Faction Rules Hack: I’ve noticed that the game’s rules seem to disincentivize going to your fellow PC’s for help and information, because you can’t mark Faction when your buddy the Wizard hooks you up. I’m thinking of loosening that rule a little so that any time another PC helps you out in a way that 1) involves a roll and 2) involves an introduction or at least your name being dropped, you get to mark Faction. This sort of simulates the idea that, even if you haven’t met the Vampire King of Cleveland, he’s heard of you and that you’ve been asking a lot of questions about him, he’s got you on his radar. Obviously it’s then up to the MC to keep track of this and decide when the Vampire King is going to reach out and start asking questions of his own. The roll is required so there’s some skin in the game and so that a miss can remind the MC to make trouble for both PC’s involved.
Will this break the game or make advancement way too easy? I play online, so fast advancement is good as long as it’s not too fast.
I think you need to tighten up the idea into a move to make it really sing, but it’s not a bad idea!
Remember that folks do get to mark Faction when they cash in a debt, so you are incentivized to go to your Wizard buddy and demand that he help you by cashing in a debt with him. Are your players already doing that? 😀
Actually I’m curious what reading Daniel Krashin had that led him to believe Faction checks don’t count when there’s a pc involved.
I had a little bit of this happening in my game as well, if people are just talking nicely and not getting Debts involved. Now one of the players has a massive pile of Debts on everyone and there is a reckoning to come.
Bwahahaha.
After re-reading the rules, I think Brandon has a good point; doing a favor for somebody is a move and should create a Debt. The game hasn’t started yet, but clearly tracking Debt is key, even more so than tracking Strings in Monsterhearts Other things to track: who the PCs have pissed off; how they’ve gotten beaten up.
Tracking Debts has two parts as well! You can essentially have that happening during play (with in character action, of course) or using the End of Session Moves which has you remind other players whether you did a favor for someone or someone did a favor for you.
The thing to be careful of here is of course making sure that ‘favors’ and ‘Debts’ are equal. Buying someone a six pack of beer probably isn’t worthy of a Debt (unless the other character is a teenager who needs it to work with an ancient Loa), walking into a compound full of vampires without any backup to spit in the eye of the Vampire King is probably more than a Debt.