New factions?

[AoS]

Last day I was thinking with some friends about how should be a new facction in Malifaux, and we agree that a faction of pirates would be awsome.

 

We thought how would be the crews, and we said something like this:

 

1- Some like a Davy jones tripulation (of Pirates of the Caribbean).

2- Typicall free pirate crew.

3- Mermaid and mermen or tritons.

4- Sea beasts. (Maybe no like a facction)

5- Undead pirates, (maybe dual facction with Ressers)

6- Corsair, mercenary pirates, (maybe dual facction with Outcast)

7- Wizards of water. (Maybe dual facction with The Arcannist)

8- Some marines/sailors, from the Guild facction. (of course dual facction with the Guild)

 

What do you think about this?

 

How should be a new Malifaux faccion for you?

[Fetid Strumpet]

Personally I hope they don't add any more factions.

[knghtpiper]

While your ideas sound neat, it just seems like your naming new units for the current factions.  With 7 factions do we really need another one?  They have a lot of minis to release as it is.  

[Absolution Black]

I don't know a great deal of background for the Malifaux world, but I can't see how Pirates in the traditional sense will fit with the fluff?

 

Are there any large bodies of water?  I thought there was only the river and the immediate surroundings discovered already, and I would have thought the Guild would have a pretty good stranglehold on any traffic on that. 

[Furio]

new factions will be great... in a couple of years once we've got everything that still needs to be released for the current factions.

[Kadeton]

Some pirates would be pretty neat but I don't think it would require a new Faction. Sprinkle them through the existing Factions instead.

I think it will be a long time before we see another large wave (no pun intended) of releases.

[MasterDisaster]

Sounds like Nautical Ten Thunders. Whilst the theme you have gone for is really cool and I dig it it just sounds like a copy of the Cryx from Warmachine who are effectively Pirates, granted 90% of them are undead but still. A pirate themed crew within an existing Faction would be cool but an entire Faction seems a little far fetched. Personally I think 7 Factions is enough for the moment. Lets face it, originally it was just 4. Ten Thunders came in late with the 1.5 books and with M2E Gremlins became their own faction. 7 is a pretty tall order and Wyrd are not getting stuff out at the fastest pace as it is (not a complaint BTW). An additional Faction would require another book, probably dedicated to them and at the moment this doesn't seem remotely possible. Especially when we have Avatars on the way and the remaining Wave 1 and majority of Wave 2 releases to come as well. 

[Fetid Strumpet]

Originally it was 5.

[MasterDisaster]

Originally it was 5.

 

Right you are. I knew that, must have hit 4 by accident. 

[zeeblee]

At the very least contemplating new factions can be an interesting thought experiment.  Everyone has their own methods for putting new stuff together, but for me I generally go with the following steps:

 

1)  Define the core themes of the game (aka: design limitations; you don't want My Little Pony showing up in Warhammer 40k as an example)

2)  Identify current faction themes

3)  Comparing steps 1 and 2, are there any unexplored themes?

4)  Determine if there is enough design space open within said unexplored themes to develop a new faction rather than subsuming said unused themes into an already existing faction.

 

So, going from my current knowledge/perceptions:

 

1)  Malifaux plays with steampunk-level tech in an oldschool horror setting with cyberpunk societal structure.  The landscape appears to be landlocked except for the presence of a large river and marshes.

2)  Guild- law, bureaucracy, "mundane" (in cyberpunk this is the megacorp)

Arcanists- workers rights, the everyman, mysticism, experimental tech, outside the law (in cyberpunk these are kind of like the hackers and downtrodden)

Resurrectionists- raising undead of every sort (fast zombie, slow zombie, frankenstein zombie, spirit zombie, chimera zombie, etc...)

Ten Thunders- Asia fetishization (sorry guys), organized crime, spies and infiltration

Neverborn- horrors of the unknown, horrors of nature, eldritch beasts and nightmares (so much horror!)

Gremlins- hillbillies, alcohol, and swamp wildlife

Outcasts- this one is rather funky since all but two of the crews are technically help-for-hire (at least I think Tara's fluff discusses that even though none of her crew has the Merc tag).  But then the special two (Hammelin and Jack Daw) just don't truly fit anywhere.  To me Hammelin most closely resembles Rasputina in how they both are working for a higher entity that wants everyone dead/under their thumb.  If it weren't for the fact that Jack Daw is an undead human surrounded by undead humans he would almost fit into Neverborn due to being a force of Malifaux's nature.  But he also doesn't quite fit into the Resurrectionists because he seems to be more about naturally occurring spirits than about actively reviving

 

But I don't want to derail this whole thing with a discussion of "what each faction is" so let's just try to figure out what design spaces haven't been explored yet.

 

3)  Honestly, based on the above assessment and a topic from the Arcanist faction board I think that the closest we can come to to a "new" faction would be to pull Rasputina, Marcus, and Hammelin from their current factions, maybe add a new desert themed crew (because besides the Ortegas we haven't really explored that landscape yet), and theme it around nature as an independent agent.  Because in all of my thoughts I just couldn't quite get to step 4 since each new thing felt like it fit into one of the already-formed factions.  Though I'll probably keep thinking about this for some time...

