Soul reviewed

[james_west]

Two points: first, I think there's a little of the following going on here.

Person A: Look at my nifty new screwdriver!

Person B: And it'd make a great prybar, too!

Person A: Um, I guess so, but that's not really ...

Person C: That screwdriver is cr*p. I tried to drive some nails in with it, and it didn't work worth a darn.

I shall stop extending my metaphor there. Relationship maps, to my understanding, accomplish (at least) two goals in scenario design:

(1) They give the -players- (not, necessarily, their characters) an immediate visceral involvement in the story.

(2) They serve as a guide to how the important characters in the story will react when their web of relationships is disturbed by interaction with the PCs.

Now, there are probably other methods of accomplishing these goals, although I believe that relationship maps, as written, are very effective at it.

As I read some of the responses, they seem to have the thesis "I can produce perfectly plausible, exciting plots which engage the players without involving these elements." While this is probably true, the plots are unlikely to be as thematically rich, or involve moral choice. For instance, if we focus on the "doing his job" aspect of Die Hard, where is the conflict?

If I think of classical literature, though, it primarily revolves around sex and death. (Look at Shakespeare). Perhaps this is because these themes are both very universal, and very relevant to every person.

(I'm a little biased in dealing with relationship maps; upon seeing them almost a year ago in Soul, I started using them to try to make sense of peoples' motivations in my investigative work, and I find them extraordinarily effective - not only to work out what's going on, but when someone is clearly 'violating' the map, you can be darned sure he's pretty close to the root of the problem.)

- James

[Gordon C. Landis]

Allright, to be clear - *I* am not trying to "attack" or invalidate sex/family based relationship maps here.  But I *am* seeing an awful lot of misunderstandings and/or superficial criticisms of the issues that have been raised with the familial/sexual focus.  So, just to try and be clear about where I'm failing to make the leap, here's a little quote-and-respond:

As a viewer, do I care how dedicated he is to being a cop? No, not really.

You don't?  I do.  When I think about that movie, it is his "copishness" (doing the work that someone has to do), illuminated by the local beat-cop character, that stick with me.  That, and his wife socking the asshole reporter.

1) They give the -players- (not, necessarily, their characters) an immediate visceral involvement in the story.

First of all, I certainly was thinking about "the player" and not "the character" in my comments - I won't speak for others.  As far as immediate visceral involvement in the story - how does the fact that two NPCs are sleeping with each other do more to involve the player than knowing that one of the NPCs is a foreign spy?  Especially if the player has chosen to play an FBI counter-terrorist agent?

For instance, if we focus on the "doing his job" aspect of Die Hard, where is the conflict?

Self-preservation vs. commitment to duty?  Strength of will vs. overwhelming circumstance?  Even (bringing the wife in as well - like Ron, I'm not saying either aspect is UNimportant) preserving your loved ones vs. getting the bad guy.

How dedicated people are to their job is not much of a hook

If what you're interested in is a story exploring how extremes of job dedication affect people, it's a FANTASTIC hook.  It'll only fail if you're not interested in that story.

My conclusion (so far) is that there are some story types that really are better served by a non-sexual/familial basis to the map.

Now, in the absence of other overwhelming story factors, sex/family is a GREAT way to hook players, as has been said.  I just don't see why it would always (or even usually) be the BEST way.  But I am not immune to testimonials like James', so I *will* be giving 'em a try.

In that vein - James, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "violating" the map, and getting to the "root" of the problem.  Perhaps an example?

Again, I'm not intending anything overly confrontational here - I'm just sayin' I haven't seen convincing arguments/evidence on *particular* points (sex/family as the focus).

Gordon

[Le Joueur]

Relationship maps, to my understanding, accomplish (at least) two goals in scenario design:

(1) They give the -players- (not, necessarily, their characters) an immediate visceral involvement in the story.

(2) They serve as a guide to how the important characters in the story will react when their web of relationships is disturbed by interaction with the PCs.

Now, there are probably other methods of accomplishing these goals, although I believe that relationship maps, as written, are very effective at it.

Almost.  I think the thing everyone is missing here is that Relationship Maps are for Sorcerer.  As has been made obvious, Sorcerer is about the sacrifice for power.  The sacrifice of Humanity.

Ron decided, in designing Sorcerer, that nothing was more human than sex and family.  I'm inclined to agree, especially in Sorcerer!  The problem being explored here is that Die Hard is neither about Sorcerers nor a role-playing game.  That's it!

