Mental effectsSo two of the most useful traits of Erin Quill were that 1) he was sure of himself to the point of overconfidence and 2) everyone else around him trusted him and listened hard to what he was saying. This basically means that he could come up with the most outrageous plans unhindered by humility or by the demands of anyone else.
Wenton Celling does not have these.
To correctly portray the difficulties of being a commanding officer AND operating a country that has
de facto seceded from its governing entity AND knowing your decisions have a good chance to ruin the world AND grappling with the existential crisis from relaizing that your entire world is a piece of fiction…
...I’m adding two more factors into the equation. Literally. Two numbers, changing with time and affecting your capabilities, called
Sanity and
Influence.
Sanity (SAN)The ability of your character (Wenton Celling) to trust his own decisions. This includes confidence as well as stress and general mental health.
Sanity changes in two ways:
- Before each decision, Sanity naturally regenerates by 10% of its original value, rounding down to nearest percent. This means that keeping Sanity high will help in the long run. If you are at 50%, for example, you regenerate 5%.
- Most choices incur a sanity cost. This reflects the strain put upon your mental facilities of making an unorthodox or costly decision. This varies wildly from decision to decision (see below)
This will be my decision guide for how much Sanity an action costs. All items stack. There may be variance, but these will be the guideposts.
-2 if you are unsure of the outcome
-3 if it involves the Fourth Wall
-3 if you have to leave some avenues of attack unguarded
-4 if civilians are put at risk
-5 if innocents are put at risk
You cannot undertake an action if it would drain more than 25% of your current sanity.
Sanity means that on occasion, you will have to take the easy way out.
Influence (INF)Influence represents how highly Celling’s advice is regarded by other people. More specifically, his superiors and colleagues at Brazil HighCom.
Influence is changed in two ways.
- All actions have an influence cost representing how hard it is to convince others to listen up.
- All results of actions change an intermediate value named Fame, which then carries over to Influence. Fame is long-term and decaying.
For costs, these are the guidelines:
(these are change, so negative = more cost, less pay)
-5 if it annoys a public figure
-5 if others cannot comprehend the reason
-6 if it goes against existing policies
-10 if it annoys the public in general
+5 if it helps a public figure
+10 if it helps the people
+3 if you (in the thread) come up with a good defence that non-fourth-wall users can understand
(and oh yes, you can gain influence by an action if you suck up to authority enough)
As for fame:
Fame is an integer quantity. Every “turn” (read: question from me) fame moves 1 unit closer to 0, and the current fame is added to the current influence. This means that fame’s benefit is quadratic, as increasing it a bit makes it bigger and longer.
Unlike direct influence, fame is not based on individuals, but on the other people of the military.
Fame is going to be much smaller, owing toward its greater, long-term potential. Guidelines:
-1 for losing people
-2 for letting civilians get killed
+2 for achieving long-term goals of the military or public (this includes capturing rebels)
Influence forces you to consider what normal people think.
We start off with:
Sanity: 100%
Influence: 100%
Fame: 0
And now I can rewrite the previous decision with the values.
A: Have the sucker thrown out of your fortress. (
SAN -2,
INF -1)
B: Arrest him. This is possible, as Brazil High Command is very much pro-Quill. (
SAN -4,
INF -1|6)
C: Reject all his claims and order him out of your sight. (
SAN -1,
INF -0|1)
D: Tell him you will consider it and allow him to remain. (
SAN -0|1,
INF +0|2)
E: Ignore him and tell him to leave. (
SAN -1,
INF +0)
F: Agree to the demands and allow him to remain. (
SAN -2|4,
INF -5|+5)
G: Something else…
An aside - the n|m means “random number between n and m”
Since I think we’ll be focusing on Brazil for a while, and I have more time, I’m going to overcomplicate it a bit.[/list]