Influence measures the degree to which your character can make her wishes count in mortal society. In most cases, she’s acquired influence through multiple means, including persuasion, bribery, intimidation, direct manipulation of minds and emotions, and passing herself off as a mortal when necessary. It takes time to accumulate more than a dot of two of influence in a community of any size. Influence license to do whatever strikes your character’s fancy. It’s always easier to get institutions to do what they’re already inclined to. (Dark Ages Vampire Corebook 2002)
The amount of total influence within Venice is limited within each sector. Only staff knows what that limit is, but influences do have the potential of becoming full within game and some may already be full. Remember that you will need to give a good justification for influences, especially high levels of them. We will expect an explanation of how you maintain hold of each influence you have.
Influences are handled on the 1st and 15th of each month. Please preface all actions with the key term of the action, listed below. Influence actions should be sent to both LiteST and myself, DarkeST. You do not need to send in influence actions every influence round, though you are welcome to.
Basic actions
Below are the action types one can attempt with influence. Remember that no action is foolproof and dice will be rolled to see if an action succeeds, how long an action will take, or how effective it is.
Action, Generic – use influence to do an action in your influence realm. Example actions and their corresponding level are listed under each type of influence. Other similar actions are also possible.
Assist – You may assist someone else’s influence action or gain influence for another person. When doing this, your dice are always halved, rounded down, and in some assist actions may not be possible even when they work fine as standard actions. Assists will have to be explained logically and show coordination with the other character’s goals.
Attack – This is where you use your own influence to attack the influence of another. This can be used to attack a specific individual or to attack the influence group at large. Please be specific in your plans, as they will effect the difficulty of your attempt and who your attack effects. If you wish to grow the influence you attacked, you must do so after the attack is successful. However, you will be at an advantage because you understand what exactly was hit in the broader realm of each influence.
Grow – This is where you grow your influence to a higher level. This requires an explanation of how your character is gaining more influence. Grow actions are done per two weeks. You can break them up. Higher levels of influence take longer to grow.
Growth of an influence requires you to spend XP. Please review our XP costs for backgrounds in the XP Rules section. We will automatically deduct these points at the end of a successful growth.
Hide – You are using your connections to make it less obvious you have your hands in an influence. This counteracts investigation attempts. You can hide that you possess influence levels in a particular realm, and this may counteract investigations made within your influence sector that round. You may also hide it was you that did a generic action, growth, investigation, or attack. You will also need to explain how you achieve your hiding goals.
You may dedicate as many dots of influence and appropriate backgrounds as you wish, though you may not use above 5. Those dots will count as dice for the purpose of counteracting an investigation attempt. Difficulty modifiers may be adjusted if an action is particularly noteworthy.
Investigate – This allows you to see what is going on within a realm of influence and who else might have pull in the influence in question. Note that you will not get names of involved individuals but may possible get descriptions of several individuals, both cainite and mortal for you to look through.
You can also investigate to see who might be involved in a specific influence action or search for a specific person (via a physical description). You may dedicate dots of influence and appropriate backgrounds as you wish, though you may not use above 5. Those dots will count as dice for the purpose of looking into the person or action. Difficulty modifiers may be adjusted if an action is particularly noteworthy.
Important Notes
Staff would like to note that there is no maintenance action. It is assumed that you maintain your influence because that maintenance is what the influence rating represents. However, if you go idle in play for a long period of time and do not inform staff that you are unable to post, your influence levels will decrease and be much more easy to attack.
Backgrounds may in some cases be used in conjunction with influences, where it makes sense.
If you lose a level of influence, you do not lose the XP and freebies spent on the influence. These go into an influence pile to spent on regaining influence. They cannot be used for other purchases.