Don't try to apply a rule from Sorcerer to other games, or to movies.  I certainly think that the combination of Humanity and Relationship maps would be of only limited use in a superhero game, a very limited use.

As I read some of the responses, they seem to have the thesis "I can produce perfectly plausible, exciting plots which engage the players without involving these elements." While this is probably true, the plots are unlikely to be as thematically rich, or involve moral choice. For instance, if we focus on the "doing his job" aspect of Die Hard, where is the conflict?

If I think of classical literature, though, it primarily revolves around sex and death. (Look at Shakespeare). Perhaps this is because these themes are both very universal, and very relevant to every person.

Die Hard is about good versus evil or struggle, it has nothing to do with Bruce Willis' character sacrificing his Humanity.  I'm only really versed in Hamlet and I'm pretty sure that Hamlet isn't sacrificing his humanity.  As a tradgedy, in the words from a related play, "We're from the Love, Blood, and Rhetoic school.  We can give you Love and Blood; we can give you Blood and Rhetoric.  We can give you all three concurrently or consecutively, but we can't give you Love and Rhetoric without the Blood.  Blood is compulsory."

Isn't it about time we stopped trying to use Ron's 'screwdriver' for everything?

Fang Langford

[Manu]

Hey guys,

I'll go out on a limb here, and try to write down a few things I managed to learn from what little exposure to R-maps I had so far (still waiting for Soul to arrive);

Role-playing is basically a type of social interaction between human beings, and this is central to the concept of R-maps. See, sex and family aren't merely a specific choice of potential humanity-defining factors made for Sorcerer: I think they are usable in any campaign, because of a sometimes overlooked fact: the relationships on the map grab the players on a primal level because they are human beings, and sometimes unbeknownst to them ! The player with the FBI character might be drawn into the story by a spy he spotted, but the player himself *will* go "Wow, I can't believe this guy is sleeping with Natalie, my instructor's daughter !! And, holy cow ! my son is school buddy with that mob king's !!" It's just a primal, deeply rooted proto-cultural reaction to human relationships. Even if the player doesn't consciously think of that, it'll be a nagging feeling, tingle or unease, that will propel him along the R-map lines, and into a world of conflicts - perfect for the game!

Other types of relationships (hierarchy, for instance) are, as Ron told me, stressors on the main , "sex/blood link", relationship lines. They do exist, but will realistically motivate only characters, not the players sitting around the table within minimal narrative distance of the campaign.


Just my two cents, I hoped I didn't get anything wrong.

Manu[/b]

[Gordon C. Landis]

Fang -

Good point about "Humanity" and the "for Sorceror" screwdriver - partially, that's what I was trying to get at with my "some story types that really are better served by a non-sexual/familial basis" comment.  On the other hand, the "loss of Humanity" stuff is pretty versatile - you CAN look at Die Hard through that lens.  Whether it's BEST to look at it that way . . . that's another question.

Manu -

I understand what you're saying, and it's pretty much what I undersatnd Ron to be saying - and I'm just not seeing the global applicability.  When you say:

Other types of relationships (hierarchy, for instance) are, as Ron told me, stressors on the main , "sex/blood link", relationship lines. They do exist, but will realistically motivate only characters, not the players sitting around the table within minimal narrative distance of the campaign.

I go back to the FBI agent - the *player* (and the group, etc.) have chosen a particular kind of game and a particular kind of story, one that is not *fundamentally* tied up with sex and family.  The player will be motivated by meeting a spy, not by meeting a guy sleeping with someone elses' wife.  That sex link, to my mind, could serve as an excellent "stressor" (to use your word) to the situation, providing the player additional interest (and the character some leverage to work the situation) - again, the inverse of proposed emphasis of the map.

hmm . . .  I just realized a bias I have in this regard.  I've played a number of Mekton games, with characters created using the "Lifepath" approach, often resulting in familial complications (your parents worked for the enemy, your brother was a traitor, etc.).  And our GM in those games ran with the concept - we'd discover all kinds of family-stuff in play:  PCs were actually brother/sister.  NPCs had slept with our parents - who is our real father?  And etc. (I'm told it's all very Anime-Sim-True, but I haven't seen enough anime to know for sure myself).  Not "Sorceror realtionship map" based, of course, but . . .

At this point, the whole uncovering familial/sexual relationships seems to me, as a player, a worn-out, uninteresting technique.  Rather than "draw me in", discovering that X slept with Y is likely to make me groan "here we go again . . . "

So - add that as a grain of salt when considering my comments.  Maybe I'm just the wrong guy to be looking at this "sex & blood ARE the map" thing.

