Factions in the Dark

Factions in the Dark is the name of an RPG combat system that can be used by two or more factions to simulate a smaller conflict between them that takes place below the Fac Turn level. It was developed by members of the UPC, House Crux and The 14 Red Dogs (now House Triangulum). It utilizes aspects of Blades in the Dark and Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits. The creator also killed House Reticulum's dice rolling bot several times in its creation and sends her heartfelt apologies.

Perhaps you and another faction wish to write a lore conflict between yourselves that takes place below the level of the Fac Turn. Perhaps you aren't battling over the control of a planet or attempting to strangle your opponent in some grand political battle in the stars, but are instead facing them down in a court case that only concerns a city on one of your planets. Or assassinating an important NPC. Or fighting a smaller space battle that isn't important enough for the turn.

This is a system you can use.

## Purpose

This game is intended to be a Lore game, as a way of conducting a fictional conflict away from the incredibly Mechanically heavy Faction Turn Game. If you come away from a session of this game with a bunch of numbers and no story, you have played this incorrectly. The most fun part of this system is the telling of a story, not decimating your enemy. Lore MUST come before Mechanics in this game, even if it weakens your position. That is why this should not be seen as an Antagonistic battle between rivals out of character, but a fun collaboration where all of you walk away with interesting results which you can use to paint whatever tale you want. (And stick it on the wiki!) If you know that your lore would make it harder to do something, then don't feel bad at making yourself weaker. If it looks like you would be decimated by your enemy before you even begin, then you should rethink about whether your Faction would fictionally undertake such a dangerous mission. But as we say in the UPC, sometimes the fun is doing it anyway.

## Overview

At the beginning of the game, you must first have a talk with your rivals and allies about, you guessed it, the lore. What is the conflict that will be happening and played out in front of you? You probably will already have a good idea as that's why you've decided to seek out a system for it. For this overview, let's assume that House Fornax and you and Trilliant have been speaking about a lore project where an Important Trilliant NPC has been continually causing issues and you decide to have them arrested. Fornax and Trilliant are unsure as to what to write on the Wiki and perhaps Trilliant are reluctant to lose an NPC like that. However, they are *willing* to if they have to. Your first step is going to be creating your dice pools to see if this is even something you want to do.

In Factions in the Dark, you as Factions will each have a dice pool that you will roll against the other to decide who wins. This dice pool will be equal to the average of your Cunning, Wealth and Force stats. So a 6/5/3 faction will be rolling 5d6. Both Fornax and Trilliant will be rolling 5d6 at the beginning if this conflict. Do not be dismayed if one side is stronger than the other, it is still possible to damage your enemy with some good rolls.

All factions, regardless of size, will start with 8hp that will count down throughout the encounter. So Fornax looks at this and decides that yes, they do in fact want to get rid of that pesky golden boi. Next thing to do is come up with 5 Obstacles. Think of Obstacles as the smaller battles that make up a larger conflict. You cannot just throw someone in court. You first need to talk to their friends, get evidence, and then create a convincing argument. You and your opponent will roll your dice pools against each other for each Obstacle. There will be 5. You should both write down together what these 5 obstacles are. They should take the form of stuff that the attacking party would need to do in order to complete their overall mission, such as taking out an Anti-Air gun. Fornax and Trilliant decide that these will be Fornax's obstacles:

1. Pressure a relative of the NPC to reveal dark information
2. Find a Crux Lawyer to run with this information.
3. Bribe the Defenders to put up a terrible defence
4. Convince the Judge that Fornax is correct
5. Drop a mini-nuke on the Prisoner Transport (What? Don't look at me like that)

A win in an obstacle will deal 2 damage to the losers hp. On a tie, both sides take 1 damage.

Before you begin rolling anything against each other though, the Attacker will have to roll an Engagement roll. This is to determine at the start of the operation, whether things are going well or poorly and is ripped directly from Blades in the Dark. You start off with a pool of 1d6 for sheer luck and then this changes depending on a few factors

* Is the Operation bold or daring? +d6 Is it overtly complex or contingent on many factors? -d6
* Does the plans detail expose a vulnerability in the target or hit them when its weakest? +d6 Is the target strongest against this approach or is this an incredibly defended or friendly location against that approach? -d6
* Can any of of your friends help? +d6 Can rivals help your enemy? -d6
* -d6 if your opponent has a stronger dice pool +d6 if you do.

Other factors
As you can see, the lore of your operation is important as well as the willingness to admit that a certain operation is going right at your enemies forte or that your enemy has outsmarted you with an operation. Again, this lore first. No-one should be attempting to gain a mechanical advantage they do not deserve and everyone should be prepared to be obliterated if that's what the rolls say. Which is why it is important to talk beforehand and ensure all parties are ok with being obliterated if it comes to that.

In this engagement roll, on critical success (2 6's), the attacker will automatically succeed the first obstacle and deal 2 damage to the defender (Trilliant in this case as the one having the operation conducted on them). A success (4-6 on the highest die), does nothing but a failure (1-3 on the highest die) means your opponent has succeeded, taking the first obstacle and dealing the 2 hp damage to you. If no-one takes the first obstacle, you will roll for it in the actual game.

Friends and Rivals can be any Faction that has decided to help either side, however, they should take part in the talks as they will suffer the same consequences whether you win. Or lose.

From here on out, you will be rolling your dice pools against each other for each obstacle. If you succeed on an obstacle, you will deal 2hp damage to your opponent. On a tie, both of you will lose 1 hp. Every obstacle you win will increase your dice pool by one. This includes the Obstacle you automatically won if you critically succeeded on the engagement roll. You can see how then, that a larger faction can quickly be gained on by a smaller faction if the smaller faction has luck on their side.

The faction that wins the roll, is the faction that has the highest number on a single die. With two 6s beating a single 6, three 4s beating two 4s, etc if that happens.

### THE OUTCOME

The outcome is determined in a similar style to Burning Wheel's Duel of Wits. Each faction after clashing through the 5 obstacles shall look at their remaining hp. If their hp is:

* (6-8) They should offer a Minor Compromise to their opponent
* (3-5) They should offer a Compromise to their opponent
* (1-2) They should offer a Major Compromise to their opponent
* (0>) Their opponent gets what they want (although this should be rare on an equal playing field)

You could even have an idea of what these could be before you roll anything if you think there could be arguments later over what is Minor or Major. By taking part, you are both agreeing to put your Lore on the line for the fun of seeing what happens to it, but consent is very important still. Again, win or loss, the point is to tell a fun story.

Let's say that Trilliant has to give a Major Compromise and Fornax a Minor. The result could be that Goldboi successfully avoided arrest, but has been forced to give up his plans against Fornax. Fornax are happy, but some weapons inspectors are upset about that Mininuke. Looks like Fornax shipping will be harder to ship.

Another example is that the battle, while not capturing your enemy commander, forced them to retreat. However, you lost your own General in order to do it because (as you later write) you failed the take out Anti-Air obstacle and that's what did them in.

### WRITE UP

At the end, what do you do? Why? You tell a fun story. From playing this game, you know the story of the operation. You know who is involved, you know what you did to prepare for the operation, you know whether you started off good or bad, you even know at what points the mission got risky. Use the Obstacles in your write up, say how you overcame them, or how they left you bewildered. Work in the consequences into the end of the story and that's pretty much it. You know how to write lore, you've been doing it brilliantly for a year.

Operation Honey Heist was conducted using this system. You can watch UPC, Crux and the 14RDs play through the mission here.