Defining relationships with NPCs before play?

[JC]

playing (GMing) my third game of Dogs tonight, via IRC... I'm excited

a quick question: how does one go about defining relationships between PCs and NPCs before play?

do I give them the names of the important NPCs before we start, and ask them to tell me if one of them is their PC's nephew?

or do the players just decide during play, like "this NPC I'm talking to right now is my Dog's nephew"?

cheers!

[Pyromancer]

do I give them the names of the important NPCs before we start, and ask them to tell me if one of them is their PC's nephew?

I usually do it this way. It works fine.

or do the players just decide during play, like "this NPC I'm talking to right now is my Dog's nephew"?

I read about players doing it this way, but I find the first version better. It encourages the Dogs to split up at the very first opportunity to meet their relatives. So each Dog hears a different version of the story and is told a different thing to do. Here lies fun conflict!

[lumpley]

I usually just impose it on the players. I'm like, "okay, you're about to arrive in Long Falls. Sister Martha, your cousin Andrew and his family live here; Brother Paul, your aunt Willinia lives here, and her husband died a few years ago." Sometimes they'll be key NPCs from the town writeup, sometimes they won't, but I always make sure that they're covered by the "who wants" section. Like maybe the town writeup says "the older women in town want the Dogs to find a new Steward as good as Steward Alvin had been," so that'd include aunt Willinia.

Remember that d6 relationships with blood relatives are free - I'm not forcing the player to spend any of their relationship dice.

-Vincent

[JC]

good answers, thanks

we only went through char-gen and initiations during that first session, so I'll be able to put this into practice next time