...and we're all pointing and laughing...
Reputation systems have been a bugaboo for many heroic-fantasy genre games for some time. Vastly abstract, or with relatively little relevance for the effort put into them, most reputation systems languish, overly detailed and un-used, between the pages of dusty old tomes in our gaming libraries.
There is a reputation system that defies this. Relevant, effective, and granular without being overly detailed, this system does more than measure how well-liked a given party is in a region: it helps the DM to sprinkle plot lines, to get an idea of a party’s direction, and even to track time and the changes that the party can bring to an area.
What follows is one of the best reputation systems I've seen. Enjoy.
HOW IT WORKS
There is a group of NPC’s that you want to track the PC’s relationship with over time. This may be an organization (such as a thieves’ guild or a church or an adventuring company), a location (such as a village or a city or a kingdom), or even just a single NPC (the love interest, or the local lord). The thing that this system will do is track the relationship between the party and that entity from “perfect strangers” to “intimate allies.”
Give the party a new stat: Trust. Trust is a statistic shared by the entire party, not contingent on any one member of it, and something that each member has. Trust comes in ranks: from no ranks, up to however many ranks the DM desires (typically from 3-5). Trust is what the PC’s develop over time with this entity.
Trust develops through the completion of adventures. Any entity the PC’s want to develop trust with needs something done: a delivery must be made, or a basement cleared of dire rats, or a particular monster menacing the path must be slain, or whatever. Said thing involves some danger out in the wilderness, so they’d much rather have trained adventurers do it.
These adventures can be of any length, though generally speaking it’s better to start with small adventures, and ramp them up. The entity in question isn’t going to trust some unknown vagabonds with something precious or complex, but they might trust them with a simple errand or a basic task.
Thus, the entity serves as a dispenser of adventures, quests, and tasks for the party. They need something done, and the PC’s are there to do it. As the party accomplishes these deeds successfully, they gain Trust – the entity begins to have more confidence in their proven ability to do the deeds, and so gives them greater and greater deeds: longer, harder adventures, with bigger threats and bigger stakes. Trust can be gained after a single quest, or after many.
The rank of Trust that the party has with the entity will dictate several things.
Each quest the entity might give has a corresponding Trust prerequisite that must be met. The great baron might give out a general bounty on orc ears, and when the party returns many of them, they may gain a rank of Trust (bringing them to Rank 1) – the baron believes these adventurers may be capable of slaying the orc chieftains in the region! If successful at this, they may gain another ran of Trust (Rank 2), and the baron, aware of their great skill, tells them to lead the siege on the orc fortress in the mountain pass. Clearing the mountain pass may have been the goal all along, but he’s not just going to trust some random wayfarers with that task – he’s going to put a few tests out and see who comes up.
Similarly, things like treasure can be tied to ranks of Trust. Perhaps the baron entrusts them with a sacred blade to slay the orcs in the fortress at Trust 2, but at Trust 0, he’ll only give out a few coins of treasure as a reward.
Escalating trust can tie into things in the ongoing story of the game, too. Perhaps when the party clears the fortress and achieves Trust 3, the baron suddenly disappears – creating an adventure to go rescue him from his orcish captors. Or maybe at Trust 3, the orcish counter-attack started.
It’s a good idea to have multiple entities with which the party can gain Trust milling about all at once. This can lead to interesting decision points as to which adventures to take: if the baron is offering a bounty for orc ears, but the local wizard’s college is more interested in the sudden appearance of fiends in the forest, there’s a pretty explicit choice to be made. Indeed, if the party never follows up on the orc ears, perhaps the Baron never gets kidnapped…or perhaps at some point the orcs attack the city, because the threat was ignored.
WHY THIS IS PRETTY COOL
Hub-And-Spokes
This system works best when there is a main central group of NPC’s that the party will be interacting with. This group may be the residents of a particular town or kingdom, or the members of some organization, or are in some way a group that the PC’s continue to interact with for some time (anywhere from a single level, to the length of the campaign). This is the group that they’ll be gaining fame within, the people who will go from largely not knowing them as any different from any strange vagabonds to trusting them with their most personal, difficult, and intimate problems.
This reflects a bit of realism in the system: if people just waltz into town, slay a few orcs, and waltz out, you’re not going to cement much of a reputation in that particular town. You did something positive, but there are a lot of problems in the world, and your wandering adventurers were only a momentary distraction. In order to cement fame, to gain a reputation, the party needs to put in the time and effort within a single group of NPC’s.
The group of NPC’s thus serves as the hub – the people the party keeps returning to.
The party is sent out from this hub into the surrounding area to do things for these NPC’s.
This helps the DM out in giving the PC’s a solid goal, and a detailed way of reaching that goal that can involve a lot of the other events going on in the game world. That gives the party a reason to interact with the world – to earn the trust of those entities that inhabit it. This makes world-building easy to make relevant, and helps the DM introduce new material gradually. If the DM just bought an awesome nautical adventure, and the party is far from the sea, perhaps someone who has great Trust in them tasks them with protecting a shipment, giving them a dang good reason to go to sea.
Adventure Gateway
The main mechanical consideration of trust in this system is to dribble adventures out to the PC’s. This distinguishes it from similar reputation systems, which are often more concerned about the benefits the PC’s get for being recognized local heroes. It focuses on the responsibilities that come with wielding great power in a dangerous world.
This also helps out the DM, as it keeps a steady dribble of plot lines and hooks in the hands of the players. The players always know they have something to do, and what they need to do, or at least who they need to talk to.
As a bang-on effect, this helps couch the rewards the party gets in terms of the size of their quest, too. No more orcs with +5 vorpal swords squirreled away: now, that +5 vorpal sword sits behind a Trust 5 gateway that is going to require some digging before it drops into your hands.
Goal Tracking
PC’s can have some grandiose goals. To become rich. To master powerful magic. To restore the gods to life. These are great end-points, but it doesn’t always give a DM good guidance for doing the little things.
Trust can function as a goal-tracking mechanic as well. Perhaps becoming rich requires an effective Trust of 10, which can then be broken down: okay, earning a bit of coin at Trust 0, maybe a house opens up trust 6, and by Trust 10, your character gets a sweet inheritance. Quests can tie directly into these goals: in order to get a house, the party must clear it of the undead occupying it, so you know that the quest for clearing out the undead opens up at Trust 5. Depending on your preferred level of detail, you can even break down individual quests at each XP level, or even break them down to specific encounters.
TRUST THE TRUST
So, what do you think? How would you use Trust in your games? Or do you already kind of do that, but under a different name? What other potential uses for the system do you see?
Let me know in the comments!
