Is there a difinitive threat on these?
What do people think ? Have people kept them , removed them or changed them?
I am looking at running this so would like to know how they work and the strengths and weaknesses.
And if i was to remove them completely how would i encourage the players to keep recruiting and be cautious about the activities that raise notoriety ? (This is my current reason for wanting to keep them - to avoid casual murdering of thrune forces and not have the reprisals seem arbitrary)
I think the answers run the gamut. Some use them, some modify them and some remove them. Posts in this forum tend to suggest a lot of people remove them but I think that is, at least in part, basic internet forum structure - people post more often about things that don't work than they post about things that do. If you use the Rebellion rules and they worked at your table, there's not much purpose in a post that states that.
I've come to view the Rebellion as "a group leadership feat with elaborate cohort rules" - it's an extension of the pc party. Full transparency: my group just started. We've run exactly 1 turn of the Rebellion (they are about to tackle the Salt Works.) So I'm hardly an expert on how they might work or affect play experience.
Regarding notoriety, reprisals, etc. I think it's similar to diplomacy, sense motive, intimidate, etc. Could you omit all the social skills (and associated die rolls) from the game, relying purely on role-playing to determine those sorts of outcomes? Absolutely. But the entire table would need to buy in to that methodology and the GM would need to do specific work to prepare, etc. If you're looking for some mechanical help in determining success/failures in those actions, then use the skills. Don't lose sight of the hidden value of dice and DC's - success or failure is somewhat removed from GM influence/bias. That has real value at the table - it greatly reduces suspicion or doubt that the failure to negotiate with the guard (as an example) was the result of GM manipulation. Ditto for the Rebellion rules - there are clear measures of pc/rebel infamy and likelihood of attracting unwanted attention, etc.
As is often the case, your results will vary with player buy-in. If your players are engaged by the rules and want to work with them - the mini-game will likely work for you. If your players aren't interested, then it will be a challenge to get value out of it. If you want to bribe them... err, encourage them to buy in, you could say something like - "We don't need to use these rules, but if we do, you need to put some effort into making them work. If you're not interested, fine, we won't use them. But then you won't get the benefits from leveling up the Rebellion either..."
I think the answers run the gamut. Some use them, some modify them and some remove them. Posts in this forum tend to suggest a lot of people remove them but I think that is, at least in part, basic internet forum structure - people post more often about things that don't work than they post about things that do. If you use the Rebellion rules and they worked at your table, there's not much purpose in a post that states that.
I've come to view the Rebellion as "a group leadership feat with elaborate cohort rules" - it's an extension of the pc party. Full transparency: my group just started. We've run exactly 1 turn of the Rebellion (they are about to tackle the Salt Works.) So I'm hardly an expert on how they might work or affect play experience.
Regarding notoriety, reprisals, etc. I think it's similar to diplomacy, sense motive, intimidate, etc. Could you omit all the social skills (and associated die rolls) from the game, relying purely on role-playing to determine those sorts of outcomes? Absolutely. But the entire table would need to buy in to that methodology and the GM would need to do specific work to prepare, etc. If you're looking for some mechanical help in determining success/failures in those actions, then use the skills. Don't lose sight of the hidden value of dice and DC's - success or failure is somewhat removed from GM influence/bias. That has real value at the table - it greatly reduces suspicion or doubt that the failure to negotiate with the guard (as an example) was the result of GM manipulation. Ditto for the Rebellion rules - there are clear measures of pc/rebel infamy and likelihood of attracting unwanted attention, etc.
As is often the case, your results will vary with player buy-in. If your players are engaged by the rules and want to work with them - the mini-game will likely work for you. If your players aren't interested, then it will be a challenge to get value out of it. If you want to bribe them... err, encourage them to buy in, you could say something...
There seem to be mechanical benefits of using the rules...so there is that
I intend to use them at the start and see how they go (still deciding on Hell's Rebels or Rise of the Runelords)
On a related note, is there a part in the first book that gives guidance on what a failed notoriety role means? The guide indicates each book should give guidance but I don't recall seeing this on my first read through
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I've found it to be a good way to provide links into what the PCs need to do to nurture the rebellion AND as a way to handwave stuff that would get repetitive.
The Notoriety checks are not "Book" level features but rather Encounter level features. Example: see Turn of the Torrent p.22 - as part of a likely encounter with the pc's, a Notoriety check is made and pending the success or failure, the attitude and interaction patterns of a particular NPC changes. (I'm skipping details to avoid spoilers.) These things are not called out in separate text boxes, etc. but woven directly into the normal text write-ups.
