My process

Before presenting my two factions, I'd like to focus more on my process. To find inspiration and a way to add new content to an already existing game, I had to find new ways to think and work.

With about 3 months to do this work (as a side project), I started with a planning : 

• 2 weeks to analyze all the already existing factions, and brainstorm on the factions I wanted to create and some general guidelines.
• 1 month to create and iterate with the core mechanics of each faction.
• 1 month dedicated to playtests, with different players and different factions, iterate and balance.
• 2 weeks to create the additional assets, such as the boards, the tokens, etc. for my school presentation.

 I. Analysis 

To make my analyze, I could count on my own experience (as I'm a big fan of Root), but also on the community and its tournament stats. With hundreds of games with each faction, it gave me a lot of stats on winrates, strengths and weaknesses. It helped me create a board regrouping factions by difficulty, action economy, board presence, card management and fabrication.

 II. Conception 

Once I had an overall idea for my two factions, it was time to start digging into concrete mechanics. To be fair, I had some trouble at first to know where to start. That's why I developed a way of brainstorming that proved very useful. I open a blank document and start writing everything I can think of, without any restriction, in short paragraphs (2-3 sentences maximum). As I progress, I highlight my paragraphs with different colors based on their roles :

•  New ideas  are in green. They appear every time I think about something new, or an iteration of something that I previously wrote.
•  Observations  are in red. They represent points that I'm not sure of, for example "This idea seems fun but might be very hard to balance" or "There might be too many different mechanics. I should probably cut at least one of them to make it easier and more cohesive".
•  Wishes  are in blue. They represent things that I want to keep in mind when creating my faction and that I'd really love to keep, for example "I want to keep the fantasy of a faction that works around bounties and contracts" or "I'd like the woods to have a special role".
• Finally,  Milestones  are in yellow. Whenever I feel like I've made some good changes, I write a milestone that summaries my previous points since the last milestone. It helps me working on the same document over multiple days or weeks, as I just have to read the milestones to have a reminder. It proves also useful when sharing the document to someone else.

This method was really effective, as I was able to write a dozen of pages (6 for each faction) and brainstorm a lot by myself, while keeping a track of all my thoughts. It is also really helpful against the "blank page syndrome" as I don't have to prevent myself from writing anything that I have in mind.

 III. Playtests and iterations 

Finally, the most difficult part was by far the playtests and iterations phase. As Root is a very long board game, it was difficult to gather players every week or so to play for multiple hours while trying new factions, explaining new rules, and so on. 

In a month, I was able to do 9 playtests (5 for a faction, 4 for another). This was clearly not enough to create a perfectly balanced faction, as I could not even try it against every other faction, but it certainly helped me finding what had to be adjusted, removed or reworked.

The factions changed a lot between each playtests, with major reworks for some of their core mechanics. After each playtest, I noted the score of each player, with a summary of all the feedbacks and notes from me and the other players, then added a list of changes and decisions taken after the playtest (like the systems that had to be reworked, some balancing fixes, etc.).

Faction #1 - The Confederation of the Elaphs

The Elaphs are a highly social faction, inspired by the Riverfolk Company. I wanted to emphasize the noble aspect of the deers by creating a faction that needs to maintain peace and add some sort of democracy across the table.

The Elaphs uses 3 uniques abilities : 

• Alliances : The Elaphs can place Alliance cards in front of them. Other players can sign any alliance, forming a Confederation and earning various bonuses that benefit everyone... as long as the truce is maintained.
• Peace : The Elaphs win victory points by placing Peace tokens in the clearings. This consolidates the peace, but puting too much Peace tokens enhances the risk of having outlaws breaking it. The Elaphs have to find a balance between scaling their territory and maintaining a small but ordered area.
• Citizens : Other players become Citizens or Outlaws, depending on their actions. Citizens are protected by the Elaphs and benefit from the alliances, but they are restricted in their actions are they have to avoid breaking the law. Outlaws are free, but can be attacked by the Elaphs and can not benefit from the alliances.

 Strengths :  

• Alliances : Alliances are powerful and should help you bargain with others. The more of them you have, the faster you can spread your Peace tokens and earn victory points.
• Team-playing : It is not in their advantage for any player to become an outlaw, as they indirectly become enemies of the whole alliance. Elaphs also have very strong attacks against outlaws. Just like the otters, Elaphs benefit from the teamplay aspect : if one player teams up with the elaphs, he wins. If all players team up with the Elaphs, the Elaphs win.

 Weaknesses : 

• Action economy : The action economy of the Elaphs is very weak, and depends on the Elected Deers that are chosen each turn. You need to have emergency plans if your cards are not drawn in a good order. 
• Limited by the law : Unless other players, who can become outlaws, Elaphs can never break the law. Most notably, it means you cannot attack a citizen. So if another player starts winning, but always stays under the law, you have virtually no way to prevent it.