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Hello fellow designers.
For some times now, I have been creating a wargame. It went through many iterations. I'd lay down an idea, expand it, maybe try it with 3 models by side, see what didn't work, and remade it. Again and again.

Now, I feel like I have something that could work. I haven't created profiles yet, but the core mechanic works (I think), I hope it's enjoyable and creates tactical choices.
I settled on 6 factions (Musketeers, Pirates, Monsters, Goblins, Ninjas and Zombis). The next thing to do is to create profiles, assign characteristics, special rules, weapons, etc.

And here's the question : Should every faction have it's own play style, or should every faction be able to do every play style ?

If each faction is assigned a play style, it's easy to explain : Musketeers are jack of all trades, Pirates focus on enhancing each other, etc.
But on the other hand, if a player want to play a shooting faction but dislike the looks of the Goblins, it's not good.

If each faction can do everything (not all at once, but you get to choose), you can have your cake and eat it. Ex : You could play shooting Ninjas, close combat Goblins, scary Musketeers...).
But in that case the identity of each faction is a bit diluted. Choosing your faction becomes mostly a cosmetic choice.

So. What do you think of the issue ? If you have created a game already, what did you choose and why ?

I think Faction should significantly impact playstyle, but that each faction should have a few different playstyles within. To pick a terrible example, Astra Militarum can be played infantry heavy, tank heavy, or Flyer heavy. And a mixture of all of the above. They're a shooting faction, but you have several ways to play it.

Some factions can be jack of all trades, but a flavourful preference. Dark Angels can play just like normal marines, but they're better if you focus on Bikes. They tend to use a lot of plasma, but you don't have to.

It gives armies different flavours, and encourages your players to buy into multiple armies. If you have one army that can play any which way, why start another?

Whenever you have factions or a limiting factor, other than point value, you are always going to encounter someone who "wants to play a shooting faction but dislike the looks of Goblins". Most games I choose to play end up being because I like the look and the playstyle matches me. If the playstyle doesn't match then I might collect the model but not play the game.

Now there are ways to do some sort of balance between the two worlds. It is a bit harder to balance and do but provides a couple options for building.

Take Eden for example. When you create your list you can choose a faction so then your army must contain units from that faction. However you could instead choose Stigma, which determines their way of thinking and role they played. Then if someone likes a faction, they are good. If someone likes a particular unit, but it isn't in their faction they could create a team from other units with the same mindset.

I'm of the opinion that factions should not be a purely aesthetic choice, however, factions should be able to play a variety of playstytles.

For example, let us say that you have a "Shooty" faction. This is not to say that it is the only faction that can shoot, or even that it is a lot better at shooting than the other factions, just that it would be the best faction to play with if you want to shoot stuff a lot. It may just mean that you have the most shooting options. For example, you could have archers (All-round decent shooting), cannons (powerful shooting), crossbowmen/pavisiers (Powerful shooting, but slower and shorter ranged), rangers (sneaky shooting), and horse archers (fast and shoot stuff). Other factions would find themselves missing one or more of these- say, a nomadic tribe lacking cannons and crossbows, but being just as (if not more) capable of making a horse archers list.

At the same time, that shooting army should be able to play a more melee-centric build, but may find itself shorter on options. For example, it's Heavy Cavalry might still shoot stuff, and so be less effective than the same points of another factions heavy cavalry when it comes to shock attacks. Or it's Heavy Cavalry and shock infantry may be in a more restricted part of the force org chart.

Finally, you would want to avoid making a faction a caricature of it's playstyle. One of the worst offenders that I can think of for this was Warhammer Fantasy Dwarves. They had the most options for shooting (other than possibly Skaven), and it was very easy to build a gunline in a huge variety of ways. Problem was, they could only really build a gunline, maybe with a block of heavy infantry or two. This is because they had no cavalry, no magic, no monsters, no skirmishers, and below-average speed. In short, while they were great at shooting, they sacrificed so many other elements that they ended up being terribly unfun to both play and face.

TLR- factions should have a unique flavour, but they should be able to play multiple ways, and the faction identity should be expressed as "tendencies towards X", or "somewhat more efficient Y", or "more options when it comes to Z".

Factions should, primarily, be an aesthetic choice rather than a mechanical one. After all, the faction arises from the setting and the miniatures line, not from the rules-set. And as others have observed you can have the awkwardness of not liking the aesthetic for the faction that suits your favoured playing style, or vice versa.

