2.21.3 Oratory

A character can influence a crowd of people to do something by making a speech to them. Effectively, this involves working the passions of a crowd up or down until they take the recommended actions. It takes several minutes to orate to a crowd.

A character can manipulate a crowd through oratory if he/she makes a dice roll using his/her WP + Influence (including Oratory specialism) and gains a better result than the resistance dice roll of people in the crowd.

For a crowd containing largely people with similar attributes (e.g. a crowd of peasants), the referee should make a single resistance dice roll using the average crowd attributes, to determine the overall crowd response to the oratory attempt. Any significant characters in the crowd should make their own resistance dice rolls to see whether they are individually swayed by the oratory.

The referee should give a character a bonus of +1 to +3 on the oratory dice roll if his/her player comes up with a stirring line or speech that the character would use. The referee should also give a bonus of +2 on the dice roll if the character makes some shocking or heroic gesture (e.g. ending a speech to a crowd of malcontents by charging the city guard). The referee may give a penalty on the oratory attempt of -1 to -5 if there are distractions or noise such that the crowd cannot fully hear or pay attention to the orator.

If the dice roll is successful, the crowd will pause and consider the orator's instructions. If the dice roll succeeds by 3 or more points, the crowd will follow the orator's instructions. If the dice roll is unsuccessful, the crowd may well turn on the orator.

If two orators compete, the one whose dice roll result exceeds the crowd's resistance dice roll by the most will normally win.