Primacy Gameplay

Primacy Gameplay, as taken from Damnation City (p.232), is used on Shadows over Amsterdam to heighten the player experience. It is an abstract, simplified system that lets player's exert great amount of influence in the city, without eliminating the more focused, personal experience that is core to Vampire: The Requiem.

The rivalries and competitions that go on between characters at this level of play shouldn’t be confused for competition between players. Despite the rising and falling values of the new Advantage and Influence, this is not a game you can lose. The goal, as always, is to tell a compelling, dramatic, and hopefully frightening story. Influence and event driven play are simply tools for creating conflict and sparking stories. Reaching maximum Influence is not the goal and it’s not a victory. Influence is a means to an end, and that end may never come because the Damned never die.

Not all characters can or should take part in Primacy gameplay. It's a level of play that's reserved for the powerful. This doesn't mean that your character has to be a Primogen or an Elder to take part (and indeed, plenty of Elders and Primogen don't take part either), but it does mean you should think about your character and Primacy gameplay. Primacy gameplay gives characters a new advantage; Influence, which is measured in Assets. Assets are individuals with certain ratings in particular skills (such as medicine or politics), but aren't quite as useful as Retainers, and aren't neccesarily quite as stable a resource as Allies. With that in mind, should your Nosferatu who spends all his time in the Warrens really have such assets?

Influence is a new Advantage unique to Kindred like Blood Potency. Unlike Blood Potency, however, Influence rises and falls rapidly through play and does not inevitably drive the character who has it towards a grim end. Influence is a multifaceted trait that impacts play in many different ways. For the most part, its mechanisms build on the rules you already know. As a unique property of Primacy, however, Influence interacts with actions that are only taken at this scale of play.

Influence is not a mini-game. Given nothing but dice and non-dramatized actions, Influence is extremely easy to gain. Primacy play assumes that the Danse Macabre provides an endless cast of antagonists to oppose and challenge the characters on their way to the top and to provoke the conflicts and setbacks that drama requires. If all the characters do is roll dice to gain Influence points and win Assets, they can make it to the heights of power in a few weeks. But that’s not dramatic. It’s not horrific. It’s not a story. The Influence Advantage is a tool for managing great power and intrigue. Rather than presume that the players of cunning undead masterminds must be political geniuses themselves, Influence assumes a level of capability on the part of the characters and spares the players too much detail. Influence is a common language that makes it easy for casual players to interact in a complex game world. It reveals the stakes of actions, the wages of success, and the costs of failure. It just makes things easier. - Damnation City

Influence is rated from 1 to 10 dots as follows;

Like Willpower, Influence is made up of both dots and points. Influence points — also called Juice, in the lingo of politics — are spent and restored during play. The amount of max Juice points a character can have is equal to his or her Influence rating. Spend Juice to:

• Gain a single automatic success on a single contested or extended Primacy action. You may spend multiple Influence points at once in this way. (This may represent pulling in favors or pressuring Assets to act.)
• Grant a success to another character’s Primacy action as above. But what will you ask for in return?
• Make use of more than one Asset at once.

Note that Input with the Prince, (as the Input tab in the above table details for each dot of influence) is not in play on Shadows over Amsterdam, and you will have to influence the Prince the old fashion way; Through excellent roleplay.

After a certain point — specifically, after five dots in Resources — the amount of money a character can throw at a problem becomes irrelevant. There isn’t much that five dots of Resources can’t buy that won’t overload the chronicle anyway. Yet, vampires with great Influence command even greater wealth. With six or more dots in Influence, a vampire may be so wealthy that not only is she herself rich, but she can make other characters rich. Every level of Resources above the fifth dot represents another person that the vampire can make a millionaire. (In game terms, the recipient automatically gains four dots of Resources.)

An Asset who is granted this wealth cannot be turned by another character unless that character is willing to devote more “bonus Resources” to the target. Such an Asset may still be killed. Note that Influence lifts the ceiling on maximum Resources but does not grant free dots in Resources. Each “bonus dot” of Resources costs experience points according to the normal formula for Merits.

