Leadership and Such

[Samwise]

I'm not sure if this is the best place for this so move it if seems appropriate.

Leadership
or, Why die when you can take a feat to have other people clear those traps for you?

Introductory Rambling Rant

So . . . Leadership.
We all know about it, and some of us have probably even abused the cohort it provides, but aside from that, what exactly does it do in the game?
Looking back at the "official" material on Leadership and related subjects, it really looks like it is the remnants of a Sacred Cow they just couldn't bear to give mercy to, and instead turned into a shambling horror, stalking the rules with endless tweaks and variations that require playing something other than a game about adventuring and killing monsters, eating up all of your feats in the process. However, that doesn't seem too fair, as there are some really useful concepts that can be salvaged from what is available.

Background Digression
A long time ago, in a rules system far, far away . . .
Leadership was a combination of universal class feature and ability score modifier.
Cohorts were called "henchmen", and you could recruit a number based on your Charisma. These were not Nodwick-style flunkies, those were just hirelings. They were also not modern cohorts, being significantly more independent. They'd refuse to trade spells with you, expect bonuses in addition to their half share of treasure, and be subject to random loyalty checks to refrain from abandoning you when it got Real and you got obnoxious.
Followers were called a variety of names depending on your class, but all were basically modern followers except for being stuck at 0-level, the equivalent of 1st level in an NPC class. You usually had to build a stronghold to get them, but since magic wasn't considered a level-based feature and magic marts were classified as Monty Hall, you didn't have much to do with your surplus loot but save up to build one. Besides, you'd get extra bragging rights for having one. You also had to be "name" level to gain them, which was 9th or 10th except for monks (who were otherwise as hosed as d20 monks, but that's another story).
Exceptional followers were limited to DM fiat with the exception of Rangers who got egregiously lucky and got a storm giant or a young to adult aged copper dragon. (Mighty was the die fudging when a ranger gained followers.)
Back to the main story . . .

As noted, Leadership eventually got a number of "upgrades" through sub-systems. These included various types of organizations, including guilds, in the DMGII and Cityscape, businesses, and finally the Affiliations in the PHBII. These were only vaguely compatible with each. Pathfinder attempted their own versions of some of these with their Downtime and Kingdom Rules in Ultimate Campaigns, with some continuing support, but didn't really fix the problem of feat-sucking and game play diversion. They compound that with some rather gratuitous imposition of suck on what might otherwise be worthwhile feats.


Statement of Purpose

So what I am looking to do here?
I'm not really sure.
This started as an attempt to collate everything for my players, but the more I try and make it work the more I realize it needs extreme rewriting. So to some extent this is me just writing it all down to try and organize my thoughts, and in the process inviting the usual commentary for gratuitous house ruling.
This isn't exactly a handbook and it isn't exactly a new system, it is just my hacks and random suggestions for how to get something useful from a bunch of orphaned rules.

List of Sources

Hopefully I haven't forgotten too many:

WotC
Player's Handbook
Player's Handbook II
Dungeon Master's Guide
Dungeon Master's Guide II
Epic Level Handbook
Cityscape
Libris Mortis
Heroes of Battle
Eberron Campaign Sourcebook
Dragonmarked Houses
Power of Faerun
Faiths of Faerun

Wild Life web content
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a

D20 Modern Past

PFRPG
Champions of Corruption
Ultimate Campaign
Dungeoneer's Handbook
Cohorts and Companions
Quests and Campaigns
Knights of the Inner Sea
Inner Sea Combat

[Samwise]

Rules for Leadership

Naturally there are a whole bunch of rules for using Leadership before we actually get to the fun stuff.

Leadership Score

Your Leadership Score is your character level + Charisma modifier + other modifiers.
Naturally, those other modifiers are where it gets fun.

There are a bunch of miscellaneous feats and magic items that provide bonuses, but the real crunch is in the supplemental tables.

The core rules have a table for "universal" modifiers to your Leadership Score. Those modifiers assume a generally Good-aligned, or at least reasonably heroic, leader.

