This month, I will be looking at Mythras Factions, The Design Mechanism's most recent title for Mythras.

This will be a short review, as it is a short book. I'm also declaring personal interest, since I both proofed it and supplied material for the book, hence the multiple credits on the inside cover.

Mythras Factions

Only this week, I received my complimentary author's copy of this book. It's a slim volume, like a magazine with glossy, colourful pages.

The illustrations by Andrew SImmons, Dean Spencer, David Comerci, and Jason Moser are stunning, and include both monochrome and full colour art.

Structure of The Book

Defining Factions

The first chapter describes the structures of factions: who their leaders are, their causes, goals, resources, size, scope, and dedication. Basically, how big the group is, how devoted, what they believe in.

Faction Skills

This one faced changes from the original manuscript. This chapter describes five Skills pertinent to factions, namely Allies, Following, Information, Intrigue, and Subterfuge. The chapter outlines how they are used.

Goals & Missions

This chapter takes a closer look at the goals of factions - Dependent Goals (in order to achieve Goal B, you need to achieve Goal A), and Deciding Goals (once this is at 100%, the faction will have completed the tasks it had been formed to complete, and everybody can go home); and Missions (individual tasks completed by agents of the faction to bring it closer to a goal).

Conflicts

This fun section includes combat rules for faction-vs.-faction competition. These are not the same as the Social Conflict rules found in the back of the Mythras Sourcebook; nor are they the Social Conflict rules found in Mythras Companion. These rules cover direct, and indirect, hostilities between the groups overall. The formats of these conflicts resemble Spirit Combat, Social Combat from the Companion, and physical combat - and they come with their own unique actions, Special Effects and so on.

Sample Factions

Finally, this short book rounds off with lists of factions, both generic (Noble House, etc) and specific to various settings (Fioracitta, Luther Arkwright, Worlds United, Mythic Constantinople).

Here's the fun thing. There is all-new information here, all canon, particularly the Fioracitta factions. These factions provide new information about the different settings. You won't find these in the core rulebook, and they open new doors to adventure in the books from which these factions have been taken.

There is enough information in Mythras Factions to allow you to develop your own factions; and future books I design will build new factions using these rules, as well as provide statistics for Social Conflicts using the Mythras Companion rules. I have already begun providing social conflict stat blocks for major NPCs.

Next Month

I'll be opening up one of the Mythras adventure modules. There are many to choose from, before I even go near the training modules such as Breaking The Habit, and other material such as Ships and Shield Walls.

Plus of course, somewhere down the line I am bound to crack open my author copy of Fioracitta and present to you what is inside that book. Trust me, you'll want to sit in for that one, the author dissecting their own book.