What follows is the first draft of the Reputation System for Signal Zero. This is early writing material and is apt to change in the course of playtesting and re-writing.

The Reputation Wheel

In the world of Signal Zero you can live or die because of your Reputations. They never exist in a vacuum either. There are always people, corporations, or factions that are diametrically opposed to each other. Whenever you make a new friend you piss off someone else. Some causes will just never see eye to eye.

To represent this, I preset the Reputation wheel. Every wheel covers two Reputations, the Positive and the Negative. The Positive Reputation gives a bonus to a number of things associated with that specific person\faction. The Negative Reputation gives the other person\faction a bonus to a number of things. It’s important to remember that a Negative Reputation never hurts your character, it just gives your enemies an advantage.

Reputations are tracked in two forms, the Ranks and Points. Ranks are scored between 1 and 5 while Points track between 1 and 10. If you collect 10 points you can spend them to increase the Rank of the Reputation. Otherwise there are numerous things you can spend your Points to accomplish. Points are tracked via the inner-circle of boxes. Ranks are tracked by the larger numbered circles along the outer-circle.