That said, the aesthetic should also follow the temperament or disposition of the faction, which will lead to certain mechanical inevitabilities.

If you end up with two factions with mechanical traits that are too similar then you end up in a Squat situation: the Squats were too similar in play-style to the Imperial Guard, so they got eaten. In good design and development, you should allow the emerging mechanics to influence and shape the aesthetic and vice versa until you reach a harmonious balance.

I am also inclined to divorce factions, mechanics, and appearance. Mechanics should be solid on their own. If the game is precisely about each factions strengths and weaknesses, then it makes sense to incorporate that, otherwise it unnecessarily penalizes based on aesthetic choices (like how 1 faction looks but want to play a different style? Too bad...).

So the question is what role do factions play in *your* design? You gave the following factions: Musketeers, Pirates, Monsters, Goblins, Ninjas and Zombis, but no explanation of the role of each. Off hand, it seems like there would be a lot of overlap- Musketeers and Pirates, for example, and Monsters, Goblins, and Zombies (goblins and zombies both being types of monstrous beings). I am also kind of struggling to see where Ninjas fits in (as they were a specific, largely historically insignificant, group in a very small region that shifted radically with the introduction of western firearms). Does each one have specific limits on weaponry, manpower, organization, etc.? Or, are they guides, but not hard rules for players? So Faction X tends to do Y, but players are free to build differently.

I think that factions should have strong themes, in both their models and rules, that tie them together. I wouldn't make the theme as broad as "shooty faction," but a faction with a few more specific themes could be interesting.

So, if you look at Zombies, you have shooty and melee zombies, fast and slow zombies, and even both elite and horde zombies, all in the same faction, as long as there are rules more common among the zombies than among the other factions. So, things like recursion, where a dead model can become another zombie. Or fearlessness, if morale is part of your game. Or a high durability (because they don't feel pain) or even a low durability (because they're rotting corpses).

So I can line up either fast moving, shooty zombies, or a horde of melee zombies, or a few hard hitting zombies, but they'll play differently, because I can create new zombies in game, I ignore a lot of morale, and they all have the ability to survive light wounds.

If you then look at Pirates, they might also have the same rough range of units (although likely a bit more shooting than zombies, and less long range than musketeers), but they get stacking buffs and bonuses.

I'm very much in favor of marrying up playstyle with faction. This not only strengthens the identity of each faction but also strengthens the overall brand of the IP. The downsides to the marriage enumerated above don't outweigh this advantage IMO.

I am firmly against merging play-style with faction, I understand the virtues this simplification has and the marketing plus about it.

But I prefer the option of every faction doing every play-style just in their own unique way.

yes, you lose on the easy identifiable choices (want shooting take X) but you are not limited on art style and background for players (you like X and want shooting? ok this is how they play shooting)

What you could do is give each faction at least one unit that supports a particular play style, which means that any army can let you use any playstyle at least in some manner, then expand the rest of the army as you please.

For an example (one that breaks down when you look at the rest of the game), in early 40k orks, CWE, and SM all had a version of a certain unit that supported a particular strategy. For versatile infantry: boyz, dire avengers, and tacticals. For mobile units: warbikes, jetbikes, and attack bikes. For elite hard-to-kill units: meganobs, terminators, and wraithguard. For walkers: kans/Deff dreads, dreadnoughts, and wraithknight/wraithlord depending on edition. For psychic HQs: weirdboys, farseers, and librarians. In this way each army has enough variety for most basic playstyles to have at least one option, but the options aren't the same. Weirdboys are psychic HQs, but they function as aggressive casters who want to be in the frontlines surrounded by allies, while farseers are better in a support role buffing. Meanwhile the rest of the army can be filled out according to fluff. Each army has a tanky unit, but the rest of the SM army is more durable than the rest of CWE or orks are.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
But I prefer the option of every faction doing every play-style just in their own unique way.

You want all factions to play all ways but play all ways in a way that is specific to them. This seems like a "have you cake and eat it too" way of saying you like faction and play style to align.

You know this is starting to sound a lot like the old debates on classes in RPGs....

 jmurph wrote:
You know this is starting to sound a lot like the old debates on classes in RPGs....

Difference is that classes don't come with a specific model aesthetic

Manchu wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
But I prefer the option of every faction doing every play-style just in their own unique way.

