Building systems to help with relationships

[Michael Hopcroft]

In the process of designing The Kevin & Kell Roleplaying Game for Seraphim Guard, I am facing the design problem of relationships as a vital -- in not the most vital -- part of each character's roleplayign experience. Frotunately, one of my colleagues has come up with a relationship system for FUDGE that rpvoides distinct advantages to maintaining strong relationships, and I thought I'd run it past this group to see if it seemed good to them or what ideas need to be tweaked about it.

Basically, if you have a 'tie" with a particular persion, such as a spouse, that tie gives you advantages (depending on its strength, reflected by a FUDGE level) in certain situations. For example, in the Kevin & Kell comic Kevin has a Superb love tie with Kell. He's a rabbit married to a wofl in a world where most wolves view most rabbits as lunch, so naturally there is soemthing strong there. Kell occasionally gets into trouble -- sometimes she gets into mortal peril. Whenever that happens, kevin becomes more ferocious and cunning than any predator of Earth to save her. This is reflected not only in combat but in other abilities as well; normally kevin is not a good enough graphic designer to forge official rabbit Licenses (yes, you need a license in this world to be considreed a rabbit), but when he needed a pair of fake licneses to save Kell's life he was able to come up with them. As for fighting, kevin has been known to lay out 20-30 trained fighters with his bare fists if those he loved were threatened.

The way it would probably work is that for a tie that strong (Superb is about as high as a non-superhuman can get in FUDGE), kevin gets a bonus on all his skill rolls, both in and out of combat, that he is making in an effort to protect or rescue Kell.

Of course, to keep a relationship that strong takes work. Anything kevin does can have an effect -- positive or negative -- oin his tie to Kell. the tie is so strong that it restricts his choices in a lot of areas. But to keep the relationship strong he has to repair the damage when he does something that would make Kell like him less, or do things that a rabbit would not normally do (like go to an office function for professional predators, some of whom may not know the unwritten rule of "Hands off Kevin Dewlcaw or though shalt face kell's wrath.....")

Ties might not be equally strong. they might not even be mutual -- you might have feelings towards another character who doesn;t really care whether you lvie or become lunch.

Can thissort of system work without undly handicapping roleplaying?

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Michael, what you're describing is essentially the HeroQuest augment system. It's extremely functional and powerful, and very well-suited to Fudge.

The danger I see is making the rules too complex. It's very simple: if you have a Relationship at some level, then define how much it adds to whatever ability it's augmenting.

Result for Fudge? Most augmented abilities are going to be shot up to Superb, or higher if you permit it.

All right, this is potentially a problem - all characters are running around with maxed-out abilities as long as their Relationships are involved. The solutions are as follows:

1. Contradictory Relationships cancel out by level. For example, you might have "Miss my father" at X and "Love my boyfriend" at X-1. When the father turns out to be a total bastard and you try to stop him from killing your boyfriend, you'll be at -1 level for the ability you're using.

2. Relationships may fluctuate through play, with perhaps some rules to regulate the rate. This turns the relationship abilities into analogues of the Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel.

3. Make damn sure that your customized rules for resolving oppositional conflict are clear. Fudge suffers very severely from the common problem of trying to resolve "Bob climbs a fence" differently from "Bob and Mike are competing for something." However you decide to resolve this problem, it will mathematically affect how effective and meaningful the relationships are.

I have no idea what you mean by "meaningful" role-playing. All play-experience at the Forge shows that using mechanics for relationships is exactly the same as using mechanics for (e.g.) shooting people. Well-made mechanics produce more engaging play.

I strongly recommend you read Albedo, Lace & Steel, My Life with Master, HeroQuest, and Pendragon in detail. Donjon and ReCoil also come to mind. Albedo in particular seems to me to have gone over the ground you're interested in covering.

Best,
Ron

[Mark Johnson]

I am not exactly sure of how you plan to implement your character relationships (and other augmentations).  I have been strugling with these same problems in my current project here.

Rather than augment other rolls, you could maybe simply substitute relationship rolls for skill rolls.

Biff
Swordplay -  Fair
Basketweaving - Good
Loves Sally - Superb
Hates Chuck - Great

If Biff is engaging in swordplay normally he would roll Fair.  If he is engaged in swordplay against Chuck, then can choose to roll it at Great.  If he decides to weave a basket normally he would roll Good. If he is weaving a basket for Sally could choose to roll it at Superb.  

Substitiution is a solid mechanic, but it can't help a character such as the following.

Chuck
Shoot - Superb
Hate Biff - Great

Even though he REALLY hates Biff a lot.  Using substitution he gains no shooting advantage by it.

A major problem with Fudge is that resolution and character levels are so coarsely resolved that you can't really give characters "small" bonuses.  Even one level up the skill ladder is a massive increase in effectiveness.  

One solution is that whenever someone has a relationship with another person, if the roll on a skill involving that person (in combat say) comes up UNDER the level of the relationship, allow one reroll.  So if Chuck rolls his Shoot against Biff and comes up Fair, he can try again and more than likely will roll much better.  

One other way would be instead of a reroll allow a single bump up of a level if the roll ends up UNDER the relationship rewarding high individual relationships without making everything a Superb or higher roll.

Of course, character creation will mainly be about creating these relationships.  A good thing as it really captures the flavor of your source material.

I like the idea of the power of the relationship being alterable through roleplay.  Fantastic stuff.  Whatever you end up doing, it sounds very interesting.

Good luck,
Mark

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[jdagna]

I've never seen a mechanic like Michael's proposal work in practice.  You basically get two kinds of players who say either:
1) "Of course I'm going to save her!  Oh, right, I get a bonus for that."
2) "Hey, if I say I'm fighting for my girl, I'll be twice as deadly in the next fight."

The first guy doesn't care about the bonus and the second doesn't care about the relationship.  I fall into the first class.  In fact, while playing Riddle of Steel, I felt GUILTY about using bonuses from my spiritual attributes even though I fully qualified for them under the rules.

If you ask me, Trollbabe is the model to follow for relationship mechanics.  I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, Michael.  Basically, you can use relationships to get re-rolls by introducing that person into your scene.  The catch is that if you do badly, they suffer more than you do, so they're actually a hindrance in some respect because you can't push yourself very far if you want them to survive.  And, since relationships are the only real advancement mechanic, you have good reasons to treat them nicely from both player and character perspective.

Of course, Trollbabe, as written, generally works by bringing the relation in as an assistant in some way, but it wouldn't take a lot of imagination or work to get the kind of effect you describe.  In fact, it even makes some sense: if fighting to rescue your hostage girlfriend, she'll die even if you only get knocked out.  

I can't recommend anything specific mechanics-wise, though.  I'm not very familiar with FUDGE.  Ron wrote Trollbabe, though, maybe he'll take a stab at it.

[M. J. Young]

I was also going to suggest the substitutionary scores idea, which is discussed in the http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9223">Mechanic for Weak Characters &c thread. It gives advantages to weaker characters without giving like advantages to stronger characters, so the stronger characters can't use their bonuses to stay ahead.

--M. J. Young