RUSTBELT ERRATA
Marshall Burns:
INFLUENCE
(Because I did a terrible job of explaining this in the ashcan)
You can talk, threaten, bargain, and beg all you want in-character, and it might work, but if you want to give that some teeth, you need to inflict Influence on the person you’re dealing with. Influence is a mechanical effect that constrains a character’s decisions (although the authority over those decisions remains always with that character’s player) by, essentially, making it harder to do whatever it is you don’t want him to do. Like, if you were begging for your life and managed to Influence your aggressor, it would be harder for him to keep hurting you. He might get over the Influence and do it anyway, but it’ll be that much harder, and it might be enough to save you.
To Influence a character, you have to win a diametric conflict, with your Goal being to Influence. Your Goal can’t include anything else; just Influence. So, you can’t Influence and inflict damage, or Influence and accomplish a task; not in one roll. If you’re in a fight, and someone wants to try to Influence someone, then the fighting is on hold until the Influence roll is resolved – so, when your enemy, battered and bleeding, clings to the seam of your jeans, getting his blood all over your shoes, and he begs for his life in strangled sobs, you can’t just shoot him in the face. You have to win the Influence conflict first. Then you can shoot him in the face.
When you successfully inflict Influence, your target takes on an Influence effect equal to your Performance roll, plus any points you Pushed for (and you can Push for more than you needed). In order to act in defiance of that Influence (to kill you if you begged for your life, to stand up to you if you intimidated him, etc.), the guy has to win a check against that Influence value before trying. If he wins, he’s over it and he can do what he likes; if he Gives, he must continue to act in line with that Influence.
Influence is a short-term thing. If you intimidated a bouncer in order to get into the club’s VIP room, and you come back the next day, that bouncer’s not going to still be intimidated (unless you do it again). If you seduced somebody to get money from him, he won’t still be under your thrall when you meet him next; you’ve got to renew the effect. And it’s not unreasonable for the GM to give your victim an Advantage die when you try repeat attempts at Influence – knowing that you’ve played ‘em before, they’re likely to be on the lookout for it, and that’s certainly an advantaging factor in their favor. Fool me once.
So, here’s some different ways you can Influence people:
•use Tough for physical coercion, or slapping someone upside the head to shame or shock them into compliance
•use Savvy to fast-talk or sway with rhetoric
•use Grizzled to intimidate
•use Slick for deceptions through sleight of hand
•use Thorough to slowly break someone down, say through wheedling or interrogation
•use Personable to appeal to someone’s emotions
•use Cagey to lie convincingly
•use Uncanny to freak someone out, or sway them with your aura (a favorite of manic preachers and cult leaders).
Don’t think of these as limitations; they are merely examples. There are other ways to Influence; use your imagination.
As for resisting Influence, pay special attention to how you’re resisting it. You’re usually going to be using Savvy, Grizzled, Cagey, or Thorough, depending on that how. If you’re seeing through it because you’re smart enough to work out the vectors and realize that you’re being played like a fiddle, that’s Savvy. If you’re resisting it by being hardboiled and mastering your emotions, that’s Grizzled. If you’re being suspicious and perceptive, on the lookout for this sort of thing, that’s Cagey. If you’re relying on disciplined focus, or even obsession, that’s Thorough.
By the way, remember that whole thing about Task vs. Goal. “I talk him into letting us into the club” is just the Goal, just half of the picture. We need to know how you do that. So, you should still “roleplay out” social conflicts as the conventional wisdom goes, even while bringing the dice into it. The Influence mechanic is there to give the thing extra weight, not to obviate the roleplaying.
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