Part III · The GM

Factions

The factions keep moving whatever the crew does, but the crew gets to choose where it stands.

A faction is any power bigger than one person, like a noble house, a guild, a gang, a temple or the watch. Factions move whether the crew does anything or not, and every downtime, each one on the board takes a turn. Most of the time the crew feels them as pressures, and sometimes they come in person.

What a Faction Is

You write a faction in eight lines.

Power: a die for the muscle, reach and influence it can bring to bear. Its best people are threats with a Challenge to match, so a d8 Power sends Challenge 4. Its face can go higher than that.
Wealth: a die for what it can bring to bear with money. It isn’t a purse. Spending a step buys it an extra move, another faction’s move, or something another faction will sell (see Spending Wealth).
Want: one sentence, the thing it always wants.
Agenda: what it’s doing right now, on a die that climbs as the faction works at it. The die says how close it is, and once it’s past d12, it happens.
Tags: what makes it strong. They add a step to its rolls where they fit, and the crew can strip them. Some are things it owns, like Relic: The Inkwell, and those can change hands. See Faction strength.
Face: the person the crew deals with, written as a threat.
Secret: one hidden tag, and usually its weakness.
Standing: how it sees the crew, which is one of Enemy, Wary, Neutral, Friendly or Ally.

The Vane Estate

Power d12 · Wealth d10

Want To keep everything that’s his.

Agenda Vane comes home, at d6.

Tags Wealthy · Old · Relic: The Inkwell

Face Lord Aldous Vane, the collector.

Secret The Inkwell Is the Binding. Break it and every soul in the collection goes free.

Standing Wary.

How big	Power	Wealth	For example
Small	d4–d6	d4	A gang, a cell, a family with a grudge.
Local	d6–d8	d6–d8	A guild chapter, a temple, a minor noble house.
City	d8–d10	d8–d10	The watch, the harbour guild, the old families.
Great	d10–d12	d10–d12	A great house, a church, the crown’s own office.

Three to five factions makes a good board. With fewer the world feels small, and with more, the table can’t keep track.

Building a Faction

Roll on each table, or just read down them and pick.

d12	What it is	What it wants
1	A noble house.	More: money, land, trade.
2	A merchant guild.	To keep what it has.
3	A street gang.	Revenge on a rival.
4	A temple or an order.	One thing: a relic, a document, a person.
5	A crown office: the watch, the courts, the tax house.	To be respected.
6	A secret society.	To hide what it did.
7	A mercenary company.	To change the law.
8	A craft guild.	To break another faction.
9	A family business.	To protect its own.
10	Rebels.	To be free of a master.
11	Collectors, scholars, keepers of old things.	To bring something back.
12	Something old that wears a human face.	To end something, for good.

d12	How it works	Its secret
1	Money.	It’s broke, and hiding it.
2	Violence.	Its leader isn’t who they say they are.
3	The law.	A rival inside wants the top seat.
4	Secrets and blackmail.	One crime would end it.
5	Faith.	Everything depends on one person.
6	Favours and debts.	It owes a bigger power.
7	Spies.	Its people are unpaid and angry.
8	Fear.	It believes a lie.
9	Charm, parties, gifts.	The crown is already watching it.
10	Patience.	An old promise binds it.
11	Other people’s hands.	It’s much smaller than it looks.
12	Magic, or something stranger.	It’s already dying.

Agendas

An agenda climbs, like the crew’s Goal, and its die tells you how close it is. A d2 has only just started, and it’s years off. A d4 is a season or more away, a d6 a month or two, a d8 a week or two, a d10 is days away, and a d12 could happen any day now. Past d12, it happens. A faction can have two agendas on the go at once, but never more than two.

d12	What it is doing	Starts at
1	Taking over a rival’s business.	d6
2	Buying a magistrate, a captain, a vote.	d8
3	Moving a shipment nobody should see.	d10
4	Finding something that was lost.	d4
5	Silencing a witness.	d8
6	Winning a charter, a seat, a marriage.	d6
7	Bringing someone home.	d6
8	Moving into new territory.	d4
9	Breaking a rival for good.	d2
10	Holding a festival, a trial or a ritual.	d6
11	Hunting someone down.	d8
12	Something nobody should want.	d2

The Faction Turn

Every downtime, each faction on the board takes one move, and it works like a telegraph:

At the start of downtime, the GM picks each faction’s move, or rolls for it, and says them all out loud. Whichever one matters most to the crew is the faction pressure.
The crew spends its slots, and it can move against a faction before that faction’s move lands.
Then roll the moves.