Pathfinder introduces the Vile Leadership feat in Champions of Corruption. It provide modifiers for a generally Evil-aligned, or at least reasonably nasty, leader. Why? For the same reason spellcasters get all the love in those rules, Evil must get extra bonuses to so people won't feel the need to be a bunch of wimpy do-gooders all the time.
The feat comes with a "restriction" that you be a member of one of their campaign setting organizations, but that is so fungible as to be irrelevant. Not only do you have your own evil groups, but (and I'll get to this later), just taking Leadership means you are pretty much an organization all on your own.

From here, Powers of Faerun introduces a number of additional rules expanding Leadership in general, providing some extra use for the Leadership Score, and providing a slew of gratuitous modifiers for your Leadership Score. And yes, I really mean "gratuitous". How gratuitous? Enough that the book outright waives the cap on Leadership Score of 25 and allows you to get as high a score as you like, with all the extra followers, without taking Epic Leadership. (Which I'll also address more later.)

The first new rule addresses recruiting specific followers or a cohort from "another" organization. This organization could be friendly to hostile. The intent is to provide an extension of your sphere of influence and power. It functionally requires you to use a whole bunch of organization rules.

The second new rule covers losing followers and cohorts by being a bad leader. Yes, they finally added rules for consequences of sending your massed followers to clear the traps in a dungeon beyond no more signing on. Now the ones you have can quit.

The third new rule is a set of leader "types". All provide a slew of flavor and background text.
One, the herald and wandering law officer type, only gets a prestige class.
Another, the courtier type, gets its own complex sub-system for tracking your status at court. As those rules say, they are heavily biased to first gaining power as you succeed, then falling horribly once you start getting any failures.
The others have more direct leadership modifiers. Unfortunately most of those modifiers are so highly subjective as to be worthless without additional systems to support them. Reviewing them:

Frontier Leaders - make a new realm out of the wilderness. They are very similar to courtier types except they are building a new court rather than trying to be the power behind the throne of an existing court. Their modifiers are all based on subjective abilities or statuses, such as being able to grant resources to new settlers or being self-sufficient in a variety of areas.
With some work, these could be tied directly to owning certain types of buildings or special features when using a set of kingdom building rules. You will have to do that work to get anything from them.

Military Leaders - are general officers and such. A bunch of their modifiers are tied into elements from Heroes of Battle, which ties back to the Miniatures Handbook. Most of these are rather low, and military leaders will lag behind other leaders in a group setting. It also includes some extra rules for giving orders. After all, what good is it being in charge if you can't order someone to shine your boots or make a suicidal charge up a hill? Not to mention being perfect justification to wallow in channeling R. Lee Ermey.
These require less work to integrate across sources, but they will make your players wonder where the mass battles are. Unless you plan on having some grand military campaign, you may leave players wondering why they bothered if you use these.
Several feats work with Military Leaders: Inspirational Leader, Natural Leader, Blood of the Warlord, and Great Captain. Of these, Great Captain calls for adaptation for a land commander to help everyone in a unit at the same.
Pathfinder adds Inspirational Commander (from Quests and Campaigns), which should be easily convertible.

Mercantile Leaders - make money. Hopefully. Once again, they expect you to integrate the business rules to get the full effect. They also expect you to invest in some feats, two of which have particular issues. Finally, they suggest you need to control a portion of the market. That last part is the hardest to construct rules for, especially without using kingdom building rules of some sort.
For their feats, they expect you to pick up 3 at some point: Favored, Business Savvy, and Guildmaster.
Favored requires you to belong to an organization - a guild of course. So now you need the organization rules.
Business Savvy requires the Negotiator feat as a prerequisite, and even if you are a diplomancer you've now had two feats sucked away.
Guildmaster requires a guild-related feat as a prerequisite, along with Leadership. For some guilds this isn't too horrible, but the real killer is the absurd requirement it places on your followers and cohort. That is so bad as to get its own rant later on.

