Greywander
2022-10-12, 06:39 PM
I had this on my mind recently, and although the idea was originally in the context of a video game, I'll bet it could be adapted to tabletop. Some aspects might actually be easier to do in a tabletop game than a video game.
Some time ago, I was playing with the idea of a video game in which you play as an evil overlord. So sort of a simulation strategy game where you run your evil empire, keep your people from overthrowing you, dispose of meddling heroes, subjugate nearby kingdoms, and so on. Nothing concrete, just some vague ideas of how the gameplay might look. One aspect was, of course, a reputation system that influenced how you were perceived.
More recently, I picked up One Piece: World Seeker while it was on sale, and it's... okay. It got me thinking about how I might design on open world pirate game in a setting similar to that of One Piece. As above, one aspect of that would be a reputation system, and it was feeling pretty similar to what I'd had in mind for the evil overlord game.
One interesting coincidence is that both of these game concepts have you playing as a nominal bad guy. Not that you can't play a good character, but that's not what people usually think of when they think about pirates or dictators. This would definitely have an impact on how a reputation system would work, with attitudes toward you defaulting to hostile (though not necessarily aggressive) until you've proven you can be trusted. Oddly, I think this can still work in the context of adventurers, as many adventurers are little better than bandits. Especially given how rampant murderhoboism is. Even if your players aren't themselves murderhobos, many of the NPC adventurers probably are.
Anyway, the system I was thinking about would have four "stats": Fame, Fear, Respect, and Love. I'm not sure I'm totally happy with this system, though, as it has some oddities I'll get into later.
Fame is the measure of how well known you are. The more famous you are, the farther your reputation will proceed you, and the more social influence you'll have.
All aspects of reputation are a bit of a double-edged sword. Keeping fame low helps preserve anonymity. In the pirate game, you could walk around in front of marines in broad daylight without them reacting at all, because they have no idea who you are or that you're a pirate. On the other hand, your word carries no weight because you're just some random nobody. Low fame tends towards neutral attitudes because no one has an established opinion of you yet, allowing you to make your own first impression.
By contrast, high fame tends to polarize attitudes toward you. People you've never met before will welcome you with smiles, or shoot you on sight. They know who you are and have had ample time to decide whether you're a threat to be crushed or a potential ally to be wooed. High fame makes it more likely that factions or individuals have heard of you, and influences how much they may know about you. If they've only heard rumors then they may know your name but not your face.
Fame can be difficult to keep low, as it tends to rise naturally as you accomplish great deeds. Telling people who you are and what you've done can make fame rise more quickly, while withholding your identity or even doing deeds in secret can slow your rising fame.
Fear is a measure of how dangerous people think you are. Even your allies fear you, an acknowledgement of your strength and confidence that you have their back in tough situations, as well as the certainty of retribution should they cross you.
High fear makes it easier to intimidate people, and makes others less likely to provoke you. By contrast, low fear can result in being bullied and having your empty threats ignored.
As with fame, there are pros and cons to high and low fear. High fear can bend people to your will without having to fight. Those who might have considered you a rival will instead cower before you and refrain from challenging you, already convinced it would end poorly for themselves. However, it also makes you more visibly a threat, and those who might have overlooked you for more important things will make it a priority to crush you before you become an even greater threat.
Low fear has the opposite effect, making you look weak and subservient. If people don't see you as a threat, they won't bother keeping you in check, and may even see you as a useful tool who will fall in line. This is really useful if you're the scheming sort who wants your enemies to underestimate you, and to infiltrate and destroy a rival from within, or even take control of a faction for yourself. No one would expect a cowardly servant to attack the king, so no one would think twice about the servant going in and out of the throne room during the course of their duties.
Fear generally rises as you defeat enemies and cause destruction. Defeating a few strong enemies generally has a greater effect than defeating many weak enemies. More metaphorical destruction also applies, like destabilizing a rival faction until it falls apart.
Respect is a measure of how honorable and trustworthy people think you are. Keeping your word, only attacking acceptable targets, sparing those who surrender, and so on make people respect you, while breaking your word, attacking civilians, and executing prisoners makes you look dishonorable.
