New guidelines for influence in Portsmouth - February 2000

(See also What can be done with influence (1-5) and Resource Levels)

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‘On rising from your voidlike torpor you notice that there is something different in the air, but it eludes you as to what has changed. It tingles your vampire senses and causes the hairs on the back of your neck to stand on end. ‘Another change’ you groan, ‘probably for the worst….more deceit is afoot’.

You decide to call in a few contacts and find them extraordinarily gregarious tonight. It appears that they are more informative and more willing to do ‘certain manoeuvres’ for you than you have previously noticed. Perhaps now is the time to expand your web of control and deceit even further? But wait, surely there is more threat to your empire of influence? If they are more willing to aid you, then surely they are more willing to aid another? The lifting of the Sabbat threat seems to have been noticed by kine as well as kindred. Maybe a new game has just begun.

Fear and loathing continues, but perhaps it has taken another twist tonight’

Now that the Sabbat threat has passed there are noticeable changes around you to the world of influence - more openings and a greater willingness from contacts to stick their necks out.

As a result of this there is now no upper limit to personal influence. The only limit is the domain limit, which is 35 in every area except military, in which there is only 15 total influence points to be snapped up. Some totals have already been reached, others are yet to be found. It is now conceivable for certain avaricious types to garner 35 points in one area, although I will warn that this does not make you the be-all and end-all in this influence area – there are still others – older, wiser, more devious, who are manipulating it from even greater heights who you will never hear of, let alone meet…….

Now of course, some of you vicious and malicious types out there are going to want to make unlife miserable for others who are also trying to gain supremacy in your sphere, so here’s a basic guideline on how to go about evicting them from your particular influence desire:

  1. Firstly, you must know your target. You are unable to just use your influence to ‘get rid of anyone else with xxxxx influence’ You must specifically target them.
  2. You must then bid (using the same sphere of influence of course) three times their points of influence in that sphere (using it for nothing else that month).
  3. If successful, they will lose 1 point from that influence. This point they may re-allocate at the end of the following month to another influence area. They will be unable to buy new influence in the lost area until the month following the reallocation whilst they reaffirm their grip on this area. (e.g. Hostile take-over loses Fred 1 point of finance in January, in February he reallocates this to high society and is unable to buy another finance until march).
  4. The following month this evicted influence will be up for grabs by anyone.(Feb in the above case)
  5. This may sound harsh, but there is a way to guard against hostile take-overs:

a). don’t let people know what influence you have or how much.

b). you may spend influence to guard against outside influence. Each point of influence put as a guard will reduce the effectiveness of a take-over by 1. In effect the attacker will need to bid an extra 3 influence to overcome you. This guard influence does not have to be aimed specifically at one attacker, it applies to all attacks. So if you had 1 influence (and just used it to guard) and 3 people with 3 influence in that area all attacked separately, all would fail as they would count as each only having 2. However if all 3 combined to attack you, you’ve only reduced it to 8 in which case they succeed!

Finding out who has influence:

Unfortunately the way influence is used is insidious: favours asked and blackmail used to get others to alter records, allow you access to facilities etc. This makes it extremely difficult to trace. You may easily hear from other contacts what has happened, but not who ordered it etc.

You will possibly find out who has influence if they do something big, in a rush, or rather blatantly; or if they are using influence in a certain way – for example some uses of high society by their very nature involves the kindred directly in the public eye.

So, to find out who has what influence you will need to ask, watch, use subterfuge to find out how much control they have, in general you will need to find out IC. We don’t want to make hostile take-overs too accessible.

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