Why have rules and stats for organizations and factions?

[Yora]

I've seen several RPGs which have rules for giving stats to organizations. (Stars Without Number, Dragon Age, D&D 3rd.) But I never understood what they are for. Once you have have groups statted out, what do you do with them?

[Nifft]

They have stats so you can fight them.

(Not in sword combat, usually, but rather in political or economic types of conflict.)

[Fri]

Though now I think of it, picturing the party's fighter literally fighting a political organization is pretty amusing.

"I punch the National Elf Coalition so hard that they lose their economic grasp on the Dukedom."

[Millstone85]

Though now I think of it, picturing the party's fighter literally fighting a political organization is pretty amusing.

"I punch the National Elf Coalition so hard that they lose their economic grasp on the Dukedom."Eh, D&D4e MM3 lets you fight Allabar the living planet. :smalltongue:

[Oberon Kenobi]

There's a Charm for that. #Exalted

General answer: depends on the system in question, but yeah, generally it's so the organizations can engage in conflict of some kind.

[Thrawn4]

I guess they work like a short overview for DMs.
You know, organization A has 4 resources and -1 public recognition, so they can hire mercenaries to hunt down the PCs but are hated so law enforcement is more likely to protect the PCs.

[Waddacku]

Stars Without Number has an entire chapter for how factions interact using their stats, so you can run background developments in the sector. It's to make it easier to breath life into the sandbox.

[AceOfFools]

I've seen several RPGs which have rules for giving stats to organizations. (Stars Without Number, Dragon Age, D&D 3rd.) But I never understood what they are for. Once you have have groups statted out, what do you do with them?
They create avenues of interaction for the PCs and abstraction for th GM.

Let's say you have a player that wishes to build a wizard's guild. With organization rules, you can create numbers to say how that effort is going, and provide mechanics so players know what the guild (and rival organizations) can do.

Without organization rules your either forced to stat out all the important people in the organization, and all progress must be handled by fiat.

"How many recruits dud we pick up?" "Lots?"
"Did the scandal hurt their reputation?" "A bit, but that group is popular enough most people either choose to believe it lies or don't care." "Oh, come on. Really? What will it take to get people to turn on them?"

Basically organization rules are better than the alternative if ones playing a very political-minded game.

[Yuki Akuma]

To give the GM some idea of how to consistently portray various factions.

To allow the PCs to pit their own player-run factions against GM-run factions without entirely relying on GM fiat.

So that you know exactly how much loot the PCs will get from invading a faction's HQ. :smallwink:

[noob]

It is useful if your players are not able to destroy the universe with only one free action.(true at most RPG and tables)(I remember having made a theoric build in M&M who was able to create one universe(with only one action) and it needed only something like 40 points)

[Thinker]

@Yora,
It depends on what the stats represent. For combat stats, it is so that the GM doesn't have to prepare as much if a fight breaks out with members of the faction. Other stats indicate the influence of the group, their resources, and their general attitude. It makes it pretty easy for the GM if she or he doesn't need to come up with everything on the fly.


It is useful if your players are not able to destroy the universe with only one free action.(true at most RPG and tables)(I remember having made a theoric build in M&M who was able to create one universe(with only one action) and it needed only something like 40 points)

Why assume that your players will attempt to destroy the universe with a free action? Presumably, if you're trying to play a game together, you will all buy in to the same premise (most basic of which would be, "there is a universe").

[LibraryOgre]

I know some games have such stats because the players are employed by them. "What can I reasonably requisition? How much am I going to be paid? What kind of budget can they throw at my project?"

[noob]

Or yet "How many hitman they are going to employ against me"

[GungHo]

As Mark Hall notes, it gives you the respective organization's economies of scale. This is useful to help gauge their influence in a number of areas of interest. Maybe it's just "if I sell these guys hot goods, is there any go-by regarding a percentage of sale" to "being allies with these people helps me with my knowledge checks because they own libraries dedicated to subjects X, Y & Z". Also, there are times where organizations directly or indirectly compete, and the stats give you an idea of where the chips may fall should true conflicts of interest arise whether you're using it as a rough guide or actually modeling an opposed skill roll.

Personally, I can come up with that kind of stuff on the fly, but other folks like to plan things out more than I do, or they may be using an established setting. For me, it helps me document things that I've decided on the fly so that I'm consistent. The same thing goes for city stats, castle stats, nation stats, etc.

[Knaight]

It depends on the system. For instance, REIGN has a whole subsystem for the different ways in which organizations can interact with each other and the different ways that character scale actions can affect these rolls - so the stats see immediate use. Other systems tie things like resource availability to the organizational statistics, which is also useful.

[NomGarret]

The purpose is to quantify the relative strengths of organizations when there are multiple groups active in a campaign. It also gives the PCs some way of measuring their effect on that balance of power.

[BRC]

I've seen several RPGs which have rules for giving stats to organizations. (Stars Without Number, Dragon Age, D&D 3rd.) But I never understood what they are for. Once you have have groups statted out, what do you do with them?

As a guideline for the relative strengths of the organizations in different fields. Probably not necessary in a homebrewed setting, but if you're running somebody else's setting it can be useful.

For example the Sons of the Empire support going to war to reclaim the lands lost to the orcish invasion. The Royalists oppose the war.
I, as the creator of this setting, know that the SoE have a lot of popular support among the commoners and the military, the Royalists are on the downswing, but hold lots of seats in the parliament.

However, if I'm writing a sourcebook, stats are useful as a gauge, even if nobody is rolling and dice.

The SoE have Popular Support 10 and Parliamentary support 5, The Royalists have popular support 5 and parliamentary support 15.

This provides a nice rough guide to how the factions can work. About 2/3rds of people will support the Sons of Empire over the Royalists, but when it comes to a vote, the Sons will need to do a lot of work to win over the Royalists in parliament.

[Jay R]

The straightforward answer is this:
Because some people run scenarios that use them. That fact that you don't is not relevant.

Similarly, I've never used Slaadi in any of my games. But the Monster Manual still includes them, for those DMs who do use them.

[Anonymouswizard]

Though now I think of it, picturing the party's fighter literally fighting a political organization is pretty amusing.

"I punch the National Elf Coalition so hard that they lose their economic grasp on the Dukedom."

So that's what Lowfr did?


I know some games have such stats because the players are employed by them. "What can I reasonably requisition? How much am I going to be paid? What kind of budget can they throw at my project?"

This is why I need stats before I run my Shadowrun 'Corporate Troubleshooters' campaign, I still need to decide between Ares angle Wuxing.

[SkipSandwich]

The AngryGM wrote a very good ruleset for quickly stating out factions for a sandbox andventure called Project Slaughterhouse (http://theangrygm.com/schrodinger-chekhov-samus/). I plan on using the ruleset myself the next time I get the opportunity to run a game.