Influence System
Influence System Basics
This system is designed to allow players to utilize certain stats to influence the world around them and to gather information, take actions, defend territory, or a number of other actions in the world.
The system below will explain how to utilize each background in the system, but the basic idea of this influence system is twofold. You have personal influence that you can leverage to do things in the areas you possess that influence and potentially aid your personal efforts in those areas. You also can act through your agents and assets like retainers, contacts, allies, and spies to influence the world.
Purchasing Influence
The Influence background in this system is not one background but it is allocated across 14 Areas of Influence (see Areas of Influence below). Each dot can be purchased at x2 cost and goes from 1-5.
The following rules apply to Areas of Influence:
1. A player can have no more Areas of Influence backgrounds than their Influence Background score.
2. All Areas of Influence are capped at Level 3. Levels 4 and 5 require staff approval and likely will require significant effort on the part of the player to acquire that level of control over an area.
3. Those number of players who will have Level 4 and 5 influences will be limited.
The following are the Areas of Influence that exist on the game:
Academic – Influence within universities, schools, and scholarly institutions. Useful for accessing restricted knowledge, archives, and research facilities, or leveraging bureaucrats and professors to further your goals in intellectual circles.
Underworld – Control over criminal elements and illicit activities. Enables smuggling, forgery, theft, and access to the black market. Can be used to orchestrate crimes or gain favors from criminals and gangs.
Business & Industry – Power in the corporate and industrial sectors. Allows for manipulating markets, accessing prototypes or corporate research, managing hostile takeovers, or leveraging business assets and infrastructure.
Law Enforcement – Ties to local police or federal agencies. Can be used to launch investigations, suppress evidence, arrest individuals, or place people under surveillance. While potent, it's risky—law enforcement can investigate its own.
Legal – Influence within the legal system. Offers access to skilled attorneys, court proceedings, contracts, and confidential case files. Can also be used to entangle rivals in lawsuits, injunctions, or bureaucratic red tape.
Media – Control over newspapers, magazines, and broadcast journalism. Useful for planting or suppressing stories, conducting investigations, or swaying public opinion through coverage, interviews, and exposés.
Medical – Ties to hospitals, doctors, and healthcare institutions. Grants access to treatment, drugs, medical records, and research labs. Can also be used to suppress medical findings or run discreet tests and procedures.
Transportation – Power over the movement of goods and people by road, rail, air, or sea. Can arrange fast or discreet travel, intercept or erase shipments, and track others’ movements with access to transport records and logistics.
High Society – Social standing among the wealthy and influential. Opens doors to exclusive events, powerful individuals, and philanthropic circles. This influence can grease wheels in other areas through charm, favors, and connections.
Arts & Community – Influence in local neighborhoods, small businesses, and the arts scene. Useful for gathering local support, spreading ideas, organizing cultural events, and connecting with musicians, performers, and activists.
Government – Authority within city-level government, including the mayor’s office, council, and municipal services. Can push policies, redirect city services, issue permits, or interfere with utilities and infrastructure.
Religion – Ties to religious communities and faith leaders. Can rally congregations, spread ideology, or tap spiritual leaders for support or pressure. Religious institutions also house unique knowledge and hold sway over many lives.
Occult – Connections in esoteric circles, cults, and fringe researchers. Grants access to hidden lore, rare books, supernatural rumors, and obscure groups. Risky for supernatural beings, as these communities often sense the uncanny.
Technology – Influence in emerging fields of computers and electronics. Offers access to skilled hackers, engineers, and R&D. Can uncover digital secrets, sabotage rivals, or push forward new tech breakthroughs.
Using Influence
Influence in an area can be used like a pool to manipulate the various dice rolls that you or your agents/retainers make during a given influence cycle. Each dot of influence in an area can be used as part of this pool and used in line with the following options. The costs for each are listed next to the option. Once a point of Influence is depleted from the pool it cannot be reused until the pool resets.
All Influence pools reset every two real-life weeks.
1. Aid Agents. Influence can be used to manipulate the rolls of your agents such as retainers, allies, and contacts but not spies and backup. The cost for this is 1 point of Influence and it adds +2 dice to any one roll of that agent or reduces the difficulty on a roll by -1. Up to 2 points of Influence can be spent this way for +4 dice, -2 difficulty, or +2 dice and -1 difficulty. 2 Influence pool can also be spent to give a specialization (10s count as 2 successes) on one roll.
Limitation: This Influence can only be spent to aid agents that are aligned with that Area of Influence. For example, you can’t use your Underworld Influence to aid an Academic agent.
2. Aid PC Action. Influence can also be used to manipulate the rolls your character makes in a scene or +job. The cost for this is 1 point of Influence and it adds +2 dice to any one roll of your character or reduces the difficulty on a roll by -1 in a scene or a +job. Up to 2 points of Influence can be spent this way for +4 dice, -2 difficulty, or +2 dice and -1 difficulty to rolls.
Limitation: Influence here can only be assigned to rolls that ‘make sense’ in the context of the player’s action or the scene. High Society influence is unlikely to be useful on a break-in.
3. Power Brokering. Requires the Power Brokering ability. The character may spend 1 point of Influence in an area to move up to their Power Brokering score in Influence on any other Area of Influence, regardless of it they possess it or not. Those points can then be used as if the player had those influence points on any action listed in this section. For example, if Henri has Power Brokering 3, and Underworld Influence 3, he can spend 1 point of Underworld Influence to move up to 2 points of his Underworld Influnence to High Society. He can then use that 2 High Society Influence on any other action listed in this section.
Limitation: The only limits are that the player cannot use those brokered points to broker again and no influence purchased can exceed 3, even if the PC already has 3+ Influence in that area.
4. Exert Control. This is a raw expenditure of influence to create actions in the world. These can manifest in line with the type of influence used and examples of them might be – have someone arrested, take over or ruin a business, research a scientific experiment, or steal blood from a blood bank. Staff will be the ultimate judge on this front, but the following point cost is roughly a ballpark for the amount required to make a thing happen. It is also worth noting that staff might require that a PC have at least one appropriate agent to make it happen:
1 Point: Trivial Manipulation • Steal blood from the blood bank • Run a background check • Arrange for a party invitation 2 Points: Minor Manipulation • Have someone investigated • Run academic research on something • Hire a lawyer to defend someone 3 Points: Moderate Manipulation • Call an inspector to have a building shut down • Have someone arrested • Arrange for a shipment of illegal weapons 4 Points: Major Manipulation • Pull in a world-famous researcher to handle a request • Quash or promote an important media story in the news • Trigger a gang war between two rival factions 5 Points: Massive Manipulation • Arrange for a sweeping law enforcement raid on a location • Execute a corporate takeover of a significant business • Arrange for an art opening with famous names from around the country
Limitation: These kinds of actions will likely be successful but without actual trusted hands to manage them in the form of agents you control, they can go in unpredictable directions. They are also more likely to be traced directly to you if someone digs into the action. Having someone arrested with influence alone is far less effective and reliable than if you also use your police detective ally to make the arrest and ensure it is done correctly how you wish it.