GMs: Collaborative worldbuilding

There's the fast lazy way, and then the way that actually follows breadcrumbs in some fashion, when it comes to building factions. Especially geopolitical factions, like states/countries/etc.

The fast way is just pick a spot (on the map), and make up factional attributes. This faction (A) is militaristic because they were founded by a senior officer of (pick a military) after (whatever crisis occurred). They've built up their force projection because that's what military people tend to do. This faction (B) is defensive because they were founded by surviving citizens who just wanted to be left alone, but saw the need to enforce that neutrality with violence. Etc.

For breadcrumbs, you look at the map before the crisis, or the history, or whatever. Then you track through major events, and think about how things would shake out. Who might have been there, who might have taken advantage, who might have fucked up and been replaced by someone else around at that time? What were their faction attributes due to these challenges, histories, alliances, foes, and/or geography. Who died along the way, who moved in, who allied, who fought? Were there resources like rivers or factories or something that offered advantages? Did other factions become jealous, or vulnerable, due to that?

FWIW, if you're constructing a world bible, breadcrumbs can make it feel more organic and natural to have interconnections between all the factions. If Arasaka and Fuchi are deathly enemies because a key department head in Fuchi was kept out of the board or key power office in favor of the CEO elevating his children to the successor roles, that's a foundation for why the corps hate each other (pissed off ex-Fuchi guy was given a high level role in Arasaka, bringing trade secrets, and now it's been a decade or two with both sides building bad blood by constantly clashing, etc).

For example, Midwest is a radioactive wasteland. Why? Because New York and LA were the economic anchors of America and most corporate presence tended to gravitate there. When the economy hit the skids, people gravitated there too for jobs, or at least access to city/state governments that weren't too broke to feed their impoverished citizens.

When the West Coast was taken over by MegaCorp Alliance and finally broke away from the US, the corporate strategists knew where the strategic assets like bombers and missiles were located; in the Midwest. They knew the US was going to fight to keep the West Coast, so the corps struck first. Corporate tac teams detonated some ICBMs in the silos. Others were intercepted by loitering corporate aerial assets in the boost phases. Lots of radioactive material got strewn all over the landscape, and a couple of small warheads even managed to detonate here and there.

Then the Midwest ended up being the battleground, as both coasts fought to defend or advance. Wrecking cities, driving the thin layer of noncombatants to the brink as they were ground to paste between both sides. A senior National Guard Officer in Kansas assumed control of a group of forces from several states and formed the Sanctuary Enclave of Haven, and (at great cost of blood) eventually managed to drive out forces from both coasts from fighting their war near Haven.

Meanwhile, a powerful corp saw the political winds shifting. Back before the battles kicked off. They weren't in time to transfer their holdings in Iowa out, so they instead reinforced them and built the corporate city of Profit. Armed company town that safeguards their factories and office buildings, first with mercs but now with corporate military units as they've grown to fill the void left when both coasts turned the Midwest into a warzone rather than a place where people lived.

In Wyoming and Montana, a loose collection of what eventually became nearly a hundred large landowners banded together to combine their interests and strengths. Under the banner of one charismatic ex-preacher turned rancher. Willard Wiles had the social skills to join them into an alliance that eventually turned a stretch of Montana from Bozeman to Billings into a free wheeling road house sort of community. Anything goes, everyone wears a gun on their hip and negotiates by pulling the trigger; but Wiles and his Council of Landowners manage any major disputes (defined as anything involving fixed property). Everyone drives herds and runs crops in from the surrounding areas, cowboys wearing body armor with assault rifles escorting trucks and people in to brave the annual trip into the roadhouse before that little slice of the larger community returns to the outskirts to go back to farming (or whatever) for another year.

And in Denver, when the country began tanking, a quiet little research cooperative decided to stay quiet and just start digging. What was a campus style research center became a subterranean vault, the excavators and trucks continuing to burrow the scientists deeper and deeper into the Rockies while the battles raged on and over the plains. No one knows how deep they are now; just that their science is cutting edge, always works, and is available to whoever bids the highest no questions asked. And they don't take questions, or visitors, without using some of their science on the interruptions. The test subjects rarely enjoy the experience.

You just make up people for all these lines of breadcrumbs. Some of them live through the whole trail, some come in or die off part way through. Business partners take over for one another, families soldier on. Alliances means people in each faction must get along, agreeably or not; they might hate but need each other, or they might be best buds. Those things color how and why they evolved as they did.

Random encounters are easy. Military stuff is probably scattered everywhere; mostly wreckage. But bits and pieces might survive in a usable state, even if it's just the odd chip or piece of high quality alloy sheet. Data could be left in a crashed bomber or wrecked command tank, extractable and of interest to the right party. Junkers roam the plains, looking for scores, and then heading to some form of civilization to make a deal. Bandits and ambushers mix in, stalk the crumbling interstates, scope for campfires and dust clouds that reveal human activity.

