[TSoY] Comedy, R-Maps, and Gut-Wrenching Angst

[Ricky Donato]

I just played my first session of what will hopefully become a recurring game of TSoY. It is best described as ABSOLUTELY FREAKING AWESOME.

The Setup
I've been pimping TSoY to various co-workers for a while. Recently, I convinced two co-workers to try it out, mostly by writing a brochure-like email comparing it to Star Wars. The players are me as the Story Guide, Pat, and Lindsay. Pat and I have a bit of experience with TSoY, and Lindsay had none at all, so we spent some time reviewing the rules before diving in. Lindsay quickly exclaimed, "I get it! It's a game of GWA: Gut-Wrenching Angst!"

We decided where in Near to play by visiting Clinton's Fantasy Oracle. The first element was about accursed ghosts, so I shouted out, "We're playing in Qek!" After reviewing Qek, Lindsay and Pat made the following characters:

Oaxata (Lindsay): A human female walozi dedicated to protecting the village that cast her out after she revealed her spirit-talking power. Keys of Conscience, Outcast, and Pacifist.

Edmund (Pat): An Ammeni showoff and con-man who is on the run from a rival house that he owes money to. Keys of Glittering Gold, Renown, and Competitor.

I then created what I thought was a relationship map (see my questions below) and the major SGCs:

Ruby: A teenage Ammeni girl that Edmund had seduced before fleeing Ammeni. Teenage infatuation got the best of her and she stowed away on a ship to find him in Qek. Keys of Unrequited Love (Edmund) and Masochist.

Alexandre: A minor Ammeni noble who owes money to Edmund and wants to marry Ruby for her money. He has decided that he must kill Edmund to clear his debt and end Ruby's infatuation. Keys of Bloodlust, Mission (marry Ruby), and Vengeance (against Edmund).

Tecuatl: A Qek walozi zamani-summoner who has hidden his powers from his village. He met Ruby and promptly fell in love with her, and when she asked him to find Edmund for her, he secretly decided to kill Edmund instead. Keys of Unrequited Love (Ruby) and Mission (kill Edmund).

Summary of in-game events
Edmund had fled the Qek village into the forest when Alexandre first saw him and tried to kill him. In the forest, after successfully evading Alexandre, he is attacked by a zamani panther warrior that Tecuatl had sent after him. Oaxata happens to be in the vicinity and intervenes, severing the zamani. Then she decides to travel with Edmund to the village and find out why zamani are chasing him, because that means an evil walozi is around. Lindsay immediately buys Key of the Death Hunter.

In the village, Edmund sees Ruby in the streets, so he says hello. She squeals with delight at seeing him, but she is jealous of Oaxata. She invites them back to her hut (actually Tecuatl's hut, but they don't know that), where she cooks them dinner. She uses her Secret of Fire Fruit to poison them both: Oaxata out of jealousy; Edmund because she wants him to get sick so she can take care of him and earn his gratitude. Lindsay fails her check and Oaxata is poisoned, but Edmund succeeds. Then Pat makes the best statement of the night: "I take another bite." And he marks down XP for Key of the Competitor. He fails his check and gets poisoned.

Then Tecuatl enters the hut, carrying flowers and accompanied by a guitar-playing ghost, and proclaims his love for Ruby. Edmund replies, "Dude, you'd better get in line."

Observations

• We couldn't stop laughing. Between Edmund's antics trying to show off, Ruby's teenage squealing, and Oaxata playing the straight man, the game was filled with comedy. Lindsay commented afterward that she wanted to end the session just so her stomach would stop hurting from laughter.
• Key of Unrequited Love is totally the awesome. It's like an immediate adrenaline boost to any game, because it announces to everyone that things are about to get interesting.
• The Fantasy Oracle is brilliant. I will be relying on it heavily from now on.
• I see no reason to perform any prep before the PCs are created. I need to see the Keys so that I can build a situation that trigger off them. The advantage of TSoY is that character creation is so fast that it's perfectly acceptable to wait until the PCs are created, then spend 15 minutes to create the SGCs.

Rules questions
The session raised a few rules questions, but to avoid cluttering up this thread I posted them in the CRN Games forum:
Key of the Masochist
Qek spirit magic

Why I posted this thread
I need help understanding relationship maps. I wrote up what I thought was a relationship map after Lindsay and Pat had made their characters. Then I reviewed a bunch of old posts on R-maps on the Forge and discovered I had done nothing of the sort. So this leads me to two questions:

1) What is a relationship map, and in what ways is it useful?
My tentative ansewr to this question is that a relationship map describes which characters are directly related to each other, and what are the defining elements of these relationships. For example, in my play above, Tecuatl would have an arrow pointing to Edmund stating "tried to kill". "Tried to kill" is a relationship that, no matter what happens between the two characters, will always play a relevant part in the way they interact wth each other.

2) What did I create, and in what ways is it useful (if any)?
I created relationships such as "Tecuatl trying to kill Edmund" and "Ruby is jealous of Oaxata". In other words, I described the current state of the relationship, rather than the defining elements of the relationship. This means that my map was subject to frequent change (and I modified it frequently throughout the session), which might discourage me from changing the state of a relationship.

[Frank T]

Hi Ricky,

I have no idea what people at the Forge have called an R-Map in the past, but I do exactly the same thing you did for prep. It's just a mind-mapping technique. Mind maps tend to be useful to picture complex relationships of all kinds (not just between persons).

I find it interesting that your SGCs have Keys. They never had in my TSoY games. Can you tell me a little more about how this worked out in play, and how much impact it had? Did you show these Keys to your players?

- Frank

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Ricky, if you're interested in the technique I identified and explained in The Sorcerer's Soul, naming it "relationship map," then I can explain it to you.

However, given the game you've described, I don't think it's relevant. What you're doing is merely listing NPCs who have histories and agendas. Those are good things, a necessary part of prep in most games, and you should keep doing it. If you want to do it with circles and arrows, you can do that too.

Again, that is not what I described and named relationship maps. What I did was much more specific and much more attuned to particular goal of play which happens to work very well for Sorcerer. I suggest not getting distracted by terminology and not seeking after anything special or specific when your basic, normal, prep-NPC procedures are doing just fine.

Best, Ron

[Ricky Donato]

Hi, Frank,

I gave the SGCs Keys based on advice from the wiki here, which in turn came from TonyLB's thread The Long Bridge. It has two benefits:

1) It serves as a constant reminder of the character's motivations to the SG, just like PCs' Keys do. Whenever
2) It allows the character to advance. The rate of advancement is slower than PCs, which is fine.

I did show the Keys to my players. Right atfer they had made their characters, I started coming up with SGCs, and I immediately decided that Ruby needed to be there, so I wrote her name down, and then I said out loud to myself, "Now why is she in Qek?" Pat replied, "She has Unrequited Love," to which I shouted, "That's perfect!"

Ron, the reason I asked about relationship maps is because I thought it could be more valuable than what you just called NPC histories and agendas. If you feel that it is not necessary, then I will take your word for it and continue doing what I was doing.

[Ricky Donato]

1) It serves as a constant reminder of the character's motivations to the SG, just like PCs' Keys do. Whenever

Oops, clicked Post too fast. Let me finish this sentence:

Whenever I needed to decide what a SGC wanted out of a situation, I just looked at his Keys. It made things much easier.