I’m curious, many hacks have a characteristic that ties each player together In a two sided relationship but it’s absent in uncharted worlds, why is that?
I’m curious, many hacks have a characteristic that ties each player together In a two sided relationship but it’s…
I’m curious, many hacks have a characteristic that ties each player together In a two sided relationship but it’s…
I was thinking about this myself. Kinda sad that there isn’t an Hx/bonds/strings/etc equivalent.
Because characters are connected by their Faction’s relationships. UW lets you Get Involved with any stat, not a relationship one, so instead character ties are based on Debts and Loyalties.
If I’m Loyal to the Divine Saturnalia Condescension and you’re Loyal to Kawasaki-Tesla Spacedrives, and we detail those factions and how they feel towards each other, then we can trickle that down to how our characters interact. This develops further when my paymasters push me to do something to yours, possibly through you.
Agreed. Think about how Han Solo’s loyalty to luke and Leia changes on parallel to his alignment to the rebel cause. They’re sort of inseparable, and I think the flavor of that works well in the genre.
Mike Schmitz gives an absolutely perfect example. Another example: in my ongoing game, The Academy is a galaxy-spanning “information wants to be free” monastic non-profit, basically and Hermes Corp is half-guild/half-corporation space Uber who has privatized every facet of starship creation/operation/repair and locked it up behind trade secret and patent law. The Academy PC and the Hermes PC lock horns because of these allegiances and how diametrically opposed their factions are.
I forgot all about the factions, that is kinda cool the tie between factions and the character relationships
Hope you don’t mind if I go a bit “under the hood/design diary” on this topic.
Firstly, cards on the table: I was never a fan of Hx/bonds. It’s a personal thing, related to the way I GM, but I found an overt, numeric relationship rating just didn’t do anything for me.
Secondly, Factions provide custom ideological frameworks for your campaign. This was something I tinkered with a LOT during the creation of UW (I think Factions went through 6 or 7 overhauls). Once established, a Faction will naturally adjust the ethics and beliefs of ALL characters simply by being an ideology to which they can compare. Do they agree with the outlook of the faction? Are they willing to work for the faction if they disagree? Are they willing to work against the faction if they agree with them? Characters start identifying with one faction or another (or falling between two factions) almost immediately.
Here’s where the characters start to develop inter-protagonist conflict. Arguments invariably break out along moral and ethical lines of right, wrong, good and bad. Factions exist in part to create broad-strokes dogmas and ideologies for the setting. Two characters who identify with different factions will naturally pull at each other when their ideologies clash. It becomes a struggle to find commonality between the faction’s beliefs and between the characters’ loyalties.
Thirdly, the individual Debt system creates natural dissension, because one character invariably stands to lose more than others. The character with the most Debt is punished if their friends antagonize the faction they’re indebted to. Furthermore, the GM can “pull the strings” of an indebted character, which will lead to either betrayal or falling into a Debt Spiral.
I can dig that! The focus on their relationships as it relates to the organizations they believe in is quite a good indicator, and more subtle which is good if your table doesn’t like the obvious “I have +3 with bob, we are BFFs!”
I haven’t had the opportunity to try either approach beyond Smallville RPG, so I’ll have to see how it plays out. I did like the idea of a relationship have a value in that game, but I don’t yet know if my players really liked it (they don’t run any games that have it so that might be telling)