Influence System
Overview
Dies Irae has an off-screen influence system which is about influencing the world over the longer term through mortal proxies, as represented by characters' Allies, Contacts and Retainer backgrounds.
Each month, you may submit one request per Contact or Ally background your character has. The request should state, in at most two or three brief sentences, what you want to do. In the case of Contacts, you should specify one piece of information you hope for your character to hear from the Contact. More specific requests for information may glean more specific answers. In the case of an Ally, you should specify a low-danger task taking hours at most which you would like your Ally to conduct.
To activate a contact or Ally, a character has to make a roll using an appropriate Knowledge or other relevant ability to know exactly what they want to direct that Contact or Ally to do, and a roll using an appropriate social ability to actually tell them to do it. These rolls are at a base difficulty of 6 and will increase in difficulty as they move away from being in the interests of a Contact or Ally. Retainers may stand in for your characters' rolls.
Resources can be used to increase the impact of your action. You can spend one dot of Resources for each dot of a Contact, to have them provide better information or information which was potentially risky to get, or for each dot of an Ally, to have them carry out a task which takes days and which may be higher danger.
We call anything that is subject to the influence system a "situation". Your character's personal project could be a situation. Something known about right across the city and involving numerous characters is also a situation. Multiple player characters may contribute to a situation. They just need to know about it.
Pentex front businesses are associated with special situations, each represented by a progress bar at https://diesiraemu.com/wiki/pentex-front-status/. Progress being at 0% means that the business has failed. Progress being at 100% means the business is extremely strong. Player characters may act both for and against these businesses.
Fame may be used to stand in for an equivalent number of dots of Allies or Contacts.
Retinue and Kinfolk may count as Allies or Contacts. This should be specified in your character's notes. All rolls for Retinue and Kinfolk are at -1 difficulty.
Enemy and any narratively similar flaws come into play in the influence system. An Enemy might meddle with a situation your character is involved in and so reverse progress. An Enemy might also initiate a situation of their own where they or their agents seek out the player character which they are an enemy of. This situation is like any other and can be interacted with by a player character or those helping them. An enemy if left unhindered can have potentially dire consequences for a player character. This applies to any flaws narratively similar to Enemy. Note that this is paused if a player is not notably active in a given month - it's not meant to punish inactivity.
Step by Step
Each month, you may submit one request per influence background your character has. The request should state, in at most two or three brief sentences, what you want to do.
In the case of Contacts, you should specify one piece of information you hope for your character to hear from the Contact. More specific requests for information may glean more specific answers.
In the case of an Ally, you should specify a low-danger task taking hours at most which you would like your Ally to conduct.
Example: +jobs/create req/Influence=I would like to use my Contact (Building Inspector) to see if there's any information regarding O'Tolley's looking for a new expansion place.
What is an influence action?
Everything done 'off screen' can be an influence action. This can be something that's obviously Influence; trying to promote a business, or trying to find out about an NPC, but it can also refer back to your venue.
Perhaps your Lasombra wants to secure the pack haven and make sure the Ritae the pack are undertaking stay off the radar. That's an Influence action.
Maybe your Shadow Lord is trying to track down a particular type of Spirit to learn a rare gift. That can be an Influence action.
Your Syndicate agent may just be manipulating the stock market, in order to set up an elaborate procedure to produce Primal Energy. Guess what? The Instrument for that ... can be an Influence action.
Trying to track down rumors of movements of the Fomor in the Deep Dreaming? Your Sidhe may need Influence actions suited to the Chimerical world.
These are all the things you'd ask your ST if your backgrounds can find out. Anything involving the world beyond your character's immediate reach - that's a test of how far their influence goes.
The Mechanics
Each of your influence backgrounds gets one (1) use a month. You as a PC get 4 influence actions a month. This is related to PCs still remaining the primary focus of the game, and a PC getting 1 downtime action between gaming sessions, or roughly 1 per week. I'm lazy, and I'm not going to track things weekly, so you get 4 a month. This will be a benefit to some PCs some months, and others it won't, but it's the fairest way I have found to handle it.
Every level in an influence background eqates to 2 dice for an influence roll. contact 1 rolls 2 dice. Resources 5 rolls 10 dice. Allies 3 rolls 6 dice. It's pretty simple math. Double the rating, that's the dice pool they have.