Religious Leaders - run around inciting inquisitions. It doesn't say that of course, but you know it is what you will have them do if you use these rules, so just admit it and get to it. In addition to a pack of specialized feats and gratuitous demonstration of power via spells, this type of leader brings two additional systems into play.
The simple one is requiring you to hold a position of authority via building and controlling some religious buildings. As usual, any building system integrates easily with this.
More complex is something expanded from Faiths of Faerun - issuing religious edicts. You can make rolls to make proclamations for your faith. Failure results in sin or outright heresy. Good rolls can send your followers of love and healing out on a frenzied crusade. Good times there. The biggest thing with this is requiring you to establish what the baseline expectations of the various setting faiths actually are.
As a note on the feats, a bunch allow you to have a non-traditional power as a patron. All the Vile fiend feats and Exalted archetype guy feats are included, along with dragon ascendants and "dead" powers. I'd suggest not having this as a feat as these rules give you a penalty to your Leadership Score to counter you +1 luck bonus once a day. Granted, clerics and such don't need gratuitous bonuses, but charging someone a feat like this just seems really harsh to me. Downgrade it to a trait at least.

[Samwise]

Ruling

Because having flunkies just isn't enough for you and you know it.

More Rules

Ruling comes along with a feat in Power of Faerun called, naturally, Rulership.
In addition to providing a bonus to your Leadership Score it introduces a subsystem called Influence.
Influence grants you gratuitous bonuses to telling your followers to do stuff. It mostly applies to interaction skills. It can apply to Knowledge skills "where appropriate" to your ruling. And it can apply to other skills if the DM thinks it helps you rule. So really, it applies to everything as long as you can fast talk your DM into submission, they just didn't want to say so.
The best ways to get Influence are to have followers who have followers (by getting 6th level and higher followers and having them take the Leadership feat), and by having followers in multiple organizations, especially in "positions of influence/leadership" (which one again requires reference to how sucktastic the Guildmaster feat is).
This is one of the points where the rules for Leadership and Such begin to bog down in doing stuff other than adventuring. Not only do you need to create organizations for the players to join, you now need to have organizations for them to infiltrate and subvert by proxy. And you have to have the players do extensive write ups of followers, giving them the right feats and skills to infiltrate and subvert. Sometime next year I'm sure you'll even remember to go on that adventure to stop the horde invading your kingdom.

Sadly, that's about there is on Rulership in WotC products.
You could possibly adapt the Affiliation rules to expand it, but those are clunkier than the Weapons of Legacy rules.
Or you can expand it a bit if you use that as a base to jump into the Pathfinder Kingdom Builder subsystem. There is a fair synergy there, and there are three feats that work with the theme, Center of Power, Fortunate Ruler, and Natural Ruler, in Quests and Campaigns.
I myself did a thorough hack of d20 adaptations of the old AD&D Birthright rules, with elements of Kingdom Builder, and some bits of Civilization. (Which is what directly provoked this.)
However you do it, if you are willing to deal with the diversions from "actual" adventuring, I think it can be worth the effort to work all of this in.


Since I disparaged them above, I expect this is the best place to get comments on the Affiliations out of the way.

Affiliations seem to be an attempt to make organizations work better without the massive feat tax of Favored and Guildmaster.
Unfortunately, unless you make a special effort to set the requirements for your exact campaign, players are unlikely to get past the lowest levels without jumping through some major hoops. And when they do, the payoffs are rather weak.
At most, I'd suggest pillaging the rules for inspiration for other forms of organizations. If you can come up with a way to really make them work I'd love to see it, but I'm not seeing how to really integrate them long term.

[Samwise]

Property

You too can be a slumlord millionaire!

And Still More Rules

As I noted in my reminiscing, the other side of flunkies was a stronghold. The biggest problem with rules for them is that the d20 system has those nasty Wealth By Level expectations, which get completely corrupted when you need to spend half a million gp on a decent Fortress of Solitude.

