Summary

Influence represents an amount of social capital as well as the access to a professional network that such a reputation creates. Influence provides a toolset to perform actions that can be assumed to happen off-screen and without you, the player (or character) having to worry about how, exactly, to do it: ask and ye shall recieve from your network, and it's their job to see to the job being done correctly. This is opposed to doing actions yourself or giving instructions to Allies/Contacts/Retainers.

Influence is broken into different spheres in order to bring some MUSH-friendly nuance to the very simple tabletop system. The sphere separation exists largely to determine the scope of what your influence is intended to do. Each sphere has Specialties, which make actions pertinent to your Specialty particularly potent.

In short, a given Influence action consists of a player making a request to describe what they want done, paying for that Influence action in Downtime, and then making either one or more dice rolls. The storyteller will conduct the Influence action, deciding its consequences and other effects and updating the game appropriately (such as by running scenes or +bbpost news stories that are a direct result of the action).

The Influence Stat

Influence is a standard Background bought with Background dots, Freebies, and Starting XP.

Each dot of Influence belongs to a Sphere. A sphere is an overarching influence archetype, like "Police" or "Law". There is a standard list of Spheres.

Each Sphere has Specialties. A specialty is a sub-set of that sphere. For example, Criminal influence is a Sphere, like "Drug Trafficking" is a Specialty. The list of specialties is standard and pre-defined.

Lastly, when you pick influence Specialties, you pick a Niche. This is a free-form description of the sorts of people that your character's network is composed of. Someone who takes 'Drug Trafficking' might pick a particular gang, for example, or even just a particular drug.

When allocating dots of Influence, you can invest all of your dots into one Influence type or you can diversify (like 2 dots in Drug Trafficking, 2 dots in Arms Trafficking).

Influence means you know people who know people. Although dots of Contacts, Allies and Retainers come with NPCs who have sheets, dots of Influence does not allocate NPCs with sheets. Instead, for each dot of Influence represents a larger, more valuable, extended network of people with increasingly valuable contacts. You know some of them, but not all of them, since your instructions are carried out to people who know other people.

That said, storyteller(s) might flesh out NPCs who represent the manifestation of your Influence. This is for narrative purposes. It's more fun and immersive to read something like, "Your mousy intern calls you in a panic to alert you about the files and what horrible fate this could mean for the company!" instead of "Yeah, uh, so, ... someone is attacking your Influence for 3 dots."

Influence Spheres And Specialties

Each dot of Influence belongs to a Sphere. You can see the spheres with +inf/list. Many of these Spheres have categories which are more narrow expressions of that sphere: use "+inf/list <sphere name>" to see those. For example, Transportation Influence has "Public Transportation" within it (as well as "rail transportation" and "air transportation").

You can perform any Influence action that is relevant to the overarching sphere, so for example, if you have Securities And Investment (a subset of Financial Influence) you can get up to practically any sort of wealth-keeping and money-manipulation hijinx but your dice will be far more effective if you make it directly relevant to your sphere. If your Influence is explicitly suited to performing the action instead of generally related to it, you can reduce the difficulty of an Influence roll by your rating in that Influence.

Example: Jim has 3 in "Securities And Investment" and Bob has 3 in "Banking And Credit." These are both Financial Influence. Both people can perform stock market manipulation and other financial hijinx. When Jim pulls stock market manipulation, however, he enjoys a -3 difficulty. Bob has to take the full difficulty. When Bob pulls some shenanigans to get a loan he doesn't deserve, however, it is his turn to enjoy that -3 difficulty.

Influence Niches

When you take an Influence rating, you are asked to nominate a Niche. A Niche bears no mechanical benefit, and is instead simply flavor text, a descriptor of the social circle that your Influence is most strongly associated with. This way, when Storytellers work with you to carry out your bidding, they have some creative foundation with which to work. Players detecting use of Influence can also use this Niche as a sort of breadcrumb clue.

For example, if someone were to take Criminal Influence: Drug Trafficking, perhaps they pick the Sinaloa Cartel as their Niche. Whenever the Storyteller orchestrates the results of their influence move, they might drop rumors and/or news articles talking about the Sinaloa Cartel.

A Niche is completely free-form. You can make it your own ICly owned company, an IRL entity, or the IC investments of another person. Some of the Specialty descriptions specify what sort of Niches they're looking for. For example, Police Influence expects a jurisdiction, like 'SFPD'.