Goodwill for MCs
In addition to fighting monsters and exploring wondrous locales, adventurers will need to maintain and cultivate their reputation in the various towns and cities that they frequent.
Goodwill is a mechanic that tracks a community’s sentiment towards an individual. Any action a party or player takes may generate positive or negative Goodwill. Professions have a particularly strong effect on Goodwill.
Goodwill is tracked across several spheres of the community, roughly correlated to occupations: academic, aristocratic, layfolk, mercantile, militant, religious, underworld. Certain Professions are written with this in mind and specify which spheres of the community you gain Goodwill in.
If your MC wants to streamline this process, they can simply track Goodwill per town or city, instead of tracking Goodwill for individual community spheres in each urban area. If they do this, then any feature that gives you +1 Goodwill in a particular sphere gives you +1 Goodwill overall.
Goodwill is tracked privately by your MC and can range anywhere on a scale from -20 to +20.
Private and Public Goodwill Jake is MCing for Nathan, Andi, and Grant, who respectively play Charlie, Ingrid, and Marcus. If Jake has notated that Marcus has 6 Goodwill in an area, then Grant would not know that Marcus has exactly 6 Goodwill, but he would know that Marcus is well liked
| Goodwill | Effect |
|---|---|
| -20 to -15 | Villain. You are hated and feared by your community. Community resources will be levied towards your arrest and destruction. |
| -14 to -10 | Hated. The community is hostile to your presence and will refuse your trade and lodging. Angry mobs might attempt to exile you. |
| -9 to -4 | Disliked. Goods and services often cost more for you and merchants are unlikely to haggle. |
| -3 to 3 | Neutral. You are unknown to the community overall. |
| 4 to 9 | Liked. Citizens usually go out of their way to accommodate you and give you good deals. |
| 10 to 14 | Beloved. Citizens rejoice to see you and you can always find friends and allies in town. |
| 15 to 20 | Hero. You are idolized by your community and can get virtually any good or service for free. Local authorities will overlook minor crimes that you commit and will help you when they reasonably can. |
You can track your adventurers’ Goodwill in a handful of different ways. If you want to be very granular, use the table below for each town that the heroes spend time in. If you don’t want to emphasize Goodwill as much in your game, then just use the “Overall Goodwill” column and only track your heroes’ Goodwill in each region or even in each nation, rather than in individual towns.
Because MythCraft campaigns typically span several years, tracking Goodwill on a granular level can be more rewarding for the adventurers as they see their reputations change and (ideally) improve over the course of the story. This is especially relevant if you run a campaign rife with political intrigue, skullduggery, and villains that wield the soft power of influence as deftly as a cutpurse wields a knife. Tracking Goodwill more closely can lead to rewarding narratives as your players might become discredited in one area and spend an entire adventure arc reestablishing their credibility.
Tracking a hero’s Goodwill across individual occupations will also naturally lead to different heroes becoming the face of the party in different circumstances.
| Hero | Total | Academic | Aristocratic | Mercantile | Militant | Religious | Underworld | Wandering |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avery | 11 | 0 | -2 | -6 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 4 |
| Ingrid | 33 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 6 |
| Marcus | 28 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 14 | -6 | 3 |
Awarding Goodwill
Along with a monetary reward, cool magic items, and titles and their accompanying prestige, Goodwill can be a great reward when a quest is completed successfully. While a player might not know their exact Goodwill score, they should know that their standing in the eyes of society was improved thanks to their contribution to the town’s safety and/or prosperity.
Gaining Goodwill
| Event | Goodwill Gained |
|---|---|
| Clearing fallen trees from an important trade route could improve your Mercantile or Wandering Goodwill. | +1 or +1d4 |
| Stopping a bandit threat from plaguing a small town might improve your Mercantile or Militant Goodwill. | +2 or +1d4 |
| If a noble was kidnapped and you safely recovered them, you could gain Aristocratic Goodwill. | +3 or +1d6 |
| Preventing a well-organized attempt to tarnish a temple’s reputation could improve your Religious Goodwill. | +4 or +1d6 |
| Orchestrating a well-organized attempt to tarnish a temple’s reputation might improve your Underworld Goodwill. | +5 or +1d8 |
| Warding off a significant attack from a rival town or mercenary group might tremendously improve your Goodwill in virtually any occupation. | +10 or +2d8 |