Hi all, I'd appreciate some feedback on this idea I'd like to use for a homebrew cyberpunkish SF game. The style of the game will be open-ended with stuff happening at the table rather than the GM presenting a totally fleshed-out setting or pre-generated, detailed plot.

So, here's the idea:
After basic character generation, each player describes his/her character to the other players to get table buy-in. That includes sharing Growing Up, Education/First Job, and Recent Past stuff. Then each player gets four index cards, two each marked "Personal" and "Relationship." Players keep three of the cards (2R, 1P or 1R, 2P); they write their characters name on the front and on the back they write either a relationship with another character at the table, or a personal fact for their own character. They are free to make up what they want, but here are some ideas:

Relationship:
• Mutual friend or enemy
• Love
• Grudge or feud
• Debt
• Membership
• Career/Job

Personal:
• Membership
• Mission
• House [as noble/rich/ruling family or dynasty]
• Origin/Identity
• Condition: medical, legal, social
• Money

These ideas are kept vague and ambiguous, so Relationship-Membership can mean you are in the same organization, or in competing/hostile ones, a debt can be financial or moral, Origin/Identity can mean that you are an android, an undercover cop, or another character's separated-at-birth twin, and so forth. What players write has to be specific: "Personal/Membership: Yobi Chang. I was a member of the Outer Satellites Counter-Intelligence Forces, before I took the fall for a mission botched by someone else." For each Relationship card you specify with what other character the relationship exists (you get to make up a bit of that character's past).  "Relationship/Love: Senni Hardangar.  I'm in love with Yobi Chang." or "Relationship/Mutual Friend: B.R. Trond. My favorite uncle, Vrado Klenk, was Senni Hardangar's professor at the United Corporations Academy." (That just created an NPC, Prof Klenk.) It's important that relationships connect to, or at least are compatible with, what has already been established about characters' pasts by their players.

Once that's done, Secrets are created from some these relationships and personal tidbits:
(1) For one or two of their cards (but not all three), a player can choose a secret:
• This is my secret
• This is a secret I share with another player (but no one else) [the card will be shown to the other player]
• This is my secret but I think another player suspects it
(2) Instead of choosing a second secret, a player may choose
• I know another character's secret
(3) Instead of choosing a second secret, a player may choose
• I know something about another character they don't know [requires GM approval obviously]

After that's done, non-secret cards are revealed and discussed. The GM then collects secret cards and secretly shows one of them to players who chose "I know another's secret." For example, Senni designates her love for Yobi as her secret. Yobi's past as an operative is a secret that he shares with another PC (who knows about it). You can see how this should sow some interesting narrative hooks. There are some procedures around making this work at the table (like if you know something abut another character that they don't, write it on a card to replace one of your R/P cards), but no need to go into that detail.

At the end:
- every PC has at least one connection to another PC
- every PC has at least one secret
- some PC may know another PC's secret
- players may not have total control over their character's past or relationships (I like that idea)
- a lot of detail, including NPCs, places, organization, and so forth will have been created by the players for the GM to work with.

I know creating connections between characters isn't a new idea (thank you, Vincent Baker, who got me started thinking about this stuff). I'm just trying to put some flavorful mechanic and secrecy around and combine it with player input into the setting.

Do you think this would work? Would it be fun? Would it feel weird if you were one of the players?

I'm working on a design which also uses relationships so I've been giving this some thought, and I really like the ideas you've come up with here. What I'm curious about is how much table-talk you expect to have going on during the initial creation of the cards. Are players going to be talking about the relationships they form, or are they going to be doing that in a vacuum? I am curious because of the conflicts which could arise from blind writing. (Which is not to say that can't be smoothed by the ref!)

But in general, I like the ideas here. Good job. :)

I like it. All this business with secrets can create a really paranoid atmosphere, which can be fun and cathartic.
I would be tempted to play this in a fifties cyberpunk or 'atompunk' setting (think pre-war Fallout) and play as a communist secret-agent or something.
Can you tell us more about your games setting and how this mechanic fits in with the kinds of stories you intend for players to tell?

