The Ghost/FAME

The Variant in a Nutshell: In normal exalted there is no way to directly represent the characters growing legendary status mechanically: FAME takes care of that.

The Base Rules

In a normal Game of EXALTED the characters growing level of popularity and legendary status is represented with three backgrounds, Contacts, Influence, and Cult. These are adequate for most people, but...

The Problem

OK, let me run a scenario by you: a party of exalts, traveling heroes and righters of wrongs: Who also are a rock band. Now sure, you can represent most of this with existing backgrounds, but Influence is not really appropriate, cause they are not political leaders or the like, and while cult can cover their more fanatical followers what about the peripheral people who might do them a favor just because they are fans? As I have discussed Elsewhere contacts is a dangerous background to let players take at character creation, and somewhat abuseable in the hands of some players. As you can see none of these backgrounds quite capture the idea of characters being 'famous' and known to the public, something else is required.

The Goals

So, we need a background that covers your reputation, being a living legend, having dozens or hundreds of screaming fans, and being a household name in your area of influence.

The New Rules

FAME

FAME is a background that is difficult to gain, easy to lose or avoid, and can never be purchased, only awarded by the ST. Like the Liege background for Abyssals it fluctuates constantly, though usually only one point at a time. Characters CAN have FAME at character generation, but only if the ST says that their other backgrounds and the story of the character's getting to the point they are at when the story starts warrants them having it. For Example, a character that was the mayor of their town before they became an Eclipse, or a character who is an author who's books are bestsellers across most of the scavenger lands. In any such case FAME costs the character BP like any other background, but unlike normal backgrounds there is expressly no guarantee that they get to keep it: so generally starting with a FAME score is a poor use of your BP, better to rise up from nothing than to start as something exceptional and fall from there.

Rating FAME

Fame is rated on the following scale:

X: Unknown: almost all extras have this level of FAME, in fact 90% of creation has this level of FAME. No one is your 'fan', though you might have followers or allies.

1: Known: You are a person of renown within a city or town, some few hundred people have heard of you.

2: Respected: You are famous in not only your home town, but the areas around it, about a thousand people have heard of you and would recognize your name and description. You are likely to have Connections in a few areas of life in your home town.

3: Notable: You are famous in the local region where you operate, be that small nation or province/state of a larger nation. Around 5-20 thousand people have heard of you. You probably have gained extensive 'Connections' backgrounds in a number of cities and towns.

4: Recognized: You are famous in your nation of origin or a large region if from a smaller country. At this level of Fame you begin to be bothered by FANS and require body guards and the like to protect yourself from them, or them from you. Every day there is a base 1d chance that a FAN will harass you, on any success you are bothered by a FAN that day, if a 10 is rolled a whole mob of FANS bothers you that day. Creating alternate identities to hide from FANS becomes common at this level of FAME. The Realm and the Deathlords have doubtless heard of you at this point.

5: Household Name: You are known throughout most of an entire cardinal direction. The roll to see if you are bothered by FANS now uses 3 dice, with 1 fan showing up per success and one mob per 10. At this level of FAME you almost certainly also have a high level of Cult as well, as FANS worship you with hidden shrines and unauthorized rites in a large segment of creation.

6: Living Legend: Your FAME encompasses the entirety of creation and beyond. At this level the number of fans who bother you is decided with nine dice, though you probably are unaware of this fact most of the time due to the layers of security you have protecting you. The number of non-Exalted who have achieved this level of FAME over the course of the history of Creation can be counted on a person's hands. Including Bridged (Before Her Exaltation.), Bram Marst, and Blood on the Horn.

Using FAME

The main benefit of this background is your FANS, people who idolize you and hold your ideals, or at least what they THINK are your ideals. The Roll to find a useful FAN is a Wits+Socialize roll taking one hour (Or less if the ST wishes.) at a difficulty set by the ST depending on how many people in the local area are likely to have heard of and recognize you and how likely those people are to have the skills, information, or connections you need. The ST can expressly rule if they so chose and it makes sense from their perspective that no one in the local area has heard of you at all, and therefore you have no FANS making the difficulty of the roll infinite: such as if you are in a village that has not had outside news in centuries and you are not a native.

