Influence and Feeding Modifiers

[Gorf]

After finalizing our new influence system, the feeding rolls are going to change a little. When you throw chops for feeding at Announcements, the normal results are: Win=full, Tie=Down 2, and Loss=Down 4. These are going to be altered by a modifier related to how many influence centers are located in your domain. Those with personal domain will share the pros/cons of the clan domain with their own, but will not have any negative feeding modifications due to having an influence center located in their personal domain. The clan modifiers are as follows:

Assamites: +1
Brujah: -1
Gangrel/Independant: +0
Giovanni: +0
Malkavian: -1
Nosferatu: -2
Toreador: +0
Tremere: +1
Ventrue: -1

The aforementioned Influence Centers are locations that have control over the given influence. Each influence has a center. If a domain has an Influence Center, any clan member utilizing that influence will receive an invisible +1 to their influence rating. The only way you will be able to figure out where the influence centers are located is to utilize your influence to locate them. This is considered your influence action for the week. The system will be as follows:

Base diff 7 and you roll your influence in the influence center you are trying to find. One test per week of Any influence(this means you May Not try to find the influence center of every influence you have each week, only one) and successes are carried over to the next week, there are no re-rolls for 2 wins on your tests, as there can be no specialties in Backgrounds.
A failure gets you no results
1-2 successes: 5 sites
3-4 : 4 sites
5-6 : 3 sites
7-8 : 2 sites
9-10: 1 site (the center)
On a botch: All successes are lost and the number of botches equals the number of weeks you may not utilize that influence for anything, as you have pissed off someone important in said influence.

In the coming weeks, there will be a reply to this post defining how, after a center is determined to be located in a domain other than your's, it can be 'moved' to another of the 5 sites that are either in your domain or close enough to negotiate moving borders to obtain it. At the moment, the best way to do so is to back-stab your way into owning said domain, but this will be remedied prior to anyone discovering where the actual locations are.

[Kenneth Ashland]

So, basically we 'easter-egg hunt' for the spots richest in the bubblin' crude, red gold, Kindred Tea, and reap the rewards at feeding time (?).

[David Price]

Please clarify: by "-1" do you mean Malkavians are 1/3/5 or 0/1/3 on feeding tests?

[Gorf]

arlobraven said:

Please clarify: by "-1" do you mean Malkavians are 1/3/5 or 0/1/3 on feeding tests?

In case it wasn't clarified at announcements: Currently the Malks will be down 1/3/5 for W/T/L.

[Shakir Movre']

In the case of a plus modifier however, the way this is written on a feeding test for Assamites & Tremere.

W/T/L = +1/-1/-3... Does this mean that we can bank one when we win the test. This could be quite useful for us Blood Magic users.

[Gorf]

shakir said:

In the case of a plus modifier however, the way this is written on a feeding test for Assamites & Tremere.

W/T/L = +1/-1/-3... Does this mean that we can bank one when we win the test. This could be quite useful for us Blood Magic users.

No, if you are full, then you're full.

[Alex Rourke]

My question is: Are these seasonal restrictions or are they year round? And if they are year round, how do certain parts of the city, with their specific demographics factor into the feeding ie: Pioneer Square has signifigant nightlife (hence it being the Rack) but the U District has numerous dorms, fraternaties/Sororities, apartment complexes and a decent amount of restaurants and shops all along the ave.

I'm curious as to how, with such plentiful feeding, for at least 6 months out of the year, the Brujah recieve that -1 modifier. Other areas of the city bring up questions about the homeless, gangs,underworld etc and the other factors of humanity that the Kindred so readily use for all their purposes. I would think that individual domains, the population therein and the condition thereof would have more affect.

In a nut shell, I'd think demographics, rather than influence, would play a bigger part in deciding who gets what bonus to feeding, thus making Domain more important, because while not every player wants to play the influence game, because I'm aware of some who don't, every vampire has to feed and that means there would be more conflict over domain.

Now I can see using one's influence to make feeding harder for another domain (ie one vampire using police Influence to have anothers domain more heavily patrolled and thus making feeding harder) or on the flip side, using influence to make feeding easier (ie Medical Influence granting access to hospitals or blood banks)

But I don't quite understand how a domains potential influence, or the existance of an influence center, would grant any kind of ease to feeding, with exception to things like, Police (Heavier or lessened patrols), Church (The potential, for the presence, or lack there of, of hunters) or Medical (Increase or shortage of available blood for the purposes of transfusions, tests etc.)

Just some thoughts.

