This is kind of an off-shoot of the relationship map stuff being discussed down in the Soul Reviewed thread. I'm probably making the 'Nothing-But' mistake that Ron mentions in his latest post but I'd like more information on how to reconcile the difference in information given in Soul and & Sword.

How to better put this? Okay, so Soul and the thread bellow tell us that family and sexual relations are elements that give a story emotional weight.

However, the source material of & Sword is rarely about either of those elements. I've been reading Howard's Conan stories and Conan hasn't once encounted another character he's had any kind of previous relationship with or in anyway intends to have a relationship with. So what gives the source material from & Sword the same kind of punch that something built off of a relationship map does? What prevents the Conan story from just being 'set-pieces'? How do you distinguish between pastiche and something, erm, 'genuine'? Not sure if that's the right word.

What seperates Conan from Ronin? (Note: I've never seen Ronin but since it was used in the previous thread I thought I'd refer back to it.)

Just curious.

Jesse

From my understanding of relationship maps, it doesn't really matter if the character has a link to the map. The fact that the map exists will draw the player into the story.

While the movie is an affront to the literature, Conan the Barbarian provides a great example of a relationship map in a sword and sorcery context. Conan seeks revenge because his parents were slain (blood relation) and his girlfriend was slain (sex). The king wants his daughter rescued (blood relation). Conan kills one of the henchmen's brothers (blood relation), lending extra drama to their final showdown. The sorcerer has a sexual relationship with the king's daughter (sex). Ect.

It's been a while since I've read the literature, but I think you'll find a relationship map in most of the stories.

One other point. As far as I know, Ron doesn't always use the relationship map technique. It's just one tool at the GM's disposal. It's up to you to decide if it's appropriate to the type of game you want to run.

Roger

Jesse,

I swear, I'll get to this thread. It's definitely an important and valid question, but it's also pretty hefty and life is mondo-busy. "I'll be back."

Best,
Ron

Well, I'm not Ron, but I am someone who likes to make rambling posts, has some time, and has also just recently started reading the original Howard Conan stories. So I thought I'd weigh in with some observations.

First off, towards the start of S&S, Ron seemingly identifies the good sword & sorcery stories as those where the conflict deals with either relationships or mind-wrenching horror. (Ron, please correct me if I misunderstood there!) While Conan doesn't generally deal with relationships, he does deal with horrific things on a regular basis. His reaction to them and the way in which he deals with them reaffirms his humanity -- which, of course, is what Sorcerer in general is supposed to be about.

Secondly, I'd like to note something else that's come to me while reading through the stories so far. There's a lot of similarity between the Picts on the Acquilonian border, and the American Indians on the US frontier during the settlement of the West. I think that's largely intentional. Howard lived out west, and his father is described in places as having been a "frontier doctor". There were still people around in Howard's time who had personally experienced the US - Indian conflicts, and even those who hadn't personally experienced it probably heard a lot about it from their elders.

I think that to Howard's readers, the Conan tales were probably a lot like the SF-ized versions of the Vietnam War that were popular in the '70s and '80s were (and are) to more modern readers -- they were a reflection of something that had had a heavy emotional impact on the people, and had acquired near-archetypal status in the culture. That lent them a power and immediacy; people could instantly identify with Conan as a white man on the savage frontier, just as many today still instantly identify with an SF character being a soldier in a poorly-motivated and/or unpopular war.

We might phrase the Humanity question for Howard as "Can you tame the savage frontier without becoming a savage yourself?"

Just some random thoughts. :-)

--Travis

Hi Jesse,

Conan often, although not always, enters into maps. He generally has two starting modes - up to something, with plans and intents of his own, or wandering/forced into something that usually involves someone else's plans. In my view, the core Conan stories are about (1) leadership and (2) relationship of barbarism and civilization.