You want all factions to play all ways but play all ways in a way that is specific to them. This seems like a "have you cake and eat it too" way of saying you like faction and play style to align.

Well Infinity does it quite well, others can too.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Well Infinity does it quite well, others can too.

To be fair though Infinity does aspects of this well and others not so well. Some factions clearly have better hackers, while others have less options for hackers. Not all TAGs are the same, so yes all factions might have TAGs but there is a clear difference on which one is better. Doctors and link teams are another example.

We are really simplifying playstyle and faction a bit. A bigger question is "Why should factions have a diversity or not?". This sort of goes with, how easy do you want players to be able to learn and pickup a game. One issue with having options is, there are definitely factions that tend to do things "better". Even if you have two factions that both shoot, one tends to do something better... it may cost more, but it shoots better statistically speaking. Where you get into issues is where a player who loves to shoot, picks up Faction-B because they like the look. Good reason, I do that often. They keep playing though and for some reason they always lose to Faction-A or at least most of the time. He's trying to outshoot the shooty faction, without understanding that and changing strategy and tactics. Normally the blame goes to the dice, or it goes down to Faction-A is just really OP.

That usually leads to the newer player continually having bad play experiences to where they stop playing. Many players never make the leap to learn why. We encounter this all the time in MMOs and even games like MtG. Guy picks up a black aggro deck, but can't seem to figure out why he can't beat the red aggro deck. PvP or Raid Person-A is just better because they properly maximized their build, while Person-B thinks they did, but didn't really... so the blame goes to the gear or unbalance.

There isn't technically anything wrong with that... players will eventually learn, while others don't. But understand when you give options, people will use the options. If one is always better than the other, then why provide the options in the first place. That doesn't mean you can't balance the options, but just something to consider if you should include "all the options".

This is why I said n their own unique way, if everybody had the best X then they would all be the same, each faction can engage in the same play-style, but in their own way.

For example in deception between Ariadna and PanO, both can bring a lot of surprises on the table, Ariadna can simply swarm the table with camouflage, while PanO needs to work with Holoprojectors and few units that have TO camouflage but this units have far more impact than the many camouflage units Ariadna fields.

Indeed though, if you bring the options to the player, you must balance them.

Yeah, one of the issues I see with faction=play style is that it also invites a rock-paper-scissors approach. But if you can takes some scissors with your rock, it isn't so bad.

As PsychoticStorm indicates, you can also get to the same result different ways. Say maybe force A can do melee, but relies on numerous less adept troops and has fewer, more skilled shooters while B does shooting with massed, less skilled fire, but has fewer more skilled warriors. So both can do either melee or shooting (or some combination) , but do it differently.

Compare DBA, where different historical forces determine the lists with HoTT, where you get a certain number of "points" worth of elements. Similar games, but very different approach. One is designed to match history, the other lets you play with whatever fantasy units you want (and how you see them functioning) within a common limiting framework.

Each faction should have its own strengths and weaknesses, that make it better than others at certain strategies -hit and run, long range engagement, close quarters battle (rather than specefically good or bad at melee, shooting and movement if you get me). Creating the desired result is difficult. If a given faction is comprehensively unmaneovarable, then it limits the tactics and army selection for players using that faction, making games more predictable, and probably less enjoyable too. On the other hand its very boring if armies lack a unique flair and flavour. The idea of units from opposing factions having near identical stats, to me, would be totally offputting, and definitely the greater of the two evils

In summary it is good to give armies an "area of expertise" but not limit them to that. As you know, this is commonly achieved by giving their units good scores for certain stats or bad ones for others. However it's best to mix that approach with approaches like limiting access to certain units, e.g. Orcs are worse at shooting than humans, and so have a lower ranged skill. But you can give Orc players access to 0-2 units of "Ork sharpshooters" with high ranged skill. Unit synergy can also be a useful way of giving armies a forte, (though synergy should be subtle or you can end up with a snowballing effect that leads to serious balance problems).

So in short, we all basically agree that each faction should be able to play most ways, but play them differently? And we're just arguing over the details?

 jmurph wrote:
Yeah, one of the issues I see with faction=play style is that it also invites a rock-paper-scissors approach. But if you can takes some scissors with your rock, it isn't so bad.

