Even More on Player-Based Factions, Continued

So now that we've explained what a faction is, and what it buys you, and what it costs you, we can get back to the real question of ``Do I even want factions at all?'' As heretical as this may seem, it's entirely possible that player-based factions are unneccessary. They might even prove detrimental, so beware! There are a few questions one should ask theirself to help one get to the root of this answer, and these all ultimately tie back to the very introduction of the article which opened this series. I bet you thought I forgot about those.

Demographers, sociologists, and ethnographers have identified several sorts of political groupings, and these are functionally based. Each exists to serve the specific needs of a community of a specific size. While there may be optimizations to be made here and there, it should be noted that these structures have held true for all societies for all time for all geographies. Thusly we can anticipate specific structures if we define and permit specific functions. Each mode is implied by the functions and features, rather than the other way around. I will rely on Elman Service's divisions as a convenient groups, which are the band, tribe, chiefdom, and state. True there are different sorts of states (a monoglot kingdom is very different from a polyglot federation, for example), and indeed there are even things such as empires, which practice diplomacy entirely different than states, but we shall stick to the basics. The subject matter doesn't warrant much depth anyway.

The smallest social unit, according to Service, is the band which consists of not more than a few dozen individuals. Political decisions are made largely by consensus. Sure the opinion of the best hunter might carry more weight than others, and the wisdom of the elders might be highly prized during times of famine (only they might have the long memory of which bitter weeds saved one would never eat actually them from the previous famine in their childhood), but otherwise members of the band are peers. This is not because of any sort of high-minded egalitarianism, but because the population is low enough that everyone's mind can be heard on all matters. Also because they lack any sophisticated infrastructure, any materials or resources acquired are immediately shared out and sharing is based on the needs of the recipient rather than the merits of the producers. Consider that in an age w/o electric refridgeration and salt-curing, meat is better stored in the body as fat than left outside to rot, and so long as everyone gets something then it's just fine to give more to the hungry; most providers will recall a time when they were the most in need and so honour this reciprocity. Conflict, for there is really no ``crime'' beyond taboo, is resolved via reconciliation. To banish someone would be, in effect, to slay them and that means the band as a whole would be deprived of a valuable hunter or gatherer, so it is better for all concerned if the two parties are to come to some terms.

One can see this rather dovetails with the notion of ``persistence'' described by Dr. Richard Bartle in his book /Designing Virtual Worlds/. In his use ``persistence'' is ``what survives a reboot'' such as ``If I kill the Ogre and the server is immediately rebooted, will it's corpse still be laying there on the ground?''. For our purposes here I should also extend this to include content-resets as well. See, if we have only a few minutes to loot the Ogre's corpse before it, and all it's loot, disolve then we are in a ``loot it or lose it'' mindset very much like the above band. We must immediately share out spoils lest they themselves spoil. This will also tie into what Bartle has defined as ``change'' in the sense of ``who can change what?''. If, for whatever reason, we are not at liberty to just whip up a guildhall, then we are under pressure to immediately share out the spoils since we have no way to store any surplus. Because we're all friends here, the sharing criteria will typically be ``accorrding to his need'' rather than ``according to his ability''.

It is no coincidence sounds like a typical PUG, but one should bear in mind this is because of the underlying physics of the virtual world. How the world operates says ``this is how people will interact''. So if you want to support ``fellowships'' or PUGs then there is very little design and implementation you need to do. Indeed, people will naturally form this sort of arrangement even if you don't include any formal functionality for declaring such a grouping. They'll come to agreement via chat and simple cooperation.

Bands grade and meld into the next larger and more complex structure, the tribe, which consists of a not more than a few hundred individuals. In The Real World, with a few exceptions, this only happens with the advent of agriculture; the exceptions are Japan's Ainu people or North America's Pacific North West peoples, who inhabit particular fertile lands supporting a larger hunger-gather population. Tribes continue the rather egalitarian distribution of wealth. Because they have largely settled a single area they also have some infrastructure for storage. In the case of agrarians this settlement will be a village of some sort, but in the case of particularly rich hunter-gather prospects you will find a semi-nomadic lifestyle anchored to some limited geography. Decisions still come about by seeking a democratic consensus, but there may be a ``big man'' who functions as a weak leader via his charisma rather than by any sort of physical intimidation.

