You have pull in the mortal community, whether through wealth, prestige, political office, blackmail or supernatural manipulation. Kindred with high Influence can sway, and in rare cases even control, the political and social processes of human society. Influence represents the sum of your political power in your community, particularly among the police and bureaucracy.
The influence background is bought for a specific city, and the influence of this background does not extend beyond this city.
● Moderately influential; 2 influence point per month
●● Well-connected; 3 influence points per month
●●● Position of influence; 4 influence points per month
●●●● Broad personal power; 5 influence points per month
●●●●● Vastly influential; 6 influence points per month
By exerting influence you can sway the bureaucracies and policies. Each month you can exert a certain amount of influence, limited by your Influence Background. Influence points do not carry over to the next month, and are lost if not used.
Arranging small favours within the local governmental organisation can simply be done by placing a few calls. The costs to arrange something are dependant upon the beneficiary of the favour, and the legal scope (but cost always at least 1 point).
The amount of influence necessary is modified by the legal scope of the “request” (only one of these modifiers holds):
Influencing a semi-governmental organisation, such as a hospital or high school, incurs a +1 point cost because one has to work through the government to influence the organisation.
By roleplaying the crucial encounters and discussions with individuals that hold sway, you can obtain a -1 point cost for whatever you are trying to achieve.
Arranging larger favours, such as policy changes, takes time and effort. This is expressed in the system by a breaking down the large favour into smaller steps that need to be taken one after the other. To keep things simple, it is assumed that each step will take about a month.
For example, suppose you want your landscaping company to be hired to build a nice public park on what is currently a junkyard. This can be done in three steps:
Each of these steps is assigned an influence point cost by the Storyteller and Player in a discussion. The guidelines above for simple favours offer a good starting point for the costs of each step. In our example this comes down to a cost of 3, 4, and 2 points for each step respectively.
If you can not or will not spend the influence points for the current step, the effort fails. Note that a step that is being hindered by another only fails if you do not pay the base cost, otherwise it is merely postponed and you can try again.
You can use your influence to hinder the plans of others.
Once you hear of their plans, you can oppose their efforts by spending 1 or more influence points. Each points you spend increases the influence point cost of their effort by +1, if they do not have (or choose to spend) enough influence points, their efforts fail. Influence already spend is still lost.
Note that there is a limited window to oppose another's influence. Small favours are usually a complete failure if successfully opposed. Large favours retain their progress so far, but are postponed and have to redo the failed step (possibly leading to them being abandoned).
Sometimes it is necessary to influence a different or greater authority, for example a different city or the national government or in the private sector. To do so, one must acquire the services of a fixer or lobbyist, usually through roleplay or having an extended network of contacts. Alternatively, one of the characters Retainers or Allies might already have such a role, or be specifically recruited for this.
Influencing an organization through such an intermediary adds a +1 influence cost to the effort. In all other aspects the above rules are used.
It is possible to work through multiple intermediaries, for example to influence international organizations such as the United Nations, at +1 for each intermediary. The actual influence a character wields is therefore dependent upon their political network.