There are two big problems with multi-faction and/or multi-race games:
- Keeping track of things
- Avoiding repetition
Steve himself has mentioned how he got burned out with multi-faction Earth starts because “each faction always ends up doing the same thing - get out of Sol fast”. And this is a valid concern but there are other multi-faction Earth games where this issue was avoided, an excellent one by Kurt on the old forum for example, where some factions transformed into interplanetary or interstellar ones, while other factions remained hidebound in tradition and sticking with Earth. So it is important that you identify and personalize each faction at least a little, so that you don’t just end duplicating the same thing over and over again. That’s boring to play and boring to read. Of course, some duplication is unavoidable especially if you’re doing a conventional start, but it should be minimized.
As to how to keep track of things, you were already given good advice there. Keep notes and make planes and try to stick to them but not to the extent of being too stubborn to survive. Maybe one faction IS too stubborn to survive and changing circumstances lead to their destruction. That’s a story point right there! But most factions should be smart enough to adjust their plans as the situation evolves.
I would also recommend to start small - go with two factions on Earth, like I did with my USA vs USSR Solar Hegemony (fighters only) campaign on the old forum. You can have them mirror each other in good and bad so if one does option A then the other does option B and so on, meaning that it is easy to keep the two factions separate and interesting.
Once you feel ready to go big, then it really doesn’t matter whether you have 6 factions or 12. The workload of course increases but not exponentially and six factions is already a lot of work so you might as well go broke and have twelve factions. It does mean that you have less time, energy, and opportunity to make each faction unique but that’s okay, it’s something you can work on as your campaign-story unfolds.
Another classic is to start with limited factions, maybe just two, or three or four, and then slowly introduce more factions as the game progresses, and these could be aliens as well! However, Froggiest is absolutely correct in that just the setup for a game like this can be incredibly daunting and time-consuming, and you do end up spending a lot more time going through the motions rather than having awesome moments. Setting up eight Earth governors, eight research plans, eight industrial plans, eight navy organizations, and so on and so forth, can be more than any sane person can take. Again, Steve has a great example here - he spend god knows how many hours creating an authentic setup for Battlestar Galactica campaign, recreating the Twelve Colonies in all their glory, only to have that campaign fizzle out before it could even start.
So my main advice would to just start with a simple two-faction Earth start - Cold War is a great setting for this. USA vs USSR or NATO vs Warsaw Pact both work wonders for campaign settings where names for classes, organizations, technologies, industries are easy to find and the campaign is easy to play and manage. Better to get the ball rolling rather than spend days researching stuff for a campaign setup that might never go anywhere.
But I will say this - multi-faction campaigns, once they are up & running, can be extremely rewarding. But that is only if you get your kicks out of RP and storytelling.
