Orion wrote:What is the benefit to having your system model "reaction" or "attitude" at all?
If your social system does only one thing, it should be to triage the game into tracking combat turns or not. The bare minimum social system models two attitudes: hostile and nonhostile.
It's possible to have a system that does more than that, and if so you could do something more complicated than attitudes. Or you could build up from the minimum by putting additional attitudes such as friendly and unfriendly to track socially relevant distinctions between different nonhostile characters.
At the base, if your system does not do attitudes, you need to justify that.
You could theoretically have a system of social combat where you trade witty bon mots and subtle insults to ding each other's honor/social standing while protecting your own, but that's a different barrel of fish.
1. It outputs general attitude states for NPCs (and maybe PCs) it is used upon. This is going to have the problem that such states are necessarily vague and subject to interpretation. Even if the outputs are as simple as "hostile" or "nonhostile" is going to run into this. Consider a situation where the party diplomat talks a group of brigands into "nonhostile" but the party barbarian waits for the brigands to sheathe their swords as an opening to sucker punch the brigand leader. Do the brigands remain nonhostile due to the diplomat's success? Do they become hostile again due to PC treachery? If so, can the diplomat attempt to apologize and smooth things over to make them nonhostile again?
2. It provides characters a form of mind control and at the high end social success can become indistinguishable from charms, compulsions and magical memory editing. This runs into a lot of problems with willing suspension of disbelief among the players and even more problems that most implementations make it grossly abusive compared to a game's normal combat system.
3. It has very specific maneuvers with very specific results. You build a system to work in combat time with social actions taking portions of combat actions and giving combat benefits and debuffs. Things like 3e's "demoralize opponent" use of Intimidate and the phase delay part of HERO system Presence attacks fall in here. This is definition ally very limited in what it does and can't handle unusual social scenes at all.
4. It's an extension of the combat system, and social successes deal outright damage to other characters. There is only one game I've ever seen this in, and it was meant to be a funny game where players were encouraged to bicker in character and going to zero HP just meant a cartoony wild take and loss of your next turn.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Grek wrote: Either have both Black Canary and Mary Jane roll seduction checks vs Spiderman's mechanically represented ability to judge intentions, or make the player decide who to trust in both cases.
I don't kow what you mean. The Seduction rolls are required in exactly this scenario: Spiderman do you want a BJ? Spiderman: [Y/N?] If Spiderman says Yes there is no roll. If he says No then there is one. As simple as that.
It's the worst of both worlds, and also rapey. I only have one PC. If my PC's actual intrinsic loyalties and sympathies can be changed by a die roll, I might as well be playing Progress Quest. (Yes, some games make use of it, but most do not and should not be expected to.) On the other hand, if I'm playing Black Cat, I absolutely do not want her success at fucking Spidey being influenced by my own skill at blowing the MC.
Starmaker wrote:It's the worst of both worlds, and also rapey. I only have one PC. If my PC's actual intrinsic loyalties and sympathies can be changed by a die roll, I might as well be playing Progress Quest. (Yes, some games make use of it, but most do not and should not be expected to.) On the other hand, if I'm playing Black Cat, I absolutely do not want her success at fucking Spidey being influenced by my own skill at blowing the MC.
Your comment is utterly perplexing.
The entire Superman BJ scenario exists within the context of a fucking RPG game (in this case perhaps literally, we really should work on our sample scenarios...)
But anyway that means the entire god damn "Superman says hell yes" is a direct execution of an actual player's freely made decision.
You may not like it, Frank may not like it, but the direct way he worded his stupid and dishonest "superman would say yes but needs to roll because he wouldn't but I'm not admitting that" examples directly described a scenario where superman's player said hell yes and screw you and your Louis Lane hang ups superman is his damn character in the game today and he will do what he wants.
And I don't give a fuck about your excuses. Two players decided on the actions they wanted characters under their direct control to attempt. There are no physical limitations preventing those actions. Stepping in and interfering with such basic player agency and demanding they make a roll or they aren't even allowed to decide their own character's actions is fucking insane.
This is the problem with compulsory reaction systems and similar bullshit. At SOME point in your social mechanics you MUST protect basic player agency. When conflict does not occur, or when a character resists control or influence then that means you MUST let the player decide that character's actions, and for it to be genuine agency they MUST be able to decide to simply accept that BJ if they want to.
