A Gaming Folder (Part 5) - Relationship Maps

Here's where things might go a bit differently to what other people would put in their folders.

I've discussed relationship maps on the blog before (also here and here), because they're a really useful tool for quickly seeing how different factions and individuals react to one another.

Relationship maps can really help to establish the structure and politics of a setting. Vast factional maps can give ideas of what different kingdoms/countries/empires/corporations think of each other openly. Detailed maps can provide the specific favours and grudges that might drive the motivations of specific characters. I like the consider them to be working documents that are subject to change depending on how the actions of the characters impact the world around them. If player characters are included in the relation ship maps in some way, I'll only include the reactions and attitudes of the NPC/Supporting-Characters on the map, because the player will need to decide their attitudes for their character (and anything like this will probably be easier marked as a list on the pages provided in the player pouches mentioned in the previous post).

 

Relationship maps are good because they allow a quick reference to see who might be friend;ly to the characters and who might not. "Oh you've made a friend out of Pedro, well he's not liked by Shania after an awkward break-up...so Shania will be instantly fairly hostile to you, unless you can win her over."

I like to include a couple of simple relationship maps for the players, maybe describing how those relationships are defined within a specific context. "At the Drowned Mermaid pub in the small village, Everyone knows that Lou doesn't like Jackie, but they both like Al." ...however... "Over on the fishing docks, it's known that Al and Lou keep their distance from one another, the Crabbing Crew don't like anyone but Jackie, and especially don't like Team Tuna." It only takes a couple of relationship maps with a few discrepancies between them to weave a bit of intrigue. We may learn that some informants are unreliable narrators, or we may learn that in certain places a public show of friendship or adversity might be a ruse for some reason. Once characters have learnt enough about a location, or a community of interconnected relationships, the map might transfer from the Narrator's collection into their player pouch... or a player may be permitted to copy it down for their own use. 

...remember that these relationship maps are subject to change, and what might be accurate at one stage of the story might not be accurate later. 

I've probably mentioned it elsewhere in the blog...but then again my attitudes to this sort of thing may have changed over time. I figure that the optimal number of NPCs for players characters to meaningfully interact with is about twice the number of PCs. A few less for one off games, a few more for longer campaigns. Each character should have someone they consider a friend or ally, someone who is antagonistic to them, and maybe someone to meet along the way. One player character may have an ally who is an antagonist to someone else, another player might have an antagonist who a third character meets along the way...and it's this tangle where the narrative fun begins. Relationship maps provide an easy way to track this, and having the relationship maps easily accessible in the game folder means the information can be quickly sourced.