[Robots & Rapiers] Contacts, Favors, and Influence

[Valamir]

I'm busily at work getting R&R ready for the next round of testing and thought I'd throw out a concept I'm pretty excited about.

Contacts.  Contacts are all of the robots you know who if you asked them for a favor there'd be some chance of them saying yes.  Contacts exist for 2 reasons in game terms, using them for their Influence, and asking them for favors.

Influence is a measure (1 to 5) based largely on the robot's social class and Self Awareness (i.e. sentience for those who haven't been following R&R closely) which indicates the social leverage, wealth and resources, and position of authority that a robot has.  In the game you will have the opportunity to collect Influence from your contacts (via networking) and use that Influence as a resource to have Directoral Influence over the city itself.  In otherwords, by knowing a bunch of key people in important places you gain points to spend to make things happen your way...basically becoming a "mover and a shaker" in Auvernais society.

Favor is a measure (1 to 10) of how likely the Contact is to respond favorably to you if you ask them to do something for you.  This could be because they like you, because they fear you, or because they owe you depending on what you did to earn the Favor.  The principle use of Favor is to ask your contacts for favors.  Every time you ask them for a favor their Favor towards you declines by 1, reflecting the "what have you done for me lately" mentality of social interaction in Auvernais.  Because of how important Influence is and how useful favors are, players should be well motivated to take actions necessary to earn more Favor with more Contacts, thus tieing them inexorably into the web of NPCs and faction politics.

Asking for a favor simply requires a d10 roll against the current Favor score.  Equal to or less they say "yes", greater than they say "no".

Collecting Influence through networking is one basic Favor, you're basically asking them to exert their influence on your behalf to help make something happen that you want.  The number rolled on the d10 check is the amount of Influence they'll give you up to a maximum of their Influence score if of course, the check succeeds (i.e. =< current Favor).  Favor then drops by 1.

Other favors are more open ended.  You ask them to do something, if the check succeeds they do it if not, they don't.  How big a favor they're willing to do depends on their current Favor Score (1 = Trivial, 3 = Small, 5 = Big, 7 = Huge).  What the favor can be, however, is pretty much anything the player wants that the robot is physically or mentally capable of doing.

This is the really exciting part.  I've ditched all of the "Directoral Control" by spending Inspiration points stuff and tied that control into the favor mechanic.  If the player wants to exert directoral control in the game, they must do so through their network of contacts.  Since a big part of the game is getting and defining those contacts, the players will actually be participating in populating the city with NPCs.

For instance, a player might decide they want a contact with a bartender at a seedy bar known to be patronized by petty criminals.  If they make their "Get Contact" check, they find such a person, can use Influence to define him them way they want, and can begin accumulating Favor with him in order to call upon him later.  They've not only just invented a robot NPC (unless targeting a character they already know), they've pretty much invented the bar too (unless there was one they already had in mind).

For instance, a player might roll a favor with the bartender and on success declare that the bartender tells them where to find a certain ne-er do well they've been looking for.  

A player might roll a favor check with the deacon of the cathedral and upon success have the deacon provide them with a detailed map of the underground catacombs.

A player might roll a favor check with a duke they know, and upon success have the duke invite to an extravagant ball he's hosting (a ball we didn't know he was hosting until just then).

A player might roll a favor check with a palace guard and upon success manage to smuggle a weapon into said ball that they weren't supposed to have.  Not only giving themselves a weapon, but potentially inventing the fact that they weren't supposed to have one to begin with.


Taken a step further one of the actions player robots can engage in is "plotting and schemeing" which relies on the robot's Intrigue skill.  This provides a number of Scheming Points.  Schemeing Point are used to call on favors retroactively.  Meaning you're not actually there with your contact asking for a favor now...the favor was all part of the elaborate plan you concocted then...you're just defining it now...how convenient that its exactly what you needed...what a great planner you are.

