Hi all! So my Sorcerer game finally arrived last week and me and my group set together for the first session...

After reading through most of the topics listed under "Actual Play" at the sorcerer website I decided to create a relationship map first. As source material I used the conflict in ancient Rome between Octavian and Mark Anthony (little bit based also on the HBO series Rome). Well I outlined my main characters and set together with the players to discuss he setting, premise and humanity.

After much discussion we agreed about the premise being "How much would you give up for society?".
We defined humanity as altruism, whereas you lose humanity if you make egoistic decision and would gain humanity if you further the well-being of others at your own costs. At humanity zero a character does not care for others or society whatsoever.
The setting would be a kind of a blend of film noir, gotham city and partly sin city. Imagine a metropolis in the near future, where everything seems 50ies. People are carrying around cellphones with dial wheels etc.
Demons and sorcery would be rather classic summoning up of devils from hell via sacrifice and pentagrams and so forth.

The two PC are:

Pater Preston
is a politically influential priest who wants to advance as fast as possible through the church. He plays in high politics and tries to appaer to the media as the typical beneficial priest (organizing housing for homeless people etc.)

Price:Arrogant
Telltale: One or two black feathers seem always to float around in the air where he is.
Demon: He bound a possessor demon as a naive for influencing a high level politician. He believes the demon is an angel from heavens sent to guide him. The need of the demon is that pater preston confesses his sins to a person that the demon decides and his desire is manipulation.
Kicker: Pater Preston's kicker is that he reads in the newspaper about charges of child abuse against him. His accusers are kids from his church choir and he can't remember clearly whether he did it or not.

Lennard Poxton
is a failing and aging boxer. He has many times nearly become champion (in underground boxing) but has reliably always failed.

Price: Aggressive (-1 to all situations that do not involve physical challenges)
Telltale: his right hand looks dead.
Demon: His agent (also his master) helped him bind a parasite demon that is his right hand. It helps him immensely in fights, since it deals special damage and can provide armor. Unfortunately the demon has its masters pain and blood as need and its desire is failure. His demon usually helps him, but is pissed if he actually wins a fight without suffering.
Kicker: His kicker is that he has won the champions title. Everybody expected him to loose. He would have gotten more money from bets when he lost. His opponent is his best friend, but he won.

Currently I am trying to fit the kickers into the relationship map. Interestingly the players came up with a huge numbers of NPCs (about 30) using the maps at the back of the character sheet. These include enemies/lovers/strangers/friends hell even five or so mini-kickers in their own right. So my question would be:
a.) do I fit my relationship map upon the player-defined NPC or
b.) do I leave the relationship map detached from the player NPCs more or less and just connect them in a subtle way?
c.) or do I just toss my relationship map and use the conflicts defined by the players as stories? This is by far the easiest way, since nearly every NPC they mentioned has secrets/agendas and they even linked 2 or 3 of them up pretty much.
with b.) I see the danger, that the players expressed already interest in their own NPCs and obviously want to explore them more. Should I introduce another huge branch of NPCs?

any suggestions/ideas regarding my question and the rest?

thanks and sorry for the language, but I am no native speaker.

Hi TTK,

I believe the normal method is to create the relationship map after character creation.  The two times I GMed Sorcerer, I made the R-map using player-created NPCs and only a few others that I made up.

I would say your answer is c), though you can use ideas from your existing R-map to complicate the connection you know of.

Hi again,

I thought I should explain a bit more. I believe that Ron designed Sorcerer to focus on conflicts important to the players and the characters they create. You can see this in the Kicker rule (and much of his advice on this forum).

When your players give you rich material it's a godsend--tie it in and make it as intense as possible!

Yes based on my intuition I would have gone in the same direction, but was unsure whether this is the 'Sorcerer' way of doing it :)

Anyway thanks for clearing that up!