Gordon[/quote]

[Paul Czege]

Hey Gordon,

I mean absolutely no disrespect in saying this, but I think somehow you've fogged up the glass for yourself, so you're no longer seeing the functioning of relationship maps the way I'm fairly certain you used to understand them.

The player will be motivated by meeting a spy, not by meeting a guy sleeping with someone elses' wife.

One purpose of a relationship map is definitely to motivate a player with interesting in-game stuff relevant to his character, but it's not the only purpose. The more significant purpose is to deliver significance to the character in the eyes of the other players. Are you familiar with the typical AD&D "night in the city" experience? The one where the party shacks up at an inn for the evening, with the thief sneaking out under cover of darkness to burglarize homes? The rest of the players flip idly through magazines, having conversations about music, movies, whatever, barely paying attention to the thief during his time at center stage. The thief's player might be motivated, but the game is not delivering significance to the thief in the eyes of the other players. The things that hook the thief, as a thief, just aren't enough to make the character significant to the other players. Narrativist relationship-map scenarios deliver significance to characters by exposing their struggle with issues of real human interest to the other players.

And I will say, to address your Mekton experience, that I think a lack of player interest in GM-delivered chaos among a character's kinship and sexual relationships isn't sufficient to undermine the value of relationship-maps across the spectrum of game situations. Firstly, not all kinship and sexual relationship chaos is of equal value to a character. The game has to be delivering the right stuff. If my character, as created, has an irrational belief that the woman he loves might be an alien, it's fairly irrelevant to the character's embedded conflict between love and paranoia if his brother's life is being threatened by the mob for outstanding gambling debts. The mob stuff is non-contributing relationship chaos. And also, if every character is the center of his own relationship map, a powerful aspect of relationship maps has been excised. The scenario may still be effective by virtue of exposing the struggle of characters with issues of real human interest, but it will likely be less so than a scenario with a relationship map that connects the player characters, that reverberates from the conflict outcomes and actions of the individual characters, impacting every player's character in the scenario.

Paul

[james_west]

Gordon -

Aha! At least for me, "violations" of the maps, and using them to get at the root of the problem, are the thing that makes them extraordinarily useful.

(I just wrote a long detailed example from reality, and realized it was a little too horrifying - so I fall back on a more abstract example.)

In the traditional Noir plot structure - which also is an amazingly common plot structure in the real world - you have a complex web of family/sexual relations, complicated by a decades-long history of infighting, in which something bad is happening. Someone's been killed, or something else so bad that 'outsiders' get involved. Everyone in the web starts reacting along the lines of loyalty established by the map, and frequently doing fairly bad things to one another on that basis. From the point of view of an outsider coming in, the whole field is in motion, because everyone's reacting along the lines of loyalty or enmity laid down by the map to some new stimulus. The key to figuring out what's really going on is to figure out who seems to be acting against the set of loyalties that you'd expect according to their set of relationships. There is always very important information there when someone's 'violating' the map like this. Sometimes, it turns out that it's because there were links in the map that had been hidden or misrepresented. Sometimes it's because you've found the person who (in Sorceror terms) has some serious loss of humanity.

In Sorceror, finding the person who has serious loss of humanity is important because they're probably demon-possessed (or something). In the real world, it's important because while everyone else may have been doing some fairly nasty/illegal stuff because the web's been reacting, they're fundamentally moral people. The guy who's willing to violate humanity is pretty f*ckin' Evil.

So - yes, relatonship maps are a particularly good way to make plots appropriate for Sorceror, and they do tend to be more than a little dark. There are certainly entire genre for which they'd be inappropriate. However, they are both very engaging and very realistic. The trick to being engaging is not to say "A slept with B", it's to say "A slept with B and had kids, because she needed them as sacrificial victims for her ritual"

As an aside - Hamlet is very much a "relationship map" style plot, almost to the exclusion of anything else.

- James

[contracycle]

Re: nothing but

I feel I am objecting to the "Nothing But" claim, inasmuch as I feel the claims made about blood-sex relationships are much too strong, and not just here but in TV and cinema too - see previous critique of Buffy.  Thus, I reject the general concept that relationship conflicts are a priori more engaging to players or characters than conflicts arising from situation; In fact I think that this is executed with such robotic frequency that I am totally, totally bored by the idea as a driver for character action and highly likely to be alienated from a character so motivated.


