Design Workshop: Favor and Debt

Design Workshop: Favor and Debt

Design Workshop: Favor and Debt

Random design-stuff that I’m chewing on.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m toying with expanding and revamping the Debt and Favor system. The intrigue-heavy tone of the first campaign setting feels like the best opportunity to try this stuff out. Shout out to Chris Wilson, +Alan Tsang, and everyone else who gave their feedback on the flaws/weak points of the current Debt system.

Brief summary:

– Incur Debt to people whenever you make a deal with them or ask them for something rare or important.

– Debt is recorded per group/faction.

– Debt is an economic “injury”: Minor, Major, Severe, Critical and Crushing.

– Earn Favors when you do beneficial acts.

– Favors can be spent to reduce the severity of Debts.

It’s a tad more complex than the original Debt/Favor system, but much more robust. Personally I think it’s just… better. Which is annoying? In a way? Like, I don’t think I could have put this together two years ago when writing UW, I’ve learned a lot since then. But I guess this is a candidate for a UW.v2

Anywho, I’d super appreciate any comments and feedback. I know it’s a hefty two pages, but if you folks have the time to go over it it would be really useful to me. Especially if you’ve run a campaign before and had problems with the old Debts system.

(Insert usual “It’s a work in Progress!” bleating here)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/au0txyb9swksbt0/Debt.docx?dl=0

14 thoughts on “Design Workshop: Favor and Debt”

  2. Oh man, this is actually really good. Two questions:

    Can you repay debts with Favors by going into negative Favor? If I have no Favor with you, can I go to -5 to pay off the Crushing Debt?

    The cargo section says “counts as neutral Favor” – what does that mean?

  4. Aaron Griffin

    Great questions, I’ll be sure to clarify these in the next version.

    I think it breaks the system a bit if you can spend favor you don’t have, so you have to spend positive Favors. Negative favor is usually caused by you pissing people off (especially when you’re indebted to them and they ask you for a favor and you say no)

    Poor wording on my part. I’m trying to convey that a Cargo’s Class is basically a freely transferable/non-aligned Favor that can be spent to repay any Debt.

    Basically, you can either work your way towards repaying Debt by doing jobs for various powerful/rich, or you can be independent traders, travelling around and (hopefully) trading up for better and better cargo to eventually sell and wipe out your Debts. Or a mix of both. Or, like, steal the cargo?

  6. This looks really good! A minor quibble: Calling in Debts doesn’t specify that you may remove Debt on a mission success. Is that intentional? I like the scaling favor of Debts and the interactions between Favors and Debts. I really like that the cost of refusing Debt related missions is not more Debt; it will now worsen your reputation with the lender and they’re going from leaving passive-aggressive voice mail, to break legs and bounty hunters.

  7. Alan Tsang, it’s intentional the completing the mission doesn’t repay the Debt, but rather provides the resources to repay the Debt. So a Minor or Major Debt can be repaid with one or two missions, while Crushing Debt will require a LOT of legwork to earn enough Favor to repay the Debt.

  10. Chad Jacobs I’ve got a second pass coming in a couple of days, and I would greatly appreciate any group that felt like giving it a whirl. I’ll get back to you asap.

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