Of course, there's some flexibility. Not every code of honor is the same, the important thing is that you have one and stick to it. For example, pirates might consider a merchant vessel an acceptable target, while sparing the civilians on board. This is probably one thing that's easier in a tabletop system where you can ad lib the specific tenets of your code on the spot, instead of having to pre-program all possible tenets and what does or doesn't count as following or breaking them.
The advantages of high respect are many. People will be more willing to enter into agreements with you, or even take you at your word without some kind of guarantee or collateral or threat of punishment if you go back on your word. Your enemies will be more likely to spare you if you are defeated. Non-combatants will feel more at ease around you, trusting you won't attack them so long as they don't give you a reason to. Enemies may also challenge you to one-on-one duels instead of ganging up on you.
There aren't really any benefits to having low respect, per se, but there can be benefits to conducting yourself in a disreputable manner. High respect characters can be taken advantage of, knowing they're unlikely to break their word while the disreputable character can break their word any time it is convenient. It's also generally much easier and more lucrative to go after civilians.
Love is the measure of how likeable people find you. High love shifts the attitudes of people more towards friendly, and causes even your enemies to treat you more favorably. It can illicit a negative reaction against those who commit heinous deeds against you, making it more difficult to oppose you. But with affection comes entitlement. Those who perceive you as kind and heroic will expect you to perform kind and heroic deeds on their behalf, and failure to live up to those expectations can damage your reputation.
And that's about it. Beyond that, I was thinking this could be supplemented with reputation traits that add a bit of fine tuning. For example, if you betray an ally, you might get a Betrayer trait that causes no one to fully trust you. Or, if you never bend to intimidation even against a superior enemy, you might get a Fearless trait that tells others intimidating you is a waste of time.
One thing I'm not sure about is if these four stats should be able to go negative. Can you be so un-famous that even people who should know who you are don't? Can you become so much of a doormat that even civilians bully you? Respect and love make more sense to go negative if you get a reputation as being actively dishonorable or become so unlikeable that people just hate you without knowing why. And this is where playing as a nominal bad guy might simplify this: it's assumed by default that a pirate will be dishonorable and unlikeable, so raising your love and respect is just you fighting against that stereotype. If you adhere to the stereotype then it's just business as usual, no need for negative reputation.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on this? How can it be improved? How would you implement it into whatever system you're currently playing?
Some time ago, I was playing with the idea of a video game in which you play as an evil overlord. So sort of a simulation strategy game where you run your evil empire, keep your people from overthrowing you, dispose of meddling heroes, subjugate nearby kingdoms, and so on. Nothing concrete, just some vague ideas of how the gameplay might look. One aspect was, of course, a reputation system that influenced how you were perceived.
More recently, I picked up One Piece: World Seeker while it was on sale, and it's... okay. It got me thinking about how I might design on open world pirate game in a setting similar to that of One Piece. As above, one aspect of that would be a reputation system, and it was feeling pretty similar to what I'd had in mind for the evil overlord game.
One interesting coincidence is that both of these game concepts have you playing as a nominal bad guy. Not that you can't play a good character, but that's not what people usually think of when they think about pirates or dictators. This would definitely have an impact on how a reputation system would work, with attitudes toward you defaulting to hostile (though not necessarily aggressive) until you've proven you can be trusted. Oddly, I think this can still work in the context of adventurers, as many adventurers are little better than bandits. Especially given how rampant murderhoboism is. Even if your players aren't themselves murderhobos, many of the NPC adventurers probably are.
Anyway, the system I was thinking about would have four "stats": Fame, Fear, Respect, and Love. I'm not sure I'm totally happy with this system, though, as it has some oddities I'll get into later.
Fame is the measure of how well known you are. The more famous you are, the farther your reputation will proceed you, and the more social influence you'll have.
All aspects of reputation are a bit of a double-edged sword. Keeping fame low helps preserve anonymity. In the pirate game, you could walk around in front of marines in broad daylight without them reacting at all, because they have no idea who you are or that you're a pirate. On the other hand, your word carries no weight because you're just some random nobody. Low fame tends towards neutral attitudes because no one has an established opinion of you yet, allowing you to make your own first impression.
