Community & Social checks

Errant Assets gameplay is designed to take place in a consistent location throughout your campaign. The actions of your characters will have lingering impacts on the political, social, and financial power of major players within that location.

Locations may vary greatly depending on the setting and campaign your DM has in mind, but the mechanics will generally function similarly. [Working Title] Location gameplay is designed around large urban areas or a region with significant populations, but can work in any area where there are power factions and diverse groups within the location.

Social groups and communities use shared social rules and language called Etiquettes. Knowing the right social rules in a situation ensures that your characters’ attempts to connect and manipulate others work as planned.

Etiquettes act as Charisma-type bonuses in Errant Assets.

A player states which etiquettes they are using before the check. If no etiquette is announced, it is assumed players are using their upbringing etiquette and no career etiquette.

If the etiquette is a mismatch, the DM adjusts the success threshold accordingly. This does not represent a failure to perform the etiquette. Instead, it simply represents that you are using the wrong social rules for the situation.

Locations are large diverse places, with many power players and diverse communities.

Insert bit about major powers and city division. Bits about how major powers might own neighborhoods, industries, security response in certain neighborhoods, etc. Mention that they are all vying over power and locations all the time, and this generally generates the kind of work your team specializes in.

In Errant Assets every team is part of a community. From the bartender at your regular dive to the dumpling vendor on the corner, your characters will interact regularly with a lot of people in their day to day. While usually not directly related to jobs, these NPCs may provide leads on work, intelligence, and more.

As a runner, your first asset is your own skillset, but skills alone are no match to the great powers around you. As you settle into your location, you’ll need to build a community of contacts and allies.

Every runner team needs a safe location to sleep, store their goods, train, and generally prepare for and recover from jobs. At the beginning of the campaign, you’ll choose what class of neighborhood your hideout will be located in.

Rent and upkeep costs are deducted as a team from job payouts. These costs cover rent, but also basic gear replenishment and downtime activities in your neighborhood.

You can visit different class facilities in town, but will pay the difference from your upkeep.

When your work a job, the local neighborhood levels will impact how quickly alarm and heat tracks progress.

Locations are diverse places, with affluent areas, cultural hotspots, and old history leaving lasting marks. The area of town you rent your hideout impacts both the flavor and efficacy of downtime events and the safety of your team during their off hours. All neighborhood types have advantages and disadvantages for a runner, and different cost for monthly upkeep.

Neighborhoods have both a Notice and Safety score. By default these scores are the same, but these two settings do not have to be the same.

Hideout neighborhood is an important element for both campaign parameters and flavor. You’ll want to determine several key elements for the neighborhood:

During gameplay you can upgrade facilities in your neighborhood, raising the bonus for those related events going forward. A neighborhood may have several facilities of a single type, with specialization. Each of these facilities must be invested in individually.

Upgrading facilities is a significant investment and may require time and credits, xp, or side gigs and favors owed. Each facility can only be raised to the next level if the necessary requirements for that improvement are met.

Generally upgrading facilities also raises affinity with NPCs affected by the investment and may lead to new contacts or favors owed for your characters.

Social relationships are an important element of [Working Title], as your characters rely on friends and manipulate targets. From the initial contacts you acquire during character generation, to neighborhood non-player characters, many of the people you interact with will continue along your story with you.

Treat your community as the potential asset they are, and you’ll be rewarded with new contacts, resources when you’re in a bind, added safety, and more.

Individual relationships are defined by Affinity, Power, and Favors.

Affinity represents the way characters feel about each other. Affinity is affected by many factors and will change based on events occurring during gameplay.

Affinity ranges from 1-6. This score works as a modifier during negotiations and other social checks, and affects character willingness to perform favors.

You can raise affinity with successful social checks, by performing favors, or at DM discretion based on gameplay events.

The people of [Working Title] are diverse, and not everyone handles that well. Prejudice is an optional NPC quality that impacts their affinity and behavior. Prejudice defines a trait that blinds the character. This may be as simple as straightforward misogyny, where the character assumes women are weak or easily fooled. A character with this quality can never reach max affinity with characters that have that trait, and the assumption will affect their rolls during social checks.

We recommend keeping prejudice as a quality for non-player characters and limiting the actual roleplayed interactions. Prejudice can easily hurt players if used carelessly.

Power represents the ability non-player characters have to accomplish tasks based on their profession, skills, social network, and financial assets. Power ranges from 1 to 6.

Character power may shift during gameplay as the character gets access to more resources or skills, or is affected by gameplay events.

Favors represent social debts, and may be owed by and to characters.

Favors can be exchanged for special benefits - discounts, introductions, first dibs, raised affinity, and more. Contacts may exchange favors to demand a time-sensitive job or task. Characters can choose to refuse favor requests, but acquiring too much favor debt will impact affinity.

The cost and reward for favors varies by character, what might be a small favor for one, may be considered a large debt by another.

Favors are non-player character specific, but may be owed to the team as a whole, or to an individual player character.