The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook attempted to resolve this with the Landlord feat. This provided an allowance, starting at 9th level, for building your stronghold only, along with matching funds if the DM goofs and gives you more loot than you should spend on equipment.
Overall, it isn't that bad, suffering mostly from being an annoying feat tax. And of course that decent Fortress of Solitude requires a lot more than the free allowance it provides. It also requires you to wait for 9th level, clearly a holdover from the name-level element in AD&D.
On the good side, it provides a neat synergy to pay to start a business using the WotC rules, or at least set up barracks for your followers, even if you cannot afford defenses.
On the really good side, it synergizes very nicely with the Pathfinder Downtime and Kingdom Builder rules, providing a perfect rules element for the start up funds for a kingdom.
And Pathfinder has feats to enhance it: Focused Overseer, Focused Worker, Superintendent, Fortunate Manager.
And Pathfinder has a couple of Story feats to take it even further: Dynasty Founder, and Stronghold.
Between all of that, if you extend the table down to 1st level, like say . . .

   Level    Funds Gained   Stronghold Allowance
   1       1,000 gp            1,000 gp
   2       1,000 gp            2,000 gp
   3       2,000 gp            4,000 gp
   4       2,000 gp            6,000 gp
   5       3,000 gp            9,000 gp
   6       3,000 gp          12,000 gp
   7       3,000 gp          15,000 gp
   8       5,000 gp          20,000 gp
   9       5,000 gp          25,000 gp

that; and work it in as a bonus feat for campaign task completion, and you've got something functional.

As another benefit, using just this doesn't require you to integrate a ton of other organization rules into the game. It will provide support for them if you use it, but you can use it all alone just to have a base to oppress the peasants.

[Samwise]

Minions

Because everyone loves those little yellow guys.

Rules

We finally get to actually getting servants.
You do that by taking the Leadership feat.
This gets you a bunch of followers, up to a default level of 7th, and that leads to two sidebars.

Back in 3E, followers were limited to being Commoners, Experts, and Warriors. The Epic Leadership feat provided rules for getting followers with other classes at the cost of making them higher level.
3.5 altered this to allow followers to be of any class.
Power of Faerun "house rules" Leadership to make Epic Leadership obsolete.
Together, they open the door to severe abuse of magic wielding grunts.
I'd recommend house ruling this right away, especially if you use the Power of Faerun expansions, or your players will start a Magitech Revolution that will Eberron seem wimpy in very short order. Naturally players will object to not having 500 potion, scroll, wand, and alchemical item crafters in a sweatshop, but better to nip it in the bud before they realize their 9th level character has 1 7th level, 3 6th level, and 5 5th level followers available to run around Tier 1-ing fights into yawnfests.

Then there are the variant methods of getting servants.
If for some reason you prefer your flunkies pre-slaughtered, you can instead take the Undead Leadership feat from Libris Mortis. This allows you to replace ordinary followers with certain core undead. Unfortunately, the table with Undead Leadership only goes up to 7th level followers, so you will need to do some DM expansion of that chart.
A side variant from related material is found in D20 Past, where Leadership is split into two feats, Minions (named properly!) and Sidekick, providing the followers and cohort respectively. Naturally players will hate the added feat tax, but DMs may appreciate not having to deal with a horde of followers while tolerating the extra work of a cohort. (Though see the next section.)
As another variant, there is the Thrallherd prestige class which provides a bunch of psychic zombies eager to die for your greater glory. While gained similar to ordinary followers they function outside the regular rules, and so I won't go into detail about them.

For other rules, there is a table for specific modifiers to Leadership for the number of followers you gain. This has a counterpart with the Pathfinder Vile Leadership.

Leadership has a couple of feats to supplement it of course.
Extra Followers doubles your followers.
Legendary Commander multiplies them by 10. It requires Epic Leadership as a prerequisite, which Power of Faerun made obsolete. If you don't mind your players having tons of flunkies you might consider lowering the ranks of Diplomacy required and making it a non-epic feat.
Might Makes Right gives another stat bonus to increase your Leadership Score for followers.

