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Streamlining favors

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Fri, 2012-04-27 07:16
#1
Smokeskin Smokeskin's picture
Streamlining favors
The tracking of favors refreshing seem tedious, and the "two-way street" idea where the GM has to ask for return favors unrelated to the game and take away rep if they don't help when asked just seems to lack a mechanic. It also gets a bit in the way of the story, but if the GM doesn't do it the system gets quite unbalanced. What I'm thinking is you could dispense with favor refresh rates and the "two way street", and instead use my streamlining rule of the Favors Owed Score. You'd note your Rep Score and associated Favors Owed Score for that network as "Rep - FOS", for example if your unmodified @-rep is 62 and you Favors Owed Score is 4, you'd note that as @-rep: 62 - 4 on your sheet. You'll always use your effective Rep Score = Rep - FOS for rolls, favor modifiers, etc. In the above example, he'd be at an effective Rep of 62 - 4 = 58 and have dropped a bracket down in terms of Networking modifiers. You modify your FOS based on the Networking roll when looking for favors: Excellent/critical success: favor granted - your standing and past contributions means someone was happy to help Success: favor granted, equal favor owed Failure: favor not granted Severe/critical failure: favor not granted, equal favor owed - you've asked for too much and need to prove yourself to the network When you owe a favor, you simply add the favor level to your FOS. To reduce your FOS, you have to do favors for the network - reduce the FOS by the level of the of favor performed. These can simply be jobs (where the rep gain/loss from favors on pg. 385 of EP is for story-related events only). In general, owed favors for favors granted should be repaid with favors of equal or higher level, while owed favors for failed Network rolls can be repaid at 1 level less. If deemed necessary to avoid abuse, owed favors can be tracked and repaid individually. What do you think? Less bookkeeping, simpler and faster, the "two-way street" of favors gets a clear mechanic. I also like that the very severe rep burn for using favors that hasn't refreshed gets removed - instead you'll just get to owe favors and see your effective rep score tank until you repay them if you ask for too much, but it does allow players to call in more favors im general.
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Fri, 2012-04-27 11:54
Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture
Re: Streamlining favors
We can always try it in our game, and see how it works
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Fri, 2012-04-27 12:14
Xagroth Xagroth's picture
Re: Streamlining favors
I just had an idea before, which I think is a little more fun and really easy: poker-sized cards are made indicating faction and favour level, with a color code to differenciate between the players. Print the cards, and put them inside sleeves with a cheap poker-sized card (or Magic TG cheap cards, or even some cut pieces of cardboard). Then, to ask for a favour, the player just hands the card to the GM, which will return it to the player after the ingame time has passed. You can mark the card with a whiteboard pen to indicate the "date" of expenditure or return.
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Fri, 2012-04-27 15:57
thelabmonkey thelabmonkey's picture
Re: Streamlining favors
Xagroth wrote:
I just had an idea before, which I think is a little more fun and really easy: poker-sized cards are made indicating faction and favour level, with a color code to differenciate between the players. Print the cards, and put them inside sleeves with a cheap poker-sized card (or Magic TG cheap cards, or even some cut pieces of cardboard). Then, to ask for a favour, the player just hands the card to the GM, which will return it to the player after the ingame time has passed. You can mark the card with a whiteboard pen to indicate the "date" of expenditure or return.
THIS. This needs to happen. Maybe this weekend I can put together some D&D 4e power-card style favor cards... have a couple spots for chars to pencil in their networking skill/bonus/etc directly on each card so they can just pick it up and roll some dice rather than consulting tables all the time.
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Tue, 2012-05-15 04:14
Pyrite Pyrite's picture
Re: Streamlining favors
I really think I might adopt this as a house rule. It's intuitive, straightforward, and only a slight modification to the current rules, while quite efficiently discouraging rampant use of favors.
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'No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.' --J.R.R. Tolkien
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Wed, 2012-05-16 04:06
Dimuscul Dimuscul's picture
Re: Streamlining favors
Smokeskin wrote:
[...] What do you think? Less bookkeeping, simpler and faster, the "two-way street" of favors gets a clear mechanic. I also like that the very severe rep burn for using favors that hasn't refreshed gets removed - instead you'll just get to owe favors and see your effective rep score tank until you repay them if you ask for too much, but it does allow players to call in more favors im general.
It seems like a really sweet idea. This fixes one of the things I worried about the favor system. It was as if they could be asking for things without ever having to return or do anything for the community, and I was forced to find ways for players to do favors to others. This is a very effective way to demonstrate their current debt and the burden to the network. It would make the players work for their favor and recover his debt. I think It should be made a official ruling. PD: But I would make the "costs" more high. A level 4 favor should be something serious.
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