[Flint]

How about a new crew instead of whole new faction: an outcast steam-motorcycle gang.

[LunarSol]

The concept of a minor breach opens up a little more randomness to the game in general, but the 10T covers that pretty well.  I am personally a fan of new factions existing more as different subsets of existing Masters, with a few new additions to give it some unique design space.  Splitting up Arcanists into the M&SU and the Rogue Mages is one of the big ones in my mind, with Outcasts into the For Hire and Horrors is the other.  I kind of feel those 14 masters could probably be recombined into 3 factions with a more consistent theme, but its not really at all necessary to do so.

 

As for pirates, I'm kind of meh on the idea.  I like pirates quite a bit, but there hasn't been a real concept of naval shipping in the world for them to make a lot of sense.  I do think a pirate/bandit sort of Master has a place.  Train robbers or something along those lines would fit in well with the Viktoria/Von Schill style of Outcasts.

[Bengt]

I really like the symmetry of one faction per suit and one joker faction in 1st edition.

 

As for pirates/bandits, that feels like one of the influences for Gremlins.

[SpiralngCadavr]

I'd much prefer a bunch of interesting dual faction options, or you could do something with sub-factions, such as more things like the M&SU which is practically half a faction on its own, rather than see the struggle in trying to build a new faction that's reasonably balanced in the context of a larger game. The edition shift was when to do that (and when they did).

[Ausplosions]

Please no more factions.

[Cats Laughing]

Originally it was 5.

 

Mercs are not a faction...

 

ooops, wrong game

 

Though to be serious, I can see how MasterDisaster could make that mistake without coming from WarmaHordes.  There was one faction per suit, plus outcasts, which were a faction but didn't feel like one.  Not only did each of the 3 original outcast crews have widely divergent themes (same could be said of Arcanists), but there were also actual hiring restrictions that prevented the outcasts from really mixing, and adding in Hamelin and Von Schill with their additional hiring restrictions did not help at all.  At least with Arcanists you could hire anything with any master, even if some of that didn't work very well.

 

Currently Outcasts still have that 'faction but not really connected' feel, but without the strict hiring restrictions that practically enforced subfactions in 1.5.  Heck, Wyrd even got smart and spun off one of the subfactions into that faction we love or hate or hate to love or love to hate...

[SpiralngCadavr]

Yeah, outcast hiring restrictions were pretty weird, last edition, though it was pretty cool.

Currently, I think Outcasts are actually pretty well unified:

Mercs: Misaki (lots of her TT options are mercs and she originally was one); Viks; Von Schill, Tara (thematically was a merc, mechanically works well enough with them)

Undead or undead friends: Jack, Tara, kind of Leveticus

Nihilistic magic/loners: Tara, Leveticus, Hamelin, Jack kind of

I think most factions can be organized into 2-3 partially overlapping themes, so they're not very unusual...

[Pierowmaniac]

Plenty of Factions already

[Cats Laughing]

Yeah, outcast hiring restrictions were pretty weird, last edition, though it was pretty cool.

Currently, I think Outcasts are actually pretty well unified:

Mercs: Misaki (lots of her TT options are mercs and she originally was one); Viks; Von Schill, Tara (thematically was a merc, mechanically works well enough with them)

Undead or undead friends: Jack, Tara, kind of Leveticus

Nihilistic magic/loners: Tara, Leveticus, Hamelin, Jack kind of

I think most factions can be organized into 2-3 partially overlapping themes, so they're not very unusual...

 

Side note, Leveticus is also a mercenary of sorts and has been hired in the fluff on occasion.  Hamelin and Jack are the most outcast of the outcasts, imho, as the rest fall under a 'will work for coin' theme.

[SpiralngCadavr]

Hmm, well, actually, Hamelin and Jack were both mercs in their earliest incarnations, so, I guess that means all (current) Outcast masters at one point or another hired out.

[Parker Barrows]

I would hope for another 5-10 years before another faction being considered.

[Patzer]

I would hope for another 5-10 years before another faction being considered.

I think that you are safe with that assumption. M2E will not go anywhere for a long time, and I don't see Wyrd implementing any new full factions before a new addition change. Anyway, who knows...

[thebarbalag]

For my personal preference, there really isn't something I want in the game that wouldn't fit in an existing faction, and I personally really like the way the factions are currently "aspected:" the "orginal" four, each corresponding to a suit of the Malifaux tarot, Outcasts as their fringes, and Gremlins as comic relief (although, personally I have theories about what the actual role of Gremlins is in the fluff, but that's another topic).

 

Train Robbers/Land Pirates/Bandits would fit excellently in Outcasts, Arcanists, or Neverborn, and we already have a gang of bandits (or several) in Gremlins, particularly Mah Tucket.

 

As for proper sea pirates, I echo the sentiment of others in this thread that the world of Malifaux doesn't really feature ocean travel at the moment...but then, we've only explored a very small part of the world, the city and its surrounding environs, with the edges being the Bayou, the mountains, and the river. There's a wide world out there, and I'm excited to see it explored, but I really don't think we need new factions to do it.

[Nathan Caroland]

No new factions for the foreseeable.

[decker_cky]

So you're saying we'll be blindsided by new factions?

 

...

 

AN ENTIRE FACTION OF SILURIDS!