So, I'm going through the Revised Edition getting ready for some actual play, and something about Relationships caught my eye.

Relationships tend to be expensive - the more interesting the relationship, the more of your starting Resource Points they tend to eat up. I know you can mitigate this somewhat by using the modifiers for family, romantic love, taboo relationships, and so on.

But, the thing is, Relationships don't seem to give the player any mechanical advantage. Relationships are like little mini-kickers. On the one hand the player is saying "I will spend my starting resources points on these relationships, instead of on gear, property, reputations, and so on that actually give me mechanical advantages. This shows how important the reputations are!"

On the other hand, the relationship itself is saying "Here is an NPC that the GM can use to make trouble for this character!"

So, what I'm saying is, it seems like relationships are little creative nudges for the GM - it's good for the GM if the character has a relationship, not necessarily good for the player. So how come relationships are so expensive?

But then, on the other hand, there are some things you can do with relationships that seem overpowered in the *opposite* direction. Like, using the bodyguard / squre rules, I just made a 2 life-path Teh Hottie harem slave to follow my adventurer around for... 10 resource points! That could be useful. :)

So... I'm a little confused.

First off, a purchasing a relationship is purchasing power to control the formation of the game narrative before it is fully formed. The character's relationships must be a part of the story at some point. They've got to weigh in.

So that could be a free lead, a warning or an alliance. You can't buy any of that stuff with skill points or trait points. And those points are spread over potentially many sessions of use.

The advantages? If you know the king or the leader of a rival faction, you are indeed setting up a massive advantage for yourself. First, you can dictate the NPC's dispositon -- whether he likes you or not. Second, if you didn't have that relationship? You'd have to make a Circles test.

So buying relationships allows you to bypass (multiple times!) a potentially very high obstacle test. And remember, a failed Circles test hands power over to the GM. He would be able to dictate the disposition of the NPC. But he can't do that with a relationship.

It's subtle, but, I think, very powerful.
-L

Ahhh, cool. I hadn't connected on the "bypassing circles test" aspect of things. That is nifty. Particularly since my starting Circles scores tend to be on the low side.

:)