I have toyed with two games that include this element over the years. The only trial run I had did not really bring it up in any substantial way (gaming has been slow the last couple of years). Have you guys ever included blood feuds / vendettas as a major plot point, or even big part of the setting/culture?

Sure, it's a trope for a reason.
I really try not to force this upon my players, it's usually something they come to me with or it develops during play.

Quote from: a_wanderer on December 16, 2024, 12:15:35 PMSure, it's a trope for a reason.
I really try not to force this upon my players, it's usually something they come to me with or it develops during play.

I guess you are thinking of "vendetta" in the wider sense, as in most modern entertainment?

I have been considering literal family feuds, as in Norse blood feuds or Corsican and Sicilian vendettas. It could also extend to wider "family" as in persons you have sworn to defend that the honor code demands vengeance for.

Quote from: Trond on December 16, 2024, 02:16:53 PM

Quote from: a_wanderer on December 16, 2024, 12:15:35 PMSure, it's a trope for a reason.
I really try not to force this upon my players, it's usually something they come to me with or it develops during play.

I guess you are thinking of "vendetta" in the wider sense, as in most modern entertainment?

I have been considering literal family feuds, as in Norse blood feuds or Corsican and Sicilian vendettas. It could also extend to wider "family" as in persons you have sworn to defend that the honor code demands vengeance for.

I may have misunderstood you. I mostly think of it in terms of factions- does this count in your view? If so, then yes. Almost always there will be deep, rooted hatred between at least two factions, with a bloody history.


On the pPC level:

In my current campaign, one PC is a noble exile from a family where bastards that were shunned came back, wiped almost every legitimate heir out and claimed the titles and lands.the few remaining are scrambling to gather resources

The party tangled with a gang secretly bankrolled by a cult/ religion with much political sway and that started a small scale war that ended up with them taking control of a village. Later on they assassinated the head priest of the cult and his son and now trying to dismantle their city from within while an attack is being organized against "their" village and spies were hired to find their families for leverage.

are these close to what you had in mind?

I live in Wales, birthplace of Merlin.

The Romans came to Briton in 43BC and left circa 383BC. They hired Germanic tribes, Saxons and Inglo's, as well as Jutes from Denmark, to commit genocide on the Britons. After they left the Saxons and Ingles continued the genocide and land-stealing. Their descendant continue to inhabit a huge region of Briton now named by them England, even now. A lot of their descendants went over to America and Australia and did the same thing to the indigenous natives of those continents too. This is well documented and verifiable; I am not being racist or trying to cause offence, it is our collective histories. 

What is left of the Britons are the Cornish (birthplace of King Arthur) who have an attitude that recreational sex with the new exciting strangers is better than fighting them, and the Welsh whose attitude toward the Saesneg ("Engl-ish") is a very deep rooted ancestral hatred.

The Welsh continued to protect their ancestral border for 2000 years by fighting incursions from the invaders. It is why there are more castles in Wales than in the rest of the world put together. The current King of Britain (Brit-attain) was previously the Prince of Wales, now his son is. Neither of them are Welsh. That status is in Wales regarded as a part of the repression of the indigenous population.

As far as blood feuds go; this year I was chased up the street by local racists, shouting "eff off back to where you come from, your sort are not welcome around here!" I was born eighty km along the coast in the capitol city of Wales. My birth certificate says I am Welsh. I am not genetically Welsh; I am half Cornish. My ancestors were indigenous Britons. I have blood right to live in Briton. The difference between that and the Welsh is so important to the Welsh that they consider me to be a foreign invader, in 2024.

Blood feuds are a real thing in Britain even now, although if you talk with the white-skinned English who descended from the Ingles and Saxons, you will hear a very different story about how silly the Welsh are. Their population is in decline. The current English are a mixture of many different ethnic groups, it is the non-white English whose population is exponentially on the increase. As far as the Welsh are concerned they are ALL Saeseneg.

If what you mean by blood-feuds is more to do with specific local families fighting each other over generations, probably of the same ethnic demographic as each other or branches of the same family tree, hell yes that goes on.

Putting this into an RPG, I have character sheets from my Iron Age campaign (600ad) with a section for; Tribe, Family, Friends, Allies, Mentor, Nemesis. The most useful is the Family section because one player can very quickly populate half a village in a few minutes, it includes grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins and children. For world-building this is a very useful feature. I did create some tables for character relationships, they are in a product I have on drive thru rpg.