Help with regaining reputation

[Wordmaker]

Treating the business as a character in its own right is a nice idea.

Though to be honest, given the nature of what you seem to be trying to achieve, I would have left the mechanics out of this entirely and kept it all narrative. It seems to me that mechanics are just getting in the way here.

[Haru]

So this is essentially what I was going for.  The player does actual adventures that help the company.  Every time the player successfully accomplishes a goal he's set out to do, it gives him a tag for a +2 on the role against the "tainted reputation" aspect.  I like the idea of making the company a character, but I wouldn't have it go head to head with the antagonist because...

(click to show/hide)

The NPC who set the whole thing up is a Native diplomate to the colonialists.  He comes from a very powerful clan and has lots of resources and many connections and, meta-gaming, is spec'd for this with his highest skills being contacts and resourses and having stunts that boost those. I actually am using Spymaster from the General NPC's thread.   The PC, head-to-head, would be out of his league.  In a sense, the NPC already got his turn:  set up aspects to tag and then performed the maneuver.  Now it's mostly about the PC's trying to counter.

That'd still work, I think. Like I said, a conflict on that scale will take time, and the players can use that time to gather aspects to tag on the defense roll. So I'd say ok, the NPC has set the slander campaign in motion, he rolled his epic skill with tons of stunts and got a +12. Your company rolled its PR skill and got a +5. You have 2 month to make up the difference in aspects by gathering them through side quests. You can take the time to gather up more aspects to add to a responding attack roll. The NPC will just be secure in his position of power and don't care so much about creating aspects like the players do, so it'll roughly equal out in the end.

If that's what you want to focus the campaign on, that is. If this is just supposed to be a background thing, you could just make declarations instead of side quests and have this done in a few minutes.

[Taran]

This is a major long-term goal.  There are other things at play, like rival Trade Houses and stuff as well as the typical supernatural politics that goes with a DF game.  They'll probably need the backing of a powerful organization eventually.

OF course, it won't prevent them from saying, "screw that.  Let's align ourselves with another faction, I was tired of this stupid company anyways"

I'm cool with that happening too.  In which case things for the company will take a natural progression without the PC's help.  Maybe I'll make a few rolls to see how it goes, but it wouldn't look very good for the company.

[toturi]

Immediately, the player asked, "what can I do now!  How can I reduce the time?  I have piles of FP's to spend!"

Any ideas?

In the first place, is the player expecting such a campaign? Address the why of his question.

Here are some suggestions:
1) Spin the message - spread counter rumors (which in this case could be the truth, that someone was out to ruin the company)
2) Call in markers - one does not do business without making enemies and vice versa, the company would have friends and allies, some who would not look kindly on this enemy
3) (If I was the player and didn't want to deal with such things) FATE POINT DECLARATION: The fire that burnt London down? Well, the enemy is crispy now. Without the enemy giving those plots impetus, they die a natural death.