By contrast, high fame tends to polarize attitudes toward you. People you've never met before will welcome you with smiles, or shoot you on sight. They know who you are and have had ample time to decide whether you're a threat to be crushed or a potential ally to be wooed. High fame makes it more likely that factions or individuals have heard of you, and influences how much they may know about you. If they've only heard rumors then they may know your name but not your face.
Fame can be difficult to keep low, as it tends to rise naturally as you accomplish great deeds. Telling people who you are and what you've done can make fame rise more quickly, while withholding your identity or even doing deeds in secret can slow your rising fame.
Fear is a measure of how dangerous people think you are. Even your allies fear you, an acknowledgement of your strength and confidence that you have their back in tough situations, as well as the certainty of retribution should they cross you.
High fear makes it easier to intimidate people, and makes others less likely to provoke you. By contrast, low fear can result in being bullied and having your empty threats ignored.
As with fame, there are pros and cons to high and low fear. High fear can bend people to your will without having to fight. Those who might have considered you a rival will instead cower before you and refrain from challenging you, already convinced it would end poorly for themselves. However, it also makes you more visibly a threat, and those who might have overlooked you for more important things will make it a priority to crush you before you become an even greater threat.
Low fear has the opposite effect, making you look weak and subservient. If people don't see you as a threat, they won't bother keeping you in check, and may even see you as a useful tool who will fall in line. This is really useful if you're the scheming sort who wants your enemies to underestimate you, and to infiltrate and destroy a rival from within, or even take control of a faction for yourself. No one would expect a cowardly servant to attack the king, so no one would think twice about the servant going in and out of the throne room during the course of their duties.
Fear generally rises as you defeat enemies and cause destruction. Defeating a few strong enemies generally has a greater effect than defeating many weak enemies. More metaphorical destruction also applies, like destabilizing a rival faction until it falls apart.
Respect is a measure of how honorable and trustworthy people think you are. Keeping your word, only attacking acceptable targets, sparing those who surrender, and so on make people respect you, while breaking your word, attacking civilians, and executing prisoners makes you look dishonorable.
Of course, there's some flexibility. Not every code of honor is the same, the important thing is that you have one and stick to it. For example, pirates might consider a merchant vessel an acceptable target, while sparing the civilians on board. This is probably one thing that's easier in a tabletop system where you can ad lib the specific tenets of your code on the spot, instead of having to pre-program all possible tenets and what does or doesn't count as following or breaking them.
The advantages of high respect are many. People will be more willing to enter into agreements with you, or even take you at your word without some kind of guarantee or collateral or threat of punishment if you go back on your word. Your enemies will be more likely to spare you if you are defeated. Non-combatants will feel more at ease around you, trusting you won't attack them so long as they don't give you a reason to. Enemies may also challenge you to one-on-one duels instead of ganging up on you.
There aren't really any benefits to having low respect, per se, but there can be benefits to conducting yourself in a disreputable manner. High respect characters can be taken advantage of, knowing they're unlikely to break their word while the disreputable character can break their word any time it is convenient. It's also generally much easier and more lucrative to go after civilians.
Love is the measure of how likeable people find you. High love shifts the attitudes of people more towards friendly, and causes even your enemies to treat you more favorably. It can illicit a negative reaction against those who commit heinous deeds against you, making it more difficult to oppose you. But with affection comes entitlement. Those who perceive you as kind and heroic will expect you to perform kind and heroic deeds on their behalf, and failure to live up to those expectations can damage your reputation.
And that's about it. Beyond that, I was thinking this could be supplemented with reputation traits that add a bit of fine tuning. For example, if you betray an ally, you might get a Betrayer trait that causes no one to fully trust you. Or, if you never bend to intimidation even against a superior enemy, you might get a Fearless trait that tells others intimidating you is a waste of time.
One thing I'm not sure about is if these four stats should be able to go negative. Can you be so un-famous that even people who should know who you are don't? Can you become so much of a doormat that even civilians bully you? Respect and love make more sense to go negative if you get a reputation as being actively dishonorable or become so unlikeable that people just hate you without knowing why. And this is where playing as a nominal bad guy might simplify this: it's assumed by default that a pirate will be dishonorable and unlikeable, so raising your love and respect is just you fighting against that stereotype. If you adhere to the stereotype then it's just business as usual, no need for negative reputation.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on this? How can it be improved? How would you implement it into whatever system you're currently playing?