Mathew wrote:
I'm working on a design which also uses relationships so I've been giving this some thought, and I really like the ideas you've come up with here. What I'm curious about is how much table-talk you expect to have going on during the initial creation of the cards. Are players going to be talking about the relationships they form, or are they going to be doing that in a vacuum? I am curious because of the conflicts which could arise from blind writing. (Which is not to say that can't be smoothed by the ref!)

chronoplasm wrote:
I like it. All this business with secrets can create a really paranoid atmosphere, which can be fun and cathartic.
I would be tempted to play this in a fifties cyberpunk or 'atompunk' setting (think pre-war Fallout) and play as a communist secret-agent or something.
Can you tell us more about your games setting and how this mechanic fits in with the kinds of stories you intend for players to tell?

"Christ, he [Gully Foyle] is insane."
"Am I? I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and dying. The common man's been whipped and led long enough by driven men like us. . . . Compulsive men . . . Tiger men who can't help lashing the world before them. We're all tigers, the three of us, but who the hell are we to make decisions for the world just because we're compulsive? Let the world make its own choice between life and death. Why should we be saddled with the responsibility?"
"We're not saddled," Y'ang-Yeovil said quietly. "We're driven. We're forced to seize the responsibility that the average man shirks."

Bloomfield wrote:
But I do realize that you'd want relatively mature players for this who have a good sense of how much it is cool to add to another character's background and who will roll with having their character concepts affected by the table. The whole flavor of the game should be one where the players have some narrative control over the setting and the story, and GM fiat would just be a last resort, both during charGen and play.

Ok, so the game I'm going to be playtesting this weekend (Halloween-themed session) shapes up something like this as far as relationships and secrets go:

After characters have been generated (you can assume all the basics that generally entails for convenience) there are relationships established. This is done as a negotiation between players, for character to character relationships. There's nothing stopping people from table-talk while generating characters, so some of this may be pre-negotiated. After characters have established relationships between them, minor characters are introduced and their relationships with the characters documented. No more than two of these are generated per character at this time. (More during play are allowed, as needed.)

Once relationships have been established, generation of secrets begins. Each player writes down one secret which is not shared with anyone. This is theirs and theirs alone. They then write down a secret about their character which they share with the ref. Then each player composes a secret about the character whose player is to their left and shares this with the ref, who must approve.

Thus characters have whatever personal connections they wish with each other. Generally they will have two (or more if relationships cross) connections to minor characters as well. They will know one thing about themselves that nobody else knows. They will know one thing about themselves that only the narrator knows. They will not know one thing about themselves, but another character will know it, and so will the narrator.

The reason for this particular order is that it allows the most possible knowledge to be established by the players regarding the characters for which they are composing secrets. It avoids someone doing a secret of "your parents are not your parents" for another character and then having the player generate two adoptive parents as minor characters . . . thus really already blowing a secret, or forcing weird adaptations on the part of the narrator.

The only one issue this system runs into is that the character's private secret and the secret which is unknown to them could come into conflict. Now, HOPEFULLY the examples provided for what makes a good secret in the system will mitigate this, but I can imagine that at some point this will surface. Ref's discretion at this point about what happens I suppose.

Anyway, that's just something I thought I'd share since it's related to the system you've presented. :)

Thanks for sharing, sounds cool. Let us know how the playtest goes.

Question: What is the point of the secret that no one, not even the ref knows about? I am asking because I want the relationships and secrets to drive stories, by setting up tensions between the characters, moral conflicts, story hooks for a past that comes back to haunt a character... In a way the secrets are part of the setting and the backstory and at least the ref needs to know about them.

I like the "someone knows something about my character that I don't know" thing but think I'd want to use it very sparingly; some player needs to want her character to have a bit of power over another player's character to make it work, and I don't think I'd want it as a matter of course for each PC.

The secret that nobody knows about the character can be used as a device and mechanic during play.

Consider a story in which a character has a secret that drives them in some way. It causes them to seek out/avoid certain things. It's point is to provide a motivating factor that is not apparent. It heightens immersion by it's presence. Eventually these kinds of things have a way of coming out, and due to the genre I'm writing in that's potentially a good thing.

It may turn out to be a weak element in the design, but as of this point in time I think it's worth exploring.