Anything else is spectacular insanity. Anything else is literally saying that you are writing rules for your game that prevent Tommy the BJ fan from being allowed to play Superman how he wants to. Hell anything else is simply saying that A)There is no point bringing players to the table because they NEVER get to actually make decisions for their character's actions and B) Holy shit that's gonna be stupidly complex and broken.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Dec 25, 2014 10:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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PL, I know that MGuy insists that Sartre's radical freedom necessarily implies that the actual actions of all characters in all circumstances are by definition the ones which they willed themselves to take and thus no die rolls are ever required or helpful because everyone just does what they want to do in all circumstances - but don't you start in on that bullshit. It's fucking meaningless gibberish.
FrankTrollman wrote:PL, I know that MGuy insists that Sartre's radical freedom necessarily implies that the actual actions of all characters in all circumstances are by definition the ones which they willed themselves to take and thus no die rolls are ever required or helpful because everyone just does what they want to do in all circumstances - but don't you start in on that bullshit. It's fucking meaningless gibberish.
-Username17
Gibberish? You effectively wrote "It is bad if superman's player is just allowed to decide to have superman accept something someone else's character offers him"
That's what this boils down to. You said something as stupid as that in order to support your (equally insane) idea that every character's action in an RPG must be deterministic in nature and the player is NEVER permitted to decide their own character's actions not just without a roll but also regardless of the outcome (as the roll always decides their action even on a successful resistance of influence).
You should have taken that moment when you worded your examples so poorly to rethink your retarded position. Instead you just double down hard like you always do.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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I'm not sure what Frank is on about but my position isn't rapey at all. I'm not even sure how you're reading it that way. I especially don't know how you're turning my position into a 'blow the MC' mechanic. I put it in it's simplest terms so I'm not sure how much more basic I can make it.
Let's say you want 'seduction' to be a thing a character can do. If you want that to be 'a thing' then you want your character to be someone who can be seduced into accepting bjs from people that it would probably be a bad idea to get a BJ from. If that is something you don't want then... I am not sure why you are even arguing over the BJ subject.
Moving on, if you are the one who wants to be able to seduce then the only idea I'm putting forth is that you 'might' not have to make a roll at all in order to convince someone into accepting your BJ offer. I at no point even 'implied' that you couldn't just use your skill but the whole point of eliminating the seemingly forced 'Super Dickery' problem is just to simply not make it necessary for a roll to be made when a character simply decides to accept a proposal.
As far as I'm concerned things like Diplomacy (and by extension seduction) are in the game to give the players the ability to have a character that can convince other people to do stuff (including accepting blowjobs). Allowing characters to simply accept your character's proposal in no way hampers your agency... at all. It doesn't prohibit you from attempting to use your ability. It simply means you can skip the roll. How is that a problem?
Last edited by MGuy on Thu Dec 25, 2014 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
PhoneLobster wrote:Gibberish? You effectively wrote "It is bad if superman's player is just allowed to decide to have superman accept something someone else's character offers him"
Holy fuck PL. The player doesn't need to roll to have their character voluntarily accept or reject a PC's or an NPC's offer, and there might be effects that force involuntary compliance (charm, dominate). Forcing eager heartfelt agreement on a PC, die rolls or no die rolls, hurts all but the most mindscrewy games. If you're playing a French Resistance fighter, you might want to have, idunno, a willpower roll vs. torture where a failure acts as temporary confusion and your character might be forced to involuntarily rat out his comrades. You definitely don't want your character to accidentally fail a roll against Nazi propaganda and sign up with the gestapo.
But if my character makes an offer to an NPC, I don't want for the outcome to be determined by MC fiat. The MC doesn't have the same narrative right to their characters' integrity that the players have. If I'm Black Cat and I'm offering the NPC Spidey a backscratch, how will the MC determine whether Spidey agrees or not without a die roll? "FUCK YES!", "FUCK NO!", and "He says no by default, because you're his enemy, but you can roll to make him agree" are bad, and the latter is ever so slightly rapey.