If your Mud offers any sort of communal property, a guildhall, and items deposited therein, such as within a vault but possibly also just dropped onto the floor, can persist over a reboot, then you have offered functionality which will foster a society at the tribal level. Because we are within just a few hundred, it is possible for everyone to know everyone else by both face and name, in addition to reputation. When I graduated high school, there were maybe 450 students in total attendance. Yes, I knew each and every one of them. In this mode it just isn't natural for the ``big man'' to operate as a bully over all. Loot will still be shared out fairly evenly, with an eye for the needy before the greedy, but because of communal storage then not everything needs to be shared immediately. Some goods can be preserved for a furture time of need.

It is at this point when communal identity appears. We have a name, and we have specific territory which we've claimed, and we have developped our own culture and precedents beyond simple taboos. We start using the ``we'' word a lot. This is also about the optimal size of most player-based factions. The group is small enough for everyone to know eachother, so conflict is still resolved via reconcilliation, charity is reciprocal rather than abstract, everyone has a voice in the important decisions (even if Robert's Rules need to be imposed at this point). But thanks to community property then everyone has a stake in the joint venture. If you offer guildhalls and storage vaults and such then you will have tribes.

Service says the next level is that of the chiefdom. Chiefdoms emerge after the advent of agriculture. Because chiefdoms include thousands of people, we are looking at intensive agriculture with lots of supporting infrastructure. We also see further political development. Since it's not feasible for thousands of people to intimately know eachother, chiefdoms develop shared ideologies for cultural and religious practice, as well as establish a ruling elite. This establishment is often explained in the developing religious dogma as some sort of ``divine right''. The chief's seat is usually hereditary. The chief may have advisors, but his word is the final word. He might rule purely through physical intimidation, or by skillfully navigating the myriad, and often conflicting, concerns of his people. Either way, his word is law. Chiefdoms occupy and defend fixed settlements with great storage facilities. Resources collected are no longer so evenly shared. Because the agriculture is operating at a surplus, the chiefdom can subsidize artists and craftsmen and holy men and even a standing army. These are a redistributive economy, in that the produce of labour is collected as a tax by the chief's tax collector, and portioned out as among these non-producing professions.

This is the ultimate point of any player-based faction within a virtual world and is typically only realized in an informal alliance between other factions. Player-factions just seem to break down when they get far north of 250 or so. It's possible that players start to resent supporting ``bloodsuckers'' who don't pull their own weight, or they feel anonymous when what they really want is societal involvement. I suspect there are many reasons operating together. Suffice it to say factions don't usually get this big, and those that do often collapse under their own weight. The followers lose any sense of say in the decisions, they don't know who their leaders are, they feel like they got roped into a second job instead of a delightful Mud, etc.

So if you provide the functionality for player-factions to raise a standing army, to take and defend a permanent settlement, to automatically collect dues or taxes, to efficiently collect fixed resources near said settlement, then you can expect player-factions to seek to become this big purely by momentum rather than any effort of will. This begs the question then what to do if one of these Uberguilds disintegrates? I should advise to do nothing at all. Those players who are not disenchanted with the Mud will be aborbed into other factions, as will the claimed territories. The real problem is those players who do become disenchanted from the experience of their ``home'' disintegrating is they typically leave. It is better to avoid such a predicament in the first place and provide functionality only up to the tribal level and go no further. Factions at the size and complexity are extremely stable, and prove robust enough to withstand almost any shock or scandal.

The next level, according to Service, is that of the state. I shall not describe this thing here since it would serve no purpose, but I highly recommend studying the Song of Hiawatha. This may be the only ballad which accurately reports the point of transition where five chiefdoms became a single state. The nice folks at Extra Credits have prepared a sort of ``Cliff's Notes'' on this topic: part 1 and part two.