That way you can have all of those wonderful coincidence moments like fleeing from a mob of angry robots "thankfully I'd already arranged with my good friend the stable boy to have my horse waiting for me at the bottom of the hill" or when in trouble over your head "just then some city watchmen come around the corner, its my old chum Constable Devereaux.  I knew he wouldn't let me down"

But, to do this stuff, you actually have to have contacts and be tied into lots of different NPCs (that you largely create yourself) and whom the GM can then of course build plots around.


Well, how does that sound?

[montag]

quick questions:
1) It seems "Sparking" only relates to the total influence score now. That correct?
2) What happens when one is calling a favour from a fellow "Spark"/sentient robot?
3) It seems, if the Director-Stance stuff is dropped, influence is the major route to player effectiveness. If so, this _seems_ to have three undesireable consequences (apart from the desireable ones):
- it is self-perpetuating, that is accelerating: more influence means more opportunities to use favours, which in turn raises influence.
- it weakens an important choice in "sparking": the decision for or against the tapestry. If "influence" is the only way to success, the choice to renounce the tapestry seems to become impossible. One can merely choose to work within the tapestry, either for its own ends or for one's own good, but how does one decide to become a revolutionary under this system?
- it seems to focus gameplay almost exclusively on social interaction. Interesting in its own right, but the title does mention Rapiers, doesn't it?

Overall, while I like social mechanics and think you've got a good basic concept it seems to me that the current proposal would drastically change the game and I'm not sure if it's a change for the better. I also find it hard to evaluate the mechanic in isolation, I'd probably have to see this in the context of the full rules.

[Valamir]

quick questions:
1) It seems "Sparking" only relates to the total influence score now. That correct?

The rest of the rules haven't changed at all from what you've already seen.

Sparking still works the same way as it did in game.  Players still narrate their robot's own success unless overruled by the GM using a Role Check, and the GM still narrates the robot's failures unless the player over rules with a Self Awareness check.  Self Awareness is still the way robots change and transform during play.

2) What happens when one is calling a favour from a fellow "Spark"/sentient robot?

Calling a favor from a fellow Spark doesn't work any differently.  Although the means to get Favor with them to begin with may be different.

3) It seems, if the Director-Stance stuff is dropped, influence is the major route to player effectiveness. If so, this _seems_ to have three undesireable consequences (apart from the desireable ones):
- it is self-perpetuating, that is accelerating: more influence means more opportunities to use favours, which in turn raises influence.

Gaining Contacts and increasing Favor with existing Contacts doesn't require the use of influence, so they can be added independently of how much influence the robot has.  They can also be added in game based on the robot's own actions towards the characters met.

Using favors causes Favor to decline.  Which means the more Contacts the robot has, the more they can work their network for more influence.  But the more time they will need to spend currying favor with those contacts.  I should note that there are a limited number of actions the robot can perform during this part of the game (most of this goes on between sessions).

But yes to an extent it is self perpetuating.  Robots start off as individuals, and if the players desire they can be come major movers and shakers in Auvernais Society.  Why would that be undesireable?

- it weakens an important choice in "sparking": the decision for or against the tapestry. If "influence" is the only way to success, the choice to renounce the tapestry seems to become impossible. One can merely choose to work within the tapestry, either for its own ends or for one's own good, but how does one decide to become a revolutionary under this system?

Actually no.  Don't worry about that.  There are plenty of things the robot can do to become a revolutionary.  In addition, robot's can voluntarily choose to Conform, to give the appearance of working within the Tapestry to make things easier.  

But mainly the players largely get to define their own contacts, so if they wanted they could define them all as fellow revolutionaries and basically be setting up their own little cabal of disaffected intelligentsia; or if they want to go another route their own resistance cell.

- it seems to focus gameplay almost exclusively on social interaction. Interesting in its own right, but the title does mention Rapiers, doesn't it?

Well, this is just the favor mechanic.  Nothing else has changed.  I'm not sure why you would get the impression that there'd be any fewer rapiers in it?

[Jack Aidley]

My concern is a general one I have always found with games that have specific mechanics for how others react towards you. It always seems to break the 'sense' of the game, instead of dealing with other characters I can talk to, reason with, cajoule, bribe, whatever - I'm suddenly walking into a bar and rolling a dice.