Looking at leadership, and looking over most of the bank of stories in rough internal chronology, I think that Conan as "proto-King" is developed or examined from a lot of different angles. He's a leader - and slowly, angle by angle, situation by situation, "leader about what" gets developed. Some of the stories are simply about his charisma (Pool of the Black Ones, not that it's a very good story); others pop him into leadership positions and watch him rise to the occasion (that one set in Zhoraja, title escapes me; he gets with the queen there). Some just let him see leadership that loses sight of itself (Queen of the Black Coast). And a few of the stories sort of fall apart in all sorts of ways without any thematic focus, much less this one.

But check out: A Witch Shall Be Born, People of the Black Circle, Beyond the Black River - this is Conan "pre-King," showing the leadership, judgment, intensity, and moral center that permits him to be such a good king. Contrast the Conan story The Phoenix on the Sword to its parent story, about Kull, called By This Axe I Rule - hell, compare the meanings of the titles - it's all about his *rightness* to be king. And as for The Hour of the Dragon , if you can't see that the whole book is based on the conflict that Conan must establish a royal line, in order to cement the justice and meaning of his kingship, then I despair. ("The Heart of your kingdom" is NOT the stupid fucking gem that everyone's chasing all over.)

Another thing to consider is that the stories should be analyzed in combination rather than internally. For example, I see Beyond the Black River as his full transition into commitment to civilization; it's the last story, chronologically, before the "king" stories, and it only makes sense if you read Conan as rejecting the claim made by the soldier at the end of the story. (This brings us back to that business of unspoken character decisions that you and I don't seem to see eye-to-eye on.)

Now for the point: leadership is by definition a stressor of map lines. This effect doesn't apply to every story, but it does apply to the summation across stories that I've tried to outline above - most particularly and especially, the fact that Conan must COMBINE the "trajectory" of his kingship with the "trajectory" of a map line (marriage), for his life-achievement to be more than just a series of escapades, ie, for his kingship to be "real." Do bear in mind that the "king" stories were generally written first.

For what it's worth, I agree that Howard's stories suffer from a frequent lack of grounding in emotional human concerns, probably due to Howard's own lack of life-experience (he was such a typical mix of he-man westerner and mama's boy). He tries hard sometimes, and in many ways I think that Conan as a character exceeded the author's grasp. That's why the Solomon Kane stories, the Kull stories, and the Bran Mak Morn stories often falter into purple prose and yet more carnage. Take a look at some of the more mature authors in the references and you'll find that they make better use of the map concept - Fritz Leiber's phenomenal The Snow Women and Adept's Gambit being great examples, as are the better Kane stories by Karl Edward Wagner (Raven's Eyrie, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade).

Best,
Ron

What I'd always assumed about relationship maps was that they showed the relationships that mattered to the story.

In detective fiction, it's all about lies and obfuscation. What do people lie about most? Sex and Death.

If I was running a game set in 60s London [which I probably am, but never mind], the lines would be Sex, Death, and Taxes [well, protection money, but you get my drift.]

In Ronin, the lines on the relationship map are Contracts [who worked with who, and when and where], and Friendships [to go back to the Sorcerer Who Came In From The Cold].

In Conan, they're back to the more basic, um, Sex and Death. Primal Urges. Though there might be an argument for Ownership, in that many people covet or have claim to an object, be it a Kingship, an amulet, or a McGuffin.

What seperates Conan from Ronin isn't about relationship maps, really, but about their interpretation. What we're talking about here is Theme. The Conan stories have 'sorcerers' and swords, and are pulp fantasy. They're about being exciting, with viscera and clanging all over the place, so, as basic, broad strokes [filled with basic, broad, strokes] the lines we care about are the basic broad ones. Sex, Death, and Ownership [1].

In Ronin [2], our 'sorcerors' are intelligent, careful, quiet types, who are calm in a crisis and stuff. The lines we care about here are Contracts and Friendships, because those are the ones upon which the stressors are placed, due to the events in the story. Remember, a Sex/Death relationship map is only part of the story. There are taxes and friendships and other things to go with too.

At least, that's what I think at the moment.

[1] Does anyone else put their big object(s) [daemons] on their R-Maps if they're going to be used like that?
[2] Go see it! Go!

erithromycin wrote:
What I'd always assumed about relationship maps was that they showed the relationships that mattered to the story.