FANS are almost always extras, and typically use the stats of Peasants/Citizens/Slaves from the core book. They NEVER are exalted, who must be bought as Allies, though someone with high FAME and ST permission can use that to justify buying an exalted ally who was one of their FANS before exaltation. FANS primary usefulness is much like minor Contacts, who can put them in touch with more important people.

The other benefit of FAME is that with ST permission it can be used to justify buying other backgrounds.

Going back to our example of the Exalted Rock Band, say you just had a concert in Great Forks: now you need an 'In' with the city guards. So you ask the ST if you can roll for a FAN, naturally she says 'YES', I mean it would be kind of a jerk move to not say yes right after a concert. She sets the difficulty at 4, the city guards don't like concerts much, makes more work for them. You get the successes you need though, so FAN found. She says that the FAN is the son of a captain in the city guard, and you then ask "If We convince him that we are good people can we buy a dot of Connections to the Great Forks City Guard with him as our contact?" And after a bit of hemming and hawing the ST says "He has a negative intimacy towards your music. If you over the course of this adventure can break that intimacy you can buy this dot of Connections with him as your contact." So, all you have to do now is erode a 3 dot intimacy against your music and you can have a contact in the Great Forks City Guard, very doable for a group of exalted who are all somewhat social focused people.

This is just one example of how the FAME background can be used to justify buying other backgrounds. Many backgrounds make sense to be bought due to a character's increasing level of FAME, Including but not necessarily limited to:

Resources: Endorsement deals, sales of merchandize to your FANS, appearance fees, kickbacks, donations from your FANS: FAME should be considered by the ST to typically justify purchasing a level of Resources 1 dot lower that the rating of a characters FAME with minimal in character effort.

Connections or Contacts/Influence: As given in the example above with some role-playing FAME should be allowed to be used as justification to increase their pool of Major Contacts for Connections or Contacts by using their FANS to get an 'in' with more powerful people. With Respect to Influence FAME should be considered to justify buying Influence 2 levels lower than their FAME rating.

Cult: FAME comes with FANS, and the root word of 'fan' is 'Fanatic'. If the characters have FAME the ST should consider this full and complete justification for the characters purchasing Cult up to a level 2 below their FAME score, and the ST should be aware that unlike FAME, Cults do not fade out of existence over the course of a few years of downtime, people's faith in their Idols can keep going for decades, in fact long after their deaths: Just Look at Elvis.

Followers: Like the Deadheads and other FANS of major bands or heroes many FANS would dearly love to travel around with their idols and do things for them to bask in the reflected glow of their glory. FAME should be considered full justification for purchasing a rating in the Followers background equal to its rating, and like Cult above this does not necessarily fade if the character's FAME does.

Allies: As mentioned above it is not beyond the realm of possibility or even likelihood for one of a characters FANS to achieve Exaltation, and though considerably less likely it is not unheard of for an exalt to become a FAN of another exalt: the Scarlet Empress had many such. As this is the case the ST should consider allowing the characters to purchase ST designed Allies each time their FAME score increases, or at any point she deems it reasonable if they have FAME 6.

Final Notes

Again, since it bears repeating, FAME cannot be bought with bonus points or XP it can only be awarded by the ST and will rise or fall depending on the character being true to their legend and conciliatory to their FANS. Though FAME can be gained at char gen and costs BP in this case this is not the same as the player taking it, only the ST can award FAME in this manner, as per it's usual rules.

It should also be noted that except in 'Dreams of the First Age' games or other settings where The Mask is intact FAME is inappropriate for Siderials, though some of their Resplendent Destinies might eventually be able to accumulate FAME.

FAME can represent more than just popularity, the ruthless masked assassin dressed as a Bat who opposes slavers and robbers in a major city somewhere would have FAME, perhaps more so than the city's mayor or chief of police, and there would be FANS drawn to this dark knight.

A character can have multiple FAME scores, provided they have different persona which they apply to. Lunars commonly have several different FAME scores spread among different identities, such as the FAME of the high priest they have killed and stolen the identity of and also FAME tied to the war form under which they have been saving ships from the Lintha.

These rules were originally designed to deal with a small flaw in the rules variant I created Here but I realized that they have broader applications and so instead of folding them into that rule set I made a separate page for them here