I’ve been mulling over Luke Gearing’s ideas around Reputation, the thought that you could fill in a table to as you play to measure the players’ reputation as they travel. It’s so elegant, I thought I’d try adapting it to ECO MOFOS!! This is what came out.
Your Reputation
As your Punks wander the wilds and wastes, news travels about their triumphs, their interventions and their catastrophic disasters.
Create a d66 table, 6 rows of 6 entries. Mark Entry 11 and 12 as Nobodies, as there’s always a chance the Punks are Nobodies to a random NPC. Now, each time the Punks make a difference in the world, like by rescuing a cat or destroying a Corpo base, add the event to the table, writing a short sentence describing the most important facts. For significant events (routing a Corpo spaceport, breaking a Bandit blockade), add them to the remaining 1X or 2X entries of the table. Add the most local events (such as finding a Waster’s child or delivering a special seed), to the rest of the table, with the most local events in 6X, down to the 3X entries which may be newsworthy to nearby areas. If events are especially noteworthy, on a worldwide or local scale, add them to the table 2 or 3 times. As Punks travel, keep adding to the table, replacing entries already there. The higher (5X, 6X) results are most likely to be replaced by new events, and major events can start to be entered further down the table, in 3X and 4X as renown grows.
The punks start off as nobodies, anonymous to the world. Each interaction with an NPC will be fresh. However, as Reputation grows, previous actions will start to have an effect.
Once there is an entry on the Reputation Table, each time the Punks interact with a new NPC roll on the table. If it comes up with nothing, then the NPC “Never heard of you lot”. If it comes up with an event, it produces a reaction, depending on the NPC’s relationship to that event. If a fellow punk has heard about your escapades at the Corpo Skyport, you might become an instant confidant, and they’ll want to bring you into their current schemes. If a Corpo NPC guard you’re trying to trick comes up with the same result, they recognise you from the newswires, and all hell could break loose.
The Reputation Phase
When playing with Factions, add another roll in addition to the Events- the Reputation Phase.
At the end of every session, or at the end of an in-game week, roll reputation. Whatever you roll creates a new actor in the world- people seeking you for good or ill. A bandit may send out a gang to track you down for revenge, or a Waster family may have heard of your prowess and are trying to seek you out to aid their commune. Try to think how the event rolled could have consequences.