Rock-Paper-Scissors though is a solid gaming structure and basis for most games. You can create a force that can handle 2/3 of the issues but weaker against 1/3. You can never create one to win all of the situations. If you try to cover weaker areas, you tend to make stronger areas weaker.

App Games do this well, because it is very clear and concise. Red -> Green -> Blue -> Red, then there tends to be the mix of Light <-> Dark. Most miniatures games incorporate this, but they really don't make it very clear that "X-Unit is designed to beat Y-Unit". If someone takes the time to look into the meta, get advice, they can eventually figure it out. But even then you'll still have that one or two guys that is able to make "Y-Unit beat X-Unit" because they aren't correlating the environment (players skill, other armies, etc) they are playing with. Essentially it becomes harder for newer players... this is the obstacle that most games face though.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
So in short, we all basically agree that each faction should be able to play most ways, but play them differently? And we're just arguing over the details?

Yeah pretty much. Anything to locks something into playing "Only 1 way" is bad, it becomes stagnant and boring.

 Crazy_Carnifex wrote:
So in short, we all basically agree that each faction should be able to play most ways, but play them differently? And we're just arguing over the details?

Nah, at least for my part, I remain pretty hardline in favor of distinct playstyles per faction. The mushiness of everyone being able to do everything is very off-putting IME. It makes more sense when factions are basically the same per fluff - for example, Isorians and Concord in Antares only differ in the details so it makes sense that their playstyles, broadly speaking, will be similar. However, I will also note that this specific example has also drawn criticism. Maybe a better example would be WW2 gaming - everyone is a 20s-30s human male armed virtually identically and using broadly similar squad-level tactics. HH is another example.

I would agree on Faction=Playstyle to a point. I like to think of SM as a good example, they can really do anything, but not OVERLY excel or suck at something. Now some factions should have a definite bonus in a certain area (Tau for Shooty, Orks for choppy for example) To me having a faction as purely ascetic makes for a boring faction. I want to play a faction that draws my playstyle in. Sure game balance is an issue, that is where a simple rock/paper/scissors method could be used. (Mech - Inf - Air)

There are several different aspects to consider as well. How many options are available to each group? If the number of options are rather small, then it wouldn't make sense to to have an army have many or all options. Think of it from the early days of WarmaHordes and Infinity. Each army only had a few options to start off with, so a distinct style for each faction was pretty much required.

If, however, the options are numerous, like how WarmaHordes and Infiinity have developed over the years to the modern day, then it makes sense to have them be sufficiently divers to "have every play style, in their own way".

The alternative is to go of a more Battletech/chess style where where everyone has access to the same units, they just look different.

Arkon wrote:
I settled on 6 factions (Musketeers, Pirates, Monsters, Goblins, Ninjas and Zombis). The next thing to do is to create profiles, assign characteristics, special rules, weapons, etc.

And here's the question : Should every faction have it's own play style, or should every faction be able to do every play style ?

You are actually asking a pretty fundamental balance question.

The simplest form of balance is Black vs White (i.e. Chess, Checkers, Othello, Go), in which every "faction" has the exact same pieces, doing the same things, but only differing by color. This is very easy to balance, as the sides are guaranteed to be identical.

The opposite of that is when every faction is completely different, and conversely, balance can be difficult to dial in.

I would suggest splitting the difference:
- each faction be broadly largely similar, to simplify primary balance; but
- each faction-wide gets a unique tweak and maybe a leader-specific tweak, to make them play somewhat differently.
Most games do something like this at some level, to differentiate the various factions.

As a reasult, every faction will be able to do every play style, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.

I like the idea of each faction having a unique playstyle but with a bit of flexibility (eg. Tyranids can be a horde or they can be Nidzilla or anything inbetween, but they're never going to play like Space Marines).

I think where games often fall down balance wise isn't that forces are asymmetric but rather because of placing too much emphasis on a rock-paper-scissors style of gameplay.

Rock-paper-scissors can only really work if you place tight controls on the minimum and maximum number of rocks, of papers and scissors that a force can take.

I, too, like the idea of each faction being able to do a bit of everything, but doing so in a unique way. This would still tie into an overall faction identity since there's no getting around the fact that core units with different abilities will lead to different styles.

It's just a slightly broader approach than factions being unique but with flexibility.

To be honest, there's a reason why most armies today, or in segmented historical periods tended to be similar. Once someone finds something that works, others will copy or adapt to it.