Last edited by Starmaker on Thu Dec 25, 2014 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
PhoneLobster wrote:Gibberish? You effectively wrote "It is bad if superman's player is just allowed to decide to have superman accept something someone else's character offers him"
Holy fuck PL. The player doesn't need to roll to have their character voluntarily accept or reject a PC's or an NPC's offer, and there might be effects that force involuntary compliance (charm, dominate). Forcing eager heartfelt agreement on a PC, die rolls or no die rolls, hurts all but the most mindscrewy games. If you're playing a French Resistance fighter, you might want to have, idunno, a willpower roll vs. torture where a failure acts as temporary confusion and your character might be forced to involuntarily rat out his comrades. You definitely don't want your character to accidentally fail a roll against Nazi propaganda and sign up with the gestapo.
But if my character makes an offer to an NPC, I don't want for the outcome to be determined by MC fiat. The MC doesn't have the same narrative right to their characters' integrity that the players have. If I'm Black Cat and I'm offering the NPC Spidey a backscratch, how will the MC determine whether Spidey agrees or not without a die roll? "FUCK YES!", "FUCK NO!", and "He says no by default, because you're his enemy, but you can roll to make him agree" are bad, and the latter is ever so slightly rapey.
I'm pretty sure Mister Cavern is allowed to decide what NPCs do absent player manipulation. Strahd does not need to roll to decide whether or not to sahk your blaahd.
If the idea of "Roll to seduce the person who didn't instantly skip to coitus" is that uncomfortable then maybe you just shouldn't have it on the list of things that social-fu can induce.
EDIT: Alternately, are you saying Homura has to roll to accept your offer of retroactively preventing Kyubey from going to Japan to talk Madoka into making a contract?
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Thu Dec 25, 2014 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Because powerful men get away with terrible shit, and even the public domain ones get ignored, and then, when the floodgates open, it turns out there was a goddam flood behind it.
Starmaker wrote:But if my character makes an offer to an NPC, I don't want for the outcome to be determined by MC fiat.
I don't think you are following this discussion very well.
Your first paragraph is basically denouncing what Frank is actively saying should happen, in what appears to be an attempt at a defense of his position. How did you get this far into the conversation without grasping that he is actively saying "no, players don't get to just accept offers they like!".
Then your first paragraph seems to denounce the very idea of social actions ever achieving anything at all. And crumbles into confusion about "accidentally failing rolls".
Meanwhile your second paragraph is just dumb. The outcome is only determined by MC fiat IF the MC says "OK I like your idea" otherwise it goes to actual mechanical resolution thus enabling player agency to potentially overcome a GM decision, further should a GM feel unsure, well that STILL goes to mechanical resolution. When "fiat" is limited to "Give the other guy what they want or roll for a chance to give the other guy what they want" it isn't really fiat any more.
But the whole thing where you declare GMs don't get to have basic agency on deciding the actions of NPCs? Oh hell no.
GMs DO get basic agency to decide the actions of NPCs. They HAVE TO. That is in fact pretty much entirely what GMs are even FOR. Because someone has to decide those actions and setting up a deterministic system where every NPC decision is rolled is ridiculous. Worse if you demand that the GM must roll to decide to accept an offer from the player because NPCs aren't allowed agency... then the GM also MUST roll in order to even determine IF an NPC even makes an offer to a PC, under your "no agency for NPCs" plan the GM can't even decide for an NPC to attempt to get a PC to accept a BJ in the first place.
Also your whole rapey thing? Can you stop with that? You seem to be basically just freaking out that it is an example surrounding BJs. The example is BJs because someone thought it was a funny example initially. If you have a problem with that close your eyes, think of England and imagine a sensible system where BJs aren't on the list of things the mechanics ever handle and the roll to socially influence another character has different stakes.
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Starmaker wrote:But if my character makes an offer to an NPC, I don't want for the outcome to be determined by MC fiat.
I don't think you are following this discussion very well.
[blah blah]
Also your whole rapey thing? Can you stop with that? You seem to be basically just freaking out that it is an example surrounding BJs. The example is BJs because someone thought it was a funny example initially.
That was MY example. I don't think you are following this discussion very well.
/badumtish
Alight Krusk, you said this wasn't a "write my rules for me" thread. I think its time to put up or shut up. Show us some rules.
OK Other Krusk. I've spent some time taking the points in this thread, and others, into consideration and would love to throw out draft 1 for the rules. See below. If anyone has any obvious flaws or pointers, I'd love to hear them. (note my spellcheker went into British English, and I haven't found a way to switch back)
As I look at it, its almost more guidelines to GM Fiat than rules, but maybe thats a good thing.
The Rules.