Move	Roll	On a win
Advance	Its Power against its own agenda’s die.	The agenda climbs one. Past d12, it happens.
Attack	Its Power against a rival’s Power, or the crew’s.	Strip one of the rival’s tags, or step its Power or Wealth down one.
Scheme	No roll.	A new agenda, at the die the table says, stepped up once. Only if it has room for one.
Spend	No roll.	On top of its move: step its Wealth down one for a second move, another faction’s move, or a tag bought (see below).
Recover	No roll.	Step its Power or Wealth back up one, never past where it started.
Move on the crew	No roll.	Roll on When a Faction Comes for the Crew.

Tags that fit add a step to its roll. A tie goes to the defender, and the die a faction’s climbing counts as the defender. If it loses, nothing happens this downtime, and the faction’s a little angrier about it.

If you don’t know what a faction does, roll a d6:

d6	This downtime, it…
1–2	Advances its agenda.
3	Schemes. If it already has two agendas, it advances instead.
4	Attacks its worst rival.
5	Moves on the crew.
6	Spends Wealth: roll twice more, and it takes both. If its Power or Wealth is down, it recovers instead.

Spending Wealth

Wealth is what money can do for a faction, on a die. Spending it steps it down one and buys one thing:

A second move this downtime.
Another faction’s move. It pays a faction to make one move where it says, rolled with that faction’s own dice. Nobody takes money from an Enemy.
A tag or a thing bought from a faction that’ll sell it, one that’s Neutral or better towards the buyer. It changes hands.

The crew spends its Wealth the same way, and it gets two more uses that factions don’t: winning a tie on a downtime roll, and paying for something too big for a purse in a session. See The Crew.

Jobs move Wealth and Power too. A burned warehouse steps the Guild’s Wealth down, and a ship brought home steps the crew’s up. When a job will do that, the GM says so when she offers it, and moves the dice when it’s done.

When an agenda happens

The world changes. Say how in one sentence, and write it on the party sheet.
The faction grows. Step its Power or Wealth up one, or give it a new tag.
It writes a new agenda. Roll for it, or pick what it wants next.

Standing

Every faction has a Standing with the crew. It tells you how the faction treats them, and which table it rolls on when it comes for them.

Standing	What it means
Enemy	It wants the crew gone, and it’ll pay for it.
Wary	It watches. It’ll hurt the crew if it’s cheap to.
Neutral	It does business. Everything has a price.
Friendly	It helps when it costs little, and it asks favours.
Ally	It takes risks for the crew, and it expects the same.

Up one when the crew does it a real service: a job done well, a gift, a favour returned, or one of its enemies brought down.
Down one when the crew costs it something it cares about: a tag, a step of Power or Wealth, or its face humiliated.
Straight to Enemy on a betrayal.

Most factions start Neutral. If the crew’s already crossed one, it starts Wary.

When a Faction Comes for the Crew

Roll a d12. An Enemy or Wary faction rolls on the first table, and a Friendly or Ally one rolls on the second. A Neutral faction rolls a d2 first: on a 1 it uses the first table, and on a 2 it uses the second.

d12	Enemy or Wary	Friendly or Ally
1	A price on someone’s head: next session, a crew member is Hunted, at the faction’s Power.	A job, well paid and a little dangerous.
2	It buys someone the crew relies on: a fence, a landlord, a contact. A thread with them snaps unless someone spends a slot to win them back.	A warning: someone’s coming for you.
3	It raids or seizes a party resource.	A gift: a purse of gold each, an item, a door opened.
4	It frames a crew member for something it did.	A favour asked. Something small now, something big later.
5	Its face comes to talk: a warning, a threat, an offer.	An introduction to someone useful.
6	It hires someone: a Named threat is on the crew’s trail.	Shelter: a safehouse, for as long as the crew needs it.
7	It tells the law.	A secret about a rival faction: one of its hidden tags.
8	It squeezes their money. The crew’s Wealth steps down one, and prices double next session.	It settles a debt someone in the crew owed.
9	It spreads a story. The crew’s name gets worse on every street it reaches.	Muscle: its people join in at the crew’s next big scene.
10	It takes someone on a bond.	An invitation: a party, a council, a wedding.
11	It sets a trap. The next job isn’t what it looks like.	It asks the crew to choose: us, or them.
12	It moves in the open: a fight in the street, next session.	It needs rescuing.

