R-Maps

[John Kim]

One last point, though ... to someone who's skilled with the tool, it may seem odd to spend all this time dealing with it. But you might be surprised at how many role-players out there not only don't see its uses, but immediately fly into a rage (or some kind of emotional reaction, it's hard to identify, frankly) upon hearing about it. I suggest being wary of becoming contemptuous of a tool simply because you're good at using it.

I wonder how much this depends on presentation of the idea.  For example, the Ravenloft campaign material included a number of family trees.  I've frequently had families involved in my campaigns from early on, such as when I ran the Ravenloft and Ravenloft II adventures the summer after my freshman year at college.  Later, when I ran my Oneiros campaign (which was definitely Ravenloft-inspired), there was a large family tree that was explicitly part of the game --  All of the PCs were part of the Emsworth household in one way or another.  I've never encountered flying rages at this.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

John, I think you're misrepresenting my point slightly, or missing it a little.

I've never encountered any sort of rage or any other weird emotional reaction about Soul-style relationship maps from people involved in a game. They uniformly respond positively. I'm referring to people who are talking about role-playing, and who flatly reject the notion that we, the real humans, are well-primed (for whatever reason) to respond to NPC kin and sex ties at a fairly automatic level.

For instance, they'll immediately raise as an objection that other ties are important too (which I do not dispute).

The reaction usually comes from people who seem, to me, to be emotionally wedded to forms of play in which the characters (a) are special and "beyond" various normal human ties and (b) are members of political factions which have more in common with conspiracy theories and hidden-world "unseen realities" than with any kind of real political agenda. To suggest that players may respond with more interest and commitment to issues of infidelity among three regular-people NPCs than to issues of whether the Templars are responsible for WWII is very threatening to them, apparently.

Best,
Ron

[beingfrank]

Hello,

John, I think you're misrepresenting my point slightly, or missing it a little.

I've never encountered any sort of rage or any other weird emotional reaction about Soul-style relationship maps from people involved in a game. They uniformly respond positively. I'm referring to people who are talking about role-playing, and who flatly reject the notion that we, the real humans, are well-primed (for whatever reason) to respond to NPC kin and sex ties at a fairly automatic level.

For instance, they'll immediately raise as an objection that other ties are important too (which I do not dispute).

The reaction usually comes from people who seem, to me, to be emotionally wedded to forms of play in which the characters (a) are special and "beyond" various normal human ties and (b) are members of political factions which have more in common with conspiracy theories and hidden-world "unseen realities" than with any kind of real political agenda. To suggest that players may respond with more interest and commitment to issues of infidelity among three regular-people NPCs than to issues of whether the Templars are responsible for WWII is very threatening to them, apparently.

I've seen that sort of reaction from players who don't seem to want to have their characters influenced by NPCs.  They play mysterious loners with no family, no loved ones, and have an untouchable aura and the attitude that no NPC should be allowed to influence how their character behaves.  Often it seems to be coupled with a desire to play their characters in quite game destructive ways.  Which is why characters with backgrounds that include 'family killed by baddies at a young age', 'orphaned and friendless,' or 'I killed and ate my family and all those near  to me' sends off warning signals in my mind.

To me, one of the main benefits of relationship maps or family trees is that it allows me to easily see what the characters should care about (whether love or hate, they'll have some reaction) and what can provide them with motive force.  I can see why that sort of notion is threatening to those who wish to play as though nothing external to the character can influence that character, or that the only influences on the character are those that the player specifies.  As thought they don't have a choice anyway.

I'm aware I'm drifting away from the topic, so I'll stop now.

[Bankuei]

Hi folks,

I see usually 3 areas of contention that usually spring up with R-maps as a tool.  

In regards to "how" they're intended to be used(in a Sorcerer sense), they're part of a style of play that rejects the preplanned scenario events, that alone tends to get folks riled who are rather intrenched in habitual play.

Second, usually based on experience with games laden with metaplot, you usually have groups fighting based on abstract machiavellian politics...hence the issue Ron is talking about.

Finally, for those folks who study stories, conflict between characters occurs on an emotional level.  The "other stuff" that Ron talks about is very important, it just happens that the people who we are related to, or more importantly, grew up with, or choose to have sex with, are almost always loaded with that emotional content.  Even an absent family member(such as a missing father) stirs up emotions as much as a present one.

Chris

[Lisa Padol]

So, is the following me creating an R-map, or is it something else entirely?

I read a WitchCraft supplement, and decided I could easily plug in one of the Covenants to my campaign. I jotted down some ideas about what these guys would do, and how they might interact with the PCs.

Then, I looked at my various NPCs already in play. I'm a big fan of recycling.

So, I pick one NPC, a young man, about 20 or so. I figure his father's in the Covenant. The father may well try to recruit his son, and some of his son's friends.

Did I just create an R-map or what?

-Lisa

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lisa,

To a small extent, yes, you did. Pretty easy, huh? The point is not to stop with the Covenant that you decided to use, which would mean focusing on their outlook and their plans as the only source of conflict/opportunity they present. Now you have this father-son thing going on within the Covenant, which provides sources of conflicts and opportunity of its own.

Best,
Ron

[Lisa Padol]

To a small extent, yes, you did. Pretty easy, huh?

