The Gaming Den

What's the best way to handle reputation in a game? Particularly the kind of wild west badass type of rep, where it means something!

I'd reckon it depends upon what system is in place. It would mechanically be different for d20 vs. deadlands vs. after sundown vs GURPS, etc.

Modifying overawe, persuasion, streetwise and other social interactions seems apt. The greater a reputation you have the greater an area you can expect to apply that bonus.

Yeah, in d20, you could probably have it grant bonuses to Diplomacy and/or Intimidate (especially if you track different types of reputation). While it doesn't make sense to give a boost to Sense Motive, it could impose a penalty on other's Bluff (which is really the same thing) if they are afraid or unwilling to lie to you.

In combat, it might manifest as a Frightful Presence aura, or perhaps a Calm Emotions type effect.

This has been discussed before.

The general result seems to be, no one can come up with anything that really works better than fairy tea party or isn't basically just fairy tea party with slightly more note taking and maybe an incremental number that doesn't really mean much and doesn't really increment reliably.

A lot of suggestions have in the past leaned toward using some sort of social currency system, but they a rife with emergent problems like apple stacking, heroes becoming social currency banks for other characters, and elaborate social currency trading scams in general.

Hilariously there was also that one time that Justin Bieber* did the whole "I challenge myself to write any rule you ask instantly and perfectly" and I told him to write one for basically this and... well... he failed in ways no one could even have imagined, opening our eyes to new levels of potential failure that a REALLY badly written reputation mechanic might achieve.

Save yourself the pain, just remember the cool things your players do, take a few notes if you need to, and sometimes remind them of it in play with impressed NPCs.

It is incredibly unlikely anything you are going to do is going to be more effective and useful than that, and pretty much anything anyone has ever proposed has instead turned out to be full of exploits and random laughable disaster.

* Not actually Justin Bieber. Look I know people took measures to prevent him from Google Alerting his way into every thread ever to mention his accursed name, but I'm still calling him Justin Bieber.

Edit : Though... come to think of it, if what you literally want is just for your adventures to just make you more badass... you do realize that is generally what experience/character advancement does... right?

What is 'fairy tea party'?

ghost whistler wrote:What is 'fairy tea party'?

just ad libbing with no rules.

ie make believe or let's pretend

Also don't mind phone lobster. He's ornery and hates fun.

Has anyone played with the reputation dice rules for the Firefly rpg?

This is probably a case where less is more. Just have broad tiers of reputation, give a bonus to appropriate interactions based on the tier, and eyeball when the PCs have done enough to raise a tier.

Every system I've seen that tracked reputation point by point with values for specific acts had weird edge cases like apple stacking, huge acts not counting for much, nonsensical rankings, or other problems like that. I'm not saying it's necessarily impossible to write a good one, but I'll believe it when I see it.

For those curious, apple stacking, s'far as I know originated from a thread about a social currency house rule, and the rule is discussed here.

It's not terminology that you'd know from anywhere else.

Anywho, social currency does not 1:1 map to a reputation mechanic, so while that thread does have some interesting points, it doesn't 100% apply here. Reputations don't have to be exchanged, they can just be a status that modifies some interactions and that's a heckuvalot easier to create a serviceable mechanic than a whole social currency.

I dunno or care much about the Firefly mechanics in particular, I just skimmed it to get a feel for this question. Maybe treat improved reputation as an Asset to help with Influence skill. And mostly do what PL said, just keep it in mind and role play it.

In a more structured game you may benefit from a more structured reputation system. It could be based off of character level simply enough, and maybe just make notes for how big a deal the characters are in certain regions. If they're known to niche groups, a town, a state, national celebrity, world famous and beyond.

Since its going to be MTP anyway, I prefer the Feng Shui method, where you simply have a blank to write in something like "Star pupil of the Guild of Assassins". Moreover, that system doesn't allow the GM to reach over the table, cross it out, and write in something more relevant to the factions in his railroad, but rather, makes him cross out some factions in his railroad to better integrate you.

Probably the best you're going to be able to pull off in a sandbox game is to give out titles and status which in turn serve as excuses o get circumstance modifiers to social rolls. If you're making a closed computer game, you can do something way more structured than that, but it's difficult to imagine how you might get it to work if the players are able to seriously influence the places they go and the people they interact with.

Most hard coded reputation systems get real stupid real fast the moment the players decide to get on a plane and go to France or some similar genre appropriate action in whatever game world they live in. I mean, Shadowrun 4's reputation system isn't the end of the world as long as the characters never leave Seattle, but when they do shit stops making sense in a hurry.

-Username17

For MTPishness, you could do worse than the HERO system method:

A reputation is a flavor tag which then has three components:

Scale: This is some numeric modifier to rolls where the reputation comes into play. This can be positive or negative depending on how the reputation is bought and what the reputation is.