I've been running Hell's Rebels for a couple of weeks without directly using the rebellion rules but being mindful of character actions. Doing this let's me have an idea of the group notoriety, secrecy, membership, supporters, etc.
Thankfully, my group is really good at being active in finding things to do rather than relying on NPCs to provide them with quests. Some require a little prompting from the NPCs but I'm personalizing how the quests are given based on character action and backstory.
And yeah, as Latrecis said, Notoriety is rolled to see if any given person recognizes the PCs or not. Sometimes it's slightly more beneficial if they succeed (potential ally may know who they are) or if can result in a fight (the city dottari/hellknights recognize them).
One of the things the rebellion rules do is provide a rationale for granting basic feats and magic items to the PCs for achievements in organizing. That's going to come in handy when characters designed to succeed at a skills-a-palooza suddenly have to beat a dragon and deal with a meat grinder at the Temple of Asmodeus.
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One of the things the rebellion rules do is provide a rationale for granting basic feats and magic items to the PCs for achievements in organizing.
The feats granted by the rebellion rules are no great shakes in themselves, except the one gained at rank 19, which is the only one not picked from a fixed list. They're really useful for paying feat taxes (especially those gained at rank 4) and shoring up a PC's weak defenses. Likewise the magic items and gold gained at ranks 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, and 18 amount to 28,250 gp in value all together, which isn't very much. What it is useful for is crafting; an NPC might give your player a +1 piece of armor at rank 8, or +1 weapon at rank 13, which if you've saved your gold gifts you can hand off to Hetamon or the party's crafter to improve easily enough.
I do appreciate, however, that as you say, these are rewards for achievements in organization-building, not for adventuring. The question has arisen on these boards more times than I can count why the PCs are bothering building an organization at all, when just playing the d20 system will make them powerful enough to just conquer the city by themselves eventually.
What do you mean by feat taxes in this instance? Do you mean pre requisites for certain other feats? How do the rank 4 (skill boosters) specifically help here ?
Good points roguerouge and Zimmerwald1915!
Would you two suggest sticking with the rebellion rules and having the players in charge of them?
(I saw you did earlier in the thread, roguerouge, that's good to know. How far into the AP are you?)
I'm not sure I understand part of the question: what is having the players in charge of them? I have them pick what they want to do. Most of the rules, they've uncovered (I had their inexperience play out by hiding the teams, encounters, and action types from them until they grew into the role. Might have been overly simulationist, really, for my table, given that I have a player who is an ACE at rules and an experienced DM. He runs the math and stuff.)
I DEFINITELY recommend hiding the events table from them, unless you're the rare DM that shows the players the random encounters table for a region. That's only in the player's guide to save page count for In Hell's Bright Shadow.
I recommend re-naming Loyalty as Influence, as almost all of the things you use it for are to influence people, not to retain their loyalty.
If you look elsewhere on the HR boards, you'll find that I used the organization system to model a street war between the CCG and the Ravens. That was useful and allowed me to skip a bunch of PCs vs. random groups of CCG mooks and skip to the boss battle after a few organization vs. organization rolls.
After all, you wouldn't want your table's Captain America to get bored with punching neo-nazis, would you?
I'm thinking that I'll end up using the rebellion rules more "under the hood" instead of handing the players the rebellion sheet and having them track everything. They're a group that is really good at balancing everything just right/to the largest advantage and I find that can take away from the role-playing aspect of it. (EG: When deciding if they should let someone join or not, such as Blosodriette, they'd look at the advantage and disadvantage and decide if they'd keep her or not. Not handing them the sheet has made for some great role-playing as they're honestly torn on what to do because they're thinking of consequences rather than numbers.)
I think I've read through most of your posts about the Queensmen and your group but I should refresh my memory and see if there's anything I wanted to steal from it. (Initially my plan was to run the AP very much as written but that could change.)
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I DEFINITELY recommend hiding the events table from them, unless you're the rare DM that shows the players the random encounters table for a region. That's only in the player's guide to save page count for In Hell's Bright Shadow.
Agree with everything else, disagree with this. One of the rebellion actions is to guarantee an event, and some of the most iconic things that revolutionary groups do (for example, organizing street demonstrations) are locked away in the event table. So in order to simulate those things, you either need to make them rebellion actions in themselves (which raises a number of questions, including what teams enable which actions), or go with the designers' intent and make them available through the Guarantee Event action.
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I just made protests and propaganda and member services file under Special Action. I suppose wild cat strikes and other examples where membership gets ahead of leadership should be modeled through random events tables.