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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CleverNickName" data-source="post: 8617248" data-attributes="member: 50987"><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/308461/The-Seas-of-Vodari-5E" target="_blank">The Seas of Vodari</a> 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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /> 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.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!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.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?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.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I agree that these organizations should be local.  For the most part, my factions are confined to the Island of Taevara.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul>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.</blockquote>

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