Aside from bragging rights and crafting abuse, followers aren't particularly relevant in the game. If you try and use them, like say in a military unit, you suffer horrific penalties to your Leadership Score when any of them die. That also limits using them to clear traps, or even to provide spot backup. (Barring pumping your Leadership score high enough to get followers only 2-3 levels below you of course.)
Of course using Vile Leadership from Pathfinder eliminates this, showcasing how Evil being better than good is second only to Casters being better than Martials in PFRPG.
If you use the various organization rules, followers become essential to increasing your influence to outrageous levels, but that still leaves them somewhat irrelevant.
I have house ruled in using them as a pool of die modifiers for kingdom building tasks. This of course leads neatly in to having them form or join separate organizations.
Without something like that, followers are an afterthought in search of a use.

[Samwise]

Interns

Can you believe they expected to get paid for this gig?

Rules

Cohorts are followers that are powerful enough to be trusted to watch your back while you engage in the usual suicidal acts adventurers are known for.
With all the hardwired rules operating off of Average Party Level, it is almost shocking they aren't treated as consumable as animal companions, but there you go with WotC being surprising at times.

Cohorts come with their own table of modifiers, and there is an expansion for Vile Leadership.
Cohorts have a standard limitation of being at least 2 levels lower than the PC, and getting the 25 point or standard array for their ability scores.

After that, cohorts get a stunning array of options and expansions, primarily focused on getting other than just standard characters as cohorts.
There is a default table for these with the Leadership feat, and a specialized table with the Undead Leadership feat. Pathfinder offers a dizzying array of variants in Cohorts and Companions based on character themes, along with rules for turning a magic item into a cohort. That last comes off as sort of combining a cohort with a Weapon of Legacy.
Pathfinder then goes further by introducing three feats for "lesser" cohorts:
Torchbearer - a guy who holds a torch. Said guy is class limited (house rule it, especially for 3.5 compatibility and expansion), must take a special feat for using a torch (which isn't that horrific in a martial), and is limited to being 3 levels lower than you.
Squire - a guy who shines you armor and plays meatshield. Again class limited (again house rule it), and limited to 3 levels lower than you.
Recruits - 1 guy/2 levels, but you can take only 1 on an adventure at a time, though you can swap them out when you are in a settlement. They aren't class limited but they are prohibited from crafting or using Profession skills, apparently because they are learning and practicing skills that you teach them. Yep, that's what it says. Don't ask me to explain it. Oddly, they can explicitly manage a building or organization for you as per the Downtime Rules. Go figure again. They are also limited to being 4 levels lower than you.
What turns all of them into silliness is that while you can take them earlier than 7th level when you could get Leadership in Pathfinder, it "upgrades" to Leadership at 7th level, completely destroying any flavor in the feat, not to mention losing the utility of switching Recruits between expeditions.

For me, this just begs for thorough house ruling, especially in connection with the organization and kingdom builder rules. Now you can finally get enough people to fill the rulership positions in your kingdom without trusting random NPCs the DM sets you up with. And it provides a nice range of thematic variation, allowing you to bring a chronicler (torchbearer), bodyguard (squire), and apprentice (recruit), on your adventures, along with your trusty sidekick (cohort). Of course you are a full adventuring party all by your lonesome, but that will allow you to appreciate Old School parties while mocking the rest of the party for missing a session allowing you and your crew to hog all the loot. Less abusively it just gives you a pool of people from which you can bring 1 on any particular adventure while still expanding the background. To get really variant, which I'm currently using, you could even set up a party of variant cohorts to adventure in the name of the PCs. No, that isn't my idea. Zeb Cook used it as the plot for Vecna Lives!

Finally, notes on some extra feats related to cohorts:
Improved Cohort gets you a more powerful cohort.
Practiced Cohort makes your cohort part of your team.
Practiced Leadership, from Pathfinder, gets your cohort similar benefits to Practiced Cohort, provided he is a member of a Pathfinder setting organization. (Naturally I'm going to say "house rule" it again here.)

[Samwise]

Entourage

Because running a party of 4 by yourself just isn't enough.

Feats

Rather than rules, this section is defined by various feats which provide some extra access for you.

