Reputation

[Username17]

If I were going to attempt to implement reputation "like XP" I would go in a different "XP like" direction and make it a single abstracted progress track that players spent freely on (reputation themed) permanent options of their choice.

It would have a lot of flaws, including the bit where you slay a dragon on the North Continent and some clown of a player spends the Rep on becoming Pope of the Dragon Lover Religion on the South continent.

But "the bit players like" still seems like the better "XP-like" thing to mimic rather than "just the complex book keeping bit".

Basically yes. The other main issue I see is that players hate spending longterm XP for temporary bonuses. So people aren't going to want to spend the RepPoints they get from punching out the local tavern tough on being a known badass in the village of Hommlet. They are going to want to save those points until they can afford to be the dragon pope.

This means that if you want things like the 500 street fights speech from Knockaround Guys to ever happen (which if you're trying to formalize a reputation system, I'm guessing you do), you're going to need to force people to spend reputation points right away. Now if you want that to be "not infuriating" or let people have the simple joy of saving up to be dragon pope (which is probably why you're bothering to track RepPoints in the first place), you're going to need to give people RepPoints they can save. Which implies giving out temporary and permanent RepPoints.

And that's already pushing the boundaries of acceptable complexity for a tabletop game.

[Omegonthesane]

If I were going to attempt to implement reputation "like XP" I would go in a different "XP like" direction and make it a single abstracted progress track that players spent freely on (reputation themed) permanent options of their choice.

It would have a lot of flaws, including the bit where you slay a dragon on the North Continent and some clown of a player spends the Rep on becoming Pope of the Dragon Lover Religion on the South continent.

But "the bit players like" still seems like the better "XP-like" thing to mimic rather than "just the complex book keeping bit".

Basically yes. The other main issue I see is that players hate spending longterm XP for temporary bonuses. So people aren't going to want to spend the RepPoints they get from punching out the local tavern tough on being a known badass in the village of Hommlet. They are going to want to save those points until they can afford to be the dragon pope.

This means that if you want things like the 500 street fights speech from Knockaround Guys to ever happen (which if you're trying to formalize a reputation system, I'm guessing you do), you're going to need to force people to spend reputation points right away. Now if you want that to be "not infuriating" or let people have the simple joy of saving up to be dragon pope (which is probably why you're bothering to track RepPoints in the first place), you're going to need to give people RepPoints they can save. Which implies giving out temporary and permanent RepPoints.

And that's already pushing the boundaries of acceptable complexity for a tabletop game.

How about if you could upgrade previous reputation purchases to cover a larger more relevant area?

I'm thinking going from "heroes of Hommlet" to "heroes of the Barony of Steve, which contains the village of Hommlet" to "heroes of King Daxall's Kingdom, which includes the Barony of Steve" to "heroes of the entire planet" to "heroes of the multiverse". Possibly with some intermediary steps.

[erik]

For dnd I'd run reputation like treasure you could win. Slay the dragon and you can put on your character sheet hero of Laketown and maybe favors for Misty Mountain dwarves and a Mirkwood elves. Or whatever. Drop a chest of gold from your flying carpet in the middle of Canton and become the hero of Canton.

Some of it would be MC discretion but you could have defined expectations of what you can benefit from having these things.

It is kind of how Living Greyhawk did it seemed ok. What it meant was that I had a stack of sheets filled with favors and crap from various personalities and factions. Sometimes notoriety which had downsides too.

[PhoneLobster]

How about if you could upgrade previous reputation purchases to cover a larger more relevant area?

Narrow boring feat trees are narrow and boring. No player is getting excited about cashing in rep points to widen the area in which they get a circumstantial +1 to asking for a free beer they don't need. If you can cash in your rep points for a sweet bat cave estate or the title and benefits of dragon pope then people are going to take more than one dismissive look at your rep system (no matter how crap it then turns out to be).

If you REALLY must try the enforced temporary/on the spot reputation AND the long term saving up, you could pull it with a variety of other hacky simple rules.

The simplest I can think of is "Every time you gain Reputation you must Spend reputation. You may spend more (if previously saved) or less than you you just gained." That should pretty much result in people constantly buying piss weak little whatevers just so they can save up for Pope with the change, and would push them to earn their Rep in bigger single bites of fame instead of apple stacking, which at the smaller end of the scale would then buy them nothing but the pissweak cheap stuff (or let them abusively cash in their savings, but whatever).

Throw in an "and that's the only time you can spend Reputation" if you like for other effects so you don't JUST roll into town and declare yourself pope, you at least need to punch a pickpocket in the face or give an apple to a teacher before you can cash in your saved up dragon slaying Rep points on something big.

But I'm really not sure if you NEED a quick and sloppy mechanical incentive to force players to buy the piss weak local village rep options or not. Maybe they are just too piss weak and shouldn't even be options.

A lot of these sorts of systems have major issues exactly BECAUSE they try to span too great a variation in scale of either or both their outputs/inputs. Maybe you should just only earn your Rep on big things and only spend it on big things. It would certainly help a lot with explaining away unified Rep points abstractions.

Maybe "applicable just about anywhere" just needs to be the how tall you need to be to ride the reputation point/benefit rollercoaster cut off.

[Mistborn]

Can't you just cover reputation by having people write {group} +/-X (where X is the bonus/penalty they get on rolls to influence that group going forward) on their character sheet after they do a thing. Sure that involves some MTP but anything you write for social mechanics is be pretty heavy on the MTP anyway.

[Omegonthesane]

How about if you could upgrade previous reputation purchases to cover a larger more relevant area?

Narrow boring feat trees are narrow and boring. No player is getting excited about cashing in rep points to widen the area in which they get a circumstantial +1 to asking for a free beer they don't need. If you can cash in your rep points for a sweet bat cave estate or the title and benefits of dragon pope then people are going to take more than one dismissive look at your rep system (no matter how crap it then turns out to be).

You're missing my point I think - the idea is that instead of having to save up to buy up Dragon Pope, every bit of rep you buy includes and eclipses the bits before it, so you just become Dragon Pope when you have the points even though you spent all the points.

Come to think of it what I was trying to get at could be done more simply with something like "Every time you get Rep Points, you can and must re-spend all your Rep Points (all of them)". That way there isn't any need to save up for Dragon Pope, as you just reinvest your points into Dragon Pope the moment you have enough points without having to miss out on being Dragon Cardinal/Bishop/Vicar along the way or having to explicitly set prerequisite trees.