Work Guide

Work Rolls: The Simplest Most Complex Thing Ever

The "work" command represents off-camera work done to advance the interests of an organization or family. It generates resources in three categories: Economic, Military, and Social.

These resources can be bought/sold on the broker system in City Center, used to fulfill staff-mandated costs for accomplishing things, used for purchasing army units, used for increasing domain skills (not currently useful), or invested into orgs/families (more on this later). More detailed information about them can be found in the Resource Guide.

A note on resources: Some players refer to resources as "writs." Staff discourages this usage as the word "writ" has a specific connotation within Arx's IC lore, and using "writs" to refer to resources creates unnecessary thematic confusion.

work

The work command unto itself is easy. All of the following examples will use Ember as the player character performing the commands, and Redreef as the org. Ember types org redreef, and somewhere in all of that is a table that looks like this:

Work Settings:
Resource	Stat	Skill
Economic	intellect	economics
Economic	command	sailing
Economic	charm	propaganda
Economic	intellect	artwork
Military	command	war
Military	command	leadership
Military	command	sailing
Social	charm	diplomacy
Social	charm	etiquette
Social	intellect	occult

What this table indicates are the stat+skill combinations that can be used for work rolls in that org. Each org has different rolls. Players can add rolls by achieving certain modifiers to their propriety (see the bottom section of this guide).

When you do a work roll in an org, you will specify what category of resource you intend to roll (Economic, Military, Social). The code will then use your character's sheet to find the best stat+skill combination out of the available ones in this org.

Example: Ember types: work redreef,economic

What outputs is the following:

You use 15 action points and have 207 remaining this week.
Your social clout reduces difficulty by 4.
Redreef Shores was founded by sailors and reavers. Since Baroness Ember's abolition of thralldom, the mariners of Redreef have refocused their efforts on import and export... and, of course, claiming occasionally lucrative spoils from hunting pirates and other scalliwags.

Ember rolling command and sailing. You have gained 15 economic resources. Amount modified by +9 resources due to prestige.

We can break this down piece by piece.

The first line indicates the AP cost of the roll. Each work roll costs 15 AP. You can type i to see both your current AP and your weekly AP regain in the first two lines of your inventory screen. AP maxes out at 300.

Social clout reduces the difficulty of the work roll -- that is, you're rolling x number of dice versus y difficulty, with the total results of rolls that surpass y producing z number of resouces. Thus, a lower y means a better chance of a higher z.

A character's social clout score can also be found on the inventory screen. It's determined by a set of "major" contributing stats and skills (Charm, Diplomacy, Empathy, Seduction, Manipulation, Etiquette, and Propaganda), and "minor" ones (Command, Composure, Haggling, Intimidation, Leadership, Performance, and Streetwise). Increasing the items in the "major" category will cause your social clout to dramatically rise. Ember only has a social clout of 4, which is not very good.

After the flavor text, we see that Ember's best roll out of the options in Redreef's Economic category was Command+Sailing. She received 15 economic resources from it, and the org's prestige modified that upward from there.

When you roll for an org, the org also skims a little bit off the top of the roll. The heads of the org (and possibly more members, depending on the permissions the org has set) will receive an inform like the following after that roll:

Ember has been hard at work, and Redreef has gained 3 economic resources. Amount modified by +2 resources due to prestige.

These resources go right into the Redreef org's bank account.

work (with proteges)

Doing work rolls if one has a protege (or two, or three) has some significant advantages. All of the above remains true, but adding the protege into the mix provides some tweaks.

We'll use one of Ember's proteges, Zoya, for the examples here.

For Ember to use Zoya for one of her work rolls, she would add Zoya's name to it after an equal sign, like this: work redreef,economic=zoya

Now let's look at how this changes things by going over the output again.

You use 15 action points and have 192 remaining this week.
Your social clout combined with that of your protege reduces difficulty by 15.
Located in the southwest of the Mourning Isles, Redreef Shores is ideally positioned for trade: not only with the rest of the Isles, but also with the Lyceum, the Saffron Chain, and Arx itself. Even a small Barony possesses an abundance of opportunities for enterprise.

Zoya rolling intellect and economics. You have gained 25 economic resources. Amount modified by +15 resources due to prestige.

In the first line, we see that it's still 15 AP per roll. No change there. The protege does not pay any AP for your roll -- that's all you.

In the second line, we see the first major benefit: Zoya's social clout is added to Ember's when performing the work roll. For a character like Ember, who has a low social clout, this is a big deal.

In the last line, we see the other major benefit: The code picks and chooses the best roll from both characters' sheets. Out of both sheets, Zoya had the best roll in Redreef's Economic combos, so her roll was used.

Again, a little bit is skimmed off the top for Redreef in the roll. A little bit is also skimmed off the top and sent to Zoya. Both the Redreef org and Zoya will receive informs to this effect.

work/invest and work mods

So, work is how you can get resources, either in a trickle or a flood. It depends on all kinds of numbers and variables: in what org you roll, how much prestige you have, how much prestige the org has how much social clout you have, your stat+skill combo, your protege if you have one, et cetera.

Each org has work modifiers. If we go back to org redreef we can see what Redreef's are as of this writing:

Mods: Economic: 5 (72/100), Military: 5 (41/100), Social: 5 (48/100)

The numbers in parentheses are percentages toward the next work mod, e.g. "5 (72/100)" means the org is 72% of the way to 6. We'll cover what that means in a second. First, let's talk about what these mods actually do.

