Building Bhakashal - Factions, Patrons and Domain Play
After several months of reworking and playtesting, I have finally put the finishing touches on the patron system for Bhakashal. It is imbedded in the factions of the setting, and it has evolved into far more than I had hoped for. I will review the basics of the system here.
PCs and Patrons
The standard process for gaining a patron is for the party (or individual members of the party) to get the attention of a patron in some way. PCs get standard jobs, and either through their performance of that job, or by some other means, they show themselves to be promising enough for patronage. Note that the majority of NPCs working for a faction in the city do not level, this is the game mechanical equivalent of saying they don’t get a patron’s attention as they don’t show promise.
Introducing a party or PC to a patron can be done in one of a few ways.
One or more of the PCs in the party join a faction and complete an individual job related task particularly well
The PCs as a group achieve a goal and are then brought into a faction in their respective classes
One or more of the PCs compete in the arena and do well
One or more of the PCs compete in the hunt and do well
One or more of the PCs provide a patron with something they want/need
It is possible for an individual PC to be noticed by a patron and have the rest of the party also be taken on. This is a conceit for the game, as parties like to have the same patron, but it can be explained by wanting to keep a group with established ties together as they are more likely to be loyal.
Patrons in Bhakashal are always 8th level or higher, after that point the competition for positions and power becomes acute, and patrons need their own, personal resources to achieve goals. The first conceit of the system is that high level NPCs in factions need to have lower level, less powerful agents to carry out their wishes. Not just people they can command, they have that in spades, but agents who can work in their interests. Bhakashal assumes competition between and within factions, so higher level NPCs in the various factions would want agents who would work on their behalf. A perfect role for a PC or group of PCs.
So that’s the base.
But how do you determine what the various patrons will do? That’s a combination of general patron goals and faction specific goals.
General Goals
Patron Goals (d6)
Information
Magic
Wealth
Alliances
Combat
Resources
Patrons strive to achieve goals 1-6 to gain power and prestige in their faction. Each faction has a set of goals specific to that faction, for this example, I will consider a Noble House as the faction.
Noble Houses - Goals (d10)
1. Martial Glory - Winning honor duels
2. Retrieving Ancient Items of Power / Spells - From the ruins in the marshes
3. Creation of Items of Power/Spells/monsters - bringing prestige and power to the House
4. Aligning with powerful beings outside of the city
5. Participation in the Hunt
6. Protecting the City/House territories in the marshes
7. Managing relationships with the other City Factions (the temples, other Noble Houses, the various playable groups, the guilds, the Beastial’s coven, the Monastery, the Brass Blade Spider’s Guild)
8. Trade with external nations/cities
9. The pursuit of excellence within their Ward/House’s area of interest (e.g. Ward 1 weapons and armor)
10. Alliances with other Noble Houses
Each faction in the game also has an alignment. Alignments in Bhakashal are not individual, they are factional:
Alignments apply to institutions and groups, for example, in Bhakashal every Noble House, Guild, etc., has an alignment
Lawful institutions prioritize and reward groups and cooperation, chaotic institutions prioritize and reward individuals and independence.
Good institutions behave altruistically and avoid harming others wherever possible
Evil institutions will harm to achieve their goals and are fundamentally selfish. Note that this assumes nothing about why the institution is behaving selfishly, perhaps the institution is under threat and trying to protect itself, but otherwise virtuous
So to start with we have three factors:
Patron goals
Faction goals
Factional alignment
But before we start to use those, I will detour to discuss domain play.
Domain Play in Bhakashal
The single biggest problem with domain play in D&D is that hardly anyone bothers with it. Restricted to higher levels, it was almost always ignored with people I played with. Not to mention that high level domain play was individual, whereas D&D is a group focused game.
But I wanted to capture this in some way, and I wasn’t sure how.
Then it occurred to me, why should domain play be restricted to high levels? Why do we wait for name level for PCs to have a “job” to do other than just adventure?
Why indeed.
Once I asked that question, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw the way forward.
In Bhakashal, you have a job at EVERY LEVEL. 0-level NPCS fill all positions in the city, from administrators to merchants to farmers to tax collectors. But they don’t level up. I decided to leverage this directly.
The conceit of Bhakashal is that your PC has two roles.
An adventurer who gets their direction and jobs from a patron
A member of a profession or class with specific responsibilities
The tasks associated with b) can be “in the background”, something that your character is up to between adventures for example. Or it can be used to help shape the adventures that you do go on for your patron.
What does this look like?
I will give one example to show the basic idea, then explain how it is expanded for each class.
Warlocks
Let’s start with the Warlock. Warlocks work for Noble Houses, but rather than being separated into schools of magic (necromantic, evocation, etc.), the Noble House is ruled by a Magus Warlock, and immediately under them in authority are a group of warlocks focused on the various roles of the House. I decided on 8 roles for warlocks in Bhakashal Noble Houses.
Alchemist warlocks - brew potions
Technal warlocks - work with technology
Fabricus warlocks - create magic items
Scribus warlocks - scribe spells
Jantu warlocks- create monsters
Vanvasi warlocks - create monstrous plants
Akhaada warlocks - fight in arena
Myrmidon warlocks - participate in city hunts
So the domain play goal of the PC warlock is eventually to become the Magus Warlock of a Noble House, but they can get there through any of these roles. So they can be a warlock that focuses on alchemy, and work their way up.
