Okay! So I juuuust bought a copy of this yesterday (have already read the PDF, waiting for the bound version), and I like what I see. Since space opera is my thang, that’s a compliment. I’m looking forward to running this at my (semi-)local con in a couple’a months (Who’s Yer Con, in Indianapolis).
Question, though: Did I miss it, or is there no Relationship stat? I like those. If there isn’t one, I’ll jam one in.
Directly, no.
Indirectly, there’s favors and debts with Factions. Depending on how each hero is involved with them, there’s interesting possibilities of deal with this.
I see. I like PC-to-PC relationships, too, so I wondered if there were one that I missed. Naturally, I can probably squeeze in there, like I said. Thanks, Marcelo Paschoalin !
While there’s no numeric PC-to-PC relationships per-say, the Cramped Quarters move is the go-to for when the GM wants interpersonal drama during downtime. And even though it technically only involves two people (the person making the Move and their target), remember that other characters can Get Involved in that drama.
Oh, I getcha. I’ll review that move. Thanks, Sean!
My pleasure, and thanks for picking up the game! If you run a game and feel like doing a write-up, the community would love to hear about it in the Actual Play 🙂
I just might do that! …if I manage to remember any of the shenanigans I end up inventing at the table. I’m kind of a spazz.
By the way — creating Factions seems like it’ll be a lot of fun, especially when I start creating Threats that relate to them. Wheee!
I’m old-school; I would not worry about how one PC “feels” about another. In military settings the new meat is ignored anyway until they have proven themselves through a job or two. Even less of a worry when PbtA games are presented as a quick one-shot.
I’m pretty old-school, too — but PC-to-PC relationships appeal to me because they are, in my experience, great storytelling handles. Add to that the fact that the bonds and rifts between people are a theme that I like to explore in all of my games, and relationship stats become pretty dang appealing to me. And I rarely run military settings, so there’s no ‘meat’ to ignore.
I don’t think mechanical relationships are necessary in a game when the pressure should come from external factions. You can use the factions each belongs to to model how they’d behave towards one another.
The real proof’ll be in the pudding, as they say. In any event, I’m looking forward to playing this game. Thanks, everyone!
So I guess the question is: why can’t you just write down “Steve hates Tina because she was a soldier in the war”? Why do you need a “stat” and what would this stat do?
DramaSystem is very good at modelling interpersonal drama and doesn’t have stats – you just declare something you want from another PC and they say why they won’t give it to you. No plusses or minuses or anything.
Okay, okay, fine. Forget I said anything.
You might be reading malice where I intended none.
My question is really: what does this “relationship stat” do? What moves does it apply to? What does having a high relationship with Baleron afford you that the low relationship with Naila does not?
Doc Rotwang I forgot you were kinda local to Indy!
Doc Rotwang I don’t think Aaron meant anything by it. And to answer the question: sometimes having a numeric representation is a useful shorthand to quickly illustrate a very complicated and nuanced situation. It’s the reason why I use numbers rather than words to describe people’s Stats. (What does 1 Mettle mean, etc).
Some games do away with numbers all-together, others put numbers on everything from relationships to hunger, and each designer has to choose their threshold where they say ” this stuff is expressed numerically, and that stuff is expressed descriptively”.
If the player/GM feels that certain descriptive aspects would be better served as numbers for ease of tracking or quick reference, then that’s totally their prerogative and is cool by me. Believe me, Uncharted Worlds also had relationship levels in much of the early design, and it was removed mostly because it fought for design space with Debt.
Thanks for clearing that up, Sean. This helps me wrap my mind around what’s different from other PbtA games, and – most importantly – why.
You could always step Debt and Favors down a notch om the scale and allow it to be held with people (and PCs) as well as organizations. Obviously what it implies changes at each scale level.
What I was thinking of was something almost exactly like the Bonds in Dungeon World. I don’t have to have them, of course, it’s just something I expected I’d see. Like I said, the most important thing is that I’ll get to see UW in action soon enough, and – who knows? Maybe Favors and Debt will click so hard in my head, I’ll wonder how I went so long without ’em!
Doc Rotwang so then back to my question: what moves would roll +Bond then? Just Get Involved? I think that’s probably okay but it seems a big change for little reward based on my play experiences.
Another option: instead of Bonds, relationships give you Data Points with the characters, spendable like normal Data Points. This mirrors Sagas of the Icelanders Bonds rather than DW’s
I do like the “gain Data Points due to Relationships/Interpersonal Drama” as a slightly more mechanically driven relationship system. You can only spend those Data Points when you Get Involved with that character (either to help or hinder them).
Sean Gomes I’d allow for spending them like normal Data Points, honestly. It’d help differentiate from other PbtA bonds.
I came at UW with a similar point of view. Before play, I was highly skeptical of the Cramped Quarters move as a stand-in or replacement for various relationship mechanics (Strings, Hx, etc). But once we got into it, and I started seeing all the context in which you can trigger the move, I did a 180. It’s actually pretty slick.
A lot of the interpersonal drama in our first 9 sessions stemmed directly from Cramped Quarters and getting 6- when rolling+Influence. Like Aron said above, it’s super easy to keep track of in short sentences, if you need to (long weeks between sessions, for example).
My advice would be to hang back, let the moves do their thing, observe the results, and make mechanical adjustments only if you find them lacking. I hope you have fun with it, either way. It’s a pretty kickass game.
Thanks for the advice, Wilhelm Norsten! Letting the moves do their thing is kind of my plan, now.