Letting Your Reputation Do the Talking

Karma has two effects on how your characters interact with the world around them. The primary effect of karma is as a measure of character morality. A character’s individual morality should affect their decisions, and gives situation speechcraft bonuses or penalties. The magnitude of this bonus is based on their karma score (the net value of their karmic situation). A character’s net karma score, divided by 10, is their bonus towards characters with a similar karmic background. Good ponies get a speechcraft bonus towards good or neutral ponies, bad ponies get a bonus towards bad or neutral ponies, etc. Neutral ponies – characters with a net karma score in between -10 and +10, or between -25 and +25 if they have the Impartial Mediation perk – receive no bonuses or penalties to either. Note that the While there is not maximum positive or negative value for Karma, it may help both GMs and players to imagine karma as a sliding scale from -500 to 500. This helps many GMs to reward Karma in a more consistent fashion.

The other function of karma is to represent how well known a character is. Ponies out in the wasteland will start to hear about your characters, their exploits, and their friends after at least one of your group’s members gains more than 100 Karma (either positive or negative or any combination of the two). This will affect your group differently depending on whether your net karma gain has been good (positive) or bad (negative). Characters with between -10 and +10 karma (or -25 to +25 with impartial mediation) who have received more than 100 karma are considered to be “Neutral”, and while they may still be well known, are not well or poorly thought of enough to warrant true fame or infamy. They will never be rejected from a settlement for reasons strictly relating to their karma.

Fame

If your character has a net karma score of greater than +10 and has received more than 100 points of karma, they’re wasteland-famous. The odds are pretty good that a local DJ has heard about their exploits and talks them up on the radio whenever they’re given a chance, and areas without a local radio station will probably start cranking out local rumors about all of the good that your character has done. Characters that maintain positive karma as their total received (gross) karma increases become known to those living further and further away from the areas in which their exploits actually happened; their legend grows. Be careful about becoming too well known, though – Ponies looking to bump off the local hero may start to take notice. Most heroes don’t last long in the wasteland.

Infamy

“Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have already written an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no pony that they will not betray to stay alive.”

--Sidney Hoof, Equestrian Philosopher

Infamy is what happens when your pony has developed a bad reputation. If they’ve gained more than 100 points of karma and have a net karma score of less than -10, they’ve become infamous among wastelanders in their area. As their infamy grows and their total received karma increases, characters that maintain negative karma become infamous over an increasingly large geographical area. They may find themselves increasingly running into ponies standing up for good, and having harder and harder times selling their ill-gotten gains to shopkeepers. As those living increasingly further away will have heard of them, many will begin to fear them, but many others may begin stand up to oppose their cruel actions, or just to take a cut for themselves. It is not necessarily better to be feared than loved….

Gettin’ By

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 901