But I wanted more detail than that, I wanted a role for every level, not just the high levels. I played with a few ways to do this, and settled on assigning specific roles for each level of experience, based on the role in question. So, for example, consider the Fabricus warlock (one who makes magic items).
So the 1st level warlock PC arrives in Bhakashal and joins a Noble House. They decide to become a fabricus warlock as they want to make magic items. Their first “job” will be cleaning the laboratory and doing physical labor while they apprentice.
Once 2nd level, the “job” of the PC would be to go out and collect components for use in making magic items. So monster components, rare and special non-magical items that are the peak of craftsmanship, etc. Note that the 2nd level “tasks” for all classes and all roles involve getting out into the game world, not sitting in a laboratory.
As they gain in level their responsibilities and power grow with them. Each level has a specific title and role. I created a table like this for the 8 branches listed above, each with unique level based names, as well as tables for each of the regular classes in the game.
Note also that one of the subclasses, the myrmidon, a mercenary/warlock (fighter/magic-user) is one of these branches. In this case, if you play a myrmidon, a fighter who makes potions, your role in the House is to participate in the hunt.
Putting it all Together
So now we have four factors:
Patron goals
Faction goals
Factional alignment
PC role
Which can be combined to generate jobs for the PCs, and to shape their advancement.
Take an example.
Gort Mugwhillen is a 4th level Fabricus warlock at House Himmenghost. His party’s patron is Bulga Dammnak the Rose, Fabricus Secundus Warlock (8th level ) for the House. Bulga noticed Gort and his fellow party members when they were 3rd level and involved in an honor duel in the city arena after dishonoring a Warlock from House Jin. They managed to survive that fight, drawing Bulga’s attention, and she took them on as their patron.
Let’s generate a “task” for Gort and her party on behalf of Bulga.
Patron goal, a 4 is rolled (alliances)
Faction Goal, a 5 is rolled (Participation in the Hunt)
Alignment, House Himmenghost is chaotic evil, which means that it rewards individual initiative and is not above harming other factions to achieve its goals
Gort is a 4th level fabricus warlock, his “job” is to assist the Fabricus Maker, whose job is to make (low level) magic items for the house. Gort’s other party members (who also work for Bulga) are Rede Jaku (4th level mercenary - House Himmenghost), Conlin Yal (5th level Spider - Brass Blade Guild) and Kayum the Bold (3rd level mercenary - House Himmenghost)
Bulga Dammnak owes a favor to a Jantu Tertius warlock (7th level) at House Quannar named Bhag Jomin the Russet. As Bulga will soon be vying for the position of Fabricus Magus Warlock he wants to build some alliances outside of his house, even if that means aiding a warlock who is aligned against his house, at least temporarily. Bhag Jomin has lost two of his Jantu warlocks in the last two House hunts, and suspects that they were slain by someone in House Himmenghost who is aligned against him or an external party. Bulga calls on Gort and her allies (one of several groups that Bulga serves as a patron for) as they are still low enough in the House Himmenghost hierarchy that they will not be well known by others at the House. Gort and her fellow party members are to go along on the next House Quannar hunt, disguised as mercenaries who are looking for work as extras on the hunt, and to find out what is happening.
You don’t always need to use all 4 of these factors to come up with “jobs”, sometimes they flow directly from the patron’s role. Take mercenaries (fighters) as an example, here is one of the tracks for mercenary roles in the Noble Houses.
Mercenary - Infantry
For example, Morgul Ironarm is a Mercenary Lord - Infantry, Garrison Commander (8th level mercenary [fighter]) in House Ynris. His role is to coordinate and command logistics and support for all infantry troops during regular operations. As a patron, he might send the party to investigate a particular mercenary in the city watch, which is under his command, a mercenary who is rumored to be taking bribes from a Lord at another house to learn House Ynris secrets.
Level based roles can also be used in solo play, single character games are much easier to run if the character in question has a clearly defined role that can be leveraged for game ideas. They function as “downtime” activities from adventuring as well. Each PC has a defined role that they perform when not adventuring, and this can be assumed rather than determined on the fly.
Patrons will take on groups whose members are not all in the same factions as well, as was stated above, both intra and inter factional rivalries exist, so having agents outside of your faction is a key element in surviving the intrigues of factional play.
But it would also be possible to run single class parties, say a group of mercenaries who all sign up and join House Phars together. After distinguishing themselves in some street skirmishes while on ward patrol, they draw the attention of Bohlak the Bronze, Vanvasi (plant) Secundus Warlock at House Phars. At that point they begin to take on jobs from Bohlak as they rise through the ranks at the House as mercenaries.
For about 3 years I created “tasks” from patrons on the fly. As much fun as that is, it relies on the fact I created the setting, so it is easy for me to riff on it’s elements. This system allows a referee to leverage the system and create patron tasks for the party easily. It helps to flesh out the role of the patron, and to give PCs things to do during downtime, as well as supporting solo play.
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