How do you use renown in Space:1889?

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

I've just finished running Beastmen of Mars and the PCs got home with enough artifacts to gain them a bit of renown in the field of archeology. But when the players asked me what they could use it for, I was stumped. I mean, I can make something up, but I can't find any rules on the subject anywhere in the main rulebook. Can anyone help me out here?

And if there aren't any rules about how to use renown, would anyone care to suggest some house rules?


Hans

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

And if there aren't any rules about how to use renown, would anyone care to suggest some house rules?

I don't know the 1889 system at all, but if you want to make up some house rules to make this Renown trait useful, it could enable the character who has it (or the PC party having it as a collective) to "pull strings" socially and call in favours.

Depending on how Renown scales, it could be one such usage per month per level, or once usage per 2 months at first level, then doubled usages per level after that.

Concrete effects of usages could be getting bonuses to social interaction skills, or getting to talk to someone that one would normally be completely unable to talk to, or getting someone to give more help than he'd normally be willing to give (which in some cases would be no help at all).

Renown could be "flavoured", which limits what it can be used for. Bringing home Martian artefacts suggests an Indiana Jones-flavoured Renown, meaning it covers the two "spheres" of science and adventuring (the combo-sphere of adventurer-archeologist). It could also be Martian-flavoured Renown instead, meaning it can't be used for anything related only to Earth. The problem with flavoured Renown would be that you or your players might end up having to keep track of multiple flavours of Renown, even more so if Renown is a character trait and not a group trait.

One solution to that is that each level of Renown can either give extra uses per time unit, with the first level giving something like one use per month or per 2 months, but levels after the first can also instead be used by "buy" additional spheres (the first level gives 1 usage per time unit and 1 sphere). In this case science and adventuring would be 2 seperate spheres (simulating the fact that many scientists may be disinclined to respect a hands-on Indy-style adventurer, until said adventurer proves that he actually also has a brain). Having to decide to spend Renown to buy spheres (which would be a permanent non-revokable choice) could feel rather metagamey, but of course it is the player making the decision, at least usually, not the character (the exception would be when the character knows he can "buy credibility and respect" based on his accomplishments, and that he can "buy" it in different social circles depending on how he "plays his cards").

Also deciding when to use Renown uses can be metagamey. From the character's point of view, he's just pulling strings and subtly calling attention to his past accomplishments, which is fine in itself, but the limited-per-time-unit uses is metagame (after X uses, he can no longer use the ability; it has to recharge, or "cooldown" to use MMORPG jargon).

To avoid that, you could use a burnout model instead, where Renown is a trait that can be rolled for, like a skill or attribute, with some probability after each roll that the ability burns out, thus stops working completely until the end of the time period (the last day of the current month) or drops by 1 level, again until the end of the time period. In this way, the character is taking a chance every time he chooses his Renown, because he is "stretching it", not knowing exactly how popular and famous he is. In this way, it effectively ceases to be a metagame ability.

You can also drop the time period thing completely and just have Renown be like an attribute or skill that can be used for complimentary rolls to get a bonus to rolls for social interaction skills (I can't recall if GURPS has rules for complimentary skill rolls, but Hero System does, at least recent editions). The reason for having limited uses per time period is that the effect can be starker without risk of unbalance. As soon as you make it an ability that can be used an infinite number of times, you need to take great care that over-use (which, of course, can very well be perfectly 110% in character) can cause balance problems.

With either of the roll-for-it-as-an-attribute approach, you can still use the spheres concept in a modified version: the character gets one sphere for which he can use his Renown unmodified, but if he tries using it in other spheres, the rolls are at a penalty (out-of-sphere Renown counts as 2 levels lower). The question then is how he can get more spheres than one, since limiting each charcter to being famous only in a single social sphere ever is obviously blatantly unrealistic. The simplest solution might be one sphere at 1st level, one more sphere at 4th level, and one more sphere every even level thereafter.