[Fantasy craft] Removing reputation

[Telefax]

So, I'm about to kick off a high seas exploration campaign in a homebrewed setting, and with dnd 3.5/pathfinder/4.0 having been my most used systems before, but me being extremely fed up with various aspects of them, i bought fantasy craft.
I really love the way the mechanics come together with action dice, near removal of LFQW, most of the skills (blend/notice come off as a bit iffy), and removal of the front-loadedness of classes and npc generation. I do have one big reservation though, and that is the reputation system.

Essentially, i play nowadays in a group where metagamey abstract rules really dont fly (action dice will though). Also, this campaign being a high seas exploration kind of thing, holdings and contacts dont really work for me, though i do understand the appeal would my campaign be different. Stuff like prices and random treasure generation would also be a major turn off for my players, and this is a BIG issue.

I've been considering just ad-hoccing it and replacing reputation specific class features and feats on a case by case basis, and prerolling all treasure, but in case someone has something to share about removing reputation ill definitely listen.

[The_Grand_User]

You could keep the mechanics mostly and just refluff it. Since it's on the high seas, maybe instead of reputation they collect and spend on things it's mana pearls or some such. Something rare and valuable that might not be buyable with simple silver coins. Whatever you might have for your established setting.

Also, a holding might be perfect for the group, if it's a ship. And contacts on various islands would be useful.

[Krensky]

The ship is a holding. The fortified port is a holding.

The only major issue with disallow contacts is the explorer since he know someone everywhere. For that ability just let him pick the contact when he uses the ability and don't make it be just one guy.

FC is a narrative focused game. Action dice, narrative control, ability timers on gm defined timelines.

When designing an encounter, roll the treasure ahead of time. When they pick an unexpected fight, tell them they found some stuff, you'll let them know what in a bit. Or just roll it into your next planned encounter.

As for the prize limit, that's the stuff they can keep safe. If you mean why rep and not coin to aquire them, that's partly balance and partly because the stuff isn't available for coin.

[Sletchman]

Firstly: Welcome to the boards and the game.

Secondly: LFQW ??

Nextly (wherein I actually respond to your topic): I've run games that sound similar to what you're describing, the only difference being that I kept reputation (and I'll go into that in a second).  If you don't want to roll treasure (and I don't, personally) - then you really don't have to.  Unlike D&D, there's no strict "wealth / level" thing you have to follow for CRs to not break.  So you can run entire campaigns where the loot they find is what you gave the guy they just rolled - so that pirate has a sabre, some ruined clothes, and a coinbag with a realistic quanity of gold (based on who it was).  Nothing goes wrong.  I also didn't let them use their Reputation to buy prizes, because the whole "Big Micks Magic Item Emporium" thing just didn't sit right in the campaign setting (YMMV on that though) - they did use it for a whole load of other things though.

Which is why I say keep the Reputation - especially for this style of game.  It's not as much a meta trait as it sounds.  You get it by completeing adventures (or your settings equilivent) and it's basically a measure of clout.  If your players don't want people to go "Holy heck!  It's Roberts and his crew, everyone hide - we totally owe him money." then I'm not sure what they do want outta this kind of setting.  The reason "safe prizes" are linked to Renown is because it's your groups (literal) reputation telling people that they are not people to be trifled with.  If they have too much swag it's just that the same thieves / bandits / pirate vessles might think that it's a big risk, but the prize...

Call them different things (I use different Renown tracks that I really should flesh out more fully one of these days), but trust me - having NPCs know your name, and recognise your deeds always goods down smooth with players.

Also, I've done the whole "ship is a holding" thing - worked great.  Players invested some of their Rep in upgrading their own quarters, as well as other upgrades for the ship (safer treasure strongboxes and stuff).  In terms of ingame roleplay: They did some work while in port, gathered good will, and traded in all their "I'll owe you one"s on improving their ship before they sailed out.

[Telefax]

Problem is a bit bigger than the aestethic of reputation. I switched groups recently, and this is my first time GM:ing for this particular group, and i know that at least one player is dyslexic, and i might have to do a lot of ruleswise handholding to make this work, which i probably will, since i like the basics, but it might just be too much crunch. and fantasycraft is already very crunchy. They'll obviously be getting lots of stuff though

[paddyfool]

Secondly: LFQW ??

Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard.

[Bill Whitmore]

Secondly: LFQW ??

Vesoul-Frotey, S-France, duh.    

I have no idea, really.


On the reputation front, there really isn't a hard and fast reputation to silver conversion.  Really, they are 2 completely separate economies.  The closest corollary I can find is in the Favor chart where you can gain 1000sp or 2 Rep as a loan.  Using that as a basis you could multiply rep costs by 500sp to get a rough sp value.

If I was to do something like this, I would probably set the prize limit to (Level / 2) + 1.  Then you don't have to worry about tracking renown, either, which is really dependent on reputation.


edit:

Secondly: LFQW ??

Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard.

Ah, what an odd acronym.

[Sletchman]

Possible simple solution: Give them +1 Renown every handful of successful adventures (depending on how often you play and how long you want adventures to be - between 2 and 4 is good).  That way they get the effect of "you guys are more becoming more famous" while not having to worry about another new thing they have to track.  It also puts a prize cap in place - so if they wanna hang onto too much swag you can happily say "You aren't quite fearsome enough to lug around this big a target and remain safe".

In terms of specialised prizes - instead of them "buying it" just have them use their downtime to find someone who has what they want and barter for it (swap out a less desired prize).  Incidently - Explorer's contact ability is a great in game excuse for why/how this happens.  He just "knows a guy, who knows a guy".  That or just ask what sorta magic items they want and plan in advance.  Either way works depending on the group in question.

