Questions on Prestige mechanics

[thanson02]

Hey everyone.

I am new to Zeitgeist and so far I am liking it. It has some really interesting options for players and I am thinking of picking certain elements of the campaign world and incorporating it into my current home game, particularly the Prestige mechanic. My players are working in a way where they want to gain favor with the local community anyways in our current game and I think that this mechanic would provide the interaction that players are looking for. We are playing with the 4E rule system if that matters in this case.

I was wondering if someone would clarify how the mechanic works. From what I am seeing, there are 5 different groups that the mechanic works with: Local citizens (Flint), local government and authorities (Risur), They Fey Courts (Unseen), local criminal groups, and special interest groups/private organizations (Philosophical). Depending on your prestige with each group, you can call on favors to get special items or services. I guess where I am getting caught up is that I am not understanding the relationship between prestige and favors and what favors you can call on based on your level of prestige.

Any help would be grateful. I really like the mechanic and I think my players will too. I just want to make sure I understand how it works.

 

[Elfshire]

Well, the favor system is pretty much laid out in the Player's Guide, so I'm not sure how much more help you need. The long and the short of it is that once each day, your group can call in a favor from one group. The bigger the favor, the higher the Favor Rating. If the Favor Rating is above your prestige, it might take a while for the organization to getting around to granting your request (if they deem fit to do so at all).

So getting a taxi-carriage in a hurry might be a Rating 0 Favor for Flint, while getting every able-bodied citizen to take up arms might be a Rating 6 or more.

There's also the matter of having Prestige with an organization that is opposed to the PCs; in that case, higher Prestige means that the organization spends more and more resources to take the PCs out or stymie their progress. Truthfully, ZG doesn't do as much with that idea as I'd hoped (or really, anything at all), so I've been kind of ad-libbing it and hoping for the best.

 

[hirou]

In my experience, unfortunately, Prestige system kinda falls apart mid-heroic due to at least one player having enough Diplomacy bonus to overcome any and all penalties for extra favors per day and/or level of said favor. It's a neat way to track the group "importance" in addition to just their level, but mechanically don't make it crucial to your game or at least be prepared to improvise.

 

[hirou]

Can you think of any way to improve the system?

Not sure, perhaps making it a group check and decreasing difficulty a bit would help, but I haven't tested this.

 

[Theblazeuk]

We just finished up the first adventure and it didn't seem like we had much chance to call in favours. I vaguely used it during the crowd control section of the coal tongue, but on the island my only idea was to request explosives (which came in the form of gunpowder rather than alchemist's fire, so was left behind...). Any other opportunities or am I correct in thinking it will really be more useful in Risur?

 

[thanson02]

So what actions build Prestige? Completing adventures?

The reason I ask is that it looks like the type of stuff you should be able to call in at Ranking 3, a character around level 10 should be able to do without an issue. Just like a Rank 6 prestige I would expect from a character around level 18-20.

 

[Elfshire]

So what actions build Prestige? Completing adventures?

The adventures themselves (Chapter 2 and onwards) have a section at the front, usually "Rewards," that details how the party's Prestige will change with the different groups after the Chapter is over. So it might say that if you saved Flint from being destroyed, Flint Prestige goes up one.

 

[RangerWickett]

If the constables are successful, they should hit Prestige 6 with every group that matters by the end of Adventure 9, if not earlier. At that point, I'm hoping the party will be doing things like, "Hey, can we send a few thousand soldiers to clear that area so when we fight the big monster, no one gets hurt?" or "We need seventy-seven druids to enchant a staff for one of the PCs. Hire as many mages as are needed to cast sending and teleport so we can gather them here before sunset tomorrow, because we're setting out tomorrow to save the world."

 

[imars]

My party used this. When faced with Kaja Stewart, they weren't willing to take her down directly. They rescheduled a meeting and had a company of soldiers surround her. She surely took down a few before she surrendered.