Mar 29, 2019 5:17 pm
Since we're getting into it and already have some fantastic group dynamics going on, I wanted to start working on Relationships for the PCs. Relationships can be a huge help in investigation, intrigue and even day-to-day interactions, since your witches and wizard can call on relationships to help solve problem.
If, say, for example, your created a Like relationship with Merlin, and his ability was "Divination", your character could recall a weird little Divination factoid at a crucial moment he or she had heard from Merlin, even if the character is nowhere nearby. Or you could spend from the relationship to add to a relevant roll, like if your character is standing up to a bully in a social conflict, they could recall the feeling of standing up to Rory and his friends for Merlin and spend from the relationship to add points to an Intimidation roll.
I'm going to share the ways a relationship can be used first, and then I copy and pasted the chapter on creating relationships below that. Let's hash some out with your unspent points and start creating relationships you can use!
USING RELATIONSHIPS
Players can spend Like and Love points in a Relationship to help the Sleuths:
○○ Borrow an ability from an NPC (this often includes borrowing the necessary equipment for that ability).
○○ Have an NPC do something to help or get them on the Sleuth’s side.
○○ Even get an NPC to do something risky, dangerous, or out of character.
○○ In a test or contest involving the Relationship NPC.
○○ Get into a Location with a Cool Threshold for free.
○○ Deflect Cool damage (see page 259).
The GM generally uses Hate points as a free pool of points to spend against the Sleuth, but an inventive player might get a Hate NPC to do something with a sufficiently fiendish setup.
CREATING RELATIONSHIPS
What is a Relationship? It’s the bond that one of the Sleuths has with a member of the supporting cast: a character played by the GM instead of one of the other players, called a Non‑Player Character or NPC. These are the people that help them investigate mysteries. They can also
get themselves and the Sleuths into trouble. Relationships fall into one of three categories: Loves, Likes, or Hates.
○○ LOVES are best friends, close relatives, and romantic partners who feel strongly about the Sleuth and who are committed
to her.
○○ LIKES are friends or friendly contacts that the Sleuth has been there for. They’d be willing to go the extra mile a time or two.
○○ HATES are people who can’t stand the Sleuth and take the time to make things hard for her.
The Relationship itself refers to how the NPC feels about the Sleuth. It shows how strongly this person feels about her, positively or negatively. It reflects how far out of their way they will go to help the Sleuth they know. Relationships can fluctuate. They start with point pools determined at character creation. Players spend Relationship points during sessions to use abilities the Sleuths don’t have or to gain access to places the teens have difficulty entering. Likes and Loves are catnip to GMs: ready-made dudes in distress that can come to the Sleuths for help, become swept up in events, or become collateral damage when things go pear shaped.
Relationships can also be with people who hate the Sleuths. These are often liabilities since these people will go out of their way to make
the Sleuths’ lives a little more difficult, possibly even interfering in the investigation. These are the GM’s friend. It’s always great to put a twist in a straightforward investigation by bringing out someone with a grudge. However, when you take a Hate Relationship for your Sleuth, there are benefits to the Sleuth. If you ever succeed in a social conflict with someone who Hates your character, that’s a time to celebrate. Your peers respect you for it, and there are mechanical rewards in the game.
You gain 3 Cool when your Sleuth beats a Hate in a contest.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS: SLEUTHS
Each player gets a set number of build points to put into Relationships during character creation. (See "Build Point
Table," page 9.) Invest at least 5 of these points in Relationships. Leftover points can be put into Relationships you create on the fly during the game. If you’re setting up for a campaign and you create many Relationships during character creation, not all may come into play during the first session. If this is a one-shot game, you may want to make just a few important characters, and leave the majority of your points open to help make allies (or enemies) as you play.
If you’re using a Supporting Cast Checklist (page 93, 256), add your Relationships to it as you create them.
Begin by defining your Loves, then add Likes if you wish. The GM will work with you on creating Hates. Each Relationship starts with five things:
Name: Who the Relationship is with.
Nature and Tag: The Nature of the Relationship (Like, Love, or Hate), plus a Tag—a brief elaboration on how the character feels about the Sleuth.
Points: The number of build points invested in the Relationship.
Ability: A new General ability that the NPC can loan to a Sleuth who has a Relationship with that NPC.
Location: A Location (page 92) where they are at home. Note that now, or add it during Town creation (page 130). The GM—and in some games, the players!—will add to this NPC description over time. Specifically, the GM adds a Thumbnail and a Trouble to one or two Relationships at the beginning. This is just like sketching out the NPC for any game; add details to characters you suspect will show up early.
