Did I just miss it or are the basically no storylets that give you urchin Renown? Like… Outside of the Carnival action that gets you to 5 and the Rookery Password actions which are all basically just "buy renown" I have yet to come across a single action or storylet that raises Renown: Urchins. Like… I have had Closest To: Urchins from as early as I could have a closest to and jumped on every single plot thread connected to the little buggers but I have never once seen an opportunity to gain (or lose) Urchin Renown despite having seen some for almost every. Is it just all in Fate locked content or did I just choose a faction with no renown plot? And if it is Fate locked, what stories should be I be looking into?
Yeah, with only a small handful of very rare exceptions, Renown is something you purchase. This is true for every faction
Renown is almost exclusively given by the renown items. The idea is to grind favours to 7 and then spend them to gain renown, rinse, repeat. There is no plot or anything like that.
A few stories across London will give some renown upon completion (such as selling the location of the Nadir), but they are not repeatable.
There are no ways to lose renown other than the Mr. Eaten storyline, as far as I’m aware.
If you’re looking for favours, there’s a few cards that require you to have specific companions or that only show up in The Flit.
Ah, I remember seeing my renown Church, Constables, Hell and Bohemians (maybe also society?) go up on their own without items so I assumed that all the factions had a few things like that sprinkled around early/midgame. I remember specifically starting to grind all the factions up to 5 after I saw the first one so they’d benefit as much as possible from those events. I guess it was just a few early game things that I extrapolated on. That’s disappointing tbh. I’d have thought "closest to" would give you at least 1 rare card with options to up renown by 1 or 2.
I supose renown just feels like the sort of thing that makes sense to be earned organically through IG decisions rather than bought?
Oh are there flit specific orphan cards? Good to know. That’s my new chill spot then. Do cards get determined when they hit your deck or when you draw them? Like, if I’m in my lodging and have 6 cards already and I go to the flit, will they have a chance of being flit cards or lodging cards when I draw them?
edited by easter on 6/1/2018
edited by easter on 6/1/2018
Here you go: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic24895-the-ultimate-guide-to-favours-and-renown.aspx
Cards in your deck are undetermined until you draw them, so if you have 6 cards in your deck and go to the Flit, they can be cards only drawn in the Flit.
More story-based opportunities to increase renown would be cool but at the same time, the idea of the system is that you build up a bunch of favours by doing things for folks and then cash them in to help them, making you more popular/well-known among said group.
If you want Urchin Favours, you might want to consider drawing cards at your Lodgings instead. The Grubby Urchin opportunity card, only able to be drawn there, has an option granting a Favour.
[quote=easter]Ah, I remember seeing my renown Church, Constables, Hell and Bohemians (maybe also society?) go up on their own without items so I assumed that all the factions had a few things like that sprinkled around early/midgame. I remember specifically starting to grind all the factions up to 5 after I saw the first one so they’d benefit as much as possible from those events. I guess it was just a few early game things that I extrapolated on. That’s disappointing tbh. I’d have thought "closest to" would give you at least 1 rare card with options to up renown by 1 or 2.
I supose renown just feels like the sort of thing that makes sense to be earned organically through IG decisions rather than bought? [/quote]
There are occasional Renown boosts through one-time stories, but they’re pretty rare. If you want any significant amount you do have to buy it.
We originally did have an organic faction system with Connections, which were affected by tons of options. However, since it tried to simultaneously measure currency and social relationships, Failbetter split it into Favours and Renown over the last couple years. Renown was supposed to handle the narrative aspect… but instead it ended up as a narrative-less grind without connection to the rest of the game. It’s a real pity.
That does, of course, require actually owning a Grubby Urchin. Given how unusually expensive that option is, it’s probably better to just get the Grubby Kitten and have patience. (There’s no other location-specific cards I’m aware of for Urchins favours–the Flit card is for spending them–so might as well just hang out in the Forgotten Quarter for the slightly thinner card deck.)
edited by Optimatum on 6/2/2018
If you have a Winsome Disposessed Urchin there’s another card at your lodgings
And another for if you have a Malevolent Monkey and a Grubby Urchin
That’s a total of three cards, if you have the requisite companions.
edited by JainaEgo on 6/2/2018
The fastest way to get favours/renown with Urchincs (and also Society, Docks and some others) is using weddings with other players. Make a big party (1000 preparation score, I used 50000 rats for that). Inviting some urchincs will cost you just 5, so you’ll be able to get 100 favours (the other 500 score is given to another player). Just make sure to prepare all items for favours-renown exchange before you go to the wedding. Sure, to get everyone you want to 40 renown this way will need 7 or 8 wifes, so I guess it’s not a roleplay option for everyone!
Or divorce and repeat if you find another player willing to boost their Dock, Society, Urchin, Rubbery or Bohemian renown levels.
