Affiliations in Night City

The following is a guide for how affiliation is handled by the staff if they assign a character of yours a new reputation.

GMs (including staff) may also use these reputations to influence how certain faction members react to your character if they are seen.

You are not required to use these affiliations in character creation! You can introduce your own, or modify one of them as you see fit. This is just a standardized list. We recommend it, but it is not required.

We assign affiliations not just based on the good, but the bad as well. We do not use a point system for affiliation. We just go with what we feel that faction would weigh your character's decision, and what is the most narratively exciting.

Naturally, it is very easy to go down the scale with factions in Night City, given how untrustworthy and ruthless Cyberpunk can be. On the other hand, it is difficult to climb higher up.

Examples of Gaining Affiliation

• Successfully Completing Contract Work - If it's contract work (as in, they specifically picked you), you'll likely become affiliated if you do a good job. Don't expect being a nameless employee to get you beyond Unknown without at least a few months of work, however.
• Providing them with assets or information - This can get you from Affiliated to Respected, or from Disliked to Suspect.
• Continuous Contract Work - If you work for them often, this can get you Respected with a faction.
• Career-Long Dedication - This can make you an Icon in the faction with enough time.
• Being crucial in completing a critical operation - Some factions will see you as an Icon for this, though depending on the scale, may just get you Respected.
• Killing a member, and then making up for it in some major way - This can raise you from Hostile to Distrusted. They may look over it now, or in the upper echelons, but others in the faction might still just try and kill you.

Examples of Losing Affiliation

• Failing Contract Work - Botching a job can lower your standing with a faction, especially if your failure costs them money, personnel, equipment, or information. A single ordinary failure may not matter much, but repeated or catastrophic failures certainly will.
• Abandoning or Betraying a Contract - Walking away from a job after accepting it, deliberately working against your employer, or selling them out to another faction can quickly turn a positive affiliation negative. How severe the loss is depends on the consequences of your betrayal.
• Repeatedly Refusing Important Work - You're generally free to turn down contracts, but repeatedly refusing work after establishing yourself as a reliable operative may cause a faction to stop considering you dependable. This is particularly true if they specifically sought you out.
• Working Against the Faction - Taking contracts that directly interfere with a faction's operations can steadily damage your affiliation with them. They may tolerate the occasional conflict as business, but repeatedly becoming the person ruining their plans will eventually become personal.
• Providing False Information or Faulty Assets - Knowingly giving a faction bad intelligence, compromised equipment, stolen goods that attract unwanted attention, or otherwise unreliable resources can cause them to distrust you. The consequences will be considerably worse if they discover you did it intentionally.
• Leaking Confidential Information - Revealing information entrusted to you by a faction can cause a severe loss of affiliation. Sensitive information reaching a rival faction, corporation, gang, or the public may immediately make you Distrusted or Hostile depending on the damage caused.
• Killing or Seriously Harming Members - Attacking members of a faction can rapidly destroy your standing with them. Killing a low-ranking member may be survivable with sufficient amends, while murdering important personnel or repeatedly targeting members can make you Hostile outright.
• Sabotaging a Critical Operation - Being responsible for the failure of an important operation can severely damage your affiliation. Intentionally sabotaging one is considerably worse and may immediately turn even a Respected or Iconic individual into an enemy.
• Defecting to an Enemy - Leaving a faction to openly join one of its enemies can cause an immediate and significant loss of affiliation. What was previously loyalty may become betrayal, particularly if you take faction resources, personnel, or information with you.
• Long-Term Inactivity or Abandonment - Affiliation can fade if your relationship with a faction is neglected for long enough. Someone once considered Respected may eventually become merely Affiliated or Unknown if years pass without meaningful involvement. This generally represents being forgotten rather than actively disliked.
• Committing an Unforgivable Betrayal - Some actions cannot reasonably be repaired. Killing faction leadership, exposing highly sensitive secrets, deliberately causing catastrophic losses, or otherwise becoming responsible for an existential threat to the faction may immediately make you Hostile regardless of your previous affiliation.