Scope: This is how large a group of people know about the reputation. Any reputation Braus Kraus has is unlikely to be known outside local politics. Conversely, Andrew Carnegie and Fred Rogers had international reputations

Notoriety: This is how likely someone in the relevant group is to know the reputation. In HERO, it's handled with a roll under mechanic; which is kind of clunky. But the idea is that Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazerowski, Mean Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Jerome Bettis and Mario Lemiuex are all known to the vast majority of local sports fans and have the maximum here. For contrast, Vern Law, William Gay and Ulf Samuelson are much less well known local sports figures and fewer fans know of them.

Where it has to get fuzzy is exactly when each reputation does come into play:

So for example: Ben Rothlisberger could have reputations like:

"Multiple Super Bowl winning Quarterback" +3 bonus, large group (locals, sports fans, newscasters) 14- (max roll)

"Likely Date Rapist" -2 Penalty, large group (locals, sports fans, rival teams) 11- (medium roll as this has become old news)

The first would help him in trying to get a better contract with a football team while the second would hinder him in trying to get a date or various endorsements. But there would be a lot of fuzzy ground where either, neither or both could apply, and that is gonna have to be left to group argument and MC fiat.

Since I usually play MnM3e, reputation when not purely flavor boils down to either a circumstance bonus/minus or a complication granting a hero point. Anything else is, for me, just too much bookkeeping.

ghost whistler wrote:Has anyone played with the reputation dice rules for the Firefly rpg?

No, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that given it's from the Firefly rpg, it probably sucks donkey dick. With teeth. And herpes.

Man, I'm looking through Firefly for the first time in depth, and it's terrible.

You get typically a couple dice between d6-d10, and try to argue to get your special d8 trait or random assets included as much as you can. You roll em, add the highest pair and then compare to dice that the MC rolls to see how difficult it will be for various tasks.

So random DCs with negotiated dice pools sort of. And other players can lend dice if they can mind caulk why they should be able to help.

Initiative is kind of anything goes (whoever "deserves" to go first does), rounds are variable, stakes of rolls are variable. There's a lot up in the air, so much so that it reminds me of bearworld, but at least the MC isn't directed to be a douchebag and make you fail your successes.

Half the book content, or maybe more, is trying to rehash the entire TV series as it pertains to the game. As a Firefly nerd I disagree with plenty of their choices in character building, but meh. My favorite wtf at their sample material is that they list an example of a ship that has a couple traits "They Don’t Make These Anymore" which primarily makes it hard to get parts for, and "Ordinary" which primarily makes it easy to get parts for. This is an example they thought was helpful enough to take up page space.

What Frank and Phonelobster said. I try to think in terms of plausibility rather than in terms of CRPG bullshit like faction tables or good vs bad karma. For example, most people will probably keep things polite with Mike the Dragonslayer whether or not they agree with his politics. You know, on the grounds that Mike could probably kick them in the ass so hard that they turn inside out.

erik wrote:Man, I'm looking through Firefly for the first time in depth, and it's terrible.

Fair enough. I haven't played it. I like the idea of Cortex+, but I'm not completely convinced and I haven't played it. Sometimes the 'howdy pardner' dialogue can be irritating.

You get typically a couple dice between d6-d10, and try to argue to get your special d8 trait or random assets included as much as you can. You roll em, add the highest pair and then compare to dice that the MC rolls to see how difficult it will be for various tasks.

You don't try to argue to get your Distinctions (I presume you mean these traits), you get to use them. If the GM is forcing you to rationalise how you use them before allowing them to be included he's doing it wrong.

So random DCs with negotiated dice pools sort of. And other players can lend dice if they can mind caulk why they should be able to help.

I don't know what 'mind caulk' is and quite honestly am starting to wonder why you people talk in code all the time.

I accept the criticism for rolling a random difficulty number, though i think that's not how you're meant to look at it. It's just two people rolling off.

Initiative is kind of anything goes (whoever "deserves" to go first does), rounds are variable, stakes of rolls are variable. There's a lot up in the air, so much so that it reminds me of bearworld, but at least the MC isn't directed to be a douchebag and make you fail your successes.

I haven't read that part yet, but if it's like Marvel then it's not anything goes except for the GM decides who acts first and is meant to do that on a reasonable appraisl of the situation. YMMV. From there the process is not chaotic at all.

Half the book content, or maybe more, is trying to rehash the entire TV series as it pertains to the game.

I don't know what this means. Rehash? It presents an overview of each episode and how what happens would work in the game. It doesn't explicitly present the episodes as adventures giving players the choice to do things differently. Even if that were the case, why would that be a problem?

As a Firefly nerd I disagree with plenty of their choices in character building, but meh. My favorite wtf at their sample material is that they list an example of a ship that has a couple traits "They Don’t Make These Anymore" which primarily makes it hard to get parts for, and "Ordinary" which primarily makes it easy to get parts for. This is an example they thought was helpful enough to take up page space.