Little groups are everywhere. When it all goes to shit, some people flock to the strong (and that might or might not work out), some fall victim to someone stronger, and some make it out of view. Then they might build, and possibly thrive a little. Farm, fish a river, take over a mine, fortify a valley. They trade like people do, and sometimes it's peaceful and sometimes someone else wants what they have. Everyone's armed, and the ones who are still around are those who had enough power to defend themselves. Maybe they're tough, maybe they're lucky, maybe they have friends.

Some might be nomads. Always on the move, no fixed address. They thrive because they hide, survival in mobility. Road warrior clans rolling along the remaining highways, horse rider groups plying the forests and valleys, whatever. Some of the biggest have big multi-year routes they loosely stick to, and some might even act as go-betweens or middlemen traders between the major fixed factions in the wastelands.

And what do the coastal megacorps think about all this? Is it their playground, where they dangle bait and hook minions to do their bidding? Do they ignore it? Is it a banishment zone where employees who've fallen from grace are tossed to live or die (presumably die most of the time)? Maybe some of the megas have uses for some of the factions or people in the wasteland; it could be a rare Earth mine, a patch of ground where corn growing on moderately irradiated land has some unique property they want (and might pay for, or might just take), research or old tech they need for some reason.

Creativity is about giving yourself permission to just let go and make shit up. Lots of people get afraid of that. They fear being made fun of, that someone will laugh and say this or that idea was stupid. So? Stupid ideas can be fun.

I had a campaign once where I decided a group the (fantasy) party was rescuing was the International Guild of Basketweavers. The group saved them, then bought some baskets because they realized they needed better storage for all their steadily accumulating loot. Particularly on their horses as they traveled. Later the IGB became a major player in the realm's political scene, and they remembered the player group fondly when the players got mixed up between the king and his muttering discontented ducal malcontents.

Embrace creativity. For example:

One of the megacorps should be a toy company. Everyone has kids, and kids love toys. Cyberpunk corporations are always "military this", "biorearch that", blah blah blah. Fuck it; Huggie Bear International has a hundred billion dollar market share in toys. Stuffed animals were and remain their crown jewel. At this point, sure they still make "stuffed" animals, but now they also stock animatronic, cybernetic, virtual, and other variations on the theme. Children don't play with HBI toys; HBI's bears play with the kids.

And sometimes corporate executives have kids. Some of those kids have cutting edge animatronic playmates. Which they take to mom or dad's office somtimes. The bears have hidden code, and see and hear things. Which get transmitted back to HBI for evaluation. How is it Huggie Bear International is always perfectly positioned to sail grandly through and out of any corporate crisis, no matter how sticky or violent? HBI's cyberneticists are the best in the business, and who'd suspect a lovable talking bear of being an asshole spy?

I also need ideas for more megacorporate factions.

Amazon (rebrand as desired) is the perfect cyberpunk megacorp.

They sell cheap items of dubious quality with mostly-unpronounceable random strings as brands (the manufacturers that aren't like this largely left the platform in the late 2020s). They pivoted to physical stores for all their merchandise because online shopping is hard without the internet.

They also have a surprising amount of computing power for a supposed retail company. The fall of the internet made their cloud stuff mostly irrelevant, but they now do backups (on trucks) and large-scale computing jobs for hire for those who don't have their own large scale computing power (think big password cracking jobs). They probably won't steal your data in the process. Their underpaid employees might.

You've clearly thought this through a lot so I'm not sure if I can really give you any more ideas, but here's what I've thought of. Some of the US's most iconic landscapes/landmarks fall (roughly) in the midlands.

Yellowstone National Park springs immediately to mind. Perhaps a settlement began there because it's one of the least radioactive areas around. I mean who's going to bomb a national park? There's nothing there to destroy. This leads to an interesting culture within the city-state. Survivors in and around Yellowstone were campers, self sufficient, and nature aware. Perhaps they have created some kind of nomadic community based on self reliance. Or maybe it's a bunch of smaller 'tribes' who are constantly battling with each other for resources. Though there is no established hierarchy, the area itself is incredibly dangerous as fighting between groups can get messy.

Mt Rushmore is a other one you can play with. How has this iconic feature interacted with society. Is there some hidden secret behind the faces built in by the US government all those years ago?What kind of monsters might spawn here? Giant rocky titans? Or, being a sacred place for some Native Americans, has it been reclaimed, the rocks literally defaced?

I note that Arizona is part of the Christian States of America, but I wonder if there's anything you could do with the grand canyon. How does such a huge natural rift divide people living there?

I've gone with famous landmarks because 1. I'm not American and don't know much about the US, and 2. Because I've always loved seeing how these things get changed and used in dystopian futuristic speculation.

I've really enjoyed looking through what you've written, though I must admit I've not read through in detail, so I'm not sure what I've suggest has specifically fit the vibe of what you're doing for but I've enjoyed thinking about it nonetheless.