Assets are the main commodities of Primacy. They are the primary way that characters are likely to interact with the world, whether it means putting a stop to a threat against the Kindred court or making a power play against a rival vampire. Assets represent mortal men and women under the character’s influence. Assets may be motivated by money, blackmail, intimidation, the Blood or Disciplines — it doesn’t really matter at this stage. What matters is that these people do the characters’ bidding eagerly, miserably, warily, and shamefully. Assets are a finite resource. There are only so many medical doctors, experts in the occult, gunmen, and speechwriters that can be brought into service by the undead without risking the Masquerade. This makes each Asset a distinct and precious resource, and the Kindred who controls that Asset becomes a target for allegiance or attack. If you want a good surgeon to save the life of your ghoul, you go to the vampire with a surgeon in his pocket.

Assets are gained and lost only through in-game actions. The number of dots listed for Assets at each level of Influence is not guaranteed. One character with three dots in Influence might only have 21 dots of Assets while another has 25. It all depends on what Assets are available to be won. Rather than buying new dots in Assets with experience points, players must lure or coerce Assets away from other characters, undertake actions to draw new Assets out of the city, or wait for the Storyteller to introduce a new Asset into the chronicle.

A character may have more than one Asset per Skill. Each Asset must be recorded as a separate trait. To distinguish Assets from another, they may be given names or some other descriptor, depending on their prominence in the chronicle. For example:

Medicine: Dr. Bell, Surgeon ••••, Medicine: Psychiatrist ••, Medicine: Paramedic •

It's important to understand how Assets differ from Contacts, Allies, and Retainers. Those merits are bought with XP, and are thus considered to be more permanent than Assets, which are meant to be a disposable commodity. Contacts and Allies represent a general field in which your Character has connections, and thus can't be killed or bribed away; the only way for those dots to become lost is if every individual in that particular field in the city is suddenly somehow killed. And in that case you probably have more to worry about than your contacts disappearing anyway. Retainers are slightly different. They're more or less full characters that are completely and utterly loyal to your character. They can't be bribed or coerced away. They can be killed however. That said, they're far more capable than any single asset ever could be. Assets have ratings in only one skill afterall, but a retainer has ratings in a variety of skills and attributes and may have merits of his own.

Assets can be assigned additional traits based on a character's influence rating. They can be assigned either Protection or Loyalty, or both. Protection provides an asset with protection from physical attacks, whereas Loyalty helps an Asset resist social attacks like bribery, seduction, or intimidation. Check the Influence table for information on how many Loyalty/Protection traits you can assign to assets.

Protection - If a vampire believes an Asset is at risk, she can assign it Protection. Protection steels an Asset against attack and making it more likely to survive attempts on its life. If the vampire has Assets in Brawl, Firearms, or Weaponry, the player may reflexively contest any attacks on the Asset by rolling Presence + the appropriate Skill, reflecting the power with which the vampire has motivated her muscle. (This is a free attack action; see “Actions” below.) If the vampire has none of the appropriate Assets, she simply assures the Asset that everything will be all right or devises a plan to keep the Asset safe until help can arrive. Increase the target number to kill the Asset by the vampire’s dots in Intelligence or Presence (player’s choice).

Loyalty - Assets can be turned away from their masters. Some vampires aren’t content to go through another Kindred to get what they want. They resolve to make the Asset theirs. Men with suitcases full of cash show up on the Asset’s doorstep. An envelope of incriminating pictures turns up in the mail. The vampire herself looks the Asset in the eye and commands him to come with her. If a vampire believes an Asset to be at risk of coercion, she can inspirit it and steel its Loyalty. If the vampire has Assets in Intimidation, Persuasion, or Subterfuge, the player may reflexively contest any coercion of the Asset by rolling Manipulation + the appropriate Skill, reflecting the strings the vampire is pulling with her Assets. If the vampire has none of the appropriate Assets, she does her best to keep the Asset happy enough to stay (or too frightened to leave). Increase the target number to coerce the Asset by the vampire’s dots in Strength or Manipulation.

Agents are simply an additional character that the player controls; and should not be considered on par with capable retainers in terms of usefulness. Nor can they constantly be relied upon (as influence must be spent in order to activate them)

Agents are created just like any other character, according to the rules in the World of Darkness Rulebook. An Agent gains an amount of starting experience based on his master’s Influence dots. Agents are assumed to be ghouls, though they may be mortal characters at the player’s discretion. Ghoul Agents begin with one Vitae and one dot in a Physical Discipline of the master’s clan. (Mortal Agents gain no special benefit for surrendering ghoul abilities.) Players may dispatch their Agents on missions by spending one Influence point per scene.

