Game Concept: Infamy/Notoriety
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2021 4:01 pm
This is loose draft of a concept that has been knocking around in my head the past couple of days.
Right now we have a lot of new, abstract systems that represent a character's social influence. Support, subversion, IP, etc. Characters who want to become "more powerful" are highly motivated to make lots of IC friends, rank up in a Guild, be as popular and loved as possible, etc. This really discourages criminal/heretical play as most of these archetypes of characters will still spend ~85% of their RP time maintaining their 'legitimate' friendships to get the influence and cash they need to do things like city metric votes, being an influential supporter, etc.
It also discourages lawful types from being genuinely oppressive or 'scary' to deal with as antagonistic Inquisitors or Reeves are quickly and easily ousted by their opposition now that they no longer need to be killed to be ousted.
My suggestion is a parallel track to Prestige along the lines of 'infamy' or 'notoriety' that provides benefits to characters who are 'dangerous'. For instance, for criminals/mages committing crimes in public (ie ones that report to reeves/knights), successfully stealing, putting casting unpleasant spells on people, fulfilling black market jobs, etc. And for law enforcement types, things like arrests, public punishments, and so on. Similar IP, wealth, and cosmetic benefits apply, and criminals wishing to hide their identity could create a 'infamy alias' and attach the cosmetic flair to their concealed sdesc if desired.
To discourage serial griefing, ranks would decay more slowly than prestige and strict limits would be placed on the amount of potential infamy gained from actions that harm or annoy player characters, like theft or assault.
I would be curious to both player and staff thoughts on this idea as a general concept.
Right now we have a lot of new, abstract systems that represent a character's social influence. Support, subversion, IP, etc. Characters who want to become "more powerful" are highly motivated to make lots of IC friends, rank up in a Guild, be as popular and loved as possible, etc. This really discourages criminal/heretical play as most of these archetypes of characters will still spend ~85% of their RP time maintaining their 'legitimate' friendships to get the influence and cash they need to do things like city metric votes, being an influential supporter, etc.
It also discourages lawful types from being genuinely oppressive or 'scary' to deal with as antagonistic Inquisitors or Reeves are quickly and easily ousted by their opposition now that they no longer need to be killed to be ousted.
My suggestion is a parallel track to Prestige along the lines of 'infamy' or 'notoriety' that provides benefits to characters who are 'dangerous'. For instance, for criminals/mages committing crimes in public (ie ones that report to reeves/knights), successfully stealing, putting casting unpleasant spells on people, fulfilling black market jobs, etc. And for law enforcement types, things like arrests, public punishments, and so on. Similar IP, wealth, and cosmetic benefits apply, and criminals wishing to hide their identity could create a 'infamy alias' and attach the cosmetic flair to their concealed sdesc if desired.
To discourage serial griefing, ranks would decay more slowly than prestige and strict limits would be placed on the amount of potential infamy gained from actions that harm or annoy player characters, like theft or assault.
I would be curious to both player and staff thoughts on this idea as a general concept.
