If I want two groups of rival nobles on my world, no problem: I take Nobility and Rebel Line. But what if I want, say, a world riddled by the schism between the Mundas Humanitas and the Cyrean heretics? The book pretty explicitly says Cult Churches is for non-Burning Wheel religions and Theocratic Institutions covers both orthodox Mundas and its main splinter groups. Assuming I don’t want a Theocracy as the primary government, would it make sense to take the Theocratic Institutions faction twice to represent the dueling religious establishments, or just take it once and say activating the faction indicates that whichever side of the schism you prefer is winning for now?
Theocratic vs Cult Churches. Orthodoxy is in the eye of the beholder.
I wanted to reopen this issue to clarify something. If a planet has two or more psychologist organizations, competing cults, major criminal organizations, etc would you take two or more different Faction slots or would they be represented in just one Faction? Could five players use their faction vote to bring in five different rebel lines, each with a different motivation and agenda or should just one person vote for Faction: Rebels and the others use their votes otherwise?
Personally, I prefer the idea of multiple factions that are activated and taken action against seperately from each other but I’m interested in the official answer and the group concensus. -leeman
While I do not have the Burning Empires book infront of me. I seem to recall that it is stated that if a faction is selected once; Each and every player/GM may work with that entire faction type category.
In other words: If “Orthodox Theocracy” is introduced once. Every player may have his own take on this faction.
Sorry it took me so long to get to this one.
Yeah, mechanically, you can if you really want to, but it’s unnecessary. Factions are abstract. When you take Merchant League, it’s there to represent multiple organizations, Cult Churches represents a variety of denominations. However, if you’re playing a game where two companies are vying for control of a government, and they are THE factions for a game, then I can see taking, say, Merchant League twice.
We are running a campaign on a world where the Empires are fighting for control so it made sense to us to have multiples of the same faction.
http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Gem#Imperial_Bureaucracy:_Urfan_Mission
http://www.burningempires.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Gem#Imperial_Bureaucracy:_Comoran_Concession
Having duplicate factions sounds totally reasonable then. Since factions on their own exist but don’t do anything until maneuvers are used to affect them, it would make sense to have multiples if there is some reason for member groups to be powerful enough to matter. For instance, a border world might have two different Bureaucracies or military factions represent the assets of both kingdoms.