Filling Out Factions With Combinatorics And Colour
One of the three most important codified innovations of game design in Magic: The Gathering is the colour wheel system. It’s not that this is the first card game ever to have factions (after all, what are suits, really), but of having an uneven number of factions, who match up with one another in terms of alliances and opposition. It’s a prime number, so there’s no even way to divide them up to create coalitions, everyone works together and against one another, and also, notably, it gives players an immediate philosophical flavour onramp saying hey, does this work for you, and then you can act on that. They are five essential operating vibes.
A lesson you can use from the Magic: The Gathering colour wheel, and which you can use in your own worldbuilding or game design is creating matrices of combinatorics. Or rather, you can give your players colours to fly.