It also has the fringe benefit of not weirding out any class abilities that interact with Renown (Assassin, Gallant - off the top of my head).  Once they get more comfortable with the system you can roll out the more detailed rules to those that want to use them.

[Telefax]

Thanks for the tips guys. sorry for using  the LFQW acronym, just been lurking rpg.net too much lately (also where i first heard about fantasy craft.

[tfwfh]

I want to start by saying that I agree with the people who are saying that you should keep reputation around.  Now having said that, if you really want to get rid of it, then this is my thoughts on that.

First, it seems you want to not use reputation, holdings, and contacts, and maybe renown.  So, I suppose getting rid of reputation is simple enough, it's only used for buying renown and prizes, which are magic items, holdings, contacts, and favors.  You don't want to bother with holdings, it's fine if contacts aren't purchasable, same with magic items.  Favors are a little trickier.  I suppose you could give them out as scripted rewards, like you would with magic items.  I suppose you could also just ignore them, but I think you would be missing out if you did that.  With holdings, not using them is as simple as just not using them.  Nothing relies on them or assumes they will be present.

For Contacts though, it's trickier.  There are quite a few character options that grant them, or improve them, or rely on them in some way.  The Explorer's core ability has been mentioned already.  Captains also get a Personal Lieutenant that the class is pretty invested in, and Lancers get an Animal Companion.  The Beast Master expert class and Wind Knight master class also rely on Animal Companions.  And there may be others I'm forgetting.  PLs and ACs are special cases of contacts, and beyond that there is just the Extra Contact feat.  I can't recommend doing away with contacts entirely, but if you just want to not allow them to be purchased with reputation, that would probably do what you want it to.  You could still offer them as scripted prizes, same as magic items (and favors if you're doing that), and character options that grant them can still work.  It puts the explorer at a bit of a disadvantage because a big part of his schtick is having ready access to lots of contacts, but I think it would be manageable.  Any Explorer you have would get 1 from his core ability, 1 more from the extra contact feat, and if you're willing to give a couple more as prizes then I think that should be fine.

And that brings us to renown.  Getting rid of renown is dubious at best.  For one thing, it's what sets the limit on prizes, and things could potentially get out of hand if the characters aren't limited in the prizes they can keep.  It's also a good measure of how famous a character is, and in this kind of high seas type game, I would think being famous is a definite goal.  As others have suggested, you could just give out renown every so often.  That would kind of stiff the various classes and specialties that give discounts to one of the renown tracks, though.  If that bothers you, then once in a while you might give an extra renown to characters who have one of those discounts that they have to put in the discounted track.  If you don't want to do something like that, then I would recommend you tell your players ahead of time so they can take that into account when they're choosing classes and specialties.

Now, having said all that, I still think that keeping reputation, renown, and prizes the way they are is really the better option.  Splitting off major things like owning property and collecting favors from regular money is one of my favorite things about Fantasy Craft, and I really do think you'll be missing out if you ignore it.  There's really not that much math involved with it.  And, it doesn't have to be something you explain up front while they're building characters.  Assuming you start at level 1, they won't start with any renown, and won't have enough reputation for it to be an issue.  You can hold off on the explanations until after their first adventure when you reward them with some more reputation.

[Krensky]

Animal Partners and Personal Luitenants are not special cases of contacts. They have nothing to do with contacts othe then they're NPCs.

[tfwfh]

Well, they're at least sort of similar, and it doesn't really change anything else I said.

[JELEINEN]

I don't see reputation as meta-gamey in the least and it's certainly no more abstract than the monetary system in the game.  The fact is, pre-modern societies almost always have a problem with a shortage of specie.  People just simply don't have access to a lot of coin, even if they're wealthy or the ones in charge (if precious metals were common, they'd cease to be precious).  Obtaining large ticket items like ships or land or magic items require things like financial backers, letters of credit, being owed favors and simply having a good name.  In other words, reputation.

That said, for contacts, you could always bring in something like Spycraft's networking skill.

[Telefax]

Sigh, its not reputation as a concept itself that is the main problem, the main problem is that reputation is crunchy, adds crunch to an already VERY crunch-heavy system, and my players are in general pretty new to roleplaying, and i do not want to scare them away, in fact, during character creation two days back there were signs of throwing in the towel.
I want to run the system because i like the core mechanics and interactions, and  i just hope i can do without reputation, and run it as more of a classical style campaign

[Deral]

Sigh, its not reputation as a concept itself that is the main problem, the main problem is that reputation is crunchy, adds crunch to an already VERY crunch-heavy system, and my players are in general pretty new to roleplaying, and i do not want to scare them away, in fact, during character creation two days back there were signs of throwing in the towel.
I want to run the system because i like the core mechanics and interactions, and  i just hope i can do without reputation, and run it as more of a classical style campaign

You absolutely can run FantasyCraft ignoring Reputation completely, my first FC game was high-seas as well (specifically a fantasy alternate-history colonial era Caribbean setting), and I think my players visited the same location twice. They wound up with their first ship as a prize gained through their action in the story and we had a two-year (in-game) gap between level 13 and 14, so when the Burglar came back +400 Reputation, commanding a small fleet of ships, it still managed to make sense. However, no one spent a single point of reputation throughout the game, and knowing we wouldn't have the opportunity to use much in the way of favors and the like, we didn't have a Courtier, Lancer, or anyone who automatically gained Reputation, and Renown was handed out as rewards.

What we could've done, now, was have contacts be shipmates or travelers on the ship itself, the campaign I just ran was extremely contact-heavy, and a vast percentage of them traveled with the party, even though they spent about half their time in one city. There really wasn't any conflict with hand-waving the "only once per adventure" usage of contacts, and instead they began to see contacts much more like tools, which could be good and bad, but at least it means they put them to good use.