Thumbnail: A brief description of the NPC’s real self, true nature, or convenient dramatic fate. The GM may or may not reveal this to the player (See page 91).
Trouble: The NPC’s biggest worry, or at least his biggest worry likely to trigger drama or story movement (See page 92).
Name
This is the name of the character. Include how the Sleuth is related to them.
Nature and Tag
The description is a simple statement about what the NPC feels. It’s written from the point of view of the Sleuth. It must include the word Love, Like, or Hate and another tag that explains or gives more detail about the relationship. The tag may be a word or a phrase.
If you spend from that Relationship, invoking or otherwise harmonizing with that tag can earn you a refresh of Relationship
or Cool points. Contradicting that tag can make that spend more expensive. (See "Relationships and Cool," page 98.)
Like, Love, and Hate
The Nature always includes the type of Relationship the character has with the Sleuth: Love, Like, or Hate.
Loves are people who love you, almost always more than you deserve: parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, BFFs. These are characters who are the closest to the Sleuths, and their support goes a long way. Cool points spent involving a Love Relationship count double. However, when you call on their help, it means that the GM may take that as an invitation to get those your Sleuth loves most involved in the trouble you’re investigating.
Likes include frenemies, acquaintances, people who sit behind you in French 2, and friends from Clubs and Cliques. A Pet can be included as a Like, but be sure you can use them enough to make it worth spending the points—a dog who can track people, intimidate gangsters, and look cute in the dog park might be worth it. You can have a cat or bird or hedgehog to add flavor to the Sleuth without spending Relationship points.
Hates are people who hate you, who would go out of their way to do you dirt. These might be rivals in love or academics, step-brothers who resent your relationship with their dad, queen bees of the clique you’re threatening to infiltrate, losers you rejected in 8th grade and haven’t thought about since. The Sleuths are good kids, but we’ve all done someone wrong. Or crossed the wrong person and lived to regret it. The GM will create a Hate Relationship for you, or you can work with her to do so. When you take a Hate, that Relationship starts at 3 for free, and you gain 3 build points to put into your other Relationships. Hates help put the pressure on your Sleuth, but they strengthen your other Relationships as your friends back you up against this threat. The Hate gives the GM resources to use against you, but if you defeat someone who Hates you, you gain Cool points.
New Hates may be added later in play.
Points
The number of build points you invest in a Relationship lets you know how important that character is to your Sleuth, as well as how much you can call on this person for help in a given session. (See "Using Relationships," page 94.)
You must invest at least 5 build points into Relationships when you create your Sleuth. The GM may offer to create a Hate with you, which gives you 3 free build points to invest in your Like and Love Relationships.
Relationship Ability
Each Relationship character has some skill or talent that may be able to help the Sleuths in their investigations. This is an Investigative or General ability not on the existing list. It may be a specialization of one of the existing abilities, or it may be a broad description of their job. Pick something that makes sense based on who the character is. Use them to round out the skill set available to the Sleuths.
Adults likely have abilities related to their work or some interest of theirs: police officers may have Forensics, Cop Talk, or Interrogate; a language teacher could have a language like Russian or Chinese; someone who runs a bike or car shop could have Trace Vehicle, Business, or just Bike Shop.
Other possible abilities are very broad, tracking with the NPC’s position in school or society: Cop, Computer Geek, Gangster, Quarterback, Librarian, Shop Teacher, Judge, etc. But they might be anything from Heavy Construction Equipment to Aramaic.
The GM should veto crazy or out-of-genre abilities (e.g., Terrorist, X-Ray Vision).
Fellow teens may have a hobby or academic area they specialize in. Club members may be able to provide specialties for areas the Sleuths have some knowledge of. For example, a Computer or Photography Club member might be able to provide Electronic Surveillance, or Fraud Identification.
Sleuths with a Relationship to the NPC can "borrow" those abilities, either by involving the NPC or (with something like Firearms or Sport Fishing) borrowing the specialized tool involved. This, of course, can get the Sleuth into trouble.
Additional abilities get added over time, as builds awarded between sessions by the GM (page 83).
Location
Each Relationship character has a place she frequents where she has influence. If it’s a Location with a Threshold Cost for the Sleuths to enter, having a Relationship with them can allow the Sleuths to waive the cost. Choose a Location during character or Town creation (pages 92-93).
See pages 122-130 for more on Locations.