TQuid wrote:

erithromycin wrote:
What I'd always assumed about relationship maps was that they showed the relationships that mattered to the story.

I think you probably put it better than I did, but I said much the same thing here.

I'd only add that good ol' sex & death is most likely to trump any other kind of relationship barring quite extreme circumstances, and the Premise will most likely show that ("Will Jethro forsake love to pursue vengeance for his old, crippled friend from the war?").

erithromycin wrote:
What I'd always assumed about relationship maps was that they showed the relationships that mattered to the story.

Thor Olavsrud wrote:
For instance, if a man traps a woman into a life of prostitution, the audience acknowledges that he's a "bad" person, but it doesn't really strike on a visceral level. For most of us, that's only a fiction. We can't identify it with our personal experience.

However, if that man is the woman's father, brother or lover, that strikes the audience as so wrong that it hits you in the gut. Suddenly a relationship that we "know" should be a good, pure thing has been twisted and corrupted. We get back in the realm of betrayal of trust that we have all experienced in some way or another, though likely not in that precise form.

Thor,

I think you're pretty much on-track with the intended R-Map rationale, based on my understanding. But your example provides me a way to get at what bothers me with that rationale. It's a little different than how I was thinking/explaining over in the "Soul Reviewed" thread, so . . . let me try this:

For instance, if a man traps a woman into a life of prostitution, the audience acknowledges that he's a "bad" person, but it doesn't really strike on a visceral level. For most of us, that's only a fiction. We can't identify it with our personal experience.

However, if that man is the woman's father, brother or lover, that strikes the audience as so wrong that it hits you in the gut. Suddenly a relationship that we "know" should be a good, pure thing has been twisted and corrupted. We get back in the realm of betrayal of trust that we have all experienced in some way or another, though likely not in that precise form.

That's not to say that you can't or shouldn't map other types of relationship -- like the contracts you mentioned earlier -- it just means that betrayals of such relationships are not likely to affect your audience as strongly

Gordon C. Landis wrote: Man, this is hard - I've erased multi-paragraphs of text twice now. Let me stick to RPG examples . . . if I have set up a game with folks that has as an acknowldged, important aspect "betrayal of trust", and a man trapping a woman into prostitution ISN'T enough to interest everyone, I submit that something is very wrong and adding the brother/father/lover connection is not going to help. In fact, adding that could well so dominate the situation that I "lose" the interesting and powerful story of betrayal that was developing.

Last two movies I've seen were The Count of Monte Cristo and (just now) The Fly.

The Count of Monte Cristo was great -- but what really hooked me in a "lean over to my girlfriend and go, 'Whoa!'" were all the sex/blood relationships that really cranked up the dramatic conflicts and tension. Highly recommended!

And as far as The Fly goes, it's so minimalist that it could be a play -- a grand total of 4 characters that have any bearing on the story...Seth, Ronnie, Stathis and Tawny. But these characters are all intertwined by one common factor: sex.


*spoilers, kinda*


Stathis and Ronnie are co-workers, later revealed to be ex-lovers. Then Ronnie and Seth become entangled. After a big fight, Seth goes out and hooks up with Tawny, a local barfly (no pun intended).

Anyway, besides the dramatic relationships, I have a feeling that Ron's creation/definition of the R-map stems from his own experience as a professor. I can't think of any two factors more important in socio-biology than family relationships and sexual relationships...

I don't think that anyone will argue that you can't make powerful stories without an RM. It's simply another tool in your kit that could turn what might be an otherwise hum-drum story into something really personal for your players.[\quote]
Yeah, and I certainly don't argue that you can't make powerful stories with a blood & sex RM.

But I'm lapsing back into generalities again, despite encouraging folks over on the "Reviewed" thread not to. I feel there's something important in the "beyond blood & sex" thinking, but I'm very unhappy with the way I've been discussing it - I'm not sure why, but even to me it's coming across all negative-like and that's not what I intend.

Can I use this RM tool in a why that basically EXCLUDES blood & sex? And if I do, does that make it "not an RM" in some way? Ah, hell, I'll just try it and see.

Gordon