The World of Darkness game systems are meant for resolving conflicts on an individual, or small group, level; they aren’t really very good at resolving conflicts on a large scale. Actions that are likely to involve a lot of different people bringing political power to bear, for instance, aren’t very well or very satisfyingly handled by the same mechanics that are used for one person trying to persuade another of their beliefs. For this reason, we’ve put into practice a system for resolving these sorts of large-scale, borough- or city-wide conflicts in a way that we hope will be a little more satisfying.

The influence system works like this:

• Staff or players come up with a conflict in which multiple factions are likely to have a say — who’ll win the election to be Mayor of London, for instance, or which of two feuding vampire coteries Anne will choose to award a coveted feeding ground to.
• Staff will review the idea to make sure that the possible options are appropriate and neutrally phrased.
• Staff then posts to the appropriate Influence Actions in-game bulletin board. Depending on the type of action, it may go to a sphere-specific board or to the General board (which can be acted upon by all characters, whatever their sphere). The post will outline the nature of the conflict, the stakes, the possible resolutions, and the duration of the conflict.
• Characters are encouraged to RP about the situation if it is of interest to them or affects them (e.g., to try to persuade others to their particular viewpoint, etc.)
• Once they’ve decided on an IC position, characters have the option of supporting one (or more) of the possible resolutions. Submit a +request to the INFL bucket that describes which conflict you’re intervening in, which resolution you wish to support, and which of your available Influence Backgrounds (and how much of them) you wish to support; follow up with a +roll/job to the +request, using an appropriate dice pool. Eventually, this step will be automated.
• You may intervene in as many conflicts as you like at once, but any individual Background dot may only be committed to one intervention at a time. In other words, if you have Allies 2, you can commit one dot to supporting a candidate for Mayor and one dot to supporting a particular vampire coterie; or both dots to one or the other; but you may not commit more than two dots total. In the event that a new conflict is posted in which you wish to intervene, you can withdraw previously committed dots and reallocate them, although this will reduce the amount of support they provide to the conflict they’re removed from.
• As a rule, players should avoid having more than one character intervene in any particular conflict.
• At the end of the posted duration, staff will review all committed influence to determine the total values supporting each possible resolution. The number of dots committed by a character will be adjusted for things like whether the area of London the Background is associated with is one that’s part of the conflict; whether the type of Influence the Background represents is relevant to the conflict; the number of successes accumulated; and whether the Background being used is more or less applicable to the conflict (e.g., Spies being more useful in information-gathering than Fame). This step will also eventually be automated.
• Staff will then post to the appropriate Influence Results board (and possibly an IC News board, if applicable) to reveal the outcome and the rough margin of victory. At this point, the outcome becomes part of the game world and players should treat it as such — though of course they can still grumble or object to it IC, and perhaps organize an attempt to overturn it.

In addition to supporting a particular resolution, you may also use Influence Backgrounds during a conflict to:

• Determine the relative quantity of supporters for each possible resolution.
• Determine the characters who have most recently supported a particular resolution.
• Attempt to conceal your own support for a particular resolution.

Using a Background for any of these purposes locks the Background dots used for the duration of the conflict they’re used on — that is, they cannot then be committed to support a possible resolution, or used again to gain more information on the same or a different conflict. As with the conflict itself, the degree and quality of information provided (or concealed) will depend on the nature of the Background used, the quantity being used, and the number of successes accumulated.

This system is a work in progress. It is very likely that, throughout the beta testing period and probably afterward, there will be significant changes in the way the system operates; options may be added or removed.

While it is a separate creation, this system was partly inspired by the Flagpole system used at Road to Amber MUSH.