Re: meat vs. mind

Part of the objection is that I do feel the claim tacitly, and necessarily, poses such a dichotomy.  If it is true that emotional contexts are the primary driver, then we would not be able, say, to examine the conflict that occurs inside one family during a civil war except as an emotional relationship issue.  We can relate to the angst and the agony, but we are not, by implication, permitted to consider the issues intellectually.  So works of this nature tend to spend much time on the agonising and none on the issue; the issue is "not relevant" to the emotional crisis.  And thus it becomes anti-intellectual, insisting that those things that drive human behaviour, which motivate, arise almost totally from our mammal existence and not from our consciousness, our intelligence.  To my mind, the very expectation that the audience can only be engaged by jerking their zipper or their heart-strings is a severe problem and likely to lead to bad, unsatisfying stories rather than good ones.


As for R-maps, I have little to say about them directly.  Obviously, I reject the idea that emotional issues are inherently more motivating or protagonising than motives arising from situation, and so I am not personally inclined to limit them to familial or romantic issues.

[Mike Holmes]

Gareth may be overstating the case a bit, but he does have a point. If Ron's version of the Relationship map is superior because it explicitly does not allow the intellectual connections to be referrenced (he pointed this out as a main difference and a strength), it would seem to indicate that these sorts of relationships are able to motivate player interest with more fecundity, or on a more important level or something.

I agree with Gareth that this seems like a somewhat outlandish claim. It smacks of Freudianism. And consider the source. If I'm not mistaken, Ron adapted the concept from one that refers to literature or some other media. Somebody said that the only relationships that concern us dramatically are the sex/blood ones. Well, first, that individual could have been wrong about that as regards those media. I certainly agree with Gareth there. Moreso, applying it to RPGs may be an even further stretch.

In any case, I find it hard to believe that the other relationship mapping techniques that have been discussed here are of significantly less usefulness than Ron's. His claim that his method is different seems to be suubstantially true. That it's better seems to be mostly a case of opinion.

And that's just mine.

Or, IOW, try them all and use what works for you. OR try your own method; whatever you come up with is likely to fit your style best. That's my advice.

Mike

[Blake Hutchins]

From a storytelling standpoint, the theory is that all stories ultimately boil down to dramatic hooks of sex and murder.  That statement doesn't rule out situational modifiers, but it does focus on sex and murder as underlying hooks that motivate the movement of the story -- not necessarily positing them as character motivators (as I understand it).  Personally, I'd add the hook of mystery (by which I mean unknowable issues that come up most often with regard to spirit and faith).  This whole idea is probably the ultimate reduction of the There Are Only So Many Plots Theories out there.  See Steal That Plot! by William Noble for a pragmatic statement of this approach that I find pretty useful for constructing RP plots.

I've always thought the idea behind the R-map is to construct a web of interactions for the players to run into.  The R-map provides motivation for the NPCs more than for the player characters, who must bring their own motivation to the mix.  I'd think whether the players themselves are more engaged by the sex-murder-blood relations depends on the group.  I don't read any of Ron's R-map points as excluding situation-based motivations.  Au contraire, the whole discussion of kicker is to establish character-focused situational plot hooks that can be knitted into the overall movement of the story.  Further, the R-map is a responsive network, so its components will react dynamically as the game progresses, such that situational dramatics should unfold naturally.

No reason you can't impose an overall situation -- a state of siege, a curse on the kingdom, etc. -- over the map dynamics.  Further, I think R-maps are not limited to noir.  Create an R-map from a Steven Seagal movie, for example, or a Louis L'Amour western.  It works, though you may find the maps far less tangled.  That said, I wouldn't try it with stuff like The Endless Wheel of Time, since the relationships in that kind of work strike me as superficial and motivated almost wholly by external push-pull events.  Situation-driven plots are fine, but without reflecting internal emotional states on the part of the main character(s), they're ultimately shallow.  In Die Hard, our Bruce Willis character has his ex-wife (or separated from wife) in the hostages as a special internal motivator that added a deeply personalized dimension to his sense of duty.  Without that, the movie would have lost a lot of its kick for me.

Ultimately, I read Ron's R-map discussion as emphasizing the foundational value of personal, internal motivations and relationships when constructing strong dramatic hooks.  Maybe it ain't a sonic screwdriver, but it is a versatile and important tool.

Best,

Blake

[james_west]

Blake,

Remarkably coherent statement - came out rather better than my attempts.

