DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 39C: Liberation of the Slaves
Tor became a whirling dervish – a one-man electrical storm – at the top of the stairs, holding off the churning wall of fur. Several of the ratlings leapt down onto the stairs behind him, surrounding him utterly, but they were no match for the speed or ferocity of Tor’s electrical blade.
When the furious job was done, Tor and Elestra quickly got the prisoners up the stairs and out the front door of the temple. They sent them, with money in their pockets and food in their bellies, to the watch station in Delvers’ Square.
Particularly in campaigns where the PCs are Big Damn Heroes™, I think it can be really powerful to show how their actions have earned them a reputation.
You save the world a few times and people start taking notice, ya know?
One technique I particularly like is the Big Social Event, as we saw back in Session 12: A Party at Castle Shard. As I discussed in Game Structure: Party Planning:
I’ve … found them to be effective as a way of signaling when the PCs have changed their sphere of influence. You rescued the mayor’s daughter from a dragon? Chances are you’re going to be the belle of the ball. And you’re going to discover that powerful and important people have become very interested in making your acquaintance.
When these events work, they’re exciting and engaging experiences, often providing a memorable epoch for the players and spinning out contacts and consequences that will drive the next phase of the campaign.
But, more broadly, the attitude of the world towards the PCs should shift. Partly because the players get a huge thrill out of their actions being recognized. Partly because it just makes sense.
One thing I find frequently useful for this is some form of Reputation system. For In the Shadow of the Spire, I’ve been using a streamlined variant of the Reputation mechanics from the 3rd Edition Unearthed Arcana sourcebook.
The short version is:
- Stuff that the PCs do earn them Fame or Infamy points, which collectively create a reputation bonus.
- When the PCs meet a new NPC for the first time, the NPC makes a DC 25 skill or Intelligence check + the PCs’ reputation bonus.
- On a success, they recognize the PCs. Their reaction depends on their opinion of the actions the PCs’ took to earn their Fame/Infamy (and this may also inflict bonuses or penalties to subsequent social skill checks equal to the reputation bonus).
I can also flip that around and give NPCs a Reputation score so that PCs can recognize them with a successful Knowledge (Local) + reputation check.
In this case, I decided that recusing the slaves from the Temple of the Rat God would create a big enough splash that it would add a half point to their PCs’ reputation. To track this, I have a short section in my campaign status document that looks like this:
REPUTATION
FAME: 5.5
INFAMY: 0
FAME: Rescued Phon. Recovered Jasin’s body. Castle Shard party. Shilukar’s bounty. Association with Dominic. Tavan Zith riot. Freeing slaves and children from Temple of the Rat God.
The quick rep reference basically gives me a menu of stuff that I can have NPCs who recognize the PCs mention. (“Didn’t I see you at the Harvesttime party at Castle Shard?” or “Oh my god! You saved my brother during the riot in Oldtown!” or “I heard you helped us out on that Shilukar case.”)
In practice, I grade these on a pseudo-logarithmic scale: Rescuing the pregnant Phon was enough to get earn their first point of Fame (people might recognize them as “the delvers who rescued that pregnant woman!”), but after that they aren’t going to earn Fame for every single person they rescue.
In any case, I’ve found this minimalist reputation system to be pretty effective. It tends to only be meaningful once every few sessions (although as their Reputation grows, that becomes more frequent), but the maintenance cost is extremely low and the moments when it’s triggered provide nice little spontaneous pops of payoff and, in some cases, unexpected twists.
Campaign Journal: Session 40A – Running the Campaign: Show the Help
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
I had an idea like this for a megadungeon campaign that would tie into completing quests on behalf of townsfolk, but also into the way treasure itself was used. As a player, I always liked the idea of keeping a bunch of the treasure I found even though it had no mechanical benefit: “yeah, this cool antique chandelier could be pawned for some cash, or I could hang it up in our headquarters! oh, I’m definitely hanging this wyvern head on my wall…”
“Useful” treasure like weapons is usually considered to be more efficient to keep than to sell: ie you can sell the sword for 25% of its base price (or whatever), but if you need a sword, keeping it is better than selling it and buying new.
So my idea was that you can “spend” cash to improve your Prestige by wearing nicer clothes around town, holding fancy parties, whatever. Or you can decorate with items you found in the dungeon. That 1000g chandelier will only sell for 250 in cash, but it “counts as” spending 1000g to Prestige if you hang it prominently in your stateroom.
Doing Quests for people would still be the main way to improve Prestige, but this seemed like a cool way to combine it with the desire for our successful treasure hunters to actually eat off expensive plates instead of living like hobos.
Pathfinder 2E has a great reputation subsystem that I’ve been using in my current campaign–it works somewhat similarly to what you’ve outlined here. Definitely a great way to record how the PCs’ actions have affected the people around them.
Do you take into account different factions or regions? Maybe revitalizing the forest gains them fame with the druids, but infamy with the nearby town whose livelihoods depended on that new terrain. Or maybe what they did for a town, doesn’t even reach the neighboring kingdom, and even if it did they don’t care.
Regarding the scale on which the party gains fame, that reminds me of Elan (attention received by the gods) from Anima Beyond Fantasy. Basically starting to receive attention of a god at first is easy, as long as you act according to their values. But as you get more Elan, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out among the others favoured by a god, so your action have to become bigger and more meaningful. A good example for the god of law and justice would be that at first you gain Elan by following the law or punishing criminals, but at high level Elan you might have to overthrow a corrupt goverment to stand out in your gods eyes.