Dragon Cohort from Dragon Magic lets you travel with a dragon, and it provides a bonus to the ECL of said dragon. Since it doesn't otherwise say, this appears to be in addition to a regular cohort.

Wild Cohort is from a WotC web article, and gives you a wimpier version of a druid animal companion. It probably won't survive anywhere near how a regular animal companion or a dragon cohort will, but it has its own flavor (which oddly enough came up in my current campaign), and it lets you annoy your DM with yet another figure on the battle mat.
There are a couple of feats in that article series that work with wild cohorts or mounts in general.


Pathfinder offers a number of additional options that modify class abilities rather than provide additional cohorts. Of course if you have a Wild Cohort you might be able to convince your DM you qualify.

Monstrous Mount and Monstrous Mount Mastery let you get a selection of magical beasts as companions.

Monstrous Companion expands that base list to a large selection of magical beasts. However it directly prohibits taking Leadership as well.

[Samwise]

Organizations

"Me and this army."

Background

Organizations got their start in the DMG II where they were presented as a suggestion of something players could join with a few samples, and then some expanded development for specific guild organizations.
A variant on this, affiliations, was offered in the PHB II.
The original version received a bunch of expansion in Cityscape, with Houses, Churches, and Organizations added to Guilds. (Yes, it made Organization type Organizations. Ever consider the concept of a Warforged Scout Scout?)
Eberron of course took the concept of a House to an extreme, and the Cityscape versions are scaled down from the Dragonmarked Houses.
Organizations are at the heart of Power of Faerun.
Affiliations feature in several later splat books.

It seems WotC could never figure out exactly what to do with the concept, even splitting it in two directions, and heading nowhere fast with either.
I've noted previously that Affiliations don't seem to work for me, despite having written a few for Living Greyhawk, so I chose to concentrate on the organization concept. The following are my revised format notes trying to present an overall structure.

(Variant) Flavor Text

Power Groups

Groups are divided into five power types based on how they work to benefit their members.
Groups are further divided into four structure types based on who they work to benefit.
Groups may have two possible modifiers to their mode of operations.
There is considerable cross-over in all of these classifications. They define the primary goals of the group. Each group may use methods of the other types of groups to advance their goals.
There is also considerable cross-over within the function of the groups. A House may be part of Organization which operates within a Guild. An Organization may control a number Guilds.


Power Type

Political
A Political organization has as its main method of aggrandizement seeking and employing political power. The members are rulers, executives, legislators, and judges. Raw mundane power is their means and ends.
Political organizations frequently use Military organizations to enforce their will. They use Mercantile organizations to fund their programs. They use Social organizations to control those they rule. They use Mystical organizations for raw magical power.

Mercantile
A Mercantile organization has money as its main method of advancing itself. The members are merchants lords and guildmasters. Pure economic power is their means and ends.
Mercantile organizations use Political organizations to secure favorable laws. They use Military organizations to safeguard their wealth. They use Social organizations to gain new markets. They use Mystical organizations to access additional goods and even further markets.

Mystical
A Mystical organization has magical power as its means and ends. The members are generally arcane casters seeking to break the rules of reality.
Mystical organizations tend not to care too much about other organizations because once they reach a certain level of power they just don't need them - anything those organizations can do can be done magically. Still, Magical organizations often have Guild and Social organizations as an interface to keep outsiders from annoying them in the middle of experiments. Because of the power they have, Magical organizations are often subject to internal factions, and may wind up involved with Political and Military organizations.

Social
A Social organization works to influence society for its advantage. Most Fantasy Religions function as Social organizations, but it also includes Guilds operating in service and entertainment jobs.
Social organizations may use or transform into Political organizations when their influence spreads far enough. Social organizations may operate through Mercantile organizations to spread their influence. Social organizations may decide not to wait to convince people and operate Military Organizations to force compliance with their programs. Social organizations are more than willing to use the powers provided by Mystical organizations, but have a tendency to become distracted by the pursuit of pure power when they do so.

