D&D 5E Renown - Have You Used This Optional Rule?

[CleverNickName]

p.s. great to hear you are using Vodari!

The Seas of Vodari has been a favorite 5E setting of mine for a couple of years now...it strikes the perfect balance of swashbuckling and heroic fantasy for me. I was backer #651 for the "Seas of Vodari" Kickstarter, and backer #32 for the "Under the Seas of Vodari" Kickstarter. My only complaint is that I missed out on the digital maps. (Totally my own fault...there was a Digital Map Pack included in one of the Kickstarter pledge tiers, and for some reason I decided not to get it. I knew I should have upgraded my pledge!) Perhaps the digital map pack will show up on DriveThruRPG one of these days...

But seriously, this campaign is perfect for a swashbuckling, Renaissance-flavored game. Tons of islands to explore, nations at war with each other, a permanent magical hurricane...seriously good stuff. But I digress.

We've used Theros' Piety and Ravnicas Reknown, but not the system out of the DMG, and our campaigns are only around 7th level or so. While the perks are great fun, the system is cumbersome and it not being linked to level can make it awkward to implement (especially if you pick up a perk 'late' enough that the effort doesn't feel worth it, or they are handed out too quickly and disrupt the game). Also, tracking reknown is a pain in the behind, doubly so if you as DM are tracking it.

I can't believe it never occurred to me to check out "Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica" for guilds. [sigh] I'll see if my FLGS has a copy, but I get the feeling that you don't exactly recommend it. Ah well. More ingredients for the melting pot that is my campaign!

Also, don't forget about Mystara's Savage Coast, with its gauchos and swashbucklers - and if you can get your hands on it, look up 7th Sea/Swashbuckling Adventures. Lots of good stuff to purloine from that world (my favorite being Los Vagos - Guy Fawkes Zorro).

I did take a look at Savage Coast (love it) and 7th Sea (also love it), but honestly The Seas of Vodari campaign setting had everything I needed. Shawn can confirm, but I get the feeling that the writers drew a lot of inspiration from Savage Coast and 7th Sea already.

A few thoughts;

• the players should never know the numbers. Yes they should know that they are liked, or trusted or hated. And what the rough scale is, but not numbers.
• When my players got 'famous' enough with Waterdeep, they were awarded a Heroes badge (an arcane mark/tattoo they can hide or show at will) that gets them a discount on some supplies as well as influence with the Guard and Watch etc.

Thanks for the input! And I'm totally stealing the Hero's Badge idea from you...tattoos are perfect for certain factions. Just curious: why do you say that "the players should never know the numbers." Is that to prevent metagaming from the players? Or do the characters in the story really not know who their closest friends are?

I've used it before, and there's some pitfalls to avoid. Overall the concept works pretty well, however.

Most organizations are going to be local groups, with a few being nation-sized. Only a handful are really going to have multinational influence. Figure out how far you plan on taking the game, and set your organizations accordingly. Local organizations should be far easier to get influence with, but they're going to have much less utility when you're not there. You've already got your guilds kind of set up, but I'd still take another look at them to make sure you'll be okay.

Tracking can be a pain, depending on how much you want to do with it. If you want some political PvP, you'll need to track each PC's renown, since they'll work as individuals as often as a group. Assuming your group is going to remain cohesive like most groups, then you can just track the group as a whole. You should consider where the party/PC stands with each faction after every adventure, although most missions won't impact more than 2-3 groups. A simple spreadsheet with every faction and the party's renown should be sufficient.

You might want to fiddle with the numbers layout, as I'm not fond of their setup. First of all, I allow renown to go negative (infamy) to represent the organization being unhappy with the PCs. Secondly, I require more and/or harder missions to gain renown, since as printed it's not hard to jump up quickly within a single organization. For example, if using the downtime activity, 1 week might gain you 1 renown if under 5, but it'll take 2 weeks for each after that, then 3 weeks once you're at 10, etc. A few simple missions might get the PCs some renown, but once you're at 5, they need to get harder to be worth renown, then again at 10, etc. Alternately you can score 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 renown points that eventually add up to full renown.

Thank you so much for the input; I was hoping to hear from someone who tested the Renown system out and could provide constructive feedback, and this is exactly what I was looking for.

• I agree that these organizations should be local. For the most part, my factions are confined to the Island of Taevara.
• It looks like the hardest part of tracking for me will be remembering to do it. I can build a tracker in Roll20 easily enough, though (we are going to be playing over VTT), so hopefully that will make it less cumbersome. I won't be tracking each PCs individual Renown score, though...the party of adventurers will have a single Renown score that all PCs share.
• And the numbers will definitely need adjusting. I really like your idea of having Infamy (a negative renown score), so I'll be stealing that thank-you-very-much. There are certain factions in this world that you do not want to be enemies with. So I'm thinking Renown will be a scale from 0 to 10, and Infamy will be from -10 to 0.

The way I see this working in my game: Let's say there's a faction in my game called "Crownsport City Watch." In the course of an adventure, the party decides to collect a bounty for some coin, and they capture a wanted criminal and hand him over to the guards to face justice...and just like that, they've earned 1 point of Renown with the Crownsport City Watch. A handful of people on the Watch might recognize the party, might remember them later when they are asking around for information.

So the party decides to cultivate that relationship with the City Watch a bit--the bounty hunts are fun and the coin is good, so they pick up a couple more bounties, and advance their Renown to 2. Now they're pretty well-known, the guards nod when they walk past, occasionally tip them off to criminal activity in town, give them the gossip on the mayor, that sort of thing. They occasionally get job offers from the guards, "you guys should join up! Get free healing at the temple, and ya don't have to check your weapons and armor e'ry time you go into a shop!" Now the party can buy weapons and armor from the barracks, they can call in favors (maybe they need a place to lay low for a while), and guards will look the other way when they are open-carrying their flintlocks in town.

Renown 2 will also kick off a whole new side-quest, which will advance the party's Renown all the way to 10. When/if at least one member of the party joins the City Watch, they will be approached by one of the officers of the guard, who needs their help rooting out a criminal organization in the City of Crownsport. Over the course of several gaming sessions they discover a rival Thieves' Guild faction, infiltrate it, bring it down, and arrest its leaders. As they complete this quest, the heroes will gain more Renown, which will unlock more resources from the City Watch to help them in that quest: access to faction-specific and unique spells, weapons and equipment; support personnel like bodyguards and contacts; legal protection and safehouses, those sorts of things--not really a suite of new permanent abilities or powers.

Anyway, that's the general idea. It needs work.

 

[LordEntrails]

Thanks for the input! And I'm totally stealing the Hero's Badge idea from you...tattoos are perfect for certain factions. Just curious: why do you say that "the players should never know the numbers." Is that to prevent metagaming from the players? Or do the characters in the story really not know who their closest friends are?

IMO they should know who their friends are, but do you put a number on your friendships? I don't, its more like friend, good friend, blood friend, best friend right? Not 5, 13, 75 and 100

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I tried using Renown in the fantasy Venice campaign I ran for my first 5e campaign. In hindsight, I think I would've preferred to use the optional rule, the Honor stat, instead.

I envisioned a game where the social maneuvering vied with fighting monsters and ran it past the players to make sure they were onboard. But when it came time to play, most of the players just ignored Renown, barely accruing any of it. For a variety of reasons (some my fault, some their fault), that campaign collapsed.