If true that's a mistake, but I'm not sure how that proves the rules are bad.

FrankTrollman wrote: I mean, Shadowrun 4's reputation system isn't the end of the world as long as the characters never leave Seattle, but when they do shit stops making sense in a hurry.

-Username17

A system with which I am unfamiliar.

Mind caulk is just filling in gaps in rules with imagination. It's intuitive enough that I thought it was not code per se.

The example of the ship wasn't bad rules just bad presentation. I was baffled as to why socially awkward Simon got a d8 social stat and others things like that. My complaint about half of the content being a fan guide is that they overdid it massively if it was to be just an example. I mean you have to get past 200 pages to find the initiative rules. It strikes me more like a fan guide than a rpg guide.

My complaint about arguable dice pools is that two characters in similar situations could wind up using different dice from a difference in system mastery. They give examples of trying to apply Distinction to nonstandard rolls, like using Companion status to circumvent the law. They offer it as something you may turn down but it still introduces some variability.

The mechanic of opposed rolls is and the layout are what made me call this terrible. The gimmicky language does rustle my jimmies and I don't know why since I like it in other games like dead lands.

erik wrote:Mind caulk is just filling in gaps in rules with imagination. It's intuitive enough that I thought it was not code per se.

I always thought fairy tea party was pretty intuitive too. Didn't think that was local insular code. I thought it was pretty much common preschool playground code.

I've always heard it referred to as Magic Tea Party, not Fairy. And before that term caught on, as "Cops & Robbers style".

ghost whistler wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote: I mean, Shadowrun 4's reputation system isn't the end of the world as long as the characters never leave Seattle, but when they do shit stops making sense in a hurry.

-Username17

A system with which I am unfamiliar.

Honestly, just go run a google search if something confuses you. Go and look up a Shadowrun 4th edition core book, and find the relevant passage. You're asking for suggestions, not us guessing what games you know/like that happen to do what you want.

That said, the HERO Method does sound promising. You could also look at FantasyCraft's, its d20, you'd have to up the reputation gains by I think 50-100%, and might not be good enough.

What if reputation ran on a system similar to XP. One of the problems of the reputation or social currency system is apple-stacking, so what if it worked like XP in that eventually such minor deeds stop giving you extra points?

The overall goal of a reputation system is to make NPCs react differently to the PCs because they're badass motherfuckers. I could also see using one so that people don't need to put ranks in Diplomacy to change attitudes. This is an admirable goal.

There are two basic ways to do this- one is to build a score based on actual deeds. This might as well work like xp, like wiseman suggests. The other is to just give characters a bonus to social interaction tied directly to level. This latter way to do things is a better way to achieve the goal of "don't make people have ranks of diplomacy to change npc attitudes," but you're still going to want some non-level modifiers, like the Necromancer getting pro-Intimidation, anti-Negotiation mods with superstitious villagers and the Soldier getting Intimidation boosts with low-ranking npc soldiers and negotiation bonuses with same rank, and penalties to both with top brass.

If you're going to track every deed, then you really need to track every deed twice. Lets say the adventure is "rescue winsome maidens from the priests of Vecna before they're sacrificed in a vile ceremony with a horny vampire demon." If the heroes succeed, then they'll likely get a bonus to their rep with the families and neighbors of said lasses, but they need to take a penalty when they deal with Vecna cultists in the future. If Vecna cultists (in general) are impressed by the heroes thwarting their plan to sacrifice women to their god, there's a problem. Which is not to say you can't have the occasional NPC who is impressed by the heroes thwarting his side's plans, but Jimmy Olsen, Cultist of Vecna needs to be an exception.

My point is that "Reputation By Deed" systems need to account for the fact that every deed worthy of renown will have people who approve and people who disapprove.

If I were to start building a system for reputation, I'd probably just make Diplomacy and Intimidate options for all characters with a bonus based on their level, and then they get tags that modify it, like Spooky for Necromancers and Witches so that they intimidate peasants easily, but will have a hard time buying horses or food from them.

Wiseman wrote:What if reputation ran on a system similar to XP. One of the problems of the reputation or social currency system is apple-stacking, so what if it worked like XP in that eventually such minor deeds stop giving you extra points?

That sounds fairly fine when you are tracking one total for one faction in one region, the moment you are tracking it multiple times the small amount of complexity of that sort of tracking system would multiply into a big hassle pretty fast.

Which is the main problem with such things in general.

If I were going to attempt to implement reputation "like XP" I would go in a different "XP like" direction and make it a single abstracted progress track that players spent freely on (reputation themed) permanent options of their choice.

It would have a lot of flaws, including the bit where you slay a dragon on the North Continent and some clown of a player spends the Rep on becoming Pope of the Dragon Lover Religion on the South continent.

But "the bit players like" still seems like the better "XP-like" thing to mimic rather than "just the complex book keeping bit".