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So the final set of four mechanics and design principles that encourage player moral decision making, and reduce moral essentialism in your D&D game is “Faction Intrigue”.
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Morale, Reaction Rolls and the combat averse environment created by Asymmetrical Encounters create a setting where combat recedes to become only one option for resolving the obstacles presented by a setting full of dangerous creatures and people.
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Offering options for negotiation, trickery and retreat however is fairly meaningless if there’s nothing to support them from the GM’s side of the table. To do that though, one can’t just drop in a modular mechanic.
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Instead, affirming the non-combat mechanics and play options asks the GM to accept a radical Design Principle, that monsters exist in the game world independently of the characters. That the characters heroes' journey is separate from the setting and its inhabitants.
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To open up space for unexpected interaction, monsters must be embodied enough with sufficient psychological depth, to support unexpected decisions by the players, who love to make defeated enemies allies, to scheme with the most sinister forces presented or take offense.
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To allow such exciting moral decisions the GM and the Designer need to give up some forms of narrative control and to invest that energy (or adventure pages, or prep work) in giving the creatures encountered personalities.
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This isn’t a call for funny voices. The most important part of personalities for entities encountered will be their: goals, allies, enemies, and plans. Whatever it takes to place them into the fabric of the setting as entities with agency.
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The goal though isn’t really to create a clockwork universe, to simulate a region, location or world, it’s still to offer a few locations and region were fantasy adventure can occur easily, so taking some mechanical shortcuts is helpful.
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I’m also not encouraging the GM to saddle every villager, bandit and froghemoth with a backstory, that’s both nearly impossible for an adventure of any size and produce a large amount of detail that the players will never see. Don't waste pages or GM time.
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Instead, the GM or designer can construct a set of Factions, groups of creatures, or powerful creatures with goals, allies, enemies and plans. Leaders and speakers for factions can have more detailed personalities, and maybe a table provides names and personality for extras.
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How it’s done varies, but what’s important is that when the PCs meet a dragon, village boss, or ogre it’s got its own agenda when the players enter negotiation with it. 11/
It’s best if each of these agendas conflict in some way, both allowing the players to act as power brokers and preventing them from making allies of everyone. If you’re helping the Ogre steal sheep, the villagers are going to shoot arrows at you as well.
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Build up a network of 5 or 6 regional or dungeon faction relationships (draw it out as a web if you like) and let the characters find their way through it. It’s much like exploring a maze, maybe easier at the table as relationships and negotiation are universal.
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This sort of Faction Intrigue can be done entirely without tools, in a classic adventure like B2, it’s usually just implied by a few sparse phrases, and that still works, but for a designer or GM that wants something less improvisational there’s modern tools.
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First the "Relationship Web". Here’s a nice one by Kelvin Green as a (2013?) One Page Dungeon, it nicely illustrates the idea. There’s other tools as well “Tracks”, “Orders of Battle” and “Clocks/Indexes” are also rather useful at keeping track of factions.
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“Tracks” of “Reputation Tracks” are a way of determining how positively or negatively a faction views the party (and you should base this on party not individual PC or your players will find a way to be on good terms with everyone).
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Tracks can make these as simple as "Enemies - Neutral - Friends" or more complexity numerical systems, with factions offering resources, quests and henchmen at the higher levels.
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Reputation can become a favorite min-game for many players, with the party seeking to become agents of specific factions or join a military force in exchange for perks, equipment, followers and titles.
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This is useful, because it gives the players choice. Compared to predetermined story, players who choose their affiliations invest more. They may eventually betray them, but it will have far more emotional and narrative weight, because the party made the decisions.
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You can track reputation with numbers and rules (e.g. At reputation 4 the Goatfolk, 4 “billygruff clubmen” will join, -1 reputation if they are mistreated or any are killed) or simply by keeping notes and a log of negotiated agreements/ on character sheets.