Military
A Military organization exists to fight. Usually that includes a focus on surviving, but there are some fanatical, even suicidal, groups that don't care as long as they get to fight. They fight for many reasons, but direct, personal, fighting is their common defining characteristic.
Military organizations are frequently employed by all other types of organizations. A Military organization may wind up ruling a region and operate a Political organization. An army travels on its stomach, and a Military organization may set up a wholly owned Guild to provide for logistics. A Military organization can often find purpose, or at least diversion, through Social organizations. A Military organization will almost always look to take advantage of the creations of a Mystical organization.


Structure Type

Houses
A House is generally a closed family group that exists for the advancement and aggrandizement of its members. The methods used may vary, but they only means to the end of making the House itself more important.
While a traditional House consists only of blood relatives, many cultures recognize those who marry into the House as full members. Likewise some cultures have a tradition of full adoption into a House. This can eventually extend until the line between a House and an adventuring party is obscured out of existence. Generally speaking, a House should refer to those who are blood relatives, with some leeway for spouses and adopted members.
Houses typically work through other groups: a Mercantile House will control one or more Guilds; a Mystic House may control a Fantasy Religion; a Military House will sponsor Mercanary Companies. The outsiders with the most direct connection to a House are the clients that the House is a patron to. These clients may generally be considered an Organization with a specific purpose to aggrandize the House.

Guilds
A Guild is generally a business organization that exists for the profit of its members. The business may vary, but the goal is profit.
While a traditional Guild is a trade or craft guild, many societies recognize laborers, civil servants, and other unusual groups as guilds. At a certain point the activities of a guild may become so divergent as to blur into other types of groups. The focus of a guild should remain on making money.
Guilds typically work directly. If they need assistance with a goal they hire another group. Guilds are subject to faction and subversion, and may have internal Houses and Organizations using the Guild to pursue other goals.
 
Organizations
Organizations are a general catch-all category for any group that does not fit into one of the other three primary categories. An organization has a goal of achieving something other than private aggrandizement or profit. They are groups with long term plans, typically involve changing the power status quo. Some more benign organizations focus on abstracts such as knowledge.
Organizations are typically tools of other Groups, or factions within those Groups seeking to use the Group for other purposes.

Fantasy Religions
A Fantasy Religion has a purpose of seeking the aggrandizement of some entity capable of bestowing divine spells, or, rarely, invocations. These entities may be benign or malign. Some are collective groups - pantheons. They vary widely in size and power. They may be secret or open. They may be orthodox or heterodox. Whatever those qualities, the focus remains on promoting the entity they serve rather than themselves.
Fantasy Religions will often use other Groups to gain power and money to promote their goals. Equally, they are subject to infiltration, subversion, and use by other Groups, seeking to advance their goals or themselves within the Fantasy Religion.


Modifiers

Arts
In some ways an Arts organization is a contradiction in terms of the purpose of an organization as it doesn't really exist to gain anything. Its entire purpose is just to create. Mostly this is some form of visual or auditory art, but it may extend to abstracts of knowledge. Actually doing something with the art or knowledge is irrelevant, it is all about the creation.

Criminal
A Criminal organization exists outside the existing social order. It may merely refuse to obey the rules or be actively dedicated to overthrowing the current society.
The attitudes and methods of Criminal organizations typically place them on the Evil/antagonist end of the campaign scale, but it may rarely include the heroic liberator archetype for PCs. Care should be taken when developing such organizations to avoid confusing them with other types.


Rules

Once you get past all of that fluff to classify your groups, you can sort through the specific rules for them.
Each Structure type has rules on joining, slightly different sets of benefits, and slightly different drawbacks.
The various combinations of Power and Structure type have sets of associated classes, associated skills, and benefits for being Favored that relate to certain feats. Those feats are where things start to break down.


Favored (Ci)/Favored in Guild (DMG II)/Favored in House (ECS)
Rather straightforward, you are well-liked by the powers that be in your organization. The first two versions give you access to some additional benefits depending on the specific type of group you are with. The Eberron-specific version gives you a more open-ended access to calling in "favors", with examples with DCs provided in Dragonmarked. Overall this version winds up significantly more powerful than the other two, but then Cityscape does seem to present Houses as the most important "level" of organization. And it happens that Cityscape doesn't provide any version of Favored benefits for the Houses. It would take some work to adapt, but it seems like a reasonable task if you are developing your campaign to include the concept.
This feat is also noted as being an indicator of "being in a position of influence" in an organization for purposes of the Rulership feat.

