[silvarilon]

Sounds cool!

In Ironclaw we've gone the exact opposite way. Instead of making rules for NPC influence, we've made it more vague.

Every PC in the game can join various guilds, or create their own guild.
For every active member in a guild, the guild gets a number of "tokens" each day, depending on their members skills. So if their member has spy skills, they get subterfuge tokens. If their member has combat skills they get martial tokens. If their member has trading skills they get economy tokens. And if their member has social skills they get society tokens.

When the players want to bring the NPC influence to bear, they spend the appropriate type of token. So asking NPCs for influence costs subterfuge tokens. Getting an NPC to guard a door or beat up someone costs martial tokens. Some of these token uses are programmed in, and others are manually handled by staff. Players can request a game effect and staff will say how many tokens it will cost. This allows players to do things that aren't programmed into the game systems, but might make sense for the story, and gives staff a fair way to make sure that they aren't just favoring players they like.

An example of recent use - one character was accused of having stolen some steel. They spent economy tokens to ask for an NPC metalsmith to come check if their steel matched the same type as the stolen steel. Staff popped in, had the NPC say "No, this obviously comes from a different mine, look at the red flecks in here..." and left, but the player got the freedom of coming up with creative solutions rather than having to rely on what was coded.