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Beyond using reputation for perks, it can also directly impact reaction rolls and morale. Encountering a neutral or friendly faction the GM should apply bonuses (perhaps one per reputation point?) while factions with past negative experiences have reaction penalties.
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“Orders of Battle” are separate records of a faction’s numbers, resources and tactics. They help to track relative faction strength after interaction with the party & can be used to determine how inter-factional conflict ends during a longer campaign.
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Orders are almost necessary when one isn’t following a set narrative as they allow the GM to quickly determine how a given faction (say the haven village) will respond to player hijinx and are a tool to help imagine faction conflict.
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Orders allow for better tracking of faction plans. Knowing that the Goatfolk are ambush raiders with a special fondness for wine and have 30 Billygruffs to throw into their depredations means that the GM can anticipate their actions.
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When Friar Tipsy trundles through their briarwood with a wagon of claret the GM has an idea of what will happen if they party doesn't intervene: Tipsy bludgeoned, village fete ruined, Goatfolk drunk and happy.
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Faction plans needn't be reactive, better adventure happens when players have a chance to uncover faction schemes and to act: respond, intervene, assist. Maybe the party will warn Tipsy without their Goatfolk friends knowing, maybe they’ll help the Goatfolk steal the wine?
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To do this “Clocks/Indexes” are useful. A “Clock” is simply a countdown for an event. I usually do them by game session rather than some length of time in the game world. Clocks can be drawn as a literal clock, but that’s gimmicky and space consuming - a number is fine.
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“Indexes” work somewhat like clocks, but incorporate player action. A favorite is the “Chaos Index” from Hydra Co-Op’s “Slumbering Ursine Dunes” where various player actions and forbearance increase or decrease the ambient amount of “chaos” with dramatic regional effects.
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Indexes can benefit from random elements, where a clock might countdown the sessions to the village fete (and inevitable goatfolk wine raid) an Index would track the relationship between the village and briarwood.
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An index could have two poles - one with a villager call for gendarmes to massacre the goatfolk in the woods and the other the goatfolk burning the village. Player actions and random events would move the Index back and forth between adventure ending extremes.
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Random events (Goatman leader Nanny Burse has a prophetic dream) could move that index up or down triggering individual clocks, or events might be triggered by player action or change Order (the villagers are reinforced when local preacher comes by with his fanatic flock).
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These tools work together to create potential for narrative, a set of slumbering possibilities for your game, rather than a predetermined one, and that’s their power. Players aren’t just asked to blindly follow a path but to take open ended decisions & have moral discernment.
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I use this goatfolk/village fete example precisely because it could be a classic colonialist fantasy. Wilderness dwelling man-things (though I find animal people carry less cultural baggage?) threaten a “peaceful” village.
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A modern adventure path would start with quest-giver “get those goats!”, a few encounters on the way, and a climactic fight against the goatboss. A thoughtful one might offer narrative branches ending in reconciliation between village and goatfolk or other compromise.
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Yet, even these branching narratives can’t hand the decision over to the players entirely, simply because writing branches for lower order possibilities (Party takes over goats and village, raids monastery, starts robber barony) would make this simple scenario too long.
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Using classic tools though an open set of possibilities is easy. Complications can be laid in as clocks and indexes, ticking away like narrative timebombs. Orders for factional resources, tactics and personalities, and Tracks to
determine the party's place in the intrigue.
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determine the party's place in the intrigue.
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While its entirely possible that the players will still undertake a genocidal fantasy using these tools it's both less likely (the tactical situation doesn't have to make it easy) and put that decision firmly on the players' shoulders -- hopefully making them think a bit.
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I've illustrated this thread with an odd combination of classic satyr art (wish I could add more Grecian urns, but that stuff is raunchy) and Warhammer Beastmen.
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Besides personal amusement I think this art selection may hint at something -- how you portray a faction "Goatfolk" say, matters a lot. Player are far less likely to attack the satyrs of Rubens then a band of "Pestigors", but as a faction they could be identical -- use this.