Guildmaster
Finally my rant. Guildmaster as written is horrible. You need a guild specific feat, a maxed guild skill, Favored in Guild, and Leadership. And then all of your followers must belong to the same Guild you do. Which of course completely negates a whole section of Power of Faerun. Despite house ruling Epic Leadership away, Power of Faerun forgot to errata or house rule Guildmaster. Also as written, it only applies to Guilds, leaving an absence of other ways to be important in other structure types of groups.
And of course it is the suggested indicator of "being in a position of authority" in an organization for Rulership.
Fortunately, it suggests using the feat as a reward for service to an organization, so it isn't as horrible a feat tax.
I have just rewritten the whole thing to remove the useless restriction. I would also, as I will discuss in my ramblings, make this and a bunch of others just bonus feats.

Special Dispensation
This lets you break local some local laws and get away with. For flavor, it is best treated as yet another bonus feat for meeting campaign goals.

Primary Contact and Extra Contacts
An additional element of the various organization rules are lesser NPCs who aren't followers but provide minor favors for you. In some ways they are an outgrowth of the Eberron version of Favored, building specific NPCs who can provide specific favors, rather than generic, anonymous NPCs who provide ad hoc favors with a suitable DC. Yet another candidate for bonus feats for campaign goals.
There is a Pathfinder specific version of contacts, but it looks close enough to the WotC version to not require elaboration.

[Samwise]

Really Miscellaneous

I really don't know where to put this stuff.

Gratuitous Bonuses

No, seriously, that's what they are - the Apprentice and Master feats.
They get you some bonuses to skills that are supposed to be based on an organization you belong to, along with providing some background flavor.
Theoretically, the Master feat lets your Apprentices turn into iterative cohorts every 5 levels, but are you really going to drag a 1st level current apprentice plus 6th level and 11th level former apprentices along on a 16th level adventurer?

Thematically, these have a bit of synergy with the additional cohort type feats in from Pathfinder, and a bit of work could reconcile the two sets as I suggested in the previous section, simply adding the organization skill benefits in.

[Samwise]

Extra Ramblings

So now my ramblings.

Most have been previewed in the general comments, and most come down to two things:
Modify it
Give it for free

A lot of the hard rules for followers and cohorts are nice, they just seem to leave too much behind. Of course they have to be balanced against truly outrageous combos, but a bit of tweaking should allow you to bring in the flavor without overbalancing things or losing too much optimization.

The organization rules are really too undeveloped as written to be useful without a lot of tweaking to put into a coherent whole with crossover, and even then they risk turning the game into kingdom building accounting rather than heroic adventuring. Not that such can't be fun, I happen to love me some Sid Meier's Civilization or a bit of Farmville when I've got nothing better to do with my time, but that isn't RPGing, and I don't want to lose my RPG nights to it.

Ultimately building from a Birthright foundation, I have buildings divided into government (Political), business (Mercantile), social (Religious, Arts, and Mercantile), defense (Military), with special types for schools (Scholastic), item crafting (Mystical), resources (Mercantile), and then provisions for rivals, rebels, enemies, and monsters (Criminal). Making a building creates or expands an appropriate organization, and followers staff it. Naturally it is probably more complex than it has to be, but my players are stumbling along through it.

[Samwise]

That should be the outline.

The rest for comments and such.

[Stratovarius]

There's a few other sources that might apply as well. Primarily Libris Mortis and the Undead Leadership feat and rules. It's mostly normal leadership, except designed for an undead monarch. Psionics also did some work with it via the Thrallherd and related domination material.

[Samwise]

I'm going to include the diversion into Undead Leadership.
I'll mention Thrallherd as a footnote, but it is sort of beyond what I intended to focus on.