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I thought I'd bring up a technique which I used for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign.  The principle for it is based on my thoughts in the essay, http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/immersivestory.html">Immersive Story: A View of Role-played Drama.  There, I suggested a model of role-playing which is chaotic -- each player identified with her own PC as the protagonist in a story, so really there are N simultaneous stories for N players.  However, while simultaneously being a protagonist in his own story, the PC also serves as supporting cast to the other people's stories.  

Now, using this as a basis, I tried an exercise for the Buffy campaign, which we had titled http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/buffy/siliconvalley/">Silicon Valley Slayage.  The first season had been GMed by Bill Humphries, but we agreed to switch off GMing for the second season.  So we had an established cast of characters, and I suggested drawing a chart.  

The idea of the chart is that it cross-indexes characters, so if there are 8 characters it is 8 x 8 for 64 boxes.  Each row represents a character's story.  Each column represents a supporting character in that story.  

http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/buffy/siliconvalley/relationship_chart.html

Now, the important part for me was filling in the blank spots.  The ideal here would be that each PC has an important supporting role in each story (except, of course, his own).  But this isn't an exact guide.  All the stories and roles going on are bound to clash with each other -- so you're just trying to maximize your chances rather than nailing each one.  

Some characters already had strong relationships: Dot and Max were lovers, as were Chip and Ifurita, and Drake and Tiffany.  While the love stories were important, I wanted to use the chart to focus in on all the other boxes to fill out the relationships.  Roberta in particular wasn't well tied-in to the other PCs, plus there was a new PC, Carlos, who didn't have any established relationships yet.

Yeah, I've always liked that technique.  I also like the one where, instead of listing what the Person A wants from Person B, you list what Person A thinks Person B thinks of them.  

e.g.  Joe loves Sylvia, but he is shy, so he avoids talking to her.  In Sylvia's box for Joe you would list "Dislike", because that's what she thinks he thinks, even though it's not true.

Draw these to the same scale on sheets of fairly transparent paper and you can overlay them... so that "Love" would be layered over "Dislike".

It's a fine technique with many variations.  It has strengths, it has weaknesses.  Did you have a particular direction you were hoping to take the thread here?

Quote from: TonyLBIt's a fine technique with many variations.  It has strengths, it has weaknesses.  Did you have a particular direction you were hoping to take the thread here?

Well, I guess I'd like to talk about it's strengths and weaknesses, or in other words what it's good for and how it compares to related techniques.  It's tempting to say that since each technique has strengths and weaknesses, then you should use all techniques to balance those out.  But to my mind, it's just as fun to play for the edge of the road rather than sticking in the middle.  For example, how does this compare to various relationship map techniques -- where you write the names in little circles on the page and draw lines between them?  

To take my own stab at that...  Relationship maps are hierarchical: more related people are generally drawn closer together.  In fact, as you put more and more direct relations onto it, it can become an illegible jumble (i.e. 8 characters all with relations to each other).  Thus, the map emphasizes whatever the prioritized relations are.  For example, maps suggested by The Sorcerer's Soul show only sex and kinship ties.  

The relation chart I describe puts all PC-to-PC relations on an equal footing -- i.e. they all have equal-size boxes.  The basic relations (like sex and kinship) quickly get filled in, and thus working on the chart emphasizes the other relations.  It works towards an ideal that all NxN relations are filled in.  Now, as for the effect of that?  I'd like to think it encourages the  immersive story paradigm -- i.e. identification with your own PC as protagonist, and other PCs as supporting characters.  But I'm open to other thoughts.

I agree with that assessment.  

From my experience, relationship maps advantage is not so much that they highlight any particular kind of relationship, but that they allow much easier visual tracking of chains of relationship (i.e. "X is Y's son, and Y was Z's secret lover while she was married to A, so... oh... OH!")

When updating even a medium-size grid, I've often found it difficult to immediately see the indirect consequences of filling in a previously empty box.  Is that your experience as well?

I think the grid is very useful for a game like Buffy, where part of the pleasure (at least in my experience) is riffing off each other and playing out the bickering and interaction.  So a flat, detailed look at each interaction is good.  

The R-Map, by leaving out so many significant relationships (everything that's not blood or sex), gives you the bones of the social network.

I like the principle not least because it brings these relationships out of the players heads and onto the table, as it were.  The tendency to priviliege the real actions of the real people at the table over NPC's is strong IMO and I would expect this sort of device to assist with players staying within the bounds implicit in the social conventions of the setting.

I'm thinking of the sort of situation where one character may be the vassal or employee of another.  Often this just degenerates into a casual freeindship between the PC's and the social significance of their relationship is thereby lost.  Hopefully the deliberate representation of these relationships would counter that tendency.

Some concerns I have from exploring similar techniques is that you may find yourself wanting to express more than one relationship between two individuals.  But thats probably just a technical problem.