Agents are not meant to be highly detailed characters (though you can certainly detail them to whichever degree you want), they're not likely to last forever afterall. Unlike Retainers, you do not spend any XP on your agents, and when you lose one, you can easily acquire a new one without any cost to you (though such events should clearly have roleplaying consequences).

Primacy gameplay represents a higher political level than is the custom for games of Vampire. The Kindred with such considerable assets are the movers and shakers of Kindred Society. When “pulled back” to the level of lofty politics and manipulations, Primacy play has a few distinct changes from regular Vampire play. For one, a Primacy character’s Attributes are used a bit liberally. The assumption is that masters lead their Assets by example. Thus, a vampire with great Composure has Assets that gain confidence from her grace under pressure and draw on her Composure when taking action on her behalf. A vampire with great Stamina has Assets that learn to suffer and endure by pushing themselves harder with the knowledge (and fear) of what they may be forced to suffer if they do not.

Here’s what makes actions in Primacy play distinct:

• In Primacy play, when the characters aren’t venturing forth into the world to conspire or battle, a whole night’s worth of activities are resolved in one turn. This is called, simply enough, a Primacy turn. In a Primacy turn, “Instant” actions take one turn and thus one whole night. See the following sample actions for detailed examples. No Primacy actions are taken on nights when the characters are participating directly in stories.

• Actions during Primacy turns are communicated to the Storyteller in secret. PM the Action taken to the Storyteller. Thus, one player may target another player’s character with his action and maintain the secrecy of his schemes.

• A player may take a single action during each Primacy turn. These actions encompass a whole night’s business, though, so a player’s descriptions of her character’s actions don’t involve a dash behind cover or a bite to the neck but a whole scene. (Movement isn’t a part of Primacy turns; travel to and from destinations is included in the action.) To maintain secrecy, however, a player may leave such descriptions up to the Storyteller.

Acting remotely through mortal pawns is imprecise. Primacy actions pair one of the vampire’s Attributes with an Asset’s rating (also called an Asset Skill). At this level of abstraction, equipment is not a factor — it’s included as part of the Asset’s dots. Only a few basic actions are possible on a Primacy turn unless the particular needs of a story open up new avenues of action. The core actions of a Primacy turn focus on gaining or denying avenues of influence and, of course, the pursuit of Vitae. The following section describes the core Primacy actions, however as said, other actions may become available when the story allows for it;

Dice Pool: Intelligence/Presence + Brawl/Firearms/Weaponry of the Asset (Select a single Attribute and a single Asset Skill. A character without an appropriate Asset cannot attack.)

Action: Extended, possibly contested (if target has Protection). Each roll represents one night’s attack. The target number of successes equals the target Asset’s dots + the master’s Stamina or Composure plus any modifiers from Protection. When the target number is reached, the target Asset is killed (and removed from play). The build up to death represents close calls, failed executions, and minor injuries — a hit man makes it into the Asset’s house but fails to close the deal, for example. Eventually, every target is caught and killed unless the masters pulling the strings intervene. When Assets attack other combative Assets (i.e., Brawl, Firearms, or Weaponry Assets), the action is contested rather than extended. Whichever Asset gets the most successes reduces the dots of the opposing Asset by one. Protected Assets may reflexively force a contested roll.

Dice Pool: Intelligence/Presence + Asset’s Rating.

Action: Instant. Each success reduces the current successes accumulated to kill the target Asset by one to a minimum of zero. This represents the vampire healing or bolstering the Asset after an attack. “Calm down, James,” the master soothes over the phone. “If you keep your head, we can find this bastard and put him down.”

Dice Pool: Strength/Manipulation + Intimidation/Persuasion/Subterfuge Asset (Select a single Attribute and a single Asset Skill. A character without an appropriate Asset attempts the action with the Attribute dice alone.)

