We are going to be using a modified version of the Influence system from Ultimate Combat during some of these downtime sections in Sandpoint. Days will be divided into three segments (morning, afternoon, evening), and for each segment in which nothing else is happening, we'll hold what's called a Social Round.
In a Social Round, you spend time either trying to Discover information about an NPC through a Discovery check, or trying to influence an NPC through an Influence check. You may only make one of these checks per social round, and the check represents how successful you were in either discovering information about or influencing an NPC over the course of that part of the day.
Discovery Checks - if you choose to make a Discovery check, I will provide you a list of skills you can use to try to discover information about a particular NPC. If you succeed at the check, you can learn one of the following:
* Bias - an NPC's bias either for or against particular types of people
* Strength - a method of approaching an NPC that will make it more difficult for you to influence them (these approaches should obviously be avoided)
* Weakness - a method of approaching an NPC that will make it easier to influence them
* Skill - a skill that can be used to successfully influence the particular NPC[/list]
Influence Checks - if you choose to make an Influence check, you choose a skill to use to try to Influence the NPC. You might know which skills are effective (though a successful Discovery check), or you might just guess. Each NPC takes a certain amount of successes to influence them, and successfully influencing them will bring benefits, quests, etc.
Finally, the first time you attempt a Discovery check on an NPC, you can make a Knowledge check (I will tell you which ones you can use) to gain a +4 bonus on all Discovery checks on that NPC. If you listed an NPC as one of your allies or enemies during character creation, then you gain that +4 bonus automatically.
I hope this makes sense, and I think this will be a fun, flexible, but more codified way of running interactions with the people in Sandpoint, but please let me know if you have any questions or concerns! And you should obviously still roleplay any of these interactions - I think we'll get the hang of how to weave together the story with the checks.
A list of the NPCs that you can attempt to Influence, along with their primary location in Sandpoint, can be found here.
