ParasocialTroop
2020-11-17, 03:21 PM
TL;DR I keep track of player actions in a deck so that NPC’s can have a random draw of what they might already know when meeting the PCs. I make some arguments of what is good and bad about the system, if you have feedback I’d like to hear it.
I’m GMing a homebrew campaign with evil alignment characters. Their focus has been on establishing their own new street gang in the city they reside. I had been thinking about ways of quantifying their reputation to use for interactions with other organizations, recruiting for their own gang, and to try and disincentivize murderhoboing. While they are evil characters and interact with many evil organizations, I wanted my setting to include honor and codes amongst street gangs to prevent daily death fights in the streets.
After seeing gameplay of the videogame Griftlands, I got the idea of using a deck-based reputation system. In Griftlands the system is complex with individual NPC’s giving the player a buff or debuff based on their opinion of you. I decided to have a hopefully simpler system to just describe the possible ways that outsiders perceive the reputation of the PC’s as a group or the organization they run.
The Deck
The idea is instead of having a single number to represent their reputation, there is a list (deck) of the actions that had an impact on the reputation. Each action (card) has a plus or minus. Then when you need to see what someone’s starting opinion is, you roll from the list (draw a card) and see what comes up.
Rolling multiple times, like 3 maybe 5 times, seems good because then you can get closer to the average of the deck and makes it less random. The plus or minus is determined by the GM, but should be clear to the players, ideally before they commit to taking that action. I’m currently using a google doc spreadsheet and then a digital RNG for drawing (rerolling duplicates), and the players have access so that they can see how many plus cards and minus cards they have and what actions gave pluses and minuses.
Things I like about this:
Setting Building – It helps communicate to the players what the value system is in the setting. The GM can tell players, “well people in this world don’t like it if you refuse payment even if they’re poorer than you,” but it is reinforced if it shows up as a minus when interacting with someone else.
Player Friendly – Because there is some randomness to the draws the players will want to fill their deck with as many pluses as they can, but it’s not terrible if they knowingly or accidentally get a few minuses.
Quick-ish in Play – It is fairly quick to pull open a document and say roll 3d27 (reroll duplicates), and then read the three cards that are drawn. If you want to role-play the information it is easy to read the cards in first person, “Ah you’re the ones who did this thing and that thing, I didn’t like that thing much.”
Optional Depth – If you want, you can look at the specific actions/cards drawn and see if any of those would pertain to the new NPC. If the card is “rescued orphans, 1+” and an orphan NPC draws it, then you have additional role play options.
Limitations of the system:
Cumbersome on DM – It takes time after/during play to add new cards.
One Point of View – Many times an action will be viewed differently by different NPCs. The way I’ve written it, each card has only one value regardless of what NPC draws it. You could have it flip for good and evil NPCs but I don’t really like that option. In my campaign the PoV is from both organized crime gangs and neutral or good aligned acquaintances. Because my setting has societal values I can say, the street gangs don’t like underlings getting massacred so that gives a minus card.
What does it mean? – I don’t have very defined outcomes for what a net +1, +2, -2, etc. mean. It could be like a starting opinion level, or a bonus on some roll. Very open to interpretation depending on the situation. I’ve had it do nothing at all except inform the players.
Duplicate Actions – What do you do with multiple of the same action. I added a few of the same card in the deck, but not one for every time they killed a civilian. It’s a balance to decide how often to assign cards. Try to be balanced and only give them for things NPCs will care about.
No Witnesses – This might not work well for a dungeon crawling party. If the party swears to tell no one that they stole the treasure from the holy monastery and there were no witnesses, then how would it get spread as their reputation? My campaign is urban and the PC’s have underlings that might blab. I’ve limited cards to being what survivors have seen, but other campaigns might want a omniscient PoV if there are divine or magical means of getting the info.
Random – Sometimes it is very clear what actions an NPC already knows, rolling randomly doesn’t help much then.
I’d love thoughts and feedback.
I’m GMing a homebrew campaign with evil alignment characters. Their focus has been on establishing their own new street gang in the city they reside. I had been thinking about ways of quantifying their reputation to use for interactions with other organizations, recruiting for their own gang, and to try and disincentivize murderhoboing. While they are evil characters and interact with many evil organizations, I wanted my setting to include honor and codes amongst street gangs to prevent daily death fights in the streets.
After seeing gameplay of the videogame Griftlands, I got the idea of using a deck-based reputation system. In Griftlands the system is complex with individual NPC’s giving the player a buff or debuff based on their opinion of you. I decided to have a hopefully simpler system to just describe the possible ways that outsiders perceive the reputation of the PC’s as a group or the organization they run.
The Deck
The idea is instead of having a single number to represent their reputation, there is a list (deck) of the actions that had an impact on the reputation. Each action (card) has a plus or minus. Then when you need to see what someone’s starting opinion is, you roll from the list (draw a card) and see what comes up.
Rolling multiple times, like 3 maybe 5 times, seems good because then you can get closer to the average of the deck and makes it less random. The plus or minus is determined by the GM, but should be clear to the players, ideally before they commit to taking that action. I’m currently using a google doc spreadsheet and then a digital RNG for drawing (rerolling duplicates), and the players have access so that they can see how many plus cards and minus cards they have and what actions gave pluses and minuses.
Things I like about this:
Setting Building – It helps communicate to the players what the value system is in the setting. The GM can tell players, “well people in this world don’t like it if you refuse payment even if they’re poorer than you,” but it is reinforced if it shows up as a minus when interacting with someone else.
Player Friendly – Because there is some randomness to the draws the players will want to fill their deck with as many pluses as they can, but it’s not terrible if they knowingly or accidentally get a few minuses.
Quick-ish in Play – It is fairly quick to pull open a document and say roll 3d27 (reroll duplicates), and then read the three cards that are drawn. If you want to role-play the information it is easy to read the cards in first person, “Ah you’re the ones who did this thing and that thing, I didn’t like that thing much.”
Optional Depth – If you want, you can look at the specific actions/cards drawn and see if any of those would pertain to the new NPC. If the card is “rescued orphans, 1+” and an orphan NPC draws it, then you have additional role play options.
Limitations of the system:
Cumbersome on DM – It takes time after/during play to add new cards.
One Point of View – Many times an action will be viewed differently by different NPCs. The way I’ve written it, each card has only one value regardless of what NPC draws it. You could have it flip for good and evil NPCs but I don’t really like that option. In my campaign the PoV is from both organized crime gangs and neutral or good aligned acquaintances. Because my setting has societal values I can say, the street gangs don’t like underlings getting massacred so that gives a minus card.
What does it mean? – I don’t have very defined outcomes for what a net +1, +2, -2, etc. mean. It could be like a starting opinion level, or a bonus on some roll. Very open to interpretation depending on the situation. I’ve had it do nothing at all except inform the players.
Duplicate Actions – What do you do with multiple of the same action. I added a few of the same card in the deck, but not one for every time they killed a civilian. It’s a balance to decide how often to assign cards. Try to be balanced and only give them for things NPCs will care about.
No Witnesses – This might not work well for a dungeon crawling party. If the party swears to tell no one that they stole the treasure from the holy monastery and there were no witnesses, then how would it get spread as their reputation? My campaign is urban and the PC’s have underlings that might blab. I’ve limited cards to being what survivors have seen, but other campaigns might want a omniscient PoV if there are divine or magical means of getting the info.
Random – Sometimes it is very clear what actions an NPC already knows, rolling randomly doesn’t help much then.
I’d love thoughts and feedback.