Action: Extended, possible contest (if target has Loyalty). Each roll represents one night’s coercion. The target number of successes equals the target Asset’s dots + the master’s Resolve or Composure plus any modifiers from Loyalty. When the target number is reached, the targeted Asset moves into the coercing vampire’s service and becomes one of her Assets. When an Asset is contested by a target with Loyalty, it may itself be coerced by the target’s master. An Asset sent to coerce can be lured away by another master this way.

Dice Pool: Strength/Manipulation + Asset’s Rating.

Action: Instant. Each success reduces the current coercion successes accumulated against the Asset to a minimum of zero. This represents the vampire beating the Asset down or convincing it to stay loyal. “If you take his money, if you read his letters, if you look in eyes, if you humor him just a little,” the master says with his hands around James’ throat, “I will find you and eat the marrow from your bones. Do you hear me, James?”

Dice Pool: Wits/Manipulation + Asset (Select a single Attribute and a single Asset Skill.) This action is like a perception dice pool in street-level play except that it represents the vampire’s ability to glean information through any of her minions out in the world. As such, Assets tied to any Skill are potentially eligible for this dice pool. Investigation, Politics, Stealth, Empathy, Socialize, and Streetwise are viable choices for virtually any situation while Assets associated with the particular investigation are also good fits — Firearms Assets ask around about other gunmen, and Academics Assets ask questions at a University function.

Action: Extended. Each roll represents one night of investigations. Success reveals the Kindred master behind the attack or courtship of the character’s Asset. The target number of successes required is equal to the attacking Asset’s dots plus the Influence dots of the Kindred master. The difference in Influence dots between the investigator and the attacker penalizes the investigator’s dice pool. Kindred who operate closer to the same level are more aware of each other’s existence. Every roll made by the attacking Kindred in his efforts to kill or coerce the character’s Asset adds one die to the investigator’s dice pool. More nights of attempted murder leave more evidence. More secret meetings and incriminating photos leave more signs behind. Once the target number of successes is achieved, the Asset used to attack and the vampire pulling its strings are revealed.

Example: Dante’s B&E expert has had his throat slit. He was Dante’s man for smash-and-grab jobs, so any number of other lords might want him dead, but Dante wants to know who in particular. What’s scary is that this happened without any warning, so Dante knows it’s someone with clout. He has Angela, the Weaponry Asset he’d send to cut someone’s throat, ask around. Dante’s dice pool is therefore Manipulation 3 (Dante's Attribute Rating) + Weaponry 3 (The Asset's Rating) + the number of rolls made to execute Dante’s Larceny Asset (1) = 7 dice. The Storyteller knows it was one of his own characters, Sycorax, who had Dante’s thief killed. Sycorax sent one of her five-dot Weaponry Assets, and Sycorax has eight dots of Influence, so the target number for Dante’s investigation is 13. The difference between Dante’s Influence (3) and Sycorax’s Influence (8) is five, so Dante’s dice pool, now down to two dice, is penalized by five dice. The Storyteller decides to make the first roll of Dante’s investigation in secret. It nets 1 success. When Dante’s player makes the next roll and finds out his dice pool is being penalized by five dice, he hesitates. Dante sees that his Asset’s investigation isn’t turning up much, and Dante puts this together with the short work made of his thief and realizes that he’s up against a major player in the Danse Macabre. Even if he called in some favors (that is, spent two Influence points for two automatic successes), he’d be out of his league. If he wants to find out what’s going on and protect himself, he’ll have to find another important Kindred to ally himself with.

Dice Pool: Wits/Manipulation + Asset (Select a single Attribute and a single Asset Skill.)

This action is like a perception dice pool in street-level play except that it represents the vampire’s ability to glean information through any of her minions out in the world. As such, Assets tied to any Skill are potentially eligible for this dice pool (as mentioned earlier).

Action: Extended. Each roll represents one night of investigations. Success reveals the rating and description of one Asset in the control of the target Kindred. The target number of successes required is equal to the Asset’s dots plus the Influence dots of the Kindred master. The rating of the target Kindred’s best Stealth or Subterfuge Asset penalizes the investigator’s dice pool. A specific Asset Skill must be targeted for investigation. Once the target number of successes is reached, the Asset is revealed to the investigator (though the revealed Asset’s master does not know it). Additional Assets of the same Skill can be revealed by continuing the action and accumulating additional successes equal to the next highest Asset’s rating and so on. A failed roll at any point during this process does not end the investigation, but it does alert the targeted Kindred that “someone’s been asking questions.” If the target Kindred wants to know who, he must “Investigate an Action” as described previously.

