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Post by Yves Eau on Aug 28, 2019 9:29:42 GMT
From the house rules: "Mistresses give their lovers a favor each year (Influential mistresses give additional favors). These favors are gained once a character has successfully courted a mistress (unless a previous lover has used those favors in the same year). Mistresses favor are renewed in January and are available for use in the January turn."
If a mistress will share her favours with only one player per year, she is a whole lot less valuable. How do we know from the table if she is a second-hand, dried-up hag? This rule is likely to lead to a jolly January and frolicking February in the boudoirs of Paris as the gentlemen compete for the ladies' attentions early in the year, but a dreadfully dull December.
I would consider it more reasonable to limit favours from a promiscuous mistress to one per season (two if influential), as for personal influence, with an indication in the table if this season's has already been bestowed on another lover, and fair to deny an inconstant gentleman second helpings. However, I am sure a lady would desire to impress a new suitor by making her next season's favours available immediately.
I am not keen on a fixed month for renewal, but I understand it makes the game master's job easier.
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Post by huillaume on Aug 28, 2019 10:26:13 GMT
From the house rules: "Mistresses give their lovers a favor each year (Influential mistresses give additional favors). These favors are gained once a character has successfully courted a mistress (unless a previous lover has used those favors in the same year). Mistresses favor are renewed in January and are available for use in the January turn." If a mistress will share her favours with only one player per year, she is a whole lot less valuable. How do we know from the table if she is a second-hand, dried-up hag? This rule is likely to lead to a jolly January and frolicking February in the boudoirs of Paris as the gentlemen compete for the ladies' attentions early in the year, but a dreadfully dull December. I would consider it more reasonable to limit favours from a promiscuous mistress to one per season (two if influential), as for personal influence, with an indication in the table if this season's has already been bestowed on another lover, and fair to deny an inconstant gentleman second helpings. However, I am sure a lady would desire to impress a new suitor by making her next season's favours available immediately. I am not keen on a fixed month for renewal, but I understand it makes the game master's job easier.
If you allow mistress' favors to be seasonal, habing an influent mistress is too high an asset, and I'm afraid it would break the balance of the game, as they use to be relatively high influences.
OTOH, I see your point, and IMHO the easiest solution would be to allow any mistress influence to be used once a year (as in rules) per lover, if she changes him.
TO avoid this to become a "couple swaping", modifiers for previously left ladies, if tried to be courted again by the same character, or for fame of seductor (having had too many ladies) could be applied...
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Post by Ymbert Montgomery on Aug 28, 2019 10:55:42 GMT
Swapping it to seasonal would make sense in some ways; it's how all the other influence gets renewed.
Huillaume is right that this is quite unbalanced though.
The big question is if the players mind that; obviously, En Garde! isn't a balanced game anyway!
If so, I can think of several possibilities. Mistress influence could be reduced across the board. Or, rather than seasonally, it could regenerate on a 1 in 6 chance each month.
I'm less keen on renewing mistress influence whenever a new gentleman successfully courts here. It makes sense mechanically, but it doesn't really work thematically for me.
Equally, if we're making mistress influence more frequent, I don't think we need to mark it on the table. That doesn't make sense thematically (why would a mistress advertise the fact she's been asking for favours recently?). But it also allows clever players to work out how that influence was used. If the only influecable action the month before was an application you were applying for and your rival's mistress spent her influence you can be pretty sure they tried to screw you over.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2019 11:47:33 GMT
Add a column to the mistress table to show whether she has used her influence yet that year, so the players can decide if they want to court her or not.
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Post by Yves Eau on Aug 28, 2019 12:20:55 GMT
I did not mean for a mistress to offer a constant companion a new favour each season - I am happy for each player to be limited to one per year from each mistress. If he needs more favours, he must court more ladies, possibly at great expense.
What I did not like was having a lady's annual favour used by one player in January, rendering her far less valuable to other players, and encouraging gentlemen to use favours as soon as possible. We could find ourselves very short of feminine wiles by Christmas. Allowing each new partner immediate rewards could exhaust a modest maiden, and encourage wanton neglect of our fair friends. Waiting until the next season seemed a sensible compromise, to limit the total influence of a mistress to four per year if she changes partners regularly.
