Influence

Influence represents your character's social capital. Characters with high influence are thought leaders in their spheres and communities. When someone with high influence makes their opinion known, others take notice and often emulate the position, either to curry favor, or simply because the influential character is highly regarded for their expertise. Influence comes in two types: the base and the periphery. A character's base is the core of their social circles, these are the people that your character can always count on. Losing one's base requires a major faux pas or a sustained campaign on the part of an enemy. A character's periphery is a collection of other individuals, often in different spheres, who are paying attention to the character but don't feel the same degree of loyalty or respect towards that character. Peripheral influence is often fleeting, creating a phenomenon known as the 'Influence Window' where a strong coalition is available to perform a task, but will rapidly come apart as differing visions for that task begin to sow new conflicts that threaten the coalition's fabric.

Influence is designed to run 'off camera' and over long time frames. The shortest possible time frame to complete an action using your character's influence is one week. Months are not unreasonable time increments for many influence actions. Players wishing to play the influence game with their characters are well advised to learn patience. Voter opinion doesn't turn on a dime.

These rules are considered 'in beta' and as such are subject to change. Buyer beware.

Basic Mechanics

These are the basic mechanics for our Influence system.

Terms

Base

Your character's "Base" represents the people with whom they have the closest relationship. To these people, your character is a thought leader and very little can be done to change that. Characters may not yet have fully realized their Base at game start, and the maximum size of one's Base is determined by some stat computation.

Periphery

Your character's "Periphery" represents the people your character has influence over, but that influence is tenuous. These are not members of your Base, but rather represent a coalition of people who are paying attention to your character's leadership in this particular moment. Periphery coalitions frequently come apart on their own, and certainly won't appreciate being told to die on a hill for you. The more you ask of the Periphery, the more rapidly it will decay. The larger the Periphery is, the more rapidly it will decay.

Sphere

A sphere represents a particular type of power that is held by the people who are listening to you. There are many spheres and some characters may have access to spheres that don't exist for other characters. You will generally only see the spheres that your character has at least some influence over. For example, influence over voters, pundits, and political columnists is represented by the Politics influence sphere. Influence over editors, producers, actors unions, and columnists (including political columnists) is represented by the Media influence sphere. Influence over union governance types (including actors unions), bureaucrats and scholars who study workforce economics, and so on, is represented by the Labor influence sphere.

Influence spheres overlap. This is a feature, not a bug, and is working as intended.

Points

Influence is represented by a number of points in one or more 'spheres.' A character may have a maximum of five points, plus one point for each point of the Influence and Fame backgrounds, less one point per dot in the Arcane background, in their Base. Points within the Base are not subject to maintenance tests.

At the end of each RL month, any points in excess of the Base are subject to a roll, performed by staff, using an attribute and ability pairing determined situationally, with a difficulty of 3 + the number of points of influence in the Periphery. A failure results in the loss of a point of influence and the inability to use the Cultivate action for the following month. A botch results in an additional lost point per negative success and possible damage to ongoing influence actions. Multitasking penalties apply to the monthly maintenance test.

Frames

Actions require a Frame. A Frame is a narrative, it must be supplied by the player when the action is commenced and may need to be periodically refreshed or updated to reflect changing circumstances. Frames can be as simple as 'So-and-so is a scoundrel!' or quite complex indeed. The important thing is that the Frame establishes the social narrative reasoning for WHY people should follow your lead on this.

Events

Influence is frequently aimed at Events. An Event is a social phenomenon that often has material impacts on the world. Every election season is an Event, for example, with the material impacts being a change in political leadership. Other Events might include a particular park opening or closing, a development project getting approval or not, a gang war escalating suddenly. Every Event has a Prime Mover, someone who decided the thing should happen and wanted it badly enough to commit influence to get the ball rolling. Dozens of events are happening every moment, many succeed by default, some require the faction in favor of the event occurring to reach a critical mass or otherwise meet some kind of objective.

Actions

Each week, your character may engage in one or more Influence Actions. These actions are described below. Actions are begun with a Mobilization roll. A mobilization roll is an ability + attribute test (Charisma + Leadership, for example) based on the nature of your influence. Each success mobilizes one point of influence. It may take multiple weeks to fully gear up a massive influence campaign. Once mobilized, points may be demobilized at will, and they will automatically demobilize after their activity is mooted in some fashion. Retasking active points of influence requires a mobilization roll at -2 difficulty.

Attack

You may use your influence to directly attack someone else's influence. This is basically a game of 'he-said-she-said' writ large, with all the petty bickering that implies. People who engage in lots of attack actions are generally disliked by society and so this action can backfire and becomes more dangerous the longer you perform it. This is especially tricky to perform against someone's Base. This creates a new Event.

An attack action involves disseminating damaging information to individuals who would otherwise be inclined to support someone. It requires some degree of knowledge about the nature of someone's influence as well as a Frame that highlights the ways in which the people over whom the influence is held are better off if they end that relationship.

The base difficulty for an attack action is 7. The subject of the attack reflexively rolls Charisma + Subterfuge, Etiquette, or Politics (depending upon the Frame) to resist the attack. Successes above and beyond the defensive roll mean a point of Periphery influence is lost by the target. At this point, the target is aware of the attack and may respond accordingly. Attacks are relatively easy to trace back to their source, but only one such effort may be made per attacker.

Block

You may use your influence to inhibit an Event.

Mobilized points are rolled against a difficulty of 6. Successes reduce the likelihood that an event will complete. Not all events can be completely prevented, but many can be and the rest can be significantly delayed.

Boost

You may use your influence to accelerate an Event.

Mobilize points are rolled against a difficulty of 6. Successes increase the likelihood that an event will complete and/or advance that event towards its objective. Events are not necessarily guaranteed to succeed even if their objectives are met.

Cultivate

Cultivation is a slow process wherein you use the friends you've already made to make more friends. The more influence a person gathers the more existing periphery may object to the arrival of new periphery, especially if they are activated together.

Mobilized points are rolled against a difficulty of 8. Every third success garners a new dot of influence dependent upon the frame. If there is a maintenance test in the week that the dot is cultivated, that test is handled as if this dot had not yet been cultivated. It is gained even if there is a loss and the cultivate action is locked out.

Utility

You may use your influence to produce minor events or gain boons from your sphere. These functions vary per sphere and are subject to ST judgement. Examples might include: using infrastructure influence to create a blackout on a specified date; sabotaging someone's credit rating through your Fiance influence; arranging for someone to have a meeting with a black market arms dealer using your Crime influence; etc.

A utility function does not require mobilization. Instead, a number of points are instantly mobilized and rolled vs. a difficulty of 4 for a basic utility (something routinely within someone's job description), 6 for a moderate ask (something that would risk someone's job if they got caught, but they probably won't get caught), and 8 for a big ask (something that is likely to get the person doing it in trouble, but they owe you a favor). If ANY dice come up '1' during the roll, the next Maintenance test is at +1 difficulty.

Multitasking

It is possible to have more than one influence action proceeding at the same time. There are penalties associated with this. Actions are classified as Simple or Complex depending upon the nature of the action and its frame. A complex messaging campaign can be difficult to sustain.

Every third simple action results in +1 difficulty to all actions and maintenance tests. Every complex action does the same.

Attack and Cultivate are always Complex.