Introduction #

Society of Rafa is already very much about community. While episodic, the stories at your table all feed into one another uniquely to your Kahal and players, forming a patchwork or quilt of moral resolutions.

Community Play is a toolset to help you extend beyond Society of Rafa’s episodic structure to tell longer stories, integrate community dynamics, and explore more complex society-level moral dilemmas. Community Play simplifies the complexity of freeform town politics into concrete Storyteller tools.

You can think about longer form stories as a series of connected scenarios, much like episodes or arcs in a serialized TV show. The first scenario may start with an interpersonal moral dilemma that turns into a larger community issue that your Rafa Circle can address in subsequent session(s).

As always, if these tools are not exactly what you need, please modify them to fit your needs. Do what will tell the best story for your table.

Community Play Toolset  #

• Factions: Groups or organizations with power and/or interest in the state of the community.
• Graces: Rewards that a Rafa Circle gains when they are in a Faction’s good Graces. These are rewarded as part of the Faction Vote and confer benefits to the next Scenario.
• Faction Vote: A tool to discuss and determine the effect of the Rafa Circle’s actions on their relationships with Factions. 
• List of Factions: A list of pre-built Factions and Graces.
• Rolling tables to inspire errands and favors (that is, requests in the spirit of friendship or reconciliation with Faction).

Factions #

All around Kahal and the surrounding region, groups of people hold strong opinions about the communities they occupy. When they speak up or otherwise act with purpose together, sometimes in the discordant way a chorus of crickets might sing into the night, the shape of a Faction becomes recognizable. Not all Factions are formal or hierarchical or well-organized, sometimes little more than likeminded souls with similar interests or perspectives. Together, Factions represent the myriad ways a community might delineate itself and debate community issues.

Factions & Political Alignment  #

Each Faction is associated with two or more Political Alignments, essentially representing religious and political spectrums. This provides Storytellers a shorthand to quickly consult and consider how a Faction, or an individual within that Faction, feels about or reacts to Rafas’ actions. Some Factions have seemingly contradictory Alignments associated with them, representing the varied spectrum among its members.

Storyteller Expansions #

Storytellers should fill in gaps or modify the Factions to fit your scenarios. Do not be afraid to involve your players on what they think would be cool. If you require an apprentice or secretary to the Better Shop Bureau, assign that role; if you need a merchant with a different outlook than described for Mikael, then just modify him or add another. Remember, you decide how individuals within a Faction act, as well as their mannerisms and approaches to moral or social dimensions. Our groundwork gives Storytellers a realistic place to start, but canon is entirely subject to you and your players.

When prepping a scenario, you can add Factions to your list of involved NPCs, with notes on their perspectives, possible desires, and ideas for action within the context of the story. Their play may involve or preclude any Factions you brainstorm, so just be prepared to re-evaluate before the Faction Vote.

Graces #

Graces are evocative, shiny treats for your players in the next Scenario—something to help them feel like their choices change the world and, by extension, the way they get to play the game. Players gain a Grace when they please a Faction, as determined during the Faction Vote at the end of a Scenario.

Many Graces are framed as calling in a favor, but all of them should add to the narrative of the session they are invoked in.

For the Graces that explicitly involve playing out a scene that happened in the past, this narrative heft is baked right in. For those without such a clear narrative prompt, it’s up to the Storyteller to start filling the empty spaces. Whether you’re adding something to the current scene, asking the players to fill in some details, having the Rafas play out a new scene, or just keeping it in your back pocket for later, give Graces importance and heft. Something should change when the community rises up to assist your Rafa Circle in whatever form the Graces take.

Creating your own Graces #

If you’ve made your own Faction, you should pre-generate a Grace to go with it. The nature of a useful Grace includes the following features:

1. Bring that Faction’s focus into the narrative
2. Easily solve a problem closely related to that focus
3. Be broad enough to help with other problems
4. Bring an NPC or limited resource into the scene, and/or give your players some extra resources (e.g. more life energy, free Expertise on a skill, skills they may not have, etc.)

Go big and dynamic, and do not worry excessively about balance. Don’t provide a loophole to circumvent the moral dilemma, of course, but if the Grace you design is too potent, refine it next time. Players have more fun when it produces too great an effect rather than too little.

The Faction Vote #

The Faction Vote helps both the players and storyteller think about how their actions affect the community. The Vote effectively takes place between scenarios, whether at the end of a scenario, between sessions, or at the beginning of the next session. 

1. Supply your Rafa Circle with a list of relevant Factions #

Outside of direct roleplay, share with your Rafa Circle a list of Factions that they affected or that would have strong opinions about their actions. Describe each relevant Faction and answer any of your Circle’s questions about them. While this Storyteller Guide provides Faction descriptions, it’s a launching point. Please rewrite or add Factions to suit your story.

2. Ask the Rafa Circle to freely discuss how each Faction would feel about their actions #

After each completed scenario, ask your players to take on the perspective of the community and discuss how different groups or individuals might feel about the decisions they made during the scenario. Which Factions would be pleased, or angry? Who would have mixed or ambivalent feelings?