I take the point about publishing the use of favours, and agree this would not be necessary with seasonal renewal. If favours are renewed only in January, the risk of wasting time and money courting what may turn out to be a spent force will be a serious deterrent later in the year. If you found out when you courted her in April that her favour had been used, so had to wait until June, this could upset your plans (a little unpredictability to add to the fun), but may not be a total waste.
It would not be terribly difficult for the GM to track ladies' favours over a year, so a gentleman could have another after twelve months, regardless of when he last took advantage of her: a simple spreadsheet, with one row per mistress and one column per month, recording the name of each partner to have benefitted from a favour from each mistress in a month. This would stop someone courting in November, using favours in December and January, then moving on to fresh opportunities.
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Post by Ymbert Montgomery on Aug 28, 2019 12:46:37 GMT
From my perspective that level of bookkeeping isn't an issue and would fit in with other notes I keep about mistresses.
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Post by huillaume on Aug 29, 2019 18:50:04 GMT
A related issue: can a character suggest his paramour to apply for a female appointment? If so, what are the effects?
BTW, the talbe for female appointmets should be clarified when you reedit the rules, as it's quite messy now...
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Post by gaston on Aug 29, 2019 19:24:19 GMT
A related issue: can a character suggest his paramour to apply for a female appointment? If so, what are the effects?
In previous games with these/similar rules characters can persuade their wives to apply for female appointments, but not their mistresses (over whose conduct they have far less influence). The effect of a wife having an appointment is that any SPs from it are added to those of her husband when calculating whether she gains a SL or not, and the husband gets to use her appointment favours once every year. On a related note, the other games had more female appointments precisely because players send their wives after them too. All the appointments in the gift of the Crown Princess have been removed from the current version of the Liminal houserules. Where the issue of NPC mistresses' personal favours is concerned, how about they regenerate for new suitors three months after the new relationship has begun (and every 12 months after if the mistress is retained by that suitor) ? |
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Post by Ymbert Montgomery on Aug 29, 2019 21:41:19 GMT
I'm thinking that we'll just port the Fontainbleu house rules on female PCs across to Liminal in their near entirity, bar a few changes for things like differences in housing rules.
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Post by gaston on Aug 29, 2019 22:43:03 GMT
I'm thinking that we'll just port the Fontainbleu house rules on female PCs across to Liminal in their near entirity, bar a few changes for things like differences in housing rules. OK. Should have them converted tomorrow. |
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Post by Alain Andre Durant on Sept 15, 2019 23:20:24 GMT
Swapping it to seasonal would make sense in some ways; it's how all the other influence gets renewed. Huillaume is right that this is quite unbalanced though. The big question is if the players mind that; obviously, En Garde! isn't a balanced game anyway! If so, I can think of several possibilities. Mistress influence could be reduced across the board. Or, rather than seasonally, it could regenerate on a 1 in 6 chance each month. I'm less keen on renewing mistress influence whenever a new gentleman successfully courts here. It makes sense mechanically, but it doesn't really work thematically for me. Equally, if we're making mistress influence more frequent, I don't think we need to mark it on the table. That doesn't make sense thematically (why would a mistress advertise the fact she's been asking for favours recently?). But it also allows clever players to work out how that influence was used. If the only influecable action the month before was an application you were applying for and your rival's mistress spent her influence you can be pretty sure they tried to screw you over. One method that has been used is that once a mistress's favour is used, it returns at one level per month. This requires a couple of columns in the Mistresses table (and a little bit of accounting each month on the administrator's part) that lists the current influence level and the maximum influence level. This also introduces the mistress being able to use only as much influence as she felt necessary which would allow more uses of influence, but they could be at lower levels. Realistically, this makes more sense. Influential mistresses might regain influence twice as fast as non-influential mistresses. The once a year rule really does make them more of a tool to be used and tossed off than to be kept unless they have other uses. |
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