Character Reputation in Skies of Mor-ladron

In the last post, I talked about factions and the rules I plan on using to track their goals. Now, I want to talk about how players can interact with these factions using reputation.

Reputation Levels

Reputation is a reflection of the characters' relationships with a given faction. Reputation affects how characters interact with people in those factions, smoothing a conversation or throwing up barriers.

Players track their relationships with the factions using reputation levels. Each player will keep track of their character's reputation with each faction. What happens if one member of the party has a particularly bad reputation? Well, they'll just have to remember to have the outlaw stay outside when they're meeting with a member of the constabulary.

Reputation levels match up with Draw Steel's negotiation starting attitudes, so in order from worst to best we have:

• Hostile
• Suspicious
• Neutral
• Open
• Friendly
• Trusting

I figured if we already have these, there's no need to shake things up—plus, one of the main reasons I think characters will interact with friendly factions is to get help from them, which will involve negotiating anyway. I thought about having the whole party share a reputation level with each faction, but I want individual players' faction-related titles and complications to modify their reputations.

Characters can increase their reputation with factions by doing things for them directly. This could be minor tasks or making decisions that benefit the faction during a larger quest. But it must be something that the faction asked them to do. Characters can't just luck into a good relationship with a faction unless they have a lot of renown.

At this point, it is up to the director to decide when the characters have done enough to increase their reputation with a faction. The characters need to do more or bigger things for the faction to rise in the ranks, so it should take more effort to go from friendly to trusting than it did to go from neutral to open.

From a mechanics perspective, if characters meet or beat a faction's impression score (which I talked about in the last post), then they can start off plus or minus one reputation level, depending on how previous actions align (or don't) with the faction's goals.

Moving up the reputation track with one faction can cause a character's reputation to go down with another, based on the relationships between the factions. If factions are hostile or distrustful of each other then the following can happen:

• Reaching Friendly with Faction A will cause reputation with Faction B to drop to Suspicious.
• Reaching Trusting with Faction A will cause reputation with Faction B to drop to Suspicious or, if already Suspicious, to Hostile.
• Reaching Hostile with Faction A will cause reputation with Faction B to raise to Neutral or, if already Neutral, then to Open.

With any of these shifts, already being past the level of reputation mentioned means the reputation change has no effect.

Reputation Score

Reputation score is an optional rule—I am still deciding if I want to use it. It takes the reputation levels and assigns a score to them. So, instead of the Director telling the players when they can raise their reputation level, the Director can say, "If you do X for the faction, you will receive Y reputation score points."

Much like my wealth XP, it's mostly a way for players to reasonably guess when they might reach the next level. It could look something like this.

You could go even as far as creating different scores for different factions if you wanted some to be easier to befriend or anger. Although fun, that might get too into the weeds. I like the simplicity of plopping the name of a level on a character sheet, and giving the players more structure for how things work can make results seem more fair and less hand-wavy. I will have to ask my players what they think.

But what do you think? Is this reputation system something you would use? Would you stick to reputation levels or also throw in the reputation score?

In my next post, I'll share some of the factions shaking things up in Stormspire, which is where my players will be visiting when we start playing again in the new year. See you then!