Class Conflict as Faction Play

Module B4 The Lost City contains a distinctive version of faction play. Here, the idea of “class conflict” takes on a peculiarly RPG connotation. Faction membership in this adventure is primarily related to your character class. The Magi of Usamigaras for example, are magic users, who look down their noses at fighters.

Talk of class conflict in any other context, you’re probably thinking more of workers vs the bourgeoisie. This dimension of conflict tends to poorly represented in Old School games, which are more concerned with conflict between small groups than between broad sweeps of society.

Despite this, I do think the B4 module offers important lessons for dealing with social classes in an RPG context. This is by providing an objective basis for grouping characters that cuts through factional allegiances. I’ll expand on this idea in what follows, first looking at alternative ways social classes can be treated in RPGs.

Social Class as Character Background

One way that social class figures in RPGs is in terms of character backgrounds. In 5e, one of the stock character backgrounds is that of folk hero, with your former occupation placing you amongst the peasantry. Significantly though, “something happened that set you on a different path and marked you for greater things”.

While a folk hero’s background might be that of a farmer, their present occupation as dragon slayer is pretty far removed from this. An increase in the poll tax no longer causing them many sleepless nights. This would be particularly true of a high-level fighter with a stronghold and entourage of followers. In fact, you might be the one now imposing the taxes.

The issue here with the folk hero background is a cultural understanding of class. This might give you some troupes to roleplay and an opportunity to put on a broad accent. But it will often lack any direct bearing on a character’s current motivations or actions. It is too static a category to account for a character’s changing circumstances and viewpoints.

An Objective Understanding of Class

In political discussions with a colleague, I’ve sometimes taken issue with their referring to themselves as “capitalist”. To this I’ve smugly asked where their factories are located, my point being that they are as much of a wage slave as I am. What I am trying to do here is point out their objective class status, in terms of owning things like the means of production.

An objective understanding of class seems more useful than the cultural version, because it does change when someone’s circumstances change. A high-level fighter with a strong hold would no longer be considered part of the peasantry, regardless of a folk hero background. If their stronghold generates income through agriculture, they have more in common with a feudal lord.

The objective version of class can be very useful when running an RPG, because it indicates how material forces will affect a large portion of your NPCs. The imposition of a poll tax would be ruinous to a peasant, of minor detriment to a merchant, whilst being a benefit to a feudal lord’s coffers. Even my colleague who claims to be “a capitalist” is hit in the same way as me by a cut in their wages.

At the same time, there are limitations to treating workers collectively based on their objective class status. It can serve as a general guide over an extended time periods, but a social group will often not respond as they “theoretically should” in the short term. If a poll tax were raised for the purposes of funding a war, the peasantry might even support this while they rally around a perceived enemy – even if it means killing fellow peasants on the other side.

Similarly, in the case of my colleague “the capitalist”, their favourable view of capitalism will frequently lead them to support policies that go against their class interests. Enough regular attacks on their living standards might lead him to change his position, but this can take quite some time (despite my helpfully pointing things out to them).

Factional Alignment

RPG faction play seems to offer some useful tools for improving on a purely objective treatment of social class. In faction play, the idea is often to play factions off against each other, or influence members of a faction onto your side. This captures some of the fluidity of class alignment, which is not fixed in the same sense as a cultural or objective definition of class.

Relationships between social classes is often described in terms of “class warfare”. Class alignment I would say is more fluid than war, as its easier to switch sides (there is not normally a firing squad for class traitors). Faction play probably captures this better, as its pretty common for groups to change their alliances and part of the GM’s job to track such shifts.

The type of faction play in B4 The Lost City is probably closer to what I have in mind than your average adventure module. The three factions here are not just isolated little atoms, detached from the game world at large. There are underlying objective criteria that influence factional allegiance related to a character’s profession, a categorisation that cuts through every faction in your game.

In B4 though, you are allowed to go against your objective category. Any character archetype, including fighters, can join the Magi of Usamigaras. Fighters don’t received the same material incentives as wizards, as their progression and access to resources is limited in this group. But importantly, having this choice means that faction membership is not identical with your character archetype.

We can envisage how this would have worked differently if character alignment (in terms of Law and Chaos) had been used as the objective basis for faction membership in B4. It wouldn’t really be possible for a lawful character to side with a faction that acted in a consistently chaotic manner, without changing their alignment. Factional alignment would effectively be identical with moral alignment.

The B4 approach seems the better basis for dealing with social classes, as objective class membership shouldn’t be treated as identical with class allegiance. Having the objective status of a worker doesn’t automatically entail membership to a particular union. Characters can also align against the interests of their social class. Marx’s buddy Engels ran a factory his family owned. Emancipating the working class then wasn’t really in his interests, but this didn’t stop him aligning with their cause.

Conclusion

I think B4 is an important module for elevating faction play to something more than a mosaic of little fighting groups. However, its objective basis for grouping characters according to their archetype gets a bit silly if you analyse it too much. Why would fighters find mutual solidarity against wizards? Perhaps they are all sick of being singed by mistimed fireballs.

I find it more plausible that fighters and wizards would find solidarity with each other, through their mutual role as adventurers. If a noble is sending scores of adventuring parties to die in a local dungeon with poor supplies and weaponry, this seems a pretty strong basis for collective action.

This is why I find social class a better approach to orientating faction play than character archetype, which essentially roots the division in game mechanics rather than the game world. It seems better to ground such groupings on the same material conditions effecting members of the group in a similar way (e.g. dangerous working conditions). In some adventures, other groupings might take precedence such as gender (interestingly, B4 does also have a gender basis for its factional groupings). But for the adventure I am currently working on based in a mine, social class definitely seems the right place to start.