Recording Relationships
Players write down their Relationship characters on the character sheet for their Sleuth. The entry will look like this:
Monica Park, Jessica’s Mother. Loves me and worries I’m pushing myself too hard. Love 6.
ABILITY: Forensics
LOCATION: Medical Examiner’s Office
The GM tracks the Sleuths’ Relationships using her own Supporting Cast Checklist. This gives a space to record relevant information about the NPC, and to keep track of how much she has come into play during the game.
The entry on the GM’s Supporting Cast Checklist will look like this:
Monica Park, Jessica’s Mother. Love 6. Forensics. Debt. Medical Examiner’s Office.
For important NPCs, the GM can also write out their information on a note card, adding Thumbnail and Trouble. It’s fair game—indeed, it’s practically mandatory—to use these NPCs to get the Sleuths into trouble, especially after a bad throwdown or other contest where they are used.
An entry on a note card might look like this:
JESSICA’S RELATIONSHIP:
Monica Park, Mother. Love 6.
THUMBNAIL: Biggest Fan: Believes in her daughter, but is worried that Jessica is pushing herself too hard. May suggest distractions from schoolwork.
TROUBLE: Deeply in debt and suddenly without her husband’s income.
If, say, for example, your created a Like relationship with Merlin, and his ability was "Divination", your character could recall a weird little Divination factoid at a crucial moment he or she had heard from Merlin, even if the character is nowhere nearby. Or you could spend from the relationship to add to a relevant roll, like if your character is standing up to a bully in a social conflict, they could recall the feeling of standing up to Rory and his friends for Merlin and spend from the relationship to add points to an Intimidation roll.
I'm going to share the ways a relationship can be used first, and then I copy and pasted the chapter on creating relationships below that. Let's hash some out with your unspent points and start creating relationships you can use!
USING RELATIONSHIPS
Players can spend Like and Love points in a Relationship to help the Sleuths:
○○ Borrow an ability from an NPC (this often includes borrowing the necessary equipment for that ability).
○○ Have an NPC do something to help or get them on the Sleuth’s side.
○○ Even get an NPC to do something risky, dangerous, or out of character.
○○ In a test or contest involving the Relationship NPC.
○○ Get into a Location with a Cool Threshold for free.
○○ Deflect Cool damage (see page 259).
The GM generally uses Hate points as a free pool of points to spend against the Sleuth, but an inventive player might get a Hate NPC to do something with a sufficiently fiendish setup.
CREATING RELATIONSHIPS
What is a Relationship? It’s the bond that one of the Sleuths has with a member of the supporting cast: a character played by the GM instead of one of the other players, called a Non‑Player Character or NPC. These are the people that help them investigate mysteries. They can also
get themselves and the Sleuths into trouble. Relationships fall into one of three categories: Loves, Likes, or Hates.
○○ LOVES are best friends, close relatives, and romantic partners who feel strongly about the Sleuth and who are committed
to her.
○○ LIKES are friends or friendly contacts that the Sleuth has been there for. They’d be willing to go the extra mile a time or two.
○○ HATES are people who can’t stand the Sleuth and take the time to make things hard for her.
The Relationship itself refers to how the NPC feels about the Sleuth. It shows how strongly this person feels about her, positively or negatively. It reflects how far out of their way they will go to help the Sleuth they know. Relationships can fluctuate. They start with point pools determined at character creation. Players spend Relationship points during sessions to use abilities the Sleuths don’t have or to gain access to places the teens have difficulty entering. Likes and Loves are catnip to GMs: ready-made dudes in distress that can come to the Sleuths for help, become swept up in events, or become collateral damage when things go pear shaped.
Relationships can also be with people who hate the Sleuths. These are often liabilities since these people will go out of their way to make
the Sleuths’ lives a little more difficult, possibly even interfering in the investigation. These are the GM’s friend. It’s always great to put a twist in a straightforward investigation by bringing out someone with a grudge. However, when you take a Hate Relationship for your Sleuth, there are benefits to the Sleuth. If you ever succeed in a social conflict with someone who Hates your character, that’s a time to celebrate. Your peers respect you for it, and there are mechanical rewards in the game.
You gain 3 Cool when your Sleuth beats a Hate in a contest.
BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS: SLEUTHS
Each player gets a set number of build points to put into Relationships during character creation. (See "Build Point
Table," page 9.) Invest at least 5 of these points in Relationships. Leftover points can be put into Relationships you create on the fly during the game. If you’re setting up for a campaign and you create many Relationships during character creation, not all may come into play during the first session. If this is a one-shot game, you may want to make just a few important characters, and leave the majority of your points open to help make allies (or enemies) as you play.
