One of the major hassles folks seem to have when running factions in RPGs is deciding what they are trying to do and what assets they have available. One possible framework for thinking about this is to steal from the military, who need to evaluate threats within an area on a routine basis. There are a few frameworks that are in common use (and someone has already covered one: SMEAC). This post will look at the METT-TC framework, along with some examples.

METT-TC is a subset of Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration/Logic, Command/Signal (SMEAC). It breaks down as follows:

• Mission: What are you trying to achieve?
• Enemy: Who is trying to stop you?
• Troops: What forces do you have available?
• Terrain: Where are you doing this?
• Time Constraints: When does it need to be done by?
• Civilian Considerations: What do you need to know about non-combatants in the area?

For RPG factions, this breaks down neatly into:

• Mission: what does the faction want?
• Enemy: what is stopping them?
• Troops: what do they have available to get their goal?
• Terrain: where are they and where are they going?
• Time Available: what sort of time constraints on getting their thing are there?
• Civilian considerations: how much do they care about non-faction members in getting their goal?

I would suggest that if you are unable to answer these questions for a given faction, that your faction is undercooked. Since the framework is designed for modern-day armies and to deal with their modern opposition in the real world, it is perhaps most natural for modern or science fiction factions. Notwithstanding that origin, it can work equally well for more fantasy-focused factions, since the questions to answer are pretty generalised. In order to demonstrate this, the worked example below is fantasy-themed.

Worked Example

Here is a set of four interlocking factions for a typical D&D setting’s factions. The factions are the orc warband, the villagers, the Knights of the Scarlet Pennant, and assorted adventurers. Add a map or two to these factions, detail some of the major NPCs (or PCs) in each faction, and you are left with a very playable setting background that takes relatively little time and space to develop.

The Orc Warband

• Mission: raid enough to be able to go somewhere else.
• Enemy: scattered town militia, some adventurers, small core of Knights of the Scarlet Pennant.
• Troops: large number of seasoned orc fighters, small number of orc mages, handful of human turncoats
• Terrain: bases in the monster-infested mountains, raiding into the fertile valley. Valley is mostly farmland, large river keeps them largely to western half of valley. Best bridge at Hansen’s Drift guarded by Scarlet Pennants.
• Time constraints: want to be done before winter makes getting food more difficult. Will need to reduce activities due to adverse weather. ~Three months of campaign left this year.
• Civilian considerations: will often attempt to capture for use as forced labour in mines and underground mushroom farms. Will kill concombatants on a whim. Will accept some traitors who come and find them.

The Villagers

• Mission: to be left the hell alone.
• Enemies: the orc warband, sometimes the adventurers and the Knights of the Scarlet Pennant
• Troops: town militia troops, allied to Knights of the Scarlet Pennant and most adventurers. Village priests may have some magical abilities.
• Terrain: palisaded villages in the border valley. Large river keeps eastern villages safer. Farmland with small wooded areas.
• Time constraints: manpower for military activity limited by needing same manpower for harvesting of crop.
• Civilian considerations: they are the civilians! Will happily kill orcs if they can, have also forced some adventurers out of various villages for bad behaviour.

The Knights of the Scarlet Pennant

• Mission: stop the orc threat to the Borderland Valley
• Enemies: the orc warband, unruly adventurers
• Troops: core of well-trained, well-equipped knights in heavy armour, stretched thin. Some knights paladins, with magical abilities. Assorted more lightly armed hangers-on. Allied to town militias and most adventurers.
• Terrain: forces concentrated at Hansen’s Drift, centre of the valley. Controls best easy crossing of River Brightwater. Flat farmlands good for mounted operations. Orcs redoubts in hills make mounted forces cumbersome and attacking dangerous.
• Time constraints: serve at the monarch’s pleasure, but shorter is better. Fodder for horses will become difficult in winter (~three months away).
• Civilian considerations: sworn to defend innocent villagers, on paper will make significant sacrifices for this. Balanced by needing to remain an effective force.

Adventurers of the Borderlands

• Mission: get rich or die trying. Saving some villagers is a bonus.
• Enemies: The orc warband. Have clashed with Knights of the Scarlet Pennant and town militia on occasion
• Troops: numerous small groups of variously trained and equipped fighters and mages. No centralised control. Support (under sufferance) from villages and Scarlet Pennant.
• Terrain: Based in broad central valley, but able to move in mountain areas to root out orc strongholds more effectively than Scarlet Pennant.
• Time constraints: unlimited as long as they are making a profit. Villager and Scarlet Pennant may become less helpful if taking very long and using local resources without paying for them.
• Civilian considerations: most groups will not attack villages. Actions vs orc warband usually extremely violent, no prisoners taken. Forced labour often freed, but also transferred to aid specific adventurer groups. Latter is likely to cause negative reactions amongst locals.

Further Suggestions

Giving a set of faction write-ups like this to players (possibly with some errors or omissions) would also be a good way of giving them the understanding needed for how they want to engage with various factions that they come across. Missing sections are also a useful framework for what information players might want to know about a given faction. If they do not know what a faction’s mission is, then undertaking a quest or two to find out makes a good plot hook for future activities.

METT-TC is a high-level overview, and specific considerations in a specific place should be allowed to overwrite things: one orc raid leader may be less willing to take captives than others, for example. They are also not static. If the orc warbands accidentally awaken the undead skeleton hoard of the Dread Necromancer Bozzle the Great, then they may well start to side with the villagers in the face of the new threat.

Hopefully this is still a useful framework for referees.