D20 DND skill system +/- some skills to fit setting (I think unimportant, but can include if you'd like). Changes to Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive, Bluff. Instead of what is written, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff are used to make the subject go along with your idea. Sense motive is used to oppose. Each faction has a preferential tactic, they also have a discouraged tactic, giving +5 and -5 respectively. Cannot be used to convince the target of something "Obviously untrue" as defined by anything that would normally require a Charm person, Prestidigitation, or Silent Image spell to simulate.
Faction Rating's govern the factions opinion of your PC. A higher score means the faction looks at your PC more favourably and vice versa. All PCs begin with a faction rating of 0 in all factions. During character creation, a player can choose for their PC to start with a 20 in any specific faction, if they would like. During character creation, the player can also choose to start with a lower than 0 score if desired. This essentially represents the idea that the factions don't know who your PC is, except for potentially a single background organization. As your PC does things, its rating with the various factions increases or decreases based on its actions. Each faction has its own list of increases and decreases based on their organization and its values. In order for your PCs actions to affect a faction, it must be aware of their actions. A midnight assassination might not effect your score if you don't get caught.
Each player should track their PCs ranking with each faction and adjust as the GM dictates, based on their actions with the various factions of the setting. Players should also track their Faction Ranking to see what, if any, abilities it unlocks. Factions generally unlock abilities and new titles every 20 points. GMs should feel free to varry from the indicated ratings of Faction Rank rewards as makes sense, but generally not by more than +/- 5.
NPCs all have faction ratings as well, and the GMs should feel encouraged to provide this information to the players. "You are a member of the good guys, and he is considered a Knight Protector. You probably love him." The player should feel free to take action as indicated by their faction, but also to disregard it and act as an individual. Players should also feel free to treat "The PCs" as a faction, and assign NPCs points, or take them away based on whatever logic they prefer, and some groups may even want to record this. This can be a helpful tool for tracking your groups opinion of various NPCs.
Faction 1: The Good Guys.
Favors Diplomacy, Dislikes Intimidation.
Rank -19 to 19 - Unknown
The good guys are generally helpful and try to help everyone they meet. Even if you are unknown to them. Anyone can ask them for help and they will generally do their best to comply, although they generally only help with tasks that they consider "Good".
Rank 20-39 - Friend
The good guys consider you a friend. They will go to great lengths to help you, and may not need a lot reasoning or explanation. If you are a friend to the good guys, you can get a deal on all sales (the friend rate is 10% off).
Rank 40-59 - Ally
The good guys give their allies great trust. An ally can request aide from the good guys, and receive 1d4 (per point of charisma) friends to help out. It may take up to one week to assemble the right group, but there is generally little to no questions asked. Their individual ECL can not exceed your 1/4 your character level. In addition, you know the location of any Good Guy headquarters or good guy owned buildings in each city. In addition, the good guys show you some of their methods for routing out evil. You gain the ability to detect evil at will as per the spell.
60-79 - Knight Protector
You are considered a knight protector of the Good Guys, given great authority from the organization to carry out actions in their name. You can requisition a set of Knight Protectors armor from any GG headquarters (Functions as a +1 Mithril Full Plate) This armor is emblazoned with the symbols of the GG and signifies to all your allegiance and dedication. It is also allows you to know the direction (Straight line) to the nearest GG headquarters. In addition, you can call for help from allys and friends. You can call 1d6 per point of charisma friends and 1d4 per point of charisma allys. Your friends can be no more than 1/4 your ECL, and your allys can be no more than 1/2 your ECL. No one outside of a Good Guy himself will feel a need to question your actions or requests.
80+ - Good Guy
You are now officially a good guy. Everyone regards you as a friend, and even those who hate you find it hard to strike you. You are at all times under the effect of a sanctuary spell with a CL equal to your HD. Saving throw DC is 11 + Charisma mod. This is an SLA that can be resumed or suppressed with a standard action.
-20 - -39 - Wayward Soul
The Good Guys have deemed you a wayward soul. Requests for aid are met with scepticism, but you could generally expect help if the GG thinks this could be something to bring you about, or if your request seems relatively harmless.
-40 - -59 - Wanted
The Good guys considered you a wanted personality. There is a standing bounty to bring you in for questioning of 10gp per ECL at a minimum. No specific crimes are automatically known, but the intent of the questioning is to determine what wrongs you may have committed. It will be very hard to convince the GG to help you out, but it can be done if dire circumstances demand it.