- James

[Blake Hutchins]

James,

Thanks for the kind words.  I got a lot out of your post, actually, and it made my tack that much easier.  Let me also say I've consistently enjoyed your input, and have followed it from way back last spring.  Good to see you back on the boards.

I do try to boil stuff down to my level -- when Ron and Paul and Gareth and Fang get up their respective heads full of steam, I have to grab another triple espresso to crank my neurons high enough for me to keep up.  Much of the time, I see my attempts to synthesize something as merely restating the obvious.

Anyway, thanks again.

/stroking session.

Best,

Blake

[Emily Care]

Thus family kinship and sexual contact are the primary means of drawing the map. Think of these lines as indisputably existing - the social reality of the NPCs.

Sex/Family are the most universally recognized and experienced bonds of the players/viewers. So they are the most commonly used to engage interest, indentification and connection to plot, character etc.

However, as can be seen in movies like _Reservoir Dogs_, if we are given a chance to see characters bond, sex and family connections are not strictly necessary, and if present, they may not be primary.  

And, an odd but apt example, is Beat Takeshi's recent film _Brother_. In this film, Takeshi's uber-yakuza character (much like what he played in Fireworks, and Sonatine) moves to America and takes over the mob scene in the area his brother lives in.  The relationship map for the film would center on Takeshi's character, connecting him to his brother, and his girl friend--but the main connection of the film to a young black man, a friend of Takeshi's character's brother. We do care when the brother and the girl-friend die, but the main interest of the film comes from the interplay between the unrelated young man to Takeshi's character.  It is a stronger bond in the film because we get to watch it develop and overcome obstacles.  The sexual and familial relationships are almost short-hand for connection.


--Emily Care

[Mike Holmes]

Thank you Ms. Care.

Now that you mention it, a slew of my favorite movies have no family or sex relationships in them at all. Take the spaghetti westerns, for example. Heck other Kurasawa as well (Seven Samurai). A lot of good horror,including the original Alien. The Great Escape, and most war films now that I think of it (don't tell me; Saving Private Ryan is about Tom Hank's character's relationship with his wife, despite the fact that we never see her). Lawrence of Arabia! All the films like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels that we've been discussing here lately. I could go on.

I suppose that somebody will now claim that these are all displays of latent homoeroticism.

Mike

[Valamir]

I have to say that initially I was extremely skeptical about Ron's Mapping Priorities for all of the reasons outlined above.

I've come to realize that I was wrong...for the same reasons as I'm seeing above.  I was then, as many are now completely missing the point of the relationship map.

First no one, least of all Ron, has claimed that this is the one true way to map out a scenario.  Therefor seeking examples where the map "doesn't work" is a logical fallacy (I forget which one now...that class was a good decade ago, but its common enough to have a name.

I'll say this for emphasis (90% that I have it right finally).

THE MAP IS NOT FOR THE PROTAGONISTS.

The map is for the people the protagonists will come across in the scenario.  Much of the time (I suspect most) the protagonists will not even be ON the map.

What is the relationship map?  It is a diagram of connecting realtionships between NPCs.  NOT EVERY KIND of relationship, but a specific kind...Ron has narrowed it down primarily to family and sex, but even his own examples will stray a little into other relationships.

Why these?  Because the Ron's Relationship Map is not a GMing tool shorthand for keeping track of NPCs and who knows who and what their role is.  Its a diagram of those 2 most power motivating forces common to virtually all higher order earth bound life...family and sex.

It doesn't matter if you can come up with movies where the main character isn't related to the others in this way.  Hell most of Ron's examples are from detective fiction where the protagonist has little to no direct involvement in the relationships.  Its the relationship between the characters that the protagonists interact with that's important.

Now revisit some of Mike's movies that don't fit the mold.

Westerns?  Find a John Wayne movie that doesn't involve a woman, a family of settlers, a man whose wife's been taken by indians, etc.  Clint Eastwood's A Fist Full of Dollars is all about family relationships.  And Alien?  the entire premise of that movie is based on family.  Why do you think the Mother Alien was so Pissed off?

The Relationship Map is not the only tool, in many situations it may not be the best tool for what you're trying to accomplish.  But what it does is laser in on a very specific, very powerful, type of story which draws upon some very primal and fairly universal emotions.

Does it work for what its intended for...well, not having used it yet myself I have to take the word of those who have on that.  But trying to come up with examples where it doesn't work seems completely pointless to me.