The point of this stage is to facilitate meta discussion beyond direct roleplay as their characters. They shouldn’t be shackled to process within the voice of their character. Encourage players to switch back and forth between out-of-character discussions, indirect roleplay (“how does your character feel?”), or any balance that suits them.

As they deliberate, players might generate more questions about the Factions, their motives, or feeling out the possible consequences of approaching them. Answer players’ questions so that they can feel moderately confident in their choice, and you can flesh out your own take on their reactions. Always play into what your Rafa Circle will find cool, interesting, or challenging, because it will make for the most dynamic and engaging stories.

3. Conduct a Faction Vote on who Rafas want to interact with #

Simple majority vote decides whichever Faction the Rafas interact with, and the Rafas gain the Grace associated with said Faction. Help them define how their Rafas approach the faction, whether they choose to attend a formal meeting or seek out individuals. They could be seeking help enacting a larger plan for the health of the community, looking for resources like books or expertise that they think was lacking from their resolution of the moral dilemma, looking for kudos, or something else entirely.

The Storyteller should mark a positive impact on the disposition of the Faction that won the Faction Vote.

If players agree that they have not made enough waves for any Faction to notice and don’t want to involve any, use the time to brainstorm the kind of effect your Rafa would like to have on Kahal and its surroundings. Encourage them to vote with this in mind.

4. Storyteller records which, if any, Faction is upset by recent events #

At the Storyteller’s discretion, some Factions may grow unhappy with the choices made by players’ Rafas. Examples include players snubbing all tradition or bringing Lumdai in to take over Kahal’s self-governance. Plan to demonstrate this communal displeasure to players soon, possibly as soon as the next session. It is often best to open the following session with some indication of this fallout, maybe even a full public confrontation, as this keeps these changes at the forefront of the Rafa Circle’s minds as they engage in the next Scenario.

However, if you have a great idea for when and where someone is going to complain about or to your Rafa, run with that—especially if it will force them to deal with that conflict before doing anything else.

Some questions to consider while doling out these negative marks are:

• What might a Faction hear about these events? How, and from whom?
• Which Faction might already dislike your group of Rafas in general?
• Is there a key figure that might be more upset with your Rafas than the other members of their Faction? How does that play out?
• How might this Faction make their displeasure known?
• Which Faction’s displeasure could complicate relations between your Rafas and other Factions, especially ones they care about or seek out?

Integrating Faction Dynamics into Play #

For your own benefit, you should keep track of these pluses and minuses. Though each Faction’s Grace is a single use benefit to Rafas, the Faction’s disposition toward your Rafas does not return to neutral after its use. Similarly, each time you decide which Faction is displeased with your players, that should counter a positive mark that Faction has towards your group, or create a persistent negative disposition. Erase negative marks when your players actively please a Faction or expend their next Faction Vote improving relations with said Faction.

Tracking Faction Disposition  #

It’s usually best to keep these pluses and minuses to a maximum of 2. That way, your Rafa are never dug in so deep in a hole that patching up differences is impossible. A great relationship with a Faction is +2, a terrible one is -2, and a Faction that is neutral about your Rafas would be a 0.

For instance, whenever your Rafas manage to switch a Faction’s disposition (i.e., they’ve  gotten to +1 with a Faction they previously had -1 or vice versa), figure out a way to memorialize the achievement with a big, immediate reaction. For example, give them 2 uses of the Faction’s Grace if it is a positive change, and if the change is negative, make the Faction’s displeasure very public or complicating.

Factions and Narrative Weight #

No matter how many negative marks your group accumulates with a single Faction, try to keep things on speaking terms. The communities of this game are small, and, though vehement dislike may develop and flourish publicly, the spirit of community survival keeps everyone at least civil with one another, performing basic neighborly acts for one another, and begrudgingly accepting them with a smile.

As Rosh Rafa Yochana, blessed be her memory, once said, ‘To wield hate against a sibling in Light is to drive them toward the wilderness, to exile them to the lonely unknown, and we are all siblings in Light, and we are all responsible for making sure none of us feel truly alone.’

–Reba Livia

It is up to you as Storyteller to add narrative heft into the alliances and conflicts to integrate the mechanics into the story. 

As previously mentioned, try to find a moment during the next session after every Faction Vote to show changing relationships in action. Have the happy Faction leave your Rafa a small gift at the House of Healing or invite them to a dinner. For displeased Factions, have them write a strongly worded reprimand to Rosh Rafa Shai. Perhaps they even deliver it directly to one of your Rafa’s homes. Create scenes where your Rafas must deal with reactions to their choices, and then let them discuss the situation among themselves afterwards—all of this can make it more real for them, hopefully inspiring surprising choices.

Spend time talking about these things out of character. Encourage your players to do so, ask questions about how they or their Rafas feel, and give them the opportunity to answer questions or fill in empty spaces alongside you. This makes buying into the broader world natural, with the added benefit of encouraging your players to tell you exactly what they want and what they think is cool. That makes your job, setting them up with exciting and engaging situations, much easier.

List of Factions #

For usability, we’ve split out the list of Factions from this explainer. Please find the complete List of Factions here.