Renown

[Marc (Admin)]

Renown has, and probably always will be a spirited topic.  Here are a few highlights on the way the staff are currently handling Renown:

First, Renown challenges are no longer a requirement (it's one of those things that went away) for rank advancement.  While encouraged for the role-play, there is no longer a requirement for any Renown gains to be "permanentized" via the Rite of Accomplishment in order to challenge for next rank.

Second, the "Public Renown Reports" monthly threads are being discontinued.  Participation, if any, has been extremely low.

The monthly You Are What You Do posts will continue, in a slightly different format.  Moving forward, each report will feature only the current totals for each character.  The "from-to" format is not being continued.  Since the reports are monthly and sequential, though, if you are really interested in this information you will still be able to easily compare one month to the next.  Additionally, the "Deeds" section of the report - a comment on the gain(s) and/or loss(es) will potentially be scaled back some or eliminated.  The staff will see what we can do to make it continue in some capacity.  That said, any time you have a question on why your Renown is what it is, you can always ask.  When it comes to any Renown loss, we will always make sure you are aware of the reason.

Renown will be calculated each month based on a number of variables and sources, as has always been the case.  Currently, these primarily include:  The things others tell us in their Downtime reports, the things staff witness that others might not know about, the things staff witness that others see but might not otherwise tell us about, and activity on the forums.  We believe that this will be an extremely fair and equitable process, and that players will generally be happy with the results, given time for things to prove-out.

Our philosophy is simple: Renown should be easy.  Easy for players, easy for staff, easy to understand, and we are trying to accomplish this with some minimal compromise.

The staff need to focus their energy on bettering and maintaining so many aspects of the game, that we'd prefer not to make Renown complicated and cumbersome for ourselves.  On the one hand, we could develop exhaustive lists on how many hundredths of a Trait you gain/lose for every bit of minutia (we won't).  On the other, we could come up with a balanced system that offers fair Renown awards without defining every detail. We have long provided guidance on what is generally Renown-worthy, but we'd really prefer not to get more specific than that.

At the end of the day, we hope that everyone can enjoy playing the game and know that when their character is ready to challenge for next rank, the Renown will likely be ready also.  You won't even have to spend countless hours agonizing over the accounting in order to get there, and isn't that kind of how it should be?

Please remember to place any discussions about our rules in the Rules Discussions forum.