[Joseph Mayek]

Eh, i thought they explained it fairly well, as for the domain modifiers and such. While I'm sure the things you mentioned are at least partially taken into account, it wouldn't be effecting the feeding, those are direct actions that'd need to be made. Not "how it is" for the territory.

[Barnaby Cuthbert]

My questions are about the Influence Centers.

I'm unclear as to how the lower the number of successes provides more known sites and a higher number of successes offers less known. What is the difference between 'sites' and influence centers?

Locking an entire influence down for weeks at a time to find out where influences is really heavy-handed in my opinion. Influence level 1 is who's who in the influence. Why should 'where's the general majority of whose who hanging out' be such a massive undertaking comparatively? Especially if I can intuit a lot of that with common sense? Do I really need to lock up all of my University Influence for months to learn that it's in the *gasp!* University District? Gimme a break here.

And why can't I have all my Influences tied up looking for their centers? What's the reason for that caveat? I can put them all on Watch. Seems like there is a system here already for this that is being ignored for one that is shiny and new. Keep It Simple Sts.

[Alex Rourke]

drake said:

While I'm sure the things you mentioned are at least partially taken into account, it wouldn't be effecting the feeding, those are direct actions that'd need to be made. Not "how it is" for the territory.

My real question, more clarified, is how does having an influence center increase your feeding chances?

Again, you take the example of the U. District, it's filled with potential food for vampires at least 6 out of the 12 months with breaks in December, April and the Summer months.

Also, how does this work with the Ventrue clan flaw? Ventrue can only feed from one kind of person. Does this mean all of the mortals who work in the Financial Influence field fit the Prince's feeding restriction?

Seriously.

I guess I'm failing to see why Influence backgrounds, unless used in direct actions to make hunting easier or harder, have anything to do with whether a vampire succesfully finds prey on a tuesday night in belltown.

[Kenneth Ashland]

When the 'Domain effects feeding' concept was first announced, I recalled earlier statements akin to

"Thy Domain is thy concern: if a gang war breaks out in your domain, you had better clean it up/resolve it if you want people to feel safe enough to go out/be available to feed on."

Thus, I had thought the system would be something far simpler; like, random mortal-world conditions in each domain that either helps or hinders feeding, then wait and see what the players do to fix/maintain/improve the situation.

Example: The STs post a news report to the boards, and say: Serial Rapist loose in Queen Anne!!

This will lessen the liklihood of people travelling alone, and incite the "neighborhood watch" to look for suspicious characters...like vampires...thus, Brujah feeding down by 2!

And THEN the players have to work to resolve it. Insta-plot hook.

That's what I had thought the idea was leading to, anyway. Influence centers and all that...sounds a bit complicated and artificial. No offense to the STs!! It's obvious a lot of time and thought went into the present system...

my .02

[Alex Rourke]

You know, here's a really good question, and it kinda goes in line with Schetzle's last comment: Exactly why are we changing (and making more complicated for the players) the influence system. I mean, this is a LARP and while I recognize the need for systems the more those systems get complicated, the less time we spend ROLE PLAYING because we're questioning the new systems and submitting influence and waiting on responses from our STs as to whether or not those influence manuvers go through. Which means we then have to wait to broker deals with other Kindred and move our character goals along.

Now I understand that nothing happens immediately (Unless you're Tremere with cool rituals for paper work) but having us lock up what influence we do have, after it's already taken weeks or even months to grow, in order to start a corporation that might actually help the city is a bit disuading. Then take the fact that now we're looking for Influence centers, which means said corporation, or park or Initiative now gets put on hold (when it was already slow moving) because feeding is suffering and vampires now have to look for influence centers to compensate for lost food.

I guess it's a matter of not seeing the need for complications that force one of two options:
1: Role Play Less and play the Influence Game
2: Role Play as per usual and get squished by those who do play the Influence Game.

The only good thing that I see this system providing is that it brings us as players, and our characters back to the crux of their existance: Blood. To Kindred there is NOTHING more important than blood and feeding. Thus with the negative modifiers, it reflects the actual unlife of Kindred in that more feeding scenes will need to be run.

But then that brings us to another question: Given all the time and effort our STs spend running influence and the story lines and plots how much time will they really have to run feeding scenes for say a Nosferatu who loses his feeding test and is then down 6 blood?

I think we need to consider the availability of our STs vs how many feeding scenes will this produce. A 10th gen Ventrue who loses his feeding test is down to half his blood pool. That's one hungry vampire. These are just some things I think we should consider.

[Lady Dagger Rose]

I have a real quick clarification question.

Those with personal domain will share the pros/cons of the clan domain with their own, but will not have any negative feeding modifications due to having an influence center located in their personal domain.

