These rules are intended to replace the influence background in the book.

Design Goals The following goals are considered relevant for these new rules:

• Make the actual impact of having Influence more explicit
• The Influence rules should create meaningful roleplay opportunities
  • The rules should encourage networking and the selection of “acquintances”
  • The rules should encourage tenuous cooperation within a coterie
  • Conflicting interests can lead to both kindred-kindred and kindred-kine roleplay
• The Influence rules should highlight the inherent moral corruption in the World of Darkness

Foundation The new Influence rules are built on the following foundations:

• Cities are the main localities for Kindred, so the scope of the Influence background is always City-wide,
• The Influence background represents mainly political leverage,
• The Influence background is always tied to a specific city,
• Exerting influence over larger localities (at the state, regional, national or even international level) requires knowing the right people,
• Exerting influence over different spheres (public opinion, corporate activities) requires knowing the right people,
• Influence must be used or it is lost, so no “saving up” of influence,
• Location matters, exerting influence on national politics is easier from the capital

Todo The following points still need to be addressed (roughly in order):

• Small favours
• First round of comments and discussion
• Larger influences (for achieving grander goals)
• Opposing changes and influence
• Fixers, lobbyists and “acquintances” (for influencing other scopes)
• Second round of comments and discussion
• Process feedback
• Final proposal

And now for that actual proposal:

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).

• For yourself, as a person: 1 point
• For someone else, or for an organisation you control: 2 points
• For a third party, regardless of the size of this party, i.e., both individuals, groups and districts: 3 points

The amount of influence necessary is modified by the legal scope of the “request” (only one of these modifiers holds):

• The request is within the standard procedures of the organisation: +0 points
• The request is outside of regular procedures, but within the legal authority of the organisation: +1 points
• The request is outside legal authority of the organisation, but justifiable: +2 points

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:

1. Change the zoning plan to allow for the creation of a pubic park there
2. Get the municipality to determine to build a public park there
3. Get the municipality to assign the park building job to your company

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.

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).