Glaugust 25 - Relationship History
José Guadalupe Posada. Lotteria Game. ~1910.
gacha or roguelike mechanics for your elfgame
I'm a big fan of roguelike deckbuilders. The best of them test a particular skill - weighing not just the absolute power level of a card, but assessing it in the context of your deck's current state, the final state you are aiming for, and the challenges you anticipate between you and that point. So what if we designed a system that asked for this kind of short- vs. long-term decision making as your GLoG character advances?
As I tinkered with this system, the big question was "where does the deck come from?" How do we decide what classes are in a given character's pool? I could imagine a gamier system that just offered a selection at the end of every floor (and I'm sure that would be fun to try!) but as I wrote I kept returning to the following idea.
History
As Fredric Jameson writes "history is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis." Your character's history is a list of other characters they have a close relationship with. Each entry should record a name, a class, and a relationship.
First, write down your character's own name and class. Our first relationship is with ourselves.
Second, write down the name of the character to your right and roll on the following d44 table of relationships (adapted from the work of Silverarm Press. Note their class and that relationship.
| d44 | 1. Family | 2. Romance | 3. Friendship | 4. Society |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sibling | Spouse | Drinking buddies | Poet + Patron |
| 2 | Parent + Child | Forbidden Lovers | War buddies | Teacher + Student |
| 3 | Cousins | Divorced | Childhood friends | Brigands |
| 4 | Auncle + Nibling | Romantic Rivals | Met on pilgrimage | Foreigners |
Third, write down the name of the character to the left, their class and the relationship they rolled for yours.
Advancement
When you level up, randomize the order of your history and then set aside the first two entries. You may take the next available template in the class you associate with either.
Altering Relationships
Relationships should come and go organically through play, but convenience we do all the book-keeping at the end of the session.
At the end of each session, review all your relationships and see if any have changed. Feel free to alter the text of any entry, but don't add or remove any except by the following procedures.
Addition
At the end of any session, you may declare a character that you have formed a relationship with. Add them to your history. If they are an NPC, the GM will tell you what class to note.
Additionally, you must add a character to your history under the following conditions:
- You saved their life.
- You swore a binding oath to them.
- They mortally wounded or embarrassed you.
- They have added you to their history.
You may add any number of relationships with a given character.
Removal
Relationships in your history are harder to remove. The two most common routes are:
- The character has not appeared in the story for at least five sessions.
- You "resolve" your relationship (e.g. by fulfilling your oath, avenging a wound, or forgiving a slight).
You may only remove a single relationship per session in this way.
Notes for GMs
As you no doubt observe, this sets a lot more plates spinning. For the most part, just track the NPCs the players are invested in and leave the PC-to-PC relationships for them to sort out. Look at those NPCs through a crosshairs.
You will likely often be asked to give the name of a class for a character who does not have one. You have two options here. First, just pick the class from whatever pool you have curated for the game that best fits. Second, and perhaps juicier, write a blank check. Give them a name and then find or cobble together something to fit.
Some players will try to minmax this system. That's cool! The whole goal of this system is to add mechanical stakes to the narrative and vice versa. If it feels like an issue, that's a problem to be resolved with a conversation, not within the game rules. That said, the rate limits here are provide some safeguards against rampant abuse.
You may also have players who are frustrated because they have no viable path towards the character they had imagined for themselves / they are hemmed into playing something deeply suboptimal. For them, suggest seeking a mentor. A student / teacher relationship can help tilt the odds in their favor while still satisfying the goals of the system.
Treat these relationships with the rigor you would use to describe a trapped room. When the player characters try to operate on their relationships ask them what exactly they are feeling and doing. When an NPC involved in a relationship appears on screen, spend more sensory detail on them.