Recently I've been working to create a campaign full of political intrigue, similar to the Lord of the Rings, Eragon, or Warcraft series. I'm attempting to create a world that is very alive for my party to explore, that could go many different ways. The party could find themselves appreciating the splendor of the Elven forests, or they might enjoy the ruff-and-tumble lifestyle of the orcs. I came across a problem however. I don't know what races/factions I should keep track of. There's obvious ones like the Humans, Dwarves, and Elves, but should I attempt to keep track of the Bullywug empire? I don't know which monsters/races would make be the most necessary/fun, for me to include in my campaign. How much should I keep track of? I want the world to feel alive to the players, with many moving pieces and such, but I always feel like I'm missing something with the seemingly millions of factions to keep track of. Any advice?

tl;dr I'm making a multi-factioned campaign, and I don't know which races/monsters I should use for the campaign, or how many I should keep track of.

There’s no real way to answer this except, as many as is fun for you. Some people are into it, others don’t enjoy the politics. 
I would say, only really worry about the ones that will matter to your story. Players rarely engage with lore beyond what they need in the campaign. So spending time deciding how countries on the other side if the world react to each other isn’t likely to come up. The further you get from the core conflict in the campaign, the more likely you’re just doing it for yourself. 

.Yeah, I agree with what you say. I don't think I explained myself very clearly though. The campaign is more similar to RTS storylines, like Starcraft Brood War, or Warcraft, then Lord of the Rings or Eragon. I used Eragon and Lord of the Rings as an example because I was working on creating politics similar to that. Basically the basis of the series is that the party is a group of mercenaries, and they start relatively neutral with all of these factions. These factions are at conflict with each other, and the party can do what they want with that. I don't have a big bad planned until I know the direction the players want to go in. I kind of liked the idea in the dungeon master book, where there's different factions with different goals that the party can ally themselves with or create enemies with, so I wanted to create a campaign based around this premise. Basically my plan was to create a bunch of different kingdoms that are at war with each other, and see what my party does, instead of a more planned out campaign.

Thanks for the advice though. It was well thought out, and I think would be great advice for a more standardized campaign.

I don’t think any reasonable player would demand that you make an organization for everything in the monster manual if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s no objective answer as to what sort of kingdoms to include, but I can ask some guiding questions that could help:

- Do you want the factions to all be humanoid/mortal, or can the party end up working for supernatural entities?

- Are they all on the same level morally or are some better or worse than others (which isn’t necessarily the same thing as black and white)?

- How much to they expect the party to work exclusively for them? Will the party working for two of the kingdoms get them punished if found out?

Quote from Bear_Berserker >>

.Yeah, I agree with what you say. I don't think I explained myself very clearly though. The campaign is more similar to RTS storylines, like Starcraft Brood War, or Warcraft, then Lord of the Rings or Eragon. I used Eragon and Lord of the Rings as an example because I was working on creating politics similar to that. Basically the basis of the series is that the party is a group of mercenaries, and they start relatively neutral with all of these factions. These factions are at conflict with each other, and the party can do what they want with that. I don't have a big bad planned until I know the direction the players want to go in. I kind of liked the idea in the dungeon master book, where there's different factions with different goals that the party can ally themselves with or create enemies with, so I wanted to create a campaign based around this premise. Basically my plan was to create a bunch of different kingdoms that are at war with each other, and see what my party does, instead of a more planned out campaign.

Thanks for the advice though. It was well thought out, and I think would be great advice for a more standardized campaign.

 In that case, starting from the assumption that each faction is relatively similar in power, I’d say go with an odd number. Factions almost always try to form alliances, and an odd number allows there to be one who ends up in a kingmaker position since they’d tip the scales. as far as exactly how many, that will depend on your prep time. 
But I’ll again remind you the players may have a hard time keeping everything straight, so make be like 5 or 7. 
Then add in non-faction actors who are just amp up the chaos — mercenary groups, or an orc kingdom in the fringes that someone might be able to pay off. 

I would like to add that purely dividing things up neatly along racial/species lines isn’t particularly interesting from a narrative standpoint. It’s often more interesting to have those lines blurred or ignored altogether in some instances. Like perhaps the Wood Elf Empire finds itself at odds with the High Elf Hegemony as often as it does with the nomadic Orc Tribes. And maybe the dwarves find themselves at odds with the Elven Hegemony too because they’re backing one of two factions in the Goblinoid Empire because it suits them politically in their rivalry against the Wood Elves, but the side the High Elves are backing is putting the squeeze on the Dwarves. Maybe the Dwarves have formed an alliance with one of two warring human nations hoping that they will be victorious and then subsequently lend aid in defeating the Goblinoids, but the High Elves are secretly backing the other human nation. Maybe those two human kingdoms are only in conflict because it’s a proxy war between the Dwarves and the High Elves.

All I really did there was split the elves into 2 factions, the Gonlinoids into 2 factions, and the humans into 2 factions, left the orcs and the dwarves each as single unified factions, and give them all alliances somewhat at odds with the normal ethnocentric stereotypes and viola, political intrigue happens. Are there other factions? Possibly. Only you know that as the DM. But this here is more than enough for a 1-20 campaign, and the rest of the world can be merely mentioned from time to time to give the players the impression of a wider world beyond the scope of these borders.

Thanks for the advice, this has been very helpful to me

roll a d12. thats how many factions (+ 1 for you players i guess) then roll on thsi handy table

1. the elves, expanding the forest
2. EVIL elvez, expanding the forest EVILY
3. dwarfs, who want to be left alone
4. the bullywug empire(yes i read op)
5. a daemonic cult
6. a rival kingdom
7. a sect of mind flayers lead by an elder brain
8. barbarian tribes(a'la' late roman empire)
9. goblyns(cannibal hobgoblins)
10. hobgoblin warlords
11. goblins
12. a bunch of homonculi running a criminal empire