Whether you have your backgrounds assist you in doing something, or you have them act on their own, it uses up their one influence action per month. Them acting on their own does not spend one of your actions as a PC.
To add value to influence backgrounds, I, your benevolent Influence staffer Hubris, have decided to consider the following influence backgrounds to have a relevant secondary skill for tasks in their field: Allies, Contacts, Patron, Retainer, Servants. This list may grow in the future. Resources will never be on it.
Resources can be used in almost any influence action, as greased palms spread someone's influence the fastest; especially when used to gather information and not to get someone to do something potentially dangerous. However, resources can not act on their own, and are always used in conjunction with your PC taking action, but doesn't necessarily mean you are actively taking action (rolling your own stats) beyond handing money to your other backgrounds and having them bribe people. This still uses up your resources for the month, and one of your personal influence actions. This is purely to balance the fact that resources are able to be used almost universally, and not confined to a certain field like police or underworld or whatever.
Examples
Examples to make that hopefully easier to understand:
Tim the Tzimisce wants to gather some info on Sarah that runs a strip club he wants to turn into a hunting ground. Tim uses his Retainer (3) to find get the scoop. Tim doesn't dirty his own hands with menial labor, what self respecting Tzimisce does..., so this will be the retainer acting alone on Tim's orders....like always. The roll would be 6 vs 5, successes directly determine what is and isn't learned.
The retainer can not do any further influence actions this month. Tim can still have his allies, contacts, any other retainers act, and Tim still has his own 4 actions to use, if he ever stops being lazy and does something himself.
Mary the Choruser wants to try and get a new church built. She's got allies (2) in city hall, but she also has some politics (3) herself and some magically special manipulation (4!), so she's going to have her allies help her, but she's working on it also. First, the allies support roll happens. 4 vs 5, and she gets 2 successes. Then she makes the roll for her actual attempt to get get city hall to sign off on the zoning and whatnot needed. 4 manipulation + 3 Politics + 2 successes from the support roll. For the sake of my sanity and making this a good example, she's not using magic in this; and the roll is 9 vs 6, garning 4 successes. Those 4 successes are the only roll used to determine success or failure in the influence action. Mary has used one of her 4 influence actions for the month, leaving her with 3 more. Her city hall allies have been spent for the month, and can't help her again until next month.
And because resources is so weird in this, an example for that.
Guido works for Pentex, and wants to find out about that new church cause the last thing he wants is a church popping up where they plan a new sewage treatment plant. He doesn't know whose backing that new church, but wants to find out. He has contacts in city hall himself (2), and he also has his own personal resources (4)to grease some palms cause bribary and graft just work. And since he doesn't really have anything else to do this month, he's throwing both at finding out whose supporting that church initiative. He rolls 12 vs 6, and gets 5 successes.
That doesn't guarantee he knows cause Mary may have arcane or other magical mumbo jumbo, but it's still impressive. For this example, what he finds out isn't important. What is, is that he's spent 1 of his 4 influence actions this month, and he doesn't have access to his resources or his city hall contacts for the rest of the month.
Lastly....
Your contacts, allies, retainers, servants, et al are still not infallible. Sometimes what they hear or learn is just rumor. Infact, alot of what they hear and learn will be rumors. Maybe those rumors are true, maybe those rumors are not. They're not perfect, you're not perfect, and sometimes people may believe they are absolutely right and end up being close, or not close, or completely wrong. It happens. But rest assured that your contacts arent going to work against you. I only say that what you learn isnt infallible because there may be actions taken on the other side that mean you might not have as many successes as you see on the roll. The most common example will be your target actively covering their tracks through mundane or supernatural means,.which could present itself as a success threshold you have to meet. If you have to overcome 3 successes worth of covering their tracks, then you will need to get 4 successes on the roll to get 1 success worth of valid information. And you wont know about that threshhold unless you roll high enough to overcome it. Sometimes the information can not be obtained through the means you are using. Contacts 5 (Street urchins) can not find out where Joey the Nosferatu havens at in the sewers. 10 dice or not, they can't overcome his Obfuscate 4, regardless of how many successes you roll.