Example: Dante has tasked his Investigation Asset, a ghoul PI worth four dots, with looking into the Duke’s pawns in Uptown. Dante wants to know if the Duke has anyone knowledgeable in the occult, and instructs the PI to “listen but don’t go sticking your nose out.” So Dante’s dice pool is Wits 4 + Investigation 4 = 8 dice. The Storyteller determines the target number by adding the Duke’s Influence dots (7) to the rating of his lowest Occult Asset (1) for a total of 8 successes. The Duke has a spy in his domain, though — a three-dot Stealth Asset — whose coaching of other Assets helps throw off investigators. Dante’s dice pool is reduced to 5 dice by this spy. After three rolls, Dante’s PI uncovers the Duke’s amateur occultist, but Dante tells him to keep digging. He suspects the Duke’s got someone better than a one-dot occultist on the payroll, and he’s right. Once the PI accumulates four more successes he’ll find the Duke’s mystic antiquarian (Occult ••••), working in a private library near the East Street subway.

Dice Pool: Any Attribute + Any Asset. Like feeding (p. 164 of Vampire: The Requiem), there’s no single method — or proper dice pool — for regaining Influence points. They’re a reflection of the promises, favors, posturing, and social maneuvering that goes on in the background. The player’s character is presumed to be better at networking and politicking than the player himself, so all the player must do is dramatize the action by putting together a dice pool that describes a scene. Manipulation + Academics might describe the character promising another Kindred a chance to visit the private university library in the character’s domain. Strength + Brawl might describe the character sending his own thugs to knock troublemaking mortals in line in someone else’s domain. Wits + Larceny might describe the character identifying thieves in another’s domain, so they can be watched, used, or turned-in. The actual ramifications of these actions aren’t important — the library visit, the street brawl, and the fate of the thieves don’t have to be significant events in the city or the chronicle — though they do provide potential fodder for the Storyteller when devising future stories. Whatever dice pool the player assembles is modified by the other Kindred in the city with dots in Influence. Each vampire in the city, including those of other players, may stymie the character’s attempts to regain favors. Each vampire that chooses to do so imposes a –1 penalty to the dice pool. This penalty is cumulative but cannot exceed a total –5 penalty. Kindred cannot stymie this action in secret, however — the player and his character get to know which vampires interfered or spoke out against him. Once the player has declared a Gain Influence action, he cannot cancel it after learning what penalty will be imposed. Whatever penalty is imposed must be risked by the player and his character. The dice pool may be modified by a Willpower point but not by Influence points.

Action: Instant. If the roll is a success, the player regains one Influence point. If the roll is an exceptional success, the player regains three Influence points. If the roll is a failure, no Influence points are gained. In the event of a dramatic failure, the player’s character loses no Influence but every character that opposed the roll gains one Influence point.

This is a special action that zooms the gameplay back in on street level by pitting the character’s Agents against some threat or obstacle. This can include the Agents of Storyteller characters or even Assets. This action is the narrative edge that the players have over Storyteller characters — if they cannot get ahead of the Storyteller characters with simple actions, they can challenge them in the rain and filth of the streets with old-fashioned storytelling.

Agents remain active for one scene per Influence point spent. This should be enough for agents to capture or kill a target, retrieve an artifact, interrogate a captive, or some other specific dramatic action. This isn’t enough to get a wounded Agent from the scene of a crime to a hospital in the event of a serious gunshot wound or something like it. A character who is bleeding out at the end of an Agent scene does not survive unless more Influence points are spent and he is saved in a subsequent scene.

There’s no formula for this action. The Storyteller must play out the scene according to the typical rules of the World of Darkness and her own narrative sensibility. If anything, however, scenes involving Agents should be even nastier and deadlier than those involving the player’s “main” characters. Agents are the poor sods the Damned use to hurt and be hurt. The players need to feel like they are legitimately risking their Agents when they use them, or they have no value.

But since an Agent can be replaced, players may be tempted to throw them away, which is awfully cold-hearted. A character who casually sends his people to their deaths may act like it doesn’t bother him in front of other Kindred, but he has to wake up with himself the next