What is the significance of an exemplar's connection to a drive?

I see nothing mechanic-related about it, and frankly human interactions are complex enough that I can see some exemplars falling under many or even ALL of a character's drives.

The root conflict of the relationship (on which the recurring Free Conflict is based) is the connection.

Mary Jane can, indeed, upbraid Spider-man about breaking the law. She has good odds of thereby becoming involved in a Conflict where he stakes Justice Debt.

But the thing that keeps coming back is the Love conflict. It's a way of signalling to the other players. If you have lots of Love Debt racked up, they can probably profit by playing your Love Exemplar.

Make sense?

AH I think I see...

A player pulls out his old standby, Kozmik Ray. Kozmik Ray has a pile of hope debt... in fact, he's overdrawn.

Kozmik Ray's exemplar, "Erdranium" (the mysterious energy-draining metal from another dimension) is an exemplar of hope. "Erdranium is the only way I can ever get back home, but it is deadly to me in this dimension."

Another player has a story token available, so he pulls out the villainess (mostly) Concertina (whose Love Exemplar is Kozmik Ray) and uses the story token to add Erdranium to the table. "Concertina has laced her barbed-wire whip with fragments of Erdranium. Kozmik Ray will either accept her affections, or die!"

Concertina's player is playing on two fronts. He knows that a conflict that plays on Kozmik Ray's hope will probably net her a lot of story tokens, because he's got plenty of Hope debt to stake. He also knows that while he's focusing on that conflict, Kozmik Ray's player won't be able to spend as much attention on the love conflict.

TonyLB wrote: The root conflict of the relationship (on which the recurring Free Conflict is based) is the connection.

If all three characters are in the scene, why wouldn't you have both free conflicts available?

If all three characters are in the scene then you may add either or both of the free conflicts.

If you make enough Exemplar relationships (particularly 'Nemesis' relationships between villains and heroes) you can easily end up running the entire game on only the various ways that free conflicts can be mixed and matched. In fact, I recommend trying it. It's a tightly wound way to run the game.

Let's say I've got Kozmik Ray. He has his own exemplar (Endranium) and a shared exemplar (Kid Kozmik, shared with Kid Kozmik's mother, Lady Zapf). Can he share ANOTHER exemplar with another character?

Yes.

Ah! So if you really like the "shared exemplar" system, you can go crazy with it, creating an interconnected web of characters and exemplars!

We saw a risk of the player controlling the exemplar getting too powerful, being able to create conflicts left and right. But you're right; if the exemplar i central to two or more characters it's a good thing if it's used more often, so making it an attractive character to play would only help bringing interesting characters to to the scene.

I suppose the two characters could share the exemplar's free event if it applies to both, but it would be smarter to have two separate events from a tactical point of view.

Remember that a non-person character can have a free event of its own, beyond whatever conflicts are part of any exemplar relationships.