Gaining and Losing Status

Status cannot be purchased during the game, it can only be gained by publicly notable acts or praise.

As status is a measure of public acclaim, action taken during a session or praise given openly and obviously to a significant portion of the room has a much greater impact than actions or praise only noticed by a few people. Actions that are not publicly known about - no matter how impressive, competent, or necessary - do not affect status, therefore characters must balance the secrecy of their schemes against the appearance of mediocrity if they wish to maintain status.

Each downtime return will include a space for people to praise characters for specific behaviour. This must be a specific impressive thing done in session (or number of specific impressive things) rather than a general statement that they are a good or useful person. 

While processing downtime actions, the ST team will review each character to see if their status changes for the next session. Because the gap between sessions is months if not years, the impact of any exceptional successes or failures will have faded away by the next downtime. As such any situational modifiers to a status test apply only to that status test. The bonus for impressive actions taken in downtime will only apply to actions that could be known to a significant minority of characters, at least in passing. 

For example, an NPC Prince tasks a PC ancilla with finding who is responsible for a series of killings, in exchange for permission to take control of a mine. When they succeed in slaying a monster that lives in the bell tower, they get a chance to increase in status because a fight on a bell tower and a grant of asset transfer are both things that might be mentioned generally in vampire society. 

Conversely, if a neonate submits a downtime action saying they want to kidnap the Prince of Vienna without leaving a trace, if they (miraculously) succeed it doesn’t have a chance to affect their status, as it was a secret.

Titles

Certain positions are prestigious enough that being granted them increases the holder's effective status. However, as political power comes as much from the person as the office, this increase is a bonus to status level rather than a change in the character's actual status level. Losing that position will result in the loss of any extra status bonus that it grants.

In this era, many of the formal positions one might be familiar with from a Camarilla court either hold different names or do not exist. All Domains still have a Prince, though they may not use that precise title, as such a position stems from the Feudal interpretation of the Traditions, most especially the Traditions of Hospitality and Destruction. Each court has its own quirks and officers of the court that match its Prince’s disposition.

For example, a Prince who is very obsessed with Status and Accounting might title or style themselves as a Burgher or feudal Lord, and may have an officer called the Master of Decorum, whose job will be tracking and announcing status changes. In contrast a Prince who is concerned only with martial prowess would mock such a position, perhaps instead having a Prince’s Champion to fight duels of honour for the Prince’s amusement.

Below are suggestions of common positions in a domain that may increase status. As different Princes value different things the modifier listed below is a guideline representing a hypothetical average fief and might not hold true for every fief in the game.

Most positions are mutually exclusive, so a character will only gain the highest bonus available to them rather than the total of all position-related bonuses.

Poor Diplomatic Relations

Some fiefs may not recognise the positions awarded by other fiefs or accord them less respect; for example, the Prince of Vienna might declare that the Bavarian Wilds are not a real Domain, so titles granted by that Domain grant one fewer level of status bonus in the Bavarian East March.

Lineage and History

Some characters might be embraced into an especially prestigious line of vampires (i.e. one of great power in the region or exceptional power somewhere else), or have achieved something of such note that their past deeds are still spoken of with more than casual indifference. This grants a +1 bonus to status in addition to any granted by position.

However, as this fame causes all of the character’s achievements to be scrutinised and discussed in greater detail, and one can only dine out on a past moment of greatness for so long, if the character fails two status adjustment tests in a row, the bonus is permanently lost to reflect society deciding the character is a poor example of their line or that their past successes were flukes. Depending on why the character was considered notable, there may also be other consequences - for example, one might imagine Prince Hannibal would not be overjoyed if his great grandchilde brought shame to the line by being incompetent.