What the mods do is simple: they add extra dice to a work roll. The math for this is equally simple: the number of extra dice is the work mod, divided by 2, and rounded down. So work mods of 5, like in Redreef's examples above, get rounded down to 2 extra dice. Work mods of 6 would be 3 extra dice.

The extra dice are important because the number of resources you receive from each roll are achieved by rolling dice. So more dice means more resources.

You can help to increase an org's work mods by using the work/invest command.

Ember invests 100 military resources into Redreef by typing:

work/invest Redreef,military,100

This gives us a slightly different output than the standard work output!

You use 5 action points and have 187 remaining this week.
Your social clout reduces difficulty by 4.
Under the leadership of Ember and Marina, Redreef Shores has established itself as one of the most stridently progressive domains within the Mourning Isles. It's House Redreef's reputation as fierce warriors that shields them from traditionalist blowback, as smaller domains quite rightly fear them.

Ember rolling command and war.
You and Redreef both gain 16,800 prestige.
You have increased the military influence of Redreef by 120.
Current modifier is 5, progress to next is 42/100.

We can go through it line by line again to break it down. First, investing costs less. It's 15 AP to do a work roll, but only 5 AP to invest.

Again, social clout reduces the difficulty of the roll.

In the bottom section, we see that the same stat+skill combos from org redreef listed above are used for investing. Ember's best stat+skill combo in the Military category is Command+War, so that was rolled.

Investing also increases prestige, for both the person rolling and the org.

Lastly, investing moves the org's work mod closer to the next level. Above, we saw that Redreef's military mod was at 41/100. After that investment, it's now at 42/100.

You don't have to do your work rolls and your investing in the same org. It's very common for people to do work rolls in the org with the biggest available mods, to get the biggest possible payout of resources, and then invest those into a smaller org's mods. For example, if we look at org thrax we can see they have mods like this:

Mods: Economic: 9 (82/100), Military: 10 (12/100), Social: 8 (40/100)

If Ember had done her work rolls in Thrax instead of Redreef, she would have had four extra dice -- five, if she'd rolled military!

The trade-off that Ember must consider is that by doing work rolls in Thrax, it would be Thrax that skims resources off of the top of the roll. She could potentially gain more resources to invest in Redreef and potentially grow Redreef's modifiers faster, but her work rolls themselves would not be automatically growing the number of resources in Redreef's bank account. There's no "right" or "wrong" answer to this, but it's something each player should decide for themselves if they want to make a project out of building up an org.

work/invest (with proteges)

Just like regular work rolls, you can do your investing rolls with your proteges.

Again, Ember will use her protege Zoya when investing 100 social resources into Redreef, and type:

work/invest redreef,social,100=Zoya

That gives us:

You use 5 action points and have 182 remaining this week.
Your social clout combined with that of your protege reduces difficulty by 15.
Presentation makes all the difference. The history of Redreef Shores is filled with fierce, fighting sailors and warriors, but equally important are its diplomats and courtiers. These are the people who do the essential work of convincing the more genteel quarters of the Compact to work with House Redreef.

Zoya rolling charm and etiquette.
You and Redreef both gain 28,500 prestige.
You have increased the social influence of Redreef by 114.
Current modifier is 5, progress to next is 49/100.

So as we can see, all the stuff that was true for the above investing section is still true here, and all the stuff that was true of doing regular work rolls with proteges is likewise true. Zoya gains some resources and some prestige out of the deal!

Adding work rolls to an org

As mentioned way, way up above, characters can add new stat+skill combinations to an org's work rolls. This is done by achieving specific modifiers to the character's propriety: Magnate, Titan, Tycoon, and Mogul.

A character's prop mods can be seen by typing sheet/recognition charactername, such as sheet/recognition ember, where we see at the bottom:

Propriety Modifiers: Gyre War Veteran (2), Silent War Veteran (2), Magnate (2), Titan (5), Generous (1), Respected Teacher (5)

The descriptions of Magnate, Titan, Tycoon, and Mogul are as follows:

Magnate, 2: Someone that has massively invested into improving the ties an organization has, or working tirelessly upon its behalf.
-Earning: Over 10,000 invested on work/score for an org. 

Titan, 5: Someone that has become instrumental to the development of an organization, investing massive resources to grow its influence.
-Earning: Over 50,000 invested on work/score for an org. 

Tycoon, 10: Someone who has helped developed an organization to be influential at the continental level.
-Earning: Over 100,000 invested on work/score for an org. 

Mogul, 10: Someone who has brought their organization to a high point unseen since the Crownbreaker Wars.
-Earning: Over 300,000 invested on work/score for an org. 

The number with each of those mods represents a positive modifier to the character's Propriety score, which is one of the values factored into their total Prestige score.

As the descriptions indicate, we can use the command work/score orgname to see how much a character has invested into a single org. Typing work/score Redreef will show us, for example:

Member	Total Work	Total Invested	Combined
Ember	1,682	58,720	60,402
Sedna	1,577	57,839	59,416
Griffin	301	18,855	19,156
Scythia	150	18,288	18,438
Martinique	1,048	10,702	11,750
Helewise	1,001	7,590	8,591
Zoya	1,699	6,676	8,375

If Ember didn't already have the Titan prop mod, based on the above, she would be able to put in a request for it, since she's cleared 50,000 invested into Redreef! In doing so, she could also request from staff a new stat+skill combo for a work roll -- say, Charm+Agriculture for Military -- and even suggest flavor text to go with it.

There's no real limit to how many different stat+skill combinations a single org can have, but each character can only ever create four bespoke combinations, to be divided up between their orgs however they wish. That's because there are only four investment prop mods to be earned!