action group' in most cases. They are well set up to wage guerilla war against an occupier but likely unable to stop that invasion in the first place.
Their major strength is the speed and breadth of their network - word will get around of an ill-deed done.
What are they worrying about? Not much, perhaps overly optimistically. The status-quo suits them fine and having weathered the recent conflict and foraging relatively unharmed, they are perhaps complacent. Their major concerns are around managing the cycles of the swamps, arguing about the best recipes to do things and managing all the day-to-day requests from their communities.
Where are their weak-spots for a group of ne'er-do-wells to cause maximum damage
Striking at individuals in isolation - a campaign of burning down cottages in the swamps - or wanton destruction of the swamps by a massed force would be very hard for them to respond to. They are conversely the best group to resist traditional adventurers, being dispersed, fast and individually hard-hitting themselves. Updating the map
I blocked these
- the loyalist goliaths of the Hissing Valley (bright blue)
- the kirianshalee goliaths of the Meandering Mountains (green)
- marchlords (pink)
- goblins (yellow)
- nascent kingdom of Ashley (light green)
- harpy coven and their swamp-magician allies (light blue)
There is a further faction of villains behind the curtain that I am not documenting here as this blog is read by some of my players. Th
Wrap-up
This is a pretty neat little workflow - even without the crunch of a system beneath it is gives a good lense to think about what is happening and to pick out some adventuring hooks from the background detail.
Closing GLoGmas wish
My first GLoGmas - and after a bit of wheel-spinning trying to figure out an angle (thought about the Outposts post, the Cataphracts lessons learned, the open tables lessons tips) - I finally found one in the Domain-level retrofitting. A credit to Dom's output that there were multiple angles to test.
Here's to Infernal Pact having an equally creative 2026 after a restful end of year for Dom!
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