This post follows my last post, Role Playing for GMs, where I outlined how specific Wants and Beliefs are the simplest keys that will unlock better role playing and a more lived-in, consequential world.
And at the end you’ll have an d100 index card to put in your library to animate even the dullest of demon-worshippers.
Obligatory Plug
It’s also how a window into how I thought about making a cult in my adventure, The Spear of Horrendous Iron, now on Kickstarter.
Let’s Have Better Cults!
Let’s apply our system of picking a specific want and belief to a faction.
What we’ll explore will be relevant to any faction, but let’s take that comforting old standby of D&D villainy: the Cult. Very often they’re just hanging around to provide players with something they can kill with a clean conscience. But… what if they’re more interesting?
Player: These people are evil, right? We can kill them? With our cool axes?GM: They’re Cultists. They do human sacrifice. Player: Why? GM: Cult Ritual! Player: For what? GM: Summoning a Demon! Player: What for? GM: Why…. they’re… they’re…. Cultists! They worship a Demon! Player: But why? Like…. why do they worship a Demon?!
No one joins a cult for the human sacrifice. Give this poor cult something meaningful to work towards! Cults have to have so much appeal for people to turn their backs on their families and lives. Give them wants and beliefs.
This cult wants
To be free of their bodies.
Sex and drugs.
A perfect, promised resurrection.
Righteous religious revenge.
This cult believes
Only the wicked die.
All property is theft.
The monarch is a lizard-person controlled by evil wizards.
You can transcend reality if you are pure.
A Tale of Two Cults
We can keep the demon, I like demons. But let’s imagine two very different cults.
Cult One wants to be free of their bodies, and believes that only the wicked die. So… they’re probably sacrificing the “wicked” to buy themselves undying bodies. This might be the Cult of Holy Dissolution.
Cult Two wants religious revenge, and believes that the monarch is a lizard person controlled by evil wizards. So they’re probably sacrificing religious enemies for occult weaponry in a misguided holy war. This might be the Cult of the Fresh Wound.
Too bad for our cults, the Demon also has wants and beliefs!
The Demon, let’s say, wants to inflict pain, and believes that betrayal is the sweetest pain. So he’s patiently sussing out the most painful way of betraying his own cult.
Now we don’t just have evil guys doing evil stuff, we have a very specific web of relationships that generates choices and consequences.
There is no Off-Script
So let’s say your players (as players will) go way off script. They prove to the Cultists that the demon is about to betray them. The module is totally unprepared for this, it just wants to you axe them. But with this very simple framework, you know how to respond with convincing texture — because you know what they want and believe.
The two cults are going to respond very differently:
Cult one may be overcome with panicked despair, and decide to burn everything down.
Cult two may decide their demon is an agent of the evil wizards, and work with the players to defeat it.
All of this complexity of faction play comes from something that fits on an index card: giving each entity a specific want and belief.
Leaders & Followers
Players may want to engage with a more interesting cult in a more interesting way than by hitting them with sharp metal. You may find yourself needing specific NPCs to deal with, potentially more than one. You may want to appoint a Cult Leader and Cult Followers, and give them more specific beliefs and wants.
Let’s pick Cult One and give it a leader and a follower.
The Leader might believe that people in pain are more willing to give up their bodies, and want others to feel the pain they have always felt. Or, equally, they might believe that ecstasy is the path to freedom, and want servants to bring them the means to remain in unending ecstasy.
The Follower might believe that they’re worthless, and want validation. Or, equally, might believe that they have been specially chosen, and want to stay in the light of this new love.
All Factions are Cults
Can you assign these processes to all factions?
Yes. Next question.
Why did you pick just cults? Why wasn’t the title “Better Factions”?
Because so many cults are so bad! And I love cults in games! Next question.
Are you a cultist?
D100 Better Cults
The Cult in The Spear of Horrendous Iron
I gave the cult in the Spear of Horrendous Iron this treatment.
I also gave them plans. (This is the part most modules and situations already do well, which is why I left it out of my previous post.) These are the pieces in motion. These are the actions we were talking last time about how to motivate with specificity.
The cult is a subset of a group of hardscrabble farmers who have decided to stop paying taxes to their abusive feudal lord. here are their wants and beliefs:
They believe that long ago, the wicked Druids enslaved the nature god, Gede; they planted rootlings of servitude in her pure, free heart.
They want the real Gede back; they want a wilder, more loving world.
They plan to summon an incarnation of Gede, and cut the evil roots of servitude from its heart with the Spear of Horrendous Iron!
I gave them two leadership figures, so that there would be cracks in the cult structure that the players could worm their fingers into.
Thalder believes that Gede will take him as her lover when she returns. He wants the devout to follow in his impeccable, blissful faith. He plans to father 100 children.
Lilja believes that only a hardcore revolutionary vanguard can make meaningful change. She wants Gede to destroy her mind, history to forget her. She plans to cut Thalder off from the authority he craves.
If this sounds fun, maybe you want that adventure!