Which I never understood - first, you help them so they owe you, and then you help them more so they don’t owe you anymore? It makes sense mechanically of course, since renown is more "valuable" than favours, so you "purchase" renown by paying both the price to help (a bunch of items and sometimes some menaces) as well as a stack of favours, but I highly doubt the intended in-game meaning is that members of that faction tally up your favours, add the big help, and conclude "yeah, this guy is worth remembering".
Just another weirdness of the Renown system, I guess.
I was never all that sold on the new system. It’s a decent enough game mechanic I suppose, but it totally wrenches the matter of your reputation out of the story and makes it into a separate mini-game. Your standing in the old system really felt like a natural consequence of your actions while playing the game. Whereas now it feels entirely divorced from your character, as progression is simply a matter of flipping cards until favours show up, and then trading them in when you have enough. Feels like it was designed simply to make us grind to get the prezzies, like good little maze rats. A clever way of stretching out the content without actually making much new content. Old FB love to make us grind, all right!
I am reconciled to the change, now, though. I don’t really notice it.
edited by Plynkes on 6/5/2018
Which I never understood - first, you help them so they owe you, and then you help them more so they don’t owe you anymore? It makes sense mechanically of course, since renown is more "valuable" than favours, so you "purchase" renown by paying both the price to help (a bunch of items and sometimes some menaces) as well as a stack of favours, but I highly doubt the intended in-game meaning is that members of that faction tally up your favours, add the big help, and conclude "yeah, this guy is worth remembering".
Just another weirdness of the Renown system, I guess.[/quote]
You help them so you become better known, which gives you access to various opportunities. You’re building up a capital which you spend on long-term connections. Real connections mean you can do things that you couldn’t do as a nobody.
[quote=Plynkes]I was never all that sold on the new system. It’s a decent enough game mechanic I suppose, but it totally wrenches the matter of your reputation out of the story and makes it into a separate mini-game. Your standing in the old system really felt like a natural consequence of your actions while playing the game. Whereas now it feels entirely divorced from your character, as progression is simply a matter of flipping cards until favours show up, and then trading them in when you have enough. Feels like it was designed simply to make us grind to get the prezzies, like good little maze rats. A clever way of stretching out the content without actually making much new content. Old FB love to make us grind, all right!
I am reconciled to the change, now, though. I don’t really notice it.
edited by Plynkes on 6/5/2018[/quote]
Having your renown dropping or disappearing because you chose an option is very frustrating, though. Doing all that work and then losing it because you didn’t realize how costly an option was would be really, really rough.
But why do you need to spend favours to help them? That’s the part that I don’t get. Again, makes perfect sense from a gameplay perspective, but zero sense from an in-universe perspective.
[quote=Jaina ]
Having your renown dropping or disappearing because you chose an option is very frustrating, though. Doing all that work and then losing it because you didn’t realize how costly an option was would be really, really rough.[/quote]
I think the best way it could work would be by being incorporated into stories similarly to the old Connected system, except without direct options to cash it out; it would then be a flavour marker for that faction’s opinion on you and an unlock requirement for some faction-related storylets (very similarly to how quirks work, in fact). Of course, right now it’s mean to be an ever-increasing quality, but I think that’s a major part of the problem: due to this nature it can only be raised either in non-repeatable, non-grindable storylets, or for a substantial price with a favour requirement. The former obviously greatly limits opportunities to tie it in to the stories, while the latter inevitably feels like a mechanical grind that has little to do with the wider world.
Of course one could expatiate at great length on the merits and failings of the Renown system, including for instance the dearth of renown unlocks and in general other effects on the world of high renown (for instance, having Renown: Docks 50 and going for a drink with dockers still gives you the same text that makes it sound like you don’t really belong there), but most of it has probably already been said.
Basically:
- you amass favours from folks
- when you have enough, you spend favours to help them out, cementing your place in the group
That was more or less the original concept of Renown. (Well, in theory it was supposed to be a neutral marker of your notability, with negative actions still making you more recognized, but that obviously didn’t mesh with rewards like faction items.) The issue is that there’s very little opportunity to raise it outside the faction items. There just aren’t enough stories that affect it, which is especially an issue for older players who played those stories before the conversions.
Given the quirk comparison, I think the obvious solution is to add capped Renown gains to repeatable content. Selling Casing to factions shouldn’t let you get to Renown 50, but getting to Renown 10 seems reasonable. Like with quirks, have easy options everywhere with low caps, rarer/expensive options with higher boosts, and maxing out the quality requires the expensive faction items or obscure grinds.
Indeed. I think it’s quite clear that the original vision of a neutral notability marker is completely out of the window by now, so making them more inline with quirks - complete with repeatably early grinds, rarer and more expensive high-level grinds, and thematically apprioriate actions to not just raise but also lower it - would make everything a lot more enjoyable.