Yep. Almost automatic for me at this point (after running the same game, albeit with sabbaticals, for over a decade). So, I keep sort of blinking, and saying, "Is that all? But it's obvious."

The point is not to stop with the Covenant that you decided to use, which would mean focusing on their outlook and their plans as the only source of conflict/opportunity they present. Now you have this father-son thing going on within the Covenant, which provides sources of conflicts and opportunity of its own.

Oh, absolutely. Somehow, in this part of the campaign -- a sequel, basically, dubbed "Plus 20" or "20 Years After" -- there's a lot of parent-child stuff coming out. It was not deliberately planned, but it works.

Then again, by the time I was done with the original campaign, I had a sprawling family tree -- needed about 3 sheets of paper, and it kind of had sections excerpted. I'd about related everyone to everyone.

I've got conspiracies that don't necessarily have family trees attached to them, at least not yet, and they've been working fine for years. No R-map doesn't mean no internal conflict or no personal hook. Batman and the Joker aren't related by blood, but that doesn't stop their battles from being personal.

-Lisa

[Valamir]

Batman and the Joker aren't related by blood, but that doesn't stop their battles from being personal.

That depends on whether you believe the version where it was the Joker who killed Batman's parents...

[John Kim]

Ron -- sorry if I wasn't clear.  I understood that the objections were from people who hear about the technique rather than players in the game.  My point is that I suspect that people probably have a reaction to it based on miscommunication.  For example, if you say "Sometimes it's handy to have a family tree of NPCs", I doubt it would meet with visceral disagreement.  Then again, I'm not sure, not having talked with anti-relationship-map people.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Lisa, I agree about non-relationship-map material as well - obviously, such "ties" (including enmity) are a part of the emotional and narrative landscape. We can go around all day about "but the kin/sex ones are very important" and "the non-kin/sex ones are important too," just repeating, on and on. There are more than a couple threads here that do just that, so I hope we don't have to.

John, the reaction I sometimes see usually comes from someone who puts great stock in complex setting-material regarding conspiracies among hidden organizations. The person wonders why his players don't care about what the NPCs are doing, or rather, they go into "find bad guy stop bad guy" mode. I suspect quite a bit of investment in time, money, and subcultural identity (as gamer, as GM, as customer of specific line, e.g. White Wolf) lies behind his or her strong reaction to my suggestion that they include kin/sex ties among some of the NPCs.

Best,
Ron

[Lisa Padol]

Lisa, I agree about non-relationship-map material as well - obviously, such "ties" (including enmity) are a part of the emotional and narrative landscape. We can go around all day about "but the kin/sex ones are very important" and "the non-kin/sex ones are important too," just repeating, on and on. There are more than a couple threads here that do just that, so I hope we don't have to.

No, we don't. I wasn't trying to continue the loop, just to explain how I got into it. It just seems so obvious to me that, while I understand not everyone gets it, I have to keep remembering this.

-Lisa

[Lisa Padol]

Okay, so, yesterday, I ran CthuhluPunk. The mission: Rescue a 6-year-old and his older brother from unknown kidnappers.

The brothers were part of a small R-map -- 2 brothers, their parents, older brother's girlfreind, supernatural critter pretending to be the girlfriend. Everyone knew this going in.

There was the group I mentioned in an earlier post that I intended to introduce if I could. One of its members is the father of one of the NPCs who's a friend of the brother. So, that's an R-map of 2 people -- for now. I'll probably add a wife for the father and other kids.

And I hinted at this -- the son seemed to find the set up of a magical circle somewhat familiar. And the player I expected to get it got it.

I wasn't sure for much of the episode when or if to introduce this group. I wanted basically a cameo.

As things wrapped up, I saw my moment. Improvising, I had the group show up, minus the father in the R-map. (The son wasn't there either, but he doesn't yet know what his father's up to, so that was a given from square one.) The sorcerers asked if their help was needed. On seeing it wasn't, they left. That's it.

Well, except that a) everyone was really interested about this new group, b) said group noticed one of the PCs had a Really Powerful Spirit working with her and backed away from her, and c) this PC recognized one of the sorcerers.

I hadn't been sure that was the right call when I made it, but oh, man, it was. See, this guy did some icky things in the past -- as in, a century ago. He put people's souls in gems, and the PC saw him selling these gems at a faerie market. He'd been one of three people she was considering using as a teacher, and this made her decide against him. She figured that there might be a reason to put someone in a soul gem, or to sell an empty soul gem -- but not to do what he was doing.

This totally changed the reaction of the PCs to the mystery group! There was no combat -- hadn't expected any -- but the sense of something unknown and ambiguous that I'd hoped for was there. Beautiful.

And this happened by introducing an NPC who wasn't part of the R-map above.

Except...

Except that he's part of a different R-map. See, the first person he put into a soul gem was his wife. The PCs had that soul gem some time ago -- one of them had been given it by her mother who picked it up in 19th century London, blissfully ignorant of what it was. (The year of the game is 2023, just so you know.)

When the PCs contacted the soul, they learned that her husband, despite her pleas, had stuck her soul in this gem. And he had broken his promise to her to destroy the gem and free her soul when the experiment was over.

Oh yes, we've got an R-map in here, nicely interweaving with all of the other maps.

-Lisa