Political Complexity via Central Tension Generator
War comes, creatures.
This is a little generator idea to help flesh out a campaign region by way of a central tension.
Good central tensions have many points of view and many stories to tell within them. I think this method is at least a good way to start off. At the very least, by the time you’ve followed these steps you should have a world that really compels you.
This is really more a method of fleshing out factions and hooking them into the setting, but that’s all political complexity is, right?
Da Method
Grab a piece of paper and a pen
- Write a major change that just shook the region / world. This is the hard part, you just have to brute force it and come up with an idea you like. Examples: the sun went out, a mountain came out of the ground, the king died mysteriously, the moon cracked open like an egg, the river dried up, an empire just fell, a foreign power has arrived.
- Bubble off from the center the reason that the change occured.
- Write one beneficial and one detrimental thing that came about as a result of this change.
- Write one faction that hooks into the beneficial thing, and write another faction that hooks into the detrimental thing
- Connect the factions with a bubble that describes their relationship.
- Pick one faction to connect to the history of the tension defined in step 2. They could have known about it, or even caused it themselves.
- Think about an external coming conflict. Usually this is the big bad thing that’s going to happen as a result of your central tension.
By now, the tension in the setting is taking shape. Push yourself, squeeze a little bit harder for details. The more you develop all this fake history nonsense the more you’ll have to hook into when you’re looking for new ideas. Think about other things that may cause benefits and detriments, other factions that may be looking to capitialise on the newly changed landscape.
Sample Tensions
Using this method, I came up with some tensions. Here, take a look!
Sample Tension: The Last Elf Died
Sample Tension: Discovery of the Lost Islands
In Practice (Critique)
This is an addendum added on 12 September 2023
I’ve used this generator once, and I still think it can create the basis for an interesting political landscape.
What it doesn’t give you is anything gameable. You can’t take this stuff to the table and run a game. I think it may help inform your game prep, and it’s good to have these notes somewhere to refer to, but this generator itself doesn’t give you a game.