Do you or the players keep track of favors granted or owed?

Do they have a scale that is common and a monetary value can be placed on?

Maybe I've missed it but I don't often see that favors are accounted for or credit for that matter yet in real life they do matter.

Trying to balance favors can be tricky even if you are not "gaming" them.

The most common way they are used in my games is that the Players need a favour so they have to go on a mission to earn it.

My Players will go out of their way to avoid owing favours to anybody. Seriously, they go to extreme lengths to do this.

However, if anyone ends up owing them favours, they milk it for all it is worth.

We normally assume that a favour repays a favour. So, if you owe me a favour and then do something that I have asked you, then that favour is repaid. An NPC might try to abuse this, by asking for multiple favours, but that only really happens if the NPC did a really big favour and asks for little tasks in return, for example saving a PC's life and then asking them to turn a blind eye to some smuggling and being somewhere else on a certain day. However, that kind of thing could use the Favour Currency mentioned above, allowing you to work out whether a Favour has been repaid.

Of course, what amount of Favours can repay the "I carried you for 9 months and raised you, making loads of sacrifices along the way" argument?

Quote from: soltakss;1099866My Players will go out of their way to avoid owing favours to anybody. Seriously, they go to extreme lengths to do this.

However, if anyone ends up owing them favours, they milk it for all it is worth.

We normally assume that a favour repays a favour. So, if you owe me a favour and then do something that I have asked you, then that favour is repaid. An NPC might try to abuse this, by asking for multiple favours, but that only really happens if the NPC did a really big favour and asks for little tasks in return, for example saving a PC's life and then asking them to turn a blind eye to some smuggling and being somewhere else on a certain day. However, that kind of thing could use the Favour Currency mentioned above, allowing you to work out whether a Favour has been repaid.

Of course, what amount of Favours can repay the "I carried you for 9 months and raised you, making loads of sacrifices along the way" argument?

"There is a difference between Favors and Acceptance of Responsibility."

I use favors slightly.  It's repeated use, but not common.  They are generally not tied to monetary results, either in getting them or receiving them.  There are some things that cannot be achieved any other way.  For example, I've got a handful of groups that make a small amount of healing potions.  They can be bought for a reasonable price, but only if the group that makes them has you in high favor.  That's the only way to buy them, too.  It's somewhat similar to a guild system, where it does not matter what kind of money you have, if you don't have connections.  And of course political forces often deal in favors more directly, with no money involved.  

It's very difficult in my current campaigns to achieve favor and advance in a faction without annoying some other faction, and thus gaining disfavor with them.  So the players are usually cautious about it.  They tend to not go directly after favors, but rather do whatever they were going to do, and then see how they can use whatever favor that produces.

Quote from: soltakss;1099866My Players will go out of their way to avoid owing favours to anybody. Seriously, they go to extreme lengths to do this.

This is also my experience.

I've had to explain to my L5R players that "owing favors" is going to happen as its part of the social web of the clans, the families and the Empire, and yes, owing favors can become a pain in the ass, but that's part of the L5R balance of honor.

Fortunately, honor works both ways in L5R and a NPC asking for a favor to be repaid inappropriately risks their honor as well. I let my players know that 90% of the NPCs are equally concerned with honor as they are as everyone is caught in the tangled social web.

My Warhammer players also find themselves "owing favors" to nobles, but those are easier to pay off - go hack up some Chaos cultists. Often, my Warhammer nobles and merchants will seek to get PCs to owe them because its important to them to have powerfully violent friends too, especially those who willingly fight Chaos.

My Traveller players just flee the planet if they owe anybody anything. Like soltakss said, they'll got to extreme measures like hauling ass out of a subsector.

Usually informally. But in my Honor+Intrigue campaign we tracked favors formally and their value was based on the Social Rank of the giver of the favor. Receiving a favor from a higher ranked person was a fairly common result for completing some task for or being of great serviced to that personage.

Quote from: Greentongue;1099864Do you or the players keep track of favors granted or owed?

Not really. I find that most adventures are episodic enough that the favor-owers are usually not relevant after a session or two.

I do want to run a faction focused campaign one of these days where favors feature heavily. One of these days...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1099925Not really. I find that most adventures are episodic enough that the favor-owers are usually not relevant after a session or two.

I do want to run a faction focused campaign one of these days where favors feature heavily. One of these days...

Cyberpunk is the game you're looking for, you best not get in debt to the corporate goons.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1099958Cyberpunk is the game you're looking for, you best not get in debt to the corporate goons.

I'm not a huge fan of Genesys, but its cyberpunk setting book Shadow of the Beanstalk has an excellent set of simple rules for a favor economy. It's very much what the Edge of the Empire Obligation mechanic should have been.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1099960I'm not a huge fan of Genesys, but its cyberpunk setting book Shadow of the Beanstalk has an excellent set of simple rules for a favor economy. It's very much what the Edge of the Empire Obligation mechanic should have been.

Haven't got a single book from them. You recommend it? I was talking about the original CP2013/2020

It's based on the Android setting and has lots of fluff and good art even if you don't like the Genesis rules, but it's pricey, so it depends on how much disposable cash you have on hand.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1099986It's based on the Android setting and has lots of fluff and good art even if you don't like the Genesis rules, but it's pricey, so it depends on how much disposable cash you have on hand.

Okey, that's a not today  then. Not exactly swimming in cash and the wife gives me the evil eye over any new book I buy

Quote from: HappyDaze;1099960I'm not a huge fan of Genesys, but its cyberpunk setting book Shadow of the Beanstalk has an excellent set of simple rules for a favor economy. It's very much what the Edge of the Empire Obligation mechanic should have been.

Can you give us a brief overview?

Quote from: Brendan;1100141Can you give us a brief overview?

Different levels of favors owed to individuals and/or factions, transfer of favors to others downgrades them (and you don't "keep the change"), low level favors tend to expire after a short time but high level ones never do, certain Talents link you to a faction and allow "free" low level favors from that faction once per [x time period]. That's the very brief overview.