The Crew and the Factions

The crew moves on factions with its party slots, and a party slot is an action for the crew. Roll the crew’s Power, plus a step for every crew tag and Reputation that fits. If one character’s plainly the right person for it, they can roll their own permissions instead: 1 step for the slot, plus everything that fits. Two party slots on one move count everything twice, and that’s the crew’s whole downtime gone on one thing.

Rule

Going at a bigger faction. If a faction’s Power is bigger than the crew’s, the crew can only roll against its Power with both party slots on that one move. With one slot, go at the smaller things: its agenda, its face, its people, or a project of your own that’ll cost it something when it’s done.

Move	Against	On a win	On a loss
Interfere	Its Power and its agenda’s die at once: one roll, two dice against it. Against a bigger faction with one slot, its agenda only.	Beat the agenda and its move this downtime fails, and the agenda steps down one, never below d2. Beat its Power and you take something as well: one of its tags (if it’s a thing it owns, it’s yours now, as a party resource), or a step of its Wealth, which steps the crew’s up one.	Nothing happens, and its move goes ahead.
Strike	Its Power.	Strip one of its tags, or step its Power or Wealth down one. Its Standing drops one.	Its Standing drops one anyway, and its next move is on the crew.
Deal	Its face. A Deal’s always open: one slot, however big the faction is and however it sees the crew.	Its Standing goes up one, or it trades: a favour for a favour, or one of its tags, or a thing it owns, for a step of the crew’s Wealth.	Nothing, and next time the price is higher.
Work for it	No roll.	It gives the crew a job. The job is a scene next session. Do it, and its Standing goes up one and it pays: a purse of gold each, a favour, or for a big job, a step of the crew’s Wealth.	—

Ties go to the faction. There’s no Aura in downtime, but a player can spend 1 Resolve to roll again (their own dice only), or the crew can step its Wealth down one and take the tie. Only the crew gets to do that. See Rolling in downtime.

Scenes move factions too. If the crew burns a Guild warehouse in play, they’ve struck the Guild, whatever they spent in downtime. Say so, and move its Standing and its dice.

Factions in a scene

Its people are threats with a Challenge to match its Power, and its tags can be theirs too.
Its money is its Wealth die: the bribe it can offer, the price it can pay and the guards it can hire.
Its secret can be found like any hidden tag. Once the crew knows it, they can bring it into a roll for 1 Aura, the same as any tag they know about.
Its Standing shows up in person: an ally’s agents join in, and an enemy’s face telegraphs.

The crew’s own Power, Wealth, tags and Reputations, and how the crew grows, are in The Party Sheet.

ExampleA faction turn, at the table

There are three factions on the board, and the GM picks their moves. The Vane Estate will advance Vane comes home, which is sitting at d10. The Harbour Guild is Wary of the crew. The GM doesn’t know what it’ll do, so she rolls and gets a 5: it moves on the crew. And the Quiet Order schemes. The faction pressure is the Estate: Vane is nearly home.

The Estate’s Power is a d12 and the crew’s is a d4, so the crew can’t touch its Power without both party slots. They put both in to interfere, and everything counts twice: their d4 becomes a d8, rolled against the Estate’s Power and its agenda at once. The crew rolls 7. The Power rolls 9 and the agenda rolls 4. They’ve beaten the agenda but not the Power, so the Estate’s move fails this downtime, and Vane comes home steps back down to d8. They don’t get to take anything, but Vane’s carriage has turned round on the north road.

Now for the moves. The Estate’s move has already failed. The Guild rolls a d12 on the first table and gets a 7: it tells the law, and next session the watch has the crew’s names. The Order writes a new agenda, Find the painted box, which starts at d4 and gets stepped up once, to d6.

Note

If war comes. There aren’t any war rules in Zi’Dara, because a war is a lot of factions moving at once, and the faction turn already does that. If your campaign goes to war:

Give each side a war agenda, like take the harbour, at a d2 or a d4. Every downtime, each side advances its own and attacks the other’s Power.
Whoever’s agenda climbs past d12 first wins. If a side’s Power steps down past d2, it’s broken.
Put the crew’s scenes inside it: a raid, a parley, a rescue, a bridge to hold. Each scene the crew wins steps their side’s agenda up one.
Let it cost. Every downtime the war goes on, name one thing it takes: a place, a person, a party resource. It doesn’t give them back.
Keep the crew at the centre. They’re the people the generals send, not the generals themselves.