whats the point? If it isn't gonna have any noticeable affect on core gameplay, it's pointless and adds nothing constructive.
It's not going to have any effect on core gameplay by
design. The whole idea is that people worry that new stuff are going to break the game, or people who just want to manage their brothels and don't want to involve themselves in the criminal and political aspects of the game don't need to worry because it won't impact especially on them.
It is however, going to affect
non-core gameplay.
That's the point.
I like it. You could also use the influence (I personally like calling it Political Capital) to get girls out of jail, or to activate some other function(the city guards have a party one night at your brothel, you make major profits).
I like "political capital" as well. It was what I was going to call the mechanism initially but decided "influence points" might need less explanation. Perhaps I should have stuck with my first thoughts...
I still don't really see the point of adding this. I just don't see how this would measurably improve gameplay...
Well, it gives us something else to use as rewards and penalties in events, and it means greater flexibility in how we handle the player's relationship with the city's civil authorities. Mainly, I see if as being useful when we come to write some of the more complex events we talked about elsewhere.
I'd also make the cost of buying influence non-linear, so the more you had, the more expensive it was to improve it. That means that to get the higher levels you'd need to look at some political options. There are some things you shouldn't be able to buy with gold.
The other thing this gives us is the possibility for the PC (by accident or design) to burn off all the good will he has at city hall in one go by doing something totally outrageous. For instance, I have a vague idea an event that gives the player the chance to run a slaver raid on a nunnery and nab some sanctified snatch for the brothels. To do that, you should either need to make sure that you have considerable political capital to weather the consequences, or else you should get some ongoing reprisals until you can smooth ruffled feathers in various quarters. We can't do that with the current system. It's always at 99% (assuming you're paying enough) and adding temporary penalties to the influence rate is by no means simple.
I suppose we could do something similar with gold: say you can't proceed until you make a bribe of X thousand gold ... but that seems a bit flat and one-dimensional, it doesn't allow for the possibility of a political storm if you misjudge it, and as I said earlier ... it would be nice to think that some things couldn't be bought purely in gold.
There's not a lot of effect on current gameplay by design. What this is about is enabling some of the features we've talked about elsewhere, proposals that were well received at the time.
I'm looking to the future here.