I'm worried that a player could develop contacts as characters  they meet, and then all of a sudden they're just a dice and a number when anything important is going to come of the interaction. Although this is probably something less of a concern in the world of automata presented in R&R.

[Michael S. Miller]

Asking for a favor simply requires a d10 roll against the current Favor score.  Equal to or less they say "yes", greater than they say "no".

[snip]

Other favors are more open ended.  You ask them to do something, if the check succeeds they do it if not, they don't.  How big a favor they're willing to do depends on their current Favor Score (1 = Trivial, 3 = Small, 5 = Big, 7 = Huge).  What the favor can be, however, is pretty much anything the player wants that the robot is physically or mentally capable of doing.

Ralph, let me start by saying that while I haven't had the time to follow R&R very closely, I'm anxiously awaiting holding the game in my grubby little paws. It looks seriously cool.

These social mechanics look very exciting. I think having the same social mechanics govern 'bots still believing in the Tapestry, and those that have looked behind the curtain is kinda cool. It's kinda like the Zen saying: "Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water." Some things don't change just because you see the world with all-new eyes.

My concern is similar to Jack's, in that I'm not seeing where the GM can step in to say "I feel strongly that this NPC would not act in such a way."  Just typing that out, I see possiblities. Just because the NPC grants the favor doesn't mean he likes doing, or that he does it well--or even betrays the PC!

My first thought, mechanics-wise, is that certain big favors might lower the Favor score by more than 1 point if successful. Something to think about.

[Valamir]

Ralph, let me start by saying that while I haven't had the time to follow R&R very closely, I'm anxiously awaiting holding the game in my grubby little paws.

No more than I :-)

These social mechanics look very exciting. I think having the same social mechanics govern 'bots still believing in the Tapestry, and those that have looked behind the curtain is kinda cool. It's kinda like the Zen saying: "Before enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water. After enlightenment, chopping wood, carrying water." Some things don't change just because you see the world with all-new eyes.

Heh, that's a great saying.

Yeah, my logic for that was multifold.
First, doing favors basically boils down to simple accounting.  Have I received enough benefit from you (or the expectation of same) for it to be worth my time to help you.  Favor is less about friendship and more about mutual backscratching.  True friendship is a pretty advanced concept that Sparks will only have just begun to ponder.

Second, I'm really trying to keep special rules cases in play under control, so having a seperate system for Sparks and Non Sparks would be counter to this.

Third, player robots don't necessarily know which robots are Sparked and which aren't, so keeping the system the same allows for that; and allows for GMs to be able to make that decision later rather than right away when the dice are being rolled.

My concern is similar to Jack's, in that I'm not seeing where the GM can step in to say "I feel strongly that this NPC would not act in such a way."  Just typing that out, I see possiblities. Just because the NPC grants the favor doesn't mean he likes doing, or that he does it well--or even betrays the PC!

That ties back into the basic Role and Self Awareness checks.  For a player robot, the GM can make Role Checks to force the robot to act "in character"...the robot is afterall a machine that must obey its programming and the GM gets to play the part of that programming.  The player may make a Self Awareness check to overrule its programming (which of course gets easier the more Self Aware the robot gets, which is the primary motivation to players for increasing their robot's Self Awareness.

For NPCs, this system works the same way, except now the GM is playing both sides.  So if the player is asking for the Contact to violate the Tapestry (act out of character), the GM can make a Role Check (automatic for non Sparks) to see if it would.  High roll (failures being 0) wins.

Example:  You ask Joe Stableboy to steal you some horses.

1) The GM considers your own character...would your character ask another to commit theft, isn't your character the Dudly Do-Right type?  If so the GM can make a Role Check against you to say "nope, your programming won't allow you to ask for that"  at which point you are having a sort of split personality experience where you as player, representing the growing free will of the character, are forced to watch the alter ego of your programming take control.  This is meant to be mildly frustrating in the sense of motivating the player to increase their Self Awareness (decrease their Role) so they can say "screw you GM, I'm doing it anyway" when the GM's Role Check fails.  But overall its meant to be entertaining, since players know going in how this works and its not all that hard to increase one's Self Awareness score...the pace of that increase is largely in the hands of the player.