Does this mean that those of us with Personal Domain that would normally have a negative to the feeding tests don't have that negative? Do we go with the test as per usual? And those with Personal Domain that would normally get a positive to the test still get that positive?

Clarify please? I think I'm reading that right, but I'm not sure.

[Gorf]

Alright, it appears that people are misunderstanding the relationship between Influence Centers and feeding.

If there are Influence Centers in your domain, you receive a negative feeding modifier. The more Influence Centers you have in your domain, the more you lose from your feeding. This is a balance between being able to do things better with your influences. The rationalization is that if you have an Influence Center in your domain, it is taking up some of your time; time that could be used feeding.

Those with personal domains that contain Influence Centers get the bonus to their influence actions, yet don't get the extra loss on their feeding that would come from having that bonus.

Chris: each list of sites will contain the Actual Influence Center for that particular sphere of influence. The more successes you aquire, the less possible locations you will know are the actual location, until you have whittled the list down to one. Also, not all of the Influence Centers are obvious, some are. Oh... and what would you like broken? *smirk*

Now, if you think this should fall under our current influence system, that's nice, but it can't. The closest thing to searching for the center would be Trace, but this is searching for the originator for a particular influence action; totally different from trying to find where the power center for that influence is located. We didn't have a system for that, since we didn't have Influence Centers. This is why I developed the method of searching them out along with developing the locations.

[Shakir Movre']

And the next question is... So Joe Vampire, new to the schene, doesn't have Influences, but has great Streetwise and Scrounging. Some Ventrue, stuck in his office 74 floors above the street, conducting Chemical MegaCorporation dealings has just affected his dinner. Is that what I am hearing.

Interesting concept but when the price of a phone call increases in China, how does that affect my cup of coffee in Seattle?

Perhaps if you were to give us a better writeup on the mechanics behind the concept, we might feel a little more comfortable in utilizing this new creation of yours.

[Alex Rourke]

I deffinately see where Hans is coming from with this. If my character has no Influence, but there's an influence center in his clan's domain, and I as a player (And thus my character) have no interest in said influence, how is that affecting my character's feeding if he has nothing to do with said influence and its center?

To me it seems that those who don't want the influence are taking a hit for those who do and while those who do want the influence get a trade off, those who don't, get nothing for their troubles. How does this get justified?

[Joseph Mayek]

From what I understand. This isn't a matter of a trade off so much. Though I can see how it could be viewed that way.

They've just finally 'classified' the area's as far as feeding goes, and it works well with the influence centers.

I believe the best way to look at it is like this. To understand how the Influence Centers affect feeding, look at the chart in the Vampire Mainbook.

The more people there are, the harder it is to pull off feeding. You're downtown, there's quite a few people around. Not so easy to pull some hapless victim into an alley and suck em dry. Where is, on the other hand, you're out in the middle of random area where there's not much to attract people.. Not as many people -to- feed from, sure, but those few people out and about.. Perfect feeding.

How are the Influence Centers added into the equation?

Simple. Influence Centers aren't some building, or complex somewhere (necessarily, anyways) they're the area on the map that if you looked at it, it's a hot spot for Mortal activity. Whether it be because of Bureaucratic influence in the area, where (Say, at some area downtown where the utility company's, FBI, and governmental type buildings are located fairly close to one another) and everyone gets off around the same time, goes to the same bars, hangs out after work.

It doesn't mean feeding is impossible, or anything. But, that cute girl at the bar that looks perfect to lure off, will likely have a few co-workers around. And witnesses are a bad thing, Remember?

Same goes for other areas all about the city (Except for a few area's that fall outside of those hotspot areas. Falling in assorted clan domains.

So, what good does that damnable hot spot of Mortal activity do for you?! Well, it means it's pretty god damn easy to find the right person for the job. You need a lawyer in a decent firm to weasel your way into the legal world? Hey, there's that clique of young and up & coming guys, fresh from the bar exam, wearing the power suits, over by the pool tables, relaxing with a martini after dealing with a long day in court. Take your pick of the lot, one of them is bound to wheel and deal with you.

Or, you need to get your hands on that amazing modified Colt Python .357 you heard about? So you go to make that deal. And by god, you didn't know you had the Underworld Influence center RIGHT here in your own backyard? (Or maybe you'd just spent the last month trying to find out just -where- the low life weapon dealers hang out, and low and behold it's in your domain) So you go, or send your little errand boy to go see if they can't get that Colt! Next thing your know, you're errand boy comes back and it goes something like this "Not only did I get the Colt at a decent bargain. While I was there, Tony introduced me to this guy, and look what I got for a cut rate deal!" *then puts a box of flechette ammo on the table*

So, what's not to understand about that? One effects the other. It just so happens that having influence centers, and the bonuses it gives you, gets balanced out by the detriment to feeding. Whether or not you deal with those influences, the hotspots are still there.

