Let's talk Dungeon Factions

You might have heard some form of the following advice (paraphrased):

Good dungeons have multiple factions which the party can play against one another.

I'm not sure if this advice is meant to be proscriptive, but I've noticed this in a ton of published adventures since I started looking, especially Pathfinder adventure paths. It'll crop up again and again. But is it necessary to have multiple factions with mutually-exclusive goals to make a great dungeon? I don't think so, and I want to talk about why.

First, a couple of examples. In the Kingmaker adventure path from Paizo, in Part 1, sections 4 and 5, you're introduced to a clan of Mites and a tribe of Kobolds who are occupying the same geographic and fighting over a MacGuffin. One they've been stealing back and forth for a bit. The clear implication here is that you're supposed to side with one side or the other to retrieve the MacGuffin. You can even invite the winning faction to join your city later in the adventure path. The adventure assumes that one side at most will make it through, but you can play these two factions against each other.

Another one that comes immediately to mind is from a (I think) Frog God adventure with a very similar setup: two factions are holed up in a dungeon, they've been doing skirmishes against each other for quite a while, and both sides want you to "deal with the problem".

Even recently, in the Blood Lords adventure path, there's almost an entire adventure path dedicated to resolving two factions fighting over a "field" (which itself is kinda a hex-crawl meta dungeon thing). And the back part of the adventure is essentially a rescue mission: the house has been taken over by puppets that are ostensibly under a Medusa's control but have locked her in a closet to "keep her safe".

You can see this pattern everywhere. When you've spotted it, you'll see it over and over again. One or more groups, have conflict, PCs pick side. Sometimes you'll also get a contrivance where the two groups can reconcile, but most of the time the assumption is that one group is going to be annihilated. By the PCs.

Now, I'm a big fan of factions, and if you want to read more about that, Designing Situations for Story Games and Low Prep GMing both cover using Factions and their motivations to create a fancy dynamic world. But I don't think you need to take your macro campaign factions and then shove them into every dungeon to make it satisfying.

Sometimes a dungeon just has a single group in it

When it comes to adventurers going places, sometimes the fiction demands that there just be a single group that holds all the power in that place. The individual members might have different motivations and can be handled separately, but the group has a similar set of goals.

It's not very likely that you're going to convince a set of well-paid and cared for guards to revolt against their liege lord just because you're waltzing into their castle, for example. It's also extremely unlikely that there's a group of rebels that just happen to be in there.

Likewise, a Lich's tower is very unlikely to have multiple factions attached to it. Liches, as you know, are known to be very tolerant to challenges to their power. Oh wait, no, not that. The opposite of that.

A giant bank vault filled with banking-priests is not super likely to have a secret faction of thieves already in there ready to pull a heist.

I've seen examples of each of these setups which still have satisfying and entertaining contrivances because…

…but the setup might be that an external faction wants a thing

Let's talk about that bank example. One reason you might be visiting the bank is because you've been hired by an external faction to case the place. Maybe you're there because deposits have been going missing, and it turns out that the whole place is corrupt, and you're going to have to commence a long, drawn out, legal battle to get people their property back.

That Lich has been slowly sending out undead from inside its tower, and you need to deal with the problem. There's no one there that can help you — it's up to you to bring in the big guns and solve it. It's up to you to bring the opposition.

Playing both sides can also get old

Perhaps this is just a "me" thing, but I also think that old setup of two factions fighting over a thing gets kinda…old when it's repeated. It also feels sometimes contrived. Like two groups living in proximity to each other are just one bad day away from backstabbing each other. It's a certain kind of worldview that's reinforced with combat XP as your leveling system (See also Influence of XP Design on Player Motivation).

It's weird, most adventures where there are two factions in a dungeon that aren't at odds, it's very frequently an "uneasy truce" or "they tolerate each other" or "they've come to an understanding". I don't think I've seen very many instances of "these groups live together communally and actually like each other a bunch". Even with mindless creatures who could form a kind of symbiosis, it's rare.

That's a lot of rambling to say "a dungeon can still be good even if there aren't multiple sides pursuing a goal".

Counter Example — Emerald Spire

So The Emerald Spire is a megadungeon for Pathfinder 1e, separated into floors with each floor having a distinct "theme" and faction that controls it. Most of the time, these factions don't interact at all. Sometimes you've got vestiges of "this group posts guards at the stairs". Sometimes a given floor has both intelligent(ish) spiders and undead, and they comprise a symbiotic relationship.

I think this is a good example of making the faction play optional in a design. You could, for example, convince the Lizardfolk on level 9 (I'm just making up a number here, I don't remember what floor they're on) to help you take on the Lich on level 13, but the adventure doesn't assume that's the solution you come up with.

All in all, I thought it did a good job of separating out the "can do faction interactions in the dungeon" from the "faction interactions are the whole point of the dungeon".

Wrap Up

Yeah, I don't know, I don't think "have factions everywhere" is bad advice, but I don't think they're a strictly necessary component of the design, and I'd love to see more examples where it's possible but not a central contrivance.

I'm going to think about this more and might do another ramble at some point.