Faction Builder

The Faction Builder lets you create and manage the political, criminal, religious, and organizational forces that shape your campaign world — giving each faction goals, leadership, resources, and a living history that evolves with your sessions.

Quick Start

1. Go to Factions from the sidebar (or My Groups in Simple mode).
2. Click Create Faction (or use Templates for a pre-built starting point).
3. Work through the 4-step wizard:
   • Step 1 — Basic Info: Name, faction type, influence tier, and an optional symbol.
   • Step 2 — Description & Goals: Public description, reputation, hidden agenda, primary goal, and methods.
   • Step 3 — Leadership & Organization: Leadership structure, membership size, recruitment trend, and primary resource.
   • Step 4 — Territory & Resources: Strongholds, terrain tags, and resource notes.
4. Click Create Faction on step 4.
5. Your faction appears in the faction grid. Click it to open the detail view.

Faction Types

Choose the type that best describes your organization. Available types include:

• Thieves Guild, Criminal Syndicate, Resistance Cell
• Merchant Consortium, Professional Guild
• Noble House, Political Faction, Knightly Order
• Religious Order, Druid Circle, Cult, Arcane Cabal
• Mercenary Company, Adventuring Company
• Tribal Confederation

Each type shapes how the faction is presented and can be combined with a Cultural Flavor option for additional worldbuilding texture.

Influence Tiers

Tiers define how far a faction's reach extends:

The Faction Detail View

Opening a faction displays a tabbed interface with four panels:

Relationships — Track how this faction relates to other factions in your campaign. Add relationships with a status (allied, hostile, neutral, etc.) and a loyalty score. The relationship graph gives a visual overview of your political web.

Content — Link existing generated content (NPCs, plots, encounters) to this faction. Each piece of linked content can be given a role (leader, pawn, nemesis) and a loyalty score, so you can see which NPCs belong where.

State — Track faction power, morale, and treasury over time. Use sliders and dropdowns to log a state change after each session. The escalation stage (Skirmish, Escalation, Crisis, Resolution) gives you a campaign-pacing tool built in.

Timeline — A chronological history of all state changes, with session numbers and GM notes. Toggle between History (past events) and Prep (planned next-session state changes).

Templates

If you're starting from scratch and want a tested starting point, click Templates before creating. Templates pre-fill the wizard with a complete faction concept — faction type, goals, leadership structure, and flavor. You can edit any field before saving.

Simple Mode vs. Expert Mode

CritForge's display mode setting affects faction terminology:

• Simple mode uses "Groups" and "Create Group" — better for new GMs or players who find faction language intimidating.
• Expert mode uses "Factions" and exposes additional fields like hidden agenda, tier level, recruitment rate, and sort-by-power-level.

Switch your display mode in your profile settings.

Filtering and Searching

On the Factions list page, use the search bar to filter by name, description, faction type, or goal. In Expert mode, additional dropdowns let you filter by type or tier, and sort by recently updated, recently created, name, or power level.

Tips and Best Practices

Start with 2-3 factions that are in tension. A single faction in isolation doesn't generate drama. Build two factions with competing goals (e.g., a merchant consortium and a thieves guild competing for control of the same trade routes) and the relationship graph immediately gives you plot hooks.

Log state changes after every session. The State tracker is most useful when you update it consistently. A power drop from 4 to 2 after the party foiled a faction heist, combined with a morale note, becomes the seed of that faction's next move against the party.

Use linked content to track faction NPCs. When you generate an NPC who belongs to this faction, open the faction detail and link that NPC under the Content tab with their role (e.g., "enforcer," "spy"). Over a campaign, this becomes a full roster of everyone associated with the organization.

Hidden agenda vs. public reputation. Fill both fields. The public reputation is what the party will learn first; the hidden agenda is what they eventually discover. The contrast between the two is often the most compelling faction beat in a session.

Use terrain tags to place factions on your map. Tags like "coastal," "forest," or "undercity" help you remember where a faction operates when you're building a world map or keying a location.