Reputation & standing
Briarmont keeps two separate records on your character. They sit next to each other on your dashboard, which is why they get mixed up. One tracks how far you have come. The other tracks what the town makes of you.
[briarmont_standing_ladder]
The two records
Community level is progress. It rises as you play and it does not fall. It is built to be fed by quests, work, events, and time actually spent in-world, and those sources switch on as the systems behind them come online. Each level carries a title, so you begin at level 1 as a Newcomer and are a Resident by level 5.
Standing is reputation. It starts at neutral and moves in either direction, because it answers a different question. Not how long you have been here, but whether the town thinks well of you.
A character can be a fixture in Briarmont and still be poorly thought of. The two records are meant to disagree.
Where to find them
Both live on your Munibase dashboard, in the Standing & Reputation section. Open the dashboard from Profile on the HUD, the person icon, or sign in to Munibase in a browser. That is the full picture, and the place to go when you actually want to read it.
The HUD carries the short version. Tap the activity tracker, the ! badge, and your community level and XP progress are at the top of that panel, next to your accepted quests and unread notices. That is the mid-scene glance.
There is no Standing button on the HUD, so if you are hunting for one, that is why you cannot find it.
Community level
Your level rises with participation, and the things designed to move it are the ordinary things: finishing quests, holding a job, showing up to events, and time in-world, which settles once a day. Those sources are wired in one at a time, quests first, so the ladder is quiet in these early days.
You see your level, its title, and how far into it you are. You do not see a lifetime XP total, and neither does anyone else. The bar measures the current level rather than running forever.
Levels open a handful of roles, rentals, and storylines that assume a character is already known around town. That is the whole of what they do.
It is a slow burn by design. Nobody arrives established.
Standing
Standing is the town's opinion of you, and it is the record that can cost you something.
Everyone starts neutral. From there it moves across bands that run from badly regarded, through neutral, to well regarded. You see which band you are in and a line of text describing it. You never see the number underneath, and neither does anyone else. Staff can see the number and the full history of what moved it, which is how a dispute gets settled.
What moves it today is simple. Volunteer recognition and staff awards, each recorded with a reason attached. The rest of this section is the design the record is growing into, and each piece arrives with the system behind it.
Quests will be the main engine. Finishing one can grant standing, failing one can cost it, and quests are written with both outcomes in mind. Beyond quests, in-world systems will record standing events directly too, each with a reason attached.
It will fall as readily as it rises. There is no floor under a band you have already reached. Once the sources that lower standing are live, behave badly for long enough and you will watch it come back down.
You cannot farm it, and one bad night will not finish you. Every source of standing carries a cap on how far it can move you in a single day. Grinding does not work, and a single disaster is survivable.
A reputation you stop living will fade. The design gives an idle record a slow pull toward the middle: sit well out toward either extreme with nothing touching it for a month and it begins drifting back toward neutral at a point a day. Notoriety needs upkeep. So does a good name.
What standing opens, and what it closes
Doors in Briarmont are checked rather than assumed. A role, a quest, or a storyline can carry a requirement, and today that requirement asks one question about your standing: which band you sit in. Requirements that ask for at least, or at most, a certain regard are on their way.
That cuts both ways, and it is worth sitting with. Some of Briarmont is written for people the town does not trust, and a clean record closes those doors as firmly as a bad record closes the respectable ones. No character has every option open.
Requirements can also combine standing with other things. Your level. Whether you belong to a group. How a particular quest went for you. Your academic record, if you are a student. A quest can leave a mark on your file that a later one reads back, so what you did stays done.
We do not publish which doors check what. That is for you to find in play.
What neither one is
Neither record is a leaderboard, and neither one gates ordinary roleplay. You do not need a level or a good name to walk into a scene, take a job, join a club, or spend an evening at the bar. They affect the roles and storylines built around characters the town already has an opinion about, and they are otherwise quiet.
Note. Community level rewards participation, not perfection. Standing is the record that judges you, and it is supposed to. Play a character the town has reason to think well or badly of, and let the file follow.