Using QUD-esque reputation webs for your game

One of the things I found fascinating in my recent dabbling with Caves of Qud is that nearly every creature is part of a faction and how interacting with the world can build a very different experience from one character to the next.
While most factions are neutral to one another, some are detrimental: gaining positive reputation with dogs leads to negative reputation with cats, and vice versa.
Screenshot of the reputation tab in Caves of Qud

Also, a lot of items even give bonuses to your characters’ reputation with certain factions, giving even mundane equipment a new use case. Holding on to that obsolete, but feathered leather armor might give you the opportunity to interact on neutral or possibly even friendly terms with an otherwise unfriendly or hostile faction, because feathered items provide you with +200 reputation per piece with the bird people, as long as you wear them.
Screenshot of an headpiece equipment in Caves of Qud

If, like me, you’re interested in faction-based play, I think there’s something to take away from that for our TTRPG games, so sit back and take a minute to endure (or enjoy?) my ramblings.

Establish Faction Web

Most of our games already have a variety of factions in use, even if they’re not explicitly labeled as such: the queen, the mayor, the lone witch in the woods, the goblin tribe hiding in the old dwarves’ mine.
Decide which ones are relevant to your current game. These can change by area or as the game goes on, but for now let’s say we’re building our starting area for a new campaign.
Use a piece of paper, post-its, a conspiracy board, a google sheet. Apps like Freeform on your mobile work as well.
I’d recommend using a minimum of four factions for this. A trio is possible as well, but much more rigid in use. Four gives each faction 3 possible relationship strands to use: friendly, hostile and neutral.
In its simplest form, it might look something like this:
A simple diamond shape

Using four factions also give you some flexibility to play around with setups, like this: Same shape, different relations

While four factions are enough for engaging play, I personally would use five, because that one additional faction can be used as a wildcard to come into play later, or to create more interesting situations:
A more complex web using five factions
Same factions, different relations
Yet another variant
Each one of these picture vastly different situations and possibilities for the player characters to get involved.

Anything above five factions increases the complexity of the web, but might be used for very specific setups, such as these:
A web using six factions
A web using seven factions
A web using eight factions

If that many or more factions are in play, a different kind of graphical representation should be used, as it can get confusing quite fast.

This is your baseline as the GM, but it’s not set in stone. More on that later (see Shaping Relations).

Enter the Player Characters

How does that relate to the individual player character, though? Let’s see:
For starters, the players might get a blank version of the web. You could also let them add them as they are discovered through play.

The back of the character sheet is a good place to write it down, mirroring their individual relations with the factions in play.
On the PC sheet, each faction has a reputation bar, ranging from hostile to allied. I’d probably use something like this, with 10s or 100s as increments:
A color coded reputation bar
Or a more minimalist version using only raw numbers:
A minimalist variant
On the character sheet, it would look like this (I’m sticking with the minimalist variant here):
A minimalist starting situation
As the game goes on and players start to interact with the world, they gain and lose reputation with the factions, depending on their interactions. If using an XP-based system, completing a task might give 1/10th of the XP as reputation points. The players keep track of this using the reputation bars on their character sheets.

Here’s the thing though: gaining reputation with one faction causes a loss of the same amount with this factions’ rivals.

In our first example with five factions above, gaining 30 points of reputation with the Harefi Sultanate would put a PC to Known”, while simultaneously to Cautious” with Shara, the imprisoned Prince; because these factions are hostile to one another.
Earning reputation with one faction affects their rivals as well
If the 30 points of reputation were earned with the Seafarers Guild instead, no negative reputation would have been earned, because in the example, that faction is a neutral party to all others.
An example of earning reputation with a neutral faction
This way, the use of a reaction roll when interacting with certain factions becomes more and more obsolete, as the PCs gain more renown or notoriety within the world.

It might even lead to unforseen, but campaign-defining situations in play: The viziers’ secret service might seek a PC out for a delicate job for the Harefi Sultanate, because they’ve come to be trusted. A pariah of the Scarab Nomads might see a possible ally in a PC in conflict with them.

The reputation thresholds can also be used to gate access within the faction. A standing of Known enables you to hire faction henchmen, who are more experienced that the ones met in the pub. A minimum standing of Friendly might be needed to enter faction-specific places (such as holy sites or hideouts), while being Allied offers new or secret information, or opens up more trading opportunities.
The same is true for negative reputation. While only a Standing of Hostile leads to be attacked on sight, each step before that increasingly hinders access to that factions members, territory or resources.

To avoid murder hoboing and reputation grinding”, killing members of a faction only leads to reputation loss with it, but never to reputation gain with another (even opposed) faction. Important personae within a faction might pose an exception, but only when killed as part of a task or mission. You don’t go around kingslaying without your allies critically eyeing your behaviour. After all, who’s to say they won’t be on the receiving end of that blade in the future?

Starting Relations

You might want to start with a neutral situation, the classic party full of strangers in these lands”. Every faction starts at 0 and they slowly leave their mark on the world.
This a approach might work best in open table games, where the playing party changes from one session to the next - leading to varying PC reputations among the factions.
But your regular friday night or even solo game can also benefit of keeping track of the PCs standing, incentivising emergent play.

In a mixed party, this can lead to interesting roleplay opportunities:
Why are members of warring factions travelling together? Might their shared experiences bring more commonalities than differences to light, so they decide to act as envoys and try to find a diplomatic way to end their factions’ conflict? Or will they part ways as enemies after the job is done and meet again on the battlefield one day?
How do they smuggle that one notorious PC through the capital?

Or maybe you want to play a themed campaign with the PCs belonging to a faction already, thereby predetermining their relations with others. Do they stay that way or change as the campaign goes on?

Shaping Relations

For a more complex and diplomatic game, you could also offer the opportunity to forgo personal reputation gain to affect inter-faction relations:
A PC could use that newly gained 20 reputation reward not for themselves, but to change this factions relationship with another from hostile to cautious. Work their asses off to help bury the hatchet between the Capulets and Montagues.
You might want to use a reputation requirement before this kind of influence can be exterted, though.

Also, by using reputation-bonuses on specific equipment, you can open up a whole new level of player-world interaction:
Enemy uniforms can be used to move in their territory for covert missions, provided you keep a helmet on.
The merchant prince could be fooled by dressing up as one of their peers.
One of the PCs becomes a walking legend in their motherland because they found the sword of the conqueror and dare to wear it openly (possibly estranging the current ruler).

Reputation Item Generator

If you want to make use of faction-related equipment, a random table does the trick. This d100 example uses very flat numbers while leaving a 40% chance of non-faction related equipment. You get the idea, adjust at your leisure:

1-20 ordinary
21-25 +10 bonus reputation with faction 1
26-28 +20 bonus reputation with faction 1
29-30 +50 bonus reputation with faction 1
31-35 +10 bonus reputation with faction 2
36-48 +20 bonus reputation with faction 2
39-40 +50 bonus reputation with faction 2
41-45 +10 bonus reputation with faction 3
46-48 +20 bonus reputation with faction 3
49-50 +50 bonus reputation with faction 3
61-65 +10 bonus reputation with faction 4
66-68 +20 bonus reputation with faction 4
69-70 +50 bonus reputation with faction 4
71-75 +10 bonus reputation with faction 5
76-78 +20 bonus reputation with faction 5
79-80 +50 bonus reputation with faction 5
81-100 ordinary



Date
January 6, 2025