As above, trying to be too much of hard and defined unique army just means you get countered hard, or you counter someone else hard. This is an impossible balance situation to maintain and has basically led to the power creep or crazy balance changes being made to games like 40K and Warmachine.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I like the idea of each faction having a unique playstyle but with a bit of flexibility (eg. Tyranids can be a horde or they can be Nidzilla or anything inbetween, but they're never going to play like Space Marines).

I think where games often fall down balance wise isn't that forces are asymmetric but rather because of placing too much emphasis on a rock-paper-scissors style of gameplay.

Rock-paper-scissors can only really work if you place tight controls on the minimum and maximum number of rocks, of papers and scissors that a force can take.

And after a while, people start injecting "lizard" and "spock" in to the mix to liven up.

A lot of people will bring up games like Starcraft, and it wasn't fully balanced when it started. It was close, but not quite. It took years for it to reach the point that it is now. Starcraft 2 is still going through subtle balancing changes even considering how long the current version has been out. However, as the history of Starcraft shows, it is worth the effort to make it work.

The alternative is to play either the PP or GW game. Make everything crazy powered in a 10-way version of balance, or toss the idea of balance out the window and have the game fit the narrative more than any need for balance.

Been thinking about this, and I'm realizing that Star Wars Armada is probably a good case study of how to do it so that factions have the ability to play each other’s styles, but do it differently. Think I'll do a short ramble on it. FFG established fairly clear faction identities in the first two waves, and then added more ships to blur them up a bit since then, so that almost all ships have a counterpart in the other faction who fills the same roll (Rebels started with an extra ship, so there is one ship which kinda floats around). The previews for the next wave will shake this up a bit, but in the meantime let's look at what we have now.

Wave 1+2: as I said, almost all ships here have a clean counterpart, and factions have clear playstyles. Rebels tend to have more shields, Imperials more hull. Rebels favor broadsides, Imperials front arcs. Rebels are somewhat more predisposed to long range combat, while Imperials have more options for close ranged shooting. Also, Imperials tend to have a medium range and short range variant of a ship, while Rebel ships have something else to separate them. Finally, Rebels tend to prefer defensive retrofits, while the Empire favours Offensive ones or extra Weapon Slots. Let’s look at how this shakes out for specific pairs of ships (In spoilers, this got a bit more ramble-y than I intended).

So, from Wave 1+2, we see a general trend, but not perfect. There’s a bit of overlap between torpedo boats and corvettes between factions, but both still play differently. When we look at available Admirals, we see some things which reinforce the trends. Admiral Motti Increases the Hull values of Imperial ships. Admiral Ackbar encourages broadsides. Overall, there is very little that a Rebel player can do to imitate an imperial style, excluding a torpedo boat rush, and one ship that I neglected to mention. But let’s look at some later stuff to see how the game evolved.
Subsequent Releases


Summary

So, where does this leave us? I’d say with a good mixture of factions having their own identity, and being able to play something more like the opponents playstyle. Both factions have some overlap, with Torpedo Boats, Ion Corvettes, and Flotillas existing in both fleets. When it comes to Broadside ships, Rebels turn up with the Assault Frigate and MC80 (Home One), as well as Admiral Ackbar, and potential to use MC30c’s and CR90’s with Ackbar. The Empire only really has one ship, with the Arquitens, and no real support. But it can play broadsides, and actually ends up playing rather differently than Rebels, since the Arquitens is a lot more fragile than the Rebels Broadsiders. When it comes to Frontal Firepower, Rebels bring the Pelta, MC-80 (Liberty) and Nebulon-B, against the Imperial Stat Destroyers. While Rebels have more options, their ships tend to have a bit less raw firepower than the Star Destroyers, and, in the case of the MC80 and Nebulon, even more vulnerability to getting flanked. You also have some commanders who add similar but different abilities to the mix. General Madine and Moff Jerjerod both increase the maneuverability of your ships. Madine does it by allowing you navigate commands to do more, while Jerjerrod allows you to take some damage to increase your maneuverability on the fly.

They also use new releases to allow factions to imitate the others play style months or years after the first faction gets it. Wave 1 (05/15/15) the only overlap was Rebels having frontal firepower with the Nebulon B. Rebels only gained a torpedo boat, and empire a corvette, in wave 2 (11/26/15). Rebels only got their frontal attack ship in Summer 2016, with Empire getting a broadsider in (I think) November of last year.