I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but it seemed the best fit. It can always be moved if I'm wrong. I'm pretty new so I still haven't got the hang of exactly what goes where.

I'd like to get people's views on the utility of r-maps for players, particularly for character creation. I admit I haven't read everything on the subject (alas for real life demands) but what I have read seems to focus on r-maps as used by GMs in building stories and plots tied to the PCs. This seems a good and fine use. But I'm in the process of creating a character for a game, as a player, and my automatic approach has been to ask myself 'who are the people around my character that he cares about, for good or ill?' and start drawing up a basic r-map of the character, what backstory of his I've worked out, and his current situation at his entry to the game.

Now, I know that the Forge mainly focuses on GMly concerns, but I'm interested in other people's views on r-maps as a tool for players. As I understand it, giving certain tools to GMs facilitates games with certain modes of play. Can the same tools be given to players? What effects would they have? Should players be given different tools?

I know this is a big fat open question, but I'm interesting in narrowing it down further. It makes intuitive sense to me that if certain processes of game design can lead to various outcomes in the game, then certain process of character design should have a similar effect. Has this been discussed in the past, and I've just missed it?

Oh, I'm totally in favor of this. In particular, I'd like to see the players develop their r-maps in a loose fashion, then get together and see how much they can make their loose r-maps into one complicated one. That is, David has a "hated father," while Phil has a "worrying son." Okay, so make Phil David's father and compress from there.

The more tightly wound the characters, the more intense certain kinds of play are. Think about a decent soap: if everyone is involved with and/or related to everyone else, then every plot is interesting and important to everyone else.

Chris Lehrich

A lot of the R maps I've been running with lately involve mostliy NPC's created by the players during discussion and creation and a very few of my own. I've used R-maps drawn from novels but with six people coming up with like 5 - 6 npc's a piece I find adding in additional rmaps though beyond a few characters.

I've been very determined to try a version of Legends of Alyria's Storymapping. Doing that first, maybe even using Universalis like token mechanics and creating the back stuff with the players and then letting them choose from the roles created. That sounds pretty neat.

regards,

Trevis

When thinking about connections between my character and others, I'm a little afraid of taking on a chore. I think restricting the question to a map could help establish boundaries on how much work is the complete task.

John

John Burdick wrote: When thinking about connections between my character and others, I'm a little afraid of taking on a chore. I think restricting the question to a map could help establish boundaries on how much work is the complete task.

John

Although I've not yet played Sorcerer, I have played Legends of Alyria, and I think it's a mistake to characterize Relationship/Story Maps as "used by GMs in building stories and plots tied to the PCs."

In Alyria specifically, the roll of the referee (referred to as Narrator) is rather limited and said to be optional. The creation of the Story Map is an exercise undertaken by the players cooperatively so that the players cooperatively can create situations on which to build stories and plots. If you mean that such maps are a referee's tool, they aren't really.

On the other hand, if you're asking whether it is useful for players to have systemetized or ordered methods of defining relationships between their characters and other characters in the game, I think that such structures can be useful for a great variety of play objectives.

I recall a decade or so back playing in a game in which I was the party leader and a number of the players were not friends of mine, and admittedly I found some of them annoying as people. That was my problem. However, I also found that many players played characters who were annoying to my character--they acted in ways that he would have found irresponsible and inappropriate. As party leader, my character had to make decisions about who should have responsibility within the party; as player, I felt it necessary to base those decisions on my character's relationship with the other characters, and not on my relationship with the other players.

Thus I set up a spreadsheet on which I recorded any event, any action, any conduct which would reasonably impact my character's opinion of any other character in the game, for better or worse, and I rated those events on an open-ended scale that tended to give +/-1 for most things but occasionally reached +/-5 for particularly outstanding or egregious actions. Thus when I wanted to know my character's view of his fellows without reference to my own prejudices toward the players, I had a current score that reflected his opinion, and I could make decisions based on that.

That's not necessarily the best approach for every game; it worked well for me as a player, but the referee hated it. (I've never really understood why. I think he wanted characters to emerge into greater protagonism based on player personality, and felt that by assigning leadership positions to characters who were more responsibile I was making the game dull. Then, he really liked to run games in which everyone's arrant nonsense was viable in play.) I prefer relationships in games to represent the realities of the characters, not the personalities of the players, and look for means to encourage that (my leadership system for OAD&D play is rather complex, but it achieves this well in that context in my experience). So I think that anything like a relationship map is useful if it enables players to see how their characters interact with the other characters in the game, and particularly with the other player characters.

It can also in that context defuse any hard feelings. After all, if it says on the agreed map that Bob's character and Margaret's character are bitter enemies, it is less likely that either player will have hard feelings about the way that plays out in the game.

--M. J. Young

I don't think I did characterize it that way M.J. I haven't played Alyria yet, though I intend to at some point. What interested me about what I read about it was the communal creation of the storymap. With the added option of afterwards choosing the people off the map who the player is interested in playing. I don't think such maps are exclusivly a referee's tool, they are a play group tool, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

Now I don't use r-maps to 'build plot' so to speak, but I do use them as a basis for devising Bangs pitched out to the group.

I realize that my post above looked a bit incoherent, that's what comes from quick typing and no time to edit. I've been using relationship maps in several games now starting from when I played Sorcerer a while back. I've found that since my group is relativly large (6 players) and they all enjoy coming up with NPC's enough to give me 4 to 6 NPC's each, I find that I don't have to add too many of my own NPC's into the mix.

regards

Trevis

Sorry for the confusion, Trevis--I was inferring from Frank's post the suggestion that such maps were intended for referee use.

He wrote: I admit I haven't read everything on the subject (alas for real life demands) but what I have read seems to focus on r-maps as used by GMs in building stories and plots tied to the PCs.

Oh...whups...

Note to self, not everything is about you. heh.

thanks M.J.

regards,

Trevis

M. J. Young wrote: Sorry for the confusion, Trevis--I was inferring from Frank's post the suggestion that such maps were intended for referee use.

M. J. Young wrote: On the other hand, if you're asking whether it is useful for players to have systemetized or ordered methods of defining relationships between their characters and other characters in the game, I think that such structures can be useful for a great variety of play objectives.