Obviously, Finality's political factions are going to be drawn up. Since we're not doing Great Wheel horse shit, we don't need to figure out places for Chaotic Evil people to sit in town hall meetings. If we wanted to systematize them, the obvious way to do that would be to either have 6 issues or 4 issues that factions took one of two positions on. The first would give 15 factions, the second 24 (assuming that every faction had two platforms).
So with the six issue model, you might have some list of options like:
- Reduce Taxes
- Deregulate
- Militarize
- Public Works
- Expansion and Colonization
- Social Spending
And thus if a group wanted to Militarize and Expand, they would presumably be in favor of marching army men over and taking stuff on other worlds, while if they were in favor of Public Works and Reduce Taxes they would want to cut everything out of the budget except roads and portals and stuff that they would want to pump more money into. Or something like that.
For the 4 split issues thing, it would be something like this:
- Low Tax <-> Increase Revenues
- Brutal Justice <-> Merciful Justice
- Autonomy <-> Welfare
- Colonize <-> Isolation
And that's really 8 issues, which would be 28 possible mashups. But four of them would be contradictory, so you'd have 24 real possibilities (no faction is going to be increasing
and decreasing prison sentences).
But I actually don't think it needs to be that procedural. Every faction needs to meet some playability standards, but other than that they can and should be fairly out there. There needs to be ways to put factions into the story as protagonists or antagonists (preferably but not necessarily as both). And one of the best ways to do that is just to have a
lot of issues running from narrow to broad that factions have various opinions on that range from mild to extreme and are held with convictions ranging from tepid to burning. The 2012 Republican Party Platform is a fifty page document, and while a lot of it is vague maxims there are a
lot of issues in there. Issues can include stuff like "foreign relations with Nishrek" and "legal status of sentient necromantic servitors".
Basically, a faction needs:
- A locational powerbase. There are 20 Precincts, and the faction headquarters is in one of them.
- A demographic powerbase. The Faction recruits from wherever they can, but they presumably grew out of some population group and have a "generic member" stereotype based on that.
- A persuasive philosophy. More than just "we gonna stab you berk", the faction has to be able to say things that sound like they make sense to somebody.
- Plot hooks. Plot hooks. Plot hooks. It's a storytelling game, each faction has to tell stories.
- Political opinions. They have to have enough things they want and don't want that you can imagine them allying with or against multiple other factions to accomplish or thwart goals.
- Temporal power. What landmarks and civic institutions are under the control of or influenced by members of the faction?
Basically every faction needs to do all of those things. So the Dustmen would not be an OK faction because they don't have any political opinions or plot hooks and the Anarchists would not be an OK faction because they don't have any temporal power or locational powerbase and the Transcendental Order would not be an OK faction because they don't have a philosophy or demographics.
So for example, we might have a faction like this:
Guardians of Order
"
We fear change."
He Said/She Said: “
Behind every great fortune, is a great crime.”
In Their Own Words wrote:For all the bellyaching and utopian dreaming, the fact remains that objectively things work pretty well. Basic needs are for the most part met. Security and stability are maintained. Wealth is created. There is no need to change anything. More than that, any action no matter how innocuous may have unintended consequences. Even a change perpetrated with the best of intentions may be the seed of ruination. The worlds are littered with fallen civilizations, empty ruins gathering dust on the remnants of forgotten empires. And all of them fell because of some idea which at the time probably sounded good enough to put into practice. Only in hindsight can the terrible error be identified, and by then it is far too late. The risk of any act of defiance to the current order may seem minuscule, but the tail is long. We must protect the status quo. To do anything else is to court unthinkable disaster and the pointless deaths of millions.
The Guardians reflexively oppose any and all changes. They vote against pretty much anything, unless that thing is a motion to continue as before or to repeal something recently put in place. Once a new change has been normalized and becomes an old change, Guardians will move on to protecting
that status quo. The Guardians sell their ideas with scare stories of truly horrendous – if probably remote – possibilities should the current order be altered in the slightest. This resonates strongly with people who have a lot to lose, and the Guardians find themselves bankrolled heavily by richer denizens of Finality – especially those with family fortunes.
The first chapterhouse of the Guardians is appropriately in the Castle Precinct: Precinct One. Old money runs deep there, and the Guardians of Order are able to raise funds easily amongst the well heeled. Their ranks boast many of the winners of Finality society, those who fear a loss of their current status more than their ambition and envy propels them to grasp after the status of others.
The Guardians of Order also operate insurance systems. Actuaries calculate the real risks of various events and they allow people to protect themselves from various disasters by paying into a fund that will bail them out should the insured disaster come to pass. They insure against more than just the chances of caravans being claimed by pirates or ships being lost at sea, but even esoteric threats such as death. Holders of a death insurance pact (called a “Guardian Angel”) can be assured of being brought back from the beyond should their body and soul be recovered and reunitable. Insurance bears a more than passing resemblance to gambling, and they also perform some bookie functions – the Guardians of Order are more than happy to insure you against the pain and suffering you will experience if your favorite sport team loses an important match (which is very much like betting on the opposing team, save that is legal to do so in Precinct One).
Some forms of insurance are more proactive than others. The Fire Guards will actively fight fires in buildings that have insurance contracts with them. They are also willing to sell such contracts to uninsured people whose houses are already on fire, though the expedited processing fees are tremendous. Rumors that the Fire Guards sometimes start fires to drum up business are of course vigorously denied. As the Fire Guards are not the only fire fighting gang in the city, there are sometimes heated exchanges or even fisticuffs in the street over who gets to act in saving an uncontracted building from an inferno. The Fire Guards have a police charter that is valid in Precinct One and are able to make arrests there, which may be why they are the only group providing fire protection in Precinct One.