-60 - 79 - Threat
The Good Guys have deemed you a valid threat to their way of life. There is a dead or alive bounty on you for active crimes you have committed. 100gp per ECL, with a 1000 gp bonus for alive. The GG will not help you under any circumstances, and will go out of their way to oppose you on principal.
-80- - Bad Dude
You are one bad dude. The GG have a standing kill on sight order for all members, and a standing bounty of 1000gp per ECL.
Stuff they like
Killing Threats of the GG. +2 per rank of dislike.
Saving hostages. +2 per hostage. (+5/hostage if royalty)
Destruction of evil artifacts +20.
Ending a corrupt organization - +10
Destroy threatening monsters - +1 per 5 CR.
Possession of a holy artifact of a good deity - +10
Stuff they don't like
Requisitioning dudes for help (With the ally ability) gives a -5. (the assumption is that the thing you want help with, would grant you bonuses if you succeed)
Dude under your employ dies in the line of duty. -10.
Murder of non-combatants. - 10
Using Poison -2 per usage
Theft - 1 per 100gp.
Committing other crimes (as defined by local laws) -1 per crime in addition to above penalties.
False accusation - Special. Penalty is equal to the penalty the falsely accused would normally receive.
Being caught in a lie -1, -2 or potentially -5.
Design Notes: Effectively, each good rank gives a minor power, some minor social standing, and maybe some equipment, SLAs, or minions.
Last edited by Krusk on Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Krusk wrote:As I look at it, its almost more guidelines to GM Fiat than rules, but maybe thats a good thing.
That would be fine if they offer something better than just winging it with fairy tea party. Looking at this material I'm not really seeing it.
Also, what I'm seeing is also really nothing but factional reputation "guidelines" and not that much to do with them after that. This makes it significantly less than interesting compared to having that meshing with some sort of actual social mechanics. It would be I think better if your reputation was also or simply just a bonus to relevant social actions with that faction.
Instead it's a list of remarkably narrow and actually really surprisingly stingy one off special benefits. Really some +1 mithril armour hey, I just have to be like 3 times as liked as I am allowed to start out? Stingy. Oh and that's BEFORE I am actually considered a faction member? Which only gives me the badly worded benefit of a 1st level spell that is only maybe marginally good because of what may be a poorly worded oversight?
And a lot of the guidelines to the extent they exist are a bit nonsense. So I can wipe out a WHOLE evil organization and I get +10 which is only 1/6th of my way to a +1 mithril suit if I started at zero. Stingy stuff there.
Hell it is all stingy stuff. Until you actually consider some math on killing monsters of low ranking evil mooks in which case you will be maxing out the rep (and doing a lot of accounting) just by existing as an adventurer. And you will do it without intending to and even while actively doing things the faction dislikes because nothing on that list will outpace the rep income from your victims.
Hell you could yourself be massively disliked by the faction and one solid little side adventure attacking other guys the faction also dislikes could catapult you basically all the way from various enemy categories all of the way up to maxing out your reputation with the faction in one hit. Without ever intending to.
Your system needs the following.
1) No more reputation points. Not on that scale. you have the ranks. Just do those as the reputation points/rank points instead. Don't inflate your numbers to a range from -80 to +80 for no reason when you could be using -4 to +4 instead.
2) No more clearly exploitable or accidental rank up requirements like "kill X for X times a zillion points". It's vague guidelines anyway, keep the guidelines vague, explicit and specific guidelines within a vague mechanic are exploitable and generally broken. Keep the GM arbitration high and you can prop your entire "guideline" up heavily with Oberoni's fallacy. "You rank up when the GM decides you have sufficiently impressed the faction" is ALL THE TEXT YOU NEED to determine when PCs rank up.
3) Better reputation benefits when the GM does arbitrarily decide you impress the faction. So yea again, refer to "all the text you need" from point 2. 8 faction points on your initial scale? No one cares. A rank up? Much better. Far less stingy.
4) More and better rewards for the ranks. Seriously. all that accounting and messing about just for shite low CR NPC mooks that take weeks to round up? +1 armour? Give people bat mobiles and high level ninja butlers or something.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Jan 12, 2015 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Got some time to sit down and think (about this) again.
