I was mulling over recruiting hardened gang members with pleas for the rights of fluffy bunnies, when I came up with the idea of creating different social classes of liberals. These would represent different sub movements within liberalism and roughly break down along upper-middle-lower class lines.
Intellectuals are the "upper" class of liberalism and cares about the more abstract aspects of liberalism; freedom of speech, animal rights, flag burning, privacy, gay rights etc. Intellectuals includes authors, college students, doctors, artists, etc.
Workers are the middle class of liberalism, representing the vast majority of the population from programmers to union workers and fast food workers, they care most about perceived threats to the general populace; pollution, nuclear power, taxation, workers benefits, genetic research, guns, etc.
Rebels are the lower class of liberalism, encompassing the true outcasts like gangsters, prostitutes and transients. None of the issues besides law enforcement and the death penalty would really matter for them but maybe that will change if the issues are rethought.
So, why do these matter?
Good question, the three different classes matter because they represent three different types of movements which could emerge, which would affect what avenues are open to your movement. Recruitment, seduction and interrogation are all harder if the target is a different class. Your founder also gives your movement it's initial character, meaning that throughout the game you'll have a penalty with other classes. So if your founder is a transient it will be very hard to recruit union workers personally, and even if you have a college student trying to flip a News Anchor, there will be a penalty due to the low class level of the movement.
With a little tweaking to character types, the different classes could be made to have very nice advantages and disadvantages.
Right now the intellectuals are fairly balanced. On the positive side, they can recruit many useful skills, and can best get cultural sleepers and friends in the legal system. On the negative side, they lack any personal experience in violence and theft.
Workers are balanced movement, having few highly skilled liberals (notable exception of the professional thief) but capable of taking on the enemy head on thanks to random weapon skills and army vets/black belts. The workers are best able to create low level sleeper networks (cops/security/agents/corporate HQ workers) to warn them of conservative sieges. The workers don't have too much heart or charisma in their ranks, meaning that an inspiring founder would be useful to the movement.
Rebels, right now are kinda underpowered, not having many powerful characters. But Gang Members and Prostitutes are pretty useful and easy to recruit, meaning that a strong movement can be thrown together quickly. Rebels might be helped out by the addition of a couple of thief classes, I'd suggest Pickpocket (Theft Skill) and Carjacker (Security/Driving skills).
Possible names for different types of Liberals:
Intellectual/Worker/Rebel
Civilian and below are the same
Thinker/Activist/Troublemaker
Radical/Socialist threat/Criminal
Ideolouge/Class warrior/Revolutionary
Famed Intellectual/Community Pillar/Guerrila
Elite Liberal/Scourge of Capitalism/Urban Commando
Soul of Liberalism/People's Hero/Left Wing Legend
Possible starting locations to replace homeless shelter:
Intellectual: Vegan Co-op
Worker: Abandoned Steel Plant
Rebel: Crack House
The short of it:
This is a whole wall of text, I know, but the core change is pretty simple. Every character would be upper/middle/class be they liberal, conservative or moderate. Your skill would take a hit (maybe 25%) when you try to seduce/persuade/torture/bluff a member of a different class. There is an identical skill penalty for using these skills on someone your founder isn't the same class as. Hopefully, this will make gameplay more fun. If so, flavor and tweaks can follow.
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Topic: Social Classes (Read 1355 times)