Groups are the basis of Influence skills, which control one's ability to use the rumor and influence commands such as +gossip, +boost and +trash. In other words, to create Influence skills, such as the Underworld Influence and Police Influence skills used in our example of defining an advantage, you create the relavent groups, not the skills: the <group> Influence skill is automatically created when the group is defined.

Defining groups is straightforward, requiring only that you specify a minimum Status level required, if any, and a `tag line' to be shown when rumors circulating within the group are displayed.

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>>  What is the category for this definition?
>> [Enter category, or .l to list choices, or .q to quit]
>>  What is the name of this Group?
>> [Enter a name, or .q to quit]
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Enter `group' for the category and the name of the group, such as `Underworld' or `Police'.

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>>  Is there a minimum Status level for this Group?
>> [Enter 'yes', 'no', or .q to quit]
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If a specific status is required in order to join the group (that is, as a prequisite for the <group> Influence skill), enter `yes' here. Status, recall, is on a scale ranging from 3 to 18, with 8 being a normal, average citizen, and 4 and 14 being the lowest and highest levels that the system will let players select (higher or lower values would have to be manually set by a wizard, by modifying the character's @a/dis-ad/Status property). A group such as Court or Nobles on Nim and Antar's world would require a specific status... at least 10, perhaps 11. Groups like Underworld and Police would not. Note that the +boost command allows approved characters to increase other characters' influence within a group, including characters who are not already members of the group. This is an intentional loophole... it is possible for characters to become members of a group for which they do not have the required status, by in effect being vouched for by someone who already is a member of the group. (Once a group is defined and has active members, powerful cliques of characters within the group effectively control who has membership.)

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>>  Please enter a tag sring for rumors in this group.
>>  Example: 'It's going around amoung the  that... '
>> [Enter tag string, or .q to quit]
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This entry is for display purposes only: the +rumors command prefaces the list of rumors within a group with a tag string. For a group like Underworld, we could enter a tag string like `Word on the street is...'. For Police, we could use something like `Down at the station, they're saying that...'.