PhoneLobster wrote:It would be I think better if your reputation was also or simply just a bonus to relevant social actions with that faction.
Instead it's a list of remarkably narrow and actually really surprisingly stingy one off special benefits. Really some +1 mithril armour hey, I just have to be like 3 times as liked as I am allowed to start out? Stingy. Oh and that's BEFORE I am actually considered a faction member? Which only gives me the badly worded benefit of a 1st level spell that is only maybe marginally good because of what may be a poorly worded oversight?
1) No more reputation points. Not on that scale. you have the ranks. Just do those as the reputation points/rank points instead. Don't inflate your numbers to a range from -80 to +80 for no reason when you could be using -4 to +4 instead.
2) No more clearly exploitable or accidental rank up requirements like "kill X for X times a zillion points". It's vague guidelines anyway, keep the guidelines vague, explicit and specific guidelines within a vague mechanic are exploitable and generally broken. Keep the GM arbitration high and you can prop your entire "guideline" up heavily with Oberoni's fallacy. "You rank up when the GM decides you have sufficiently impressed the faction" is ALL THE TEXT YOU NEED to determine when PCs rank up.
3) Better reputation benefits when the GM does arbitrarily decide you impress the faction. So yea again, refer to "all the text you need" from point 2. 8 faction points on your initial scale? No one cares. A rank up? Much better. Far less stingy.
4) More and better rewards for the ranks. Seriously. all that accounting and messing about just for shite low CR NPC mooks that take weeks to round up? +1 armour? Give people bat mobiles and high level ninja butlers or something.
1 - Lets drop a 0 from all numbers and do exactly that then. You get the mod on social skills with your faction. Bluff, diplo, intimidate, sense motive. You get from -10 to +10. Now it comes off fiddly, so maybe Rank 0-5, and each rank gives you a +5 to checks. Each negative rank gives a -5. And I'd need better names for those still.
2 - Move to total oberoni then. If the GM likes you, and thinks the faction does too, you can go up or down a rank.
3 - Not clear how this isn't the same as 4
4 - see the rest.
My initial concern was a level 1 dude breaking the game wide open by sucking up to a faction. This doesn't seem like as huge deal now that you've pointed it out though. If he sucks up good enough, congrats, you get the batmobile.
Any suggestions for specific things that would be sweet?
Retainer of some dudes ala leadership
Choice/secret Quests sent your way
Castle somewhere
Magic Steed of some sort (probably in scale with a paladins mount)
Magic Tattoo that gives some SLAs
Revamped weapons from weapons of legacy (without the crappy drawbacks)
Is that the scale that would get you as a player to give a shit about this and not ignore it like most DM's crappy house rule subsystems I see?[/list]
Krusk wrote:3 - Not clear how this isn't the same as 4
The difference is that 3 is talking about the rank points themselves, not the rewards you get for ranking up.
It's telling you not to throw around those incremental part rank ups. Just give out a rank up or say "not good enough for rank up try again".
Any suggestions for specific things that would be sweet?
Not especially. That is really going to be setting/fluff specific to a large extent.
However it is probably worth noting that smaller scale rewards like "faction specific equipment that at SOME character level doesn't suck" would be enough for lower ranks. Not ALL the rewards need to be castles, just the higher rank rewards. The lower rank rewards don't need to be "worth it" at every level of play they just have to be worth it at SOME level of play where that rank is actually attainable.
And I say "attainable" because I assume it is no big deal to say something like "there is just short of nothing imaginable a level 1 weakling character could do that could impress the sky knights enough for them to promote you to sky king and give you a sky castle, you will need more power before you can do something good enough for that".
Though you COULD make the low tier rewards scale with character level, that would be viable too. You get the "faction gear" reward at low rank and then the faction kits you out with level appropriate nifty items for your character level forever.
Is that the scale that would get you as a player to give a shit about this and not ignore it like most DM's crappy house rule subsystems I see?[/list]
The entry point for me caring about it is probably as small as "marginally interesting level appropriate weapon or armour". Retainers and unique tattoo bullshit is the minimum for me to care about paying attention all the way to the mid range ranks. Secret sky castles is the requirement for me to care about the top ranks.
edit: Oh, and while "moar faction quests" is something ranking up totally could/should do. It should never be considered a "reward" for ranking up, much less the only reward for a rank up.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Sat Feb 21, 2015 8:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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