Factions

[Groovy]

Here are the factions from the Heroic PC design:



Townsfolk are the founders of the town. They are its only inhabitants until other creatures are persuaded to join during the course of the game.

At one stage, I was toying with the idea of having a few specialised, unbalanced factions that wouldn't be playable from the start, but only if their town was found on the map. An example would be the Angelic faction, whose units would be unable to do any harm, and thus be consigned to a supporting role for a regular army. Another example would be the Undead faction, whose creature growth would derive entirely from necromancy.

[Groovy]

For the preliminaries, I'd like to focus on four factions from the full lineup, and make the game workable for them. Other factions can then be added later, in the first published edition of the game or in expansions.

The four that naturally come to mind are human, elf, dwarf and orc (perhaps naga), simply because they are the most popular, and therefore familiar to the players. Alternatively, it might be an idea to pick one faction from each general theme, perhaps elf, naga, human/dwarf/orc and troglodyte (Dungeon). This would be fresher, though the first list has the advantage of commonality of terrain, which more readily lends itself to the sharing of creatures (a key design feature).

[Panda Tar]

Ayuh. That's a start.

[Groovy]

I've decided to revision the faction themes. The initial ones were brief and much too negative for my liking. What I've decided to do now is to give each faction a theme that is a worthwhile facet of real-life human existence, and that only causes problems if it is out of balance with the others.

The preliminary revision is below. If you think that there are additional themes that should be covered, please share them.

[Panda Tar]

iT feels better. I wasn't saying the other was sort of negative due the fact that I didn't know how the universe of the game was.

[Groovy]

Let's just say that I'd like to be able to tell educational stories in this setting, and not be forced to resort to describing the antagonists as greedy or heretical.

[Groovy]

I have finalised the faction names. The only ones I ended up changing were Mountain to Alpine, and Nature to Sylvan. Any other suggestions?

[Panda Tar]

The names look fine, imho. And the number of factions too, specially given that you'll start using just few of those. Adding more, at this point, might be counter productive.

[Groovy]

I've decided to rename the Angelic and Demonic factions. The names just feel too narrowly focused on a specific race of creatures. The new names I'm thinking of are Angelic -> Celestial/Astral, and Demonic -> Infernal. Please let me know if you have better ideas.

[Panda Tar]

For Angelical and regarding spirits, there are names:

• Ethereal
  Empyrean
  Transcendental

From those you picked, I like either of those, Astral or Celestial.

For Demonic:

• Nether
  Hellish

[Groovy]

Tentatively,

Angelic -> Empyrean
Heaven -> Firmament

Demonic -> Infernal
Hell -> Pit

I changed the town names as well because these blend in better with the other towns than the old names did.

I like Nether as well, but it sounds a bit odd as a faction name. I'll consult with my English boffin friends before deciding whether to use it.

[Panda Tar]

Sounds nice to me.

Nether feels more like antagonistic in case you used the word Ether somewhere (or ethereal, however I have never read nethereal anywhere).

I think you can save Nether for the name of spells or as an adjective for some more foul unit/beast in future.