Patron, Duty, and Frequency of Apperance

Typically people work for a Patron Entity, especially for low tech. The relationship may vary, but it a pretty certain thing in such an age and era.

Patrons and Duties

Patrons (B72) are quite interesting since they can be Entities or an Individual. Of course, at default, such “Patronage” does come with its Duties (B133). I always bundle Patronage and Duty, to even out as 0 points. Interestingly, you cannot have RANK without Patronage. So Rank can seem expensive compared to Status (which they really should re-calibrate IMO), but setting Duty and Patronage at default means more Perks and Privileges from your patron from the status within the Patron’s Entity.

By now you should notice I’m a Organizational Nerd, a pretty low cast of nerd lolz. Organization, is the new untouchable cast of nerd lolz (because no one wants to deal with it and touch emm ewww lolz).

A simple mental run through:

A soldier’s patron is the Army, or more specifically the “sub group” of the Army he works in. The patron he can approach is his commanding officer. The frequency of appearance is how often they can ask for small favors. At frequency 9 that’s few days out of the week, um which is not really common IME, its more of a 6 which is a few days a month. Typically these are requisition requests for equipment, leave, maybe a boy’s night out, and other small favors that is expected out of a Patron.

You can look at it as a Patron in the Archaic sense as well. Typically the Lieutenant or the Chamberlain handles the day to day affairs, and allows such requests to pass through him to the lord in small times. It really depends how you imagine an organization, and each organization can be different in different eras.

The present with the economic downturn has a lot of companies tightening belts and the protocol means less liberties and more crunch time. A company in an upswing can be very generous with their “dependents” or clients but that was an age far far gone. (who wants to adventure in that era?)

Duty

One common misconception about duty is that, each thing is separate and compartmentalized. Yeah right, life can be that clean cut. In todays circumstance such a naive assessment needs to be quickly corrected or else something bad will happen sooner, or worse later.

Duty is very important in my games. Its our job and responsibilities, and in todays circumstance that means so much despite how much we can wish ourselves to be in an age where it may not exist (I will +1 a lot of the memes about such dreams but here I am gaming with the assumption it will never come true). The PCs may be doing a lot of weird stuff, and maybe given unrealistic task load,

Ex. Bill, Speedy and Fish will need to do over time to have everything ready in the HSS network upgrade. Since this is a covert infrastructure project, logistics is even more complicated if they don’t want people getting wind of what they plan and look too closely at HSS. Then there are matters their Partners/Bosses would want them to personally handle while they put out “Fires” literally. Bill has to help make sure there are no Magical juju going around in the tunnels, its not like they’ve completely explored it or can Vett they’re safe to build into.

I know people hate it when there is other Motives to an action, but scarcity makes HUMAN and not pure unadulterated saints in our activities. We will be doing things and making choices that Align as much synergy to our circumstances and the only time you will have that Pure Generous Motive is when Scarcity ceases to exist and people can afford to spend their time in a more Ideologically Pure fashion (if that state of mind ever actually existed).

So the PCs have an Adventure, and they happen to be Doing their Job going through the Trials of the Challenge. What’s their motivation: They’re regular people with Jobs to Do, and throw in the Loaded Meaning of what having a Job means to that Duty.

Damn how the idea of “work” or “job” is so loaded. It was loaded then, and very much loaded now. They saw people who specialized in transaction and logistics as outside the social order yet the reality of the value they generate being the one to make sure Goods moved around was staring everyone in their face lolz. That economic truth that “value is what you were willing or PAID for something” was lost then and is pretty much lost even now because of the Cognitive Dissonance surrounding that circumstance. (the philosophical Digging around of what is a Transaction shouldn’t be tackled here)

Frequency of Appearance

My experience in BPO really influence a lot of Freq. It is pretty intense in that industry since they need to satisfy 24/7 support and there are a lot of factors that become barriers to that. What I took away is working with months (30.5 days) and a lot of the workload heuristics to be expected. My 4 hours rule helps a lot but despite the statistics its not really a hard rule.

Patron (6) [5]; Duty, Non-hazardous (12) [-5]
Patron (9) [10]; Duty, Hazardous (12) [-10]. Well Damn, you better have my back if I’m doing this kind of scary shit… would be the modern expectation. In times where BLIND loyalty or faith is a virtue, even consecrated with the most potent symbolism and oaths of fidelity rare is an accessible patron. Of course, smart patron got Family men and had their family’s fortunes and fate dependent on the fate of their lord and master.

Patron (12) [20]; Duty, Hazardous (constant) [-20]. Tatikios comes to mind, or famous right hand men or women who was always present.

Alternate Builds.

Ryuko or the Shield build has Unwilling, Extremely Hazardous Duty to her Master… but that master can be anyone. How about her “being” or what she is as an “economic unit”, dead broke? It is possible that one’s Social Status is tied to the Patron. A person can be wealthy because of their employment: their RANK, Social Status, and Wealth are all tied to the Patron.

Without the Patron, the character would be struggling or Broke. All their possessions are owned by the Patron. Sounds like what an Android might suffer in an advance era Or a Serf in another era. Depends on how the GM or the Game designer wishes to model being “unemployed” or “masterless”.

I’ll tackle dependents in another time.

Game in the Brain