2) Ok, assuming your character is the more rapscallion type who wouldn't think twice about some theivery (or the GM failed the Role Check), the GM now considers whether Joe Stableboy is.  Nope Joe Stableboy is a real Honest John, he'd never consider such a thing.  Time to make a Role Check for Joe Stableboy.  Assuming Joe is a non spark the check is automatically successful, but the player can still roll 1d10 vs Favor.  If the players roll is successful and higher than the GM's roll for Joe, then Joe reluctantly performs the Favor anyway (with all of the potential repurcussions that carries...the master finds out, and has Joe carted off to prison...so does the player rescue him or abandon him, and if he just abandons him, does the GM drop the character's Favor with all of the other Contacts who now worry they might get the same treatment).

The player can also make Persuade or Intimidate checks to help motivate Joe.

3)  If Joe is a Spark, than there is a chance that the Role Check the GM would make for him would fail.  The GM might make a Self Awareness check for Joe to see if Joe decides to "negotiate" the terms of the favor. "sure I'll help, but you have to take me with you", or "I'll let you have the horses but you need to deliver this holoscroll to some people I know for me" or whatever.

My first thought, mechanics-wise, is that certain big favors might lower the Favor score by more than 1 point if successful. Something to think about.

I have considered that.  I haven't decided yet.  There are a few possibilities there, but I'm trying to keep the special rules (during play anyway) fairly low...I think the game will already need some good pruning once I release the beta.

There is a special kind of Contact called a Dependent.  A Dependent is a robot who actually gets its recharge power and spare parts supplied to it directly from the player robot (perhaps because it is an outlaw and can't get it from regular sources).  The Favor mechanic for Dependents works as above, but the player can always force the Dependent to do it with threats of being "cut off" which does have a larger negative impact on Favor.

So there is the possibility of doing something similiar that way.

I also toyed with the idea of making the magnitude of the Favor dependent on the number rolled rather than the actual Favor score.  With the idea that the player could keep rolling until they got the number they needed, Favor dropping by 1 each time.  This would have the effect of making bigger favors harder to roll for, requireing more attempts, and costing more Favor.  

I'd initially decided against that for 2 reasons.
1) being too fiddly (it appeals to that part of me that likes fiddly which is a bad sign).

2) Part of the point to the game design is to take a fairly traditional game design (skills, attributes, crunchy dice pool resolution) and gradually ramp up the level of player authority.  Player authority comes from two sources in the game.  

First the ability to narrate ones own successes regardless of the GMs preference for that success, and the ability to take the narration of ones own failures away from the GM who starts the game with that authority.  This authority increases as Self Awareness increases, shifting the balance of power in what I hope is a fairly systematic way.

Second the ability to have an impact on the city as a whole through the use of director stance.  This is regulated by various things the player can spend Influence on and the Favor system.  As the game progresses, the player should be able to accumulate more contacts which gives him more sources of influence and more people to ask for favors (and thus more opportunity to do it).  Initially, the player robot has no contacts.  Over the course of a few sessions he has the opportunity (if desired) to accumulate several.  If that means he starts using those Favors to have some dramatic impact that's a good thing.  I'm not really that worried about charging more for it.  In fact, I've toyed with the idea of removing the "magnitude limit" altogether.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ralph,

Must all NPC robots be treated like "GM's PCs" in terms of Sparking? It strikes me as rather laborious.

Best,
Ron

[Valamir]

Can you expand the question? Not sure what you're asking.

[montag]

Sorry Ralph, my bad. This:
" I've ditched all of the "Directoral Control" by spending Inspiration points stuff and tied that control into the favor mechanic. " confused me into thinking you had ditched the whole "Sparking" mechanics. All clear now.

markus

[Valamir]

Ahh, good.  I had been thinking you'd like the change since you had expressed your dislike for the previous Directoral Control rules.

These rules should be much more encouraging to just creating general stuff and complications through relationships rather than being more obviously "pull my can from the fire" bennies.