Of course, if you wanted to be picky, you could say, instead of giving a -1 blood, do difficulty modifiers on hunting rolls.

But, really... if you're one of those in the negative.. Would you rather a point of blood. Or have you're chance of botching on a hunt roll increase... End up having a cop shine his spotlight on you just as you're pulling away, blood on your lips. Botched hunt rolls = the suck.

Still, I think the minus/plus blood is better than the difficulty. I mean, just because it's a hotspot, doesn't mean there's not a slum near by that people will look the other way and give a crap less if joe shmoe is yanked into the dark... Even in the downtown area next to the FBI building.. there's that alley that bums regular and people tend to not look down. Sure, it's not easy, but it's not necesarily more difficulty because the Bureaucratic Center is just a few blocks away.

Well, that enough babbling for you?

[Alex Rourke]

ok, now see, that makes more sense, as I was understanding it the "1 Site (the Center)" seemed to be in reference to a singular building.

Now I realize I'm being a pain in the ass, but what happens if you're feeding say 20 or 30 blocks from the Influence Center? I mean, the Brujah and Nosferatu do have amazingly huge domains in comparison to other clans.

I mean, there's always the Rack, but then if you're hunting in the Rack (where most vampire hunt any way) do you still get your clan's negative modifier?

[Joseph Mayek]

Well, first, who's to say how big an Influence Center is? And second, You use the Nosferatu domain as an example of a big domain, and it is.. Which is very likely the exact reason that it has the biggest penalty towards feeding. When you're domain covers that much area, you're bound to have an Influence Center in there, or very likely, more than one. So there you have maybe multiple Centers in your domain, that much more in the way of attracting people of a certain type, hindering feeding because of that influence getting in the way, etc. On the other hand... a great domain for using influences.

As for the, you live in the "such and such" domain, but you feed in the rack? Well, you're Hunting roll is at diff 4, as it's the Rack, Pretty easy hunting, huh? Why do you get the blood modifier? Well, you're passing up the places right outside in your backyard, for the easy common grounds hunting. And the way I look at it.. are you going to want to travel all the time to get a bite to eat? I mean, sure, there's times when it might be cheaper for me to run over to the Jack in the Box, but there's times I don't feel like going so far, and so I toss in the extra money for the chinese restraunt to deliver.

Sure, it's not going to be perfect, but I think it's a pretty good system, And pretty simple as well. I understand there are always questions on such systems. But I think it adds a great depth to Domains, Influences, and feeding grounds. I mean, think about it.. Say you're clan doesn't give a shit about influences, but you really want that easy feeding? Then damn it, You have a -reason- to get rid of that center in the next clan domain Negotations. And maybe get a great price from those damned Ventrue clan who has a hard time feeding all the time, so doesn't care about abit more, because they have their herds to support em.. But they -really- want that extra nudge in the Finance area!

I mean, I think it's great. There will be -reasons- for wanting a certain territory now, and maybe even border disputes! Think about it, that restless brujah is tired of dealing with all the damned college students around, can't get a decent bite to eat... hears the Tremere have good eating, so just scoots over to their domain, nips some grub. Who's gonna notice, right? Could it really go that horribly?

One thing I'd like to add, I understand why they have it so you have to lock down an influence to search out a center. In a sense, it's using your resources to "compile" statistical data. Takes time. Also, from a mechanical standpoint... these influence centers are -adding- to your "effective rating" in a certain influence. It's -powerful-. So, it's not a great idea to just hand em over. And sure, while some are obvious. You don't really -know- for sure. You just assume. It might well be right, too. But.. would you give up some big price to move your clan's territory over that area, unless you were absolutely sure? I wouldn't. And once people start locating them.. they might well take actions to move them... then those "obvious" ones might not be so obvious.

Using the example I saw earlier in this thread, the University.. Sure, I bet that is the univerisity Center atm.. pretty obvious.. But what if someone decides to change that? Say, starts pumping money, resources, getting the best teachers, better aide programs, and such, in another college? Take it above and beyond the "community college" label. While at the same time... maybe the crime rate starts rising at the UW, maybe arson destorys some buildings.. Oh I can think of ways.. Drastic, sure. but it's possible. Might be something as mundane as opening bookstores, cafe's etc, places college students and proffesors like to go. *shrugs* Might not be so hard to move it abit south, into another domain.

[Alex Rourke]

ok... I think I have no more questions.