If you’re using a Supporting Cast Checklist (page 93, 256), add your Relationships to it as you create them.
Begin by defining your Loves, then add Likes if you wish. The GM will work with you on creating Hates. Each Relationship starts with five things:
Name: Who the Relationship is with.
Nature and Tag: The Nature of the Relationship (Like, Love, or Hate), plus a Tag—a brief elaboration on how the character feels about the Sleuth.
Points: The number of build points invested in the Relationship.
Ability: A new General ability that the NPC can loan to a Sleuth who has a Relationship with that NPC.
Location: A Location (page 92) where they are at home. Note that now, or add it during Town creation (page 130). The GM—and in some games, the players!—will add to this NPC description over time. Specifically, the GM adds a Thumbnail and a Trouble to one or two Relationships at the beginning. This is just like sketching out the NPC for any game; add details to characters you suspect will show up early.
Thumbnail: A brief description of the NPC’s real self, true nature, or convenient dramatic fate. The GM may or may not reveal this to the player (See page 91).
Trouble: The NPC’s biggest worry, or at least his biggest worry likely to trigger drama or story movement (See page 92).
Name
This is the name of the character. Include how the Sleuth is related to them.
Nature and Tag
The description is a simple statement about what the NPC feels. It’s written from the point of view of the Sleuth. It must include the word Love, Like, or Hate and another tag that explains or gives more detail about the relationship. The tag may be a word or a phrase.
If you spend from that Relationship, invoking or otherwise harmonizing with that tag can earn you a refresh of Relationship
or Cool points. Contradicting that tag can make that spend more expensive. (See "Relationships and Cool," page 98.)
Like, Love, and Hate
The Nature always includes the type of Relationship the character has with the Sleuth: Love, Like, or Hate.
Loves are people who love you, almost always more than you deserve: parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, BFFs. These are characters who are the closest to the Sleuths, and their support goes a long way. Cool points spent involving a Love Relationship count double. However, when you call on their help, it means that the GM may take that as an invitation to get those your Sleuth loves most involved in the trouble you’re investigating.
Likes include frenemies, acquaintances, people who sit behind you in French 2, and friends from Clubs and Cliques. A Pet can be included as a Like, but be sure you can use them enough to make it worth spending the points—a dog who can track people, intimidate gangsters, and look cute in the dog park might be worth it. You can have a cat or bird or hedgehog to add flavor to the Sleuth without spending Relationship points.
Hates are people who hate you, who would go out of their way to do you dirt. These might be rivals in love or academics, step-brothers who resent your relationship with their dad, queen bees of the clique you’re threatening to infiltrate, losers you rejected in 8th grade and haven’t thought about since. The Sleuths are good kids, but we’ve all done someone wrong. Or crossed the wrong person and lived to regret it. The GM will create a Hate Relationship for you, or you can work with her to do so. When you take a Hate, that Relationship starts at 3 for free, and you gain 3 build points to put into your other Relationships. Hates help put the pressure on your Sleuth, but they strengthen your other Relationships as your friends back you up against this threat. The Hate gives the GM resources to use against you, but if you defeat someone who Hates you, you gain Cool points.
New Hates may be added later in play.
Points
The number of build points you invest in a Relationship lets you know how important that character is to your Sleuth, as well as how much you can call on this person for help in a given session. (See "Using Relationships," page 94.)
You must invest at least 5 build points into Relationships when you create your Sleuth. The GM may offer to create a Hate with you, which gives you 3 free build points to invest in your Like and Love Relationships.
Relationship Ability
Each Relationship character has some skill or talent that may be able to help the Sleuths in their investigations. This is an Investigative or General ability not on the existing list. It may be a specialization of one of the existing abilities, or it may be a broad description of their job. Pick something that makes sense based on who the character is. Use them to round out the skill set available to the Sleuths.
Adults likely have abilities related to their work or some interest of theirs: police officers may have Forensics, Cop Talk, or Interrogate; a language teacher could have a language like Russian or Chinese; someone who runs a bike or car shop could have Trace Vehicle, Business, or just Bike Shop.
Other possible abilities are very broad, tracking with the NPC’s position in school or society: Cop, Computer Geek, Gangster, Quarterback, Librarian, Shop Teacher, Judge, etc. But they might be anything from Heavy Construction Equipment to Aramaic.
The GM should veto crazy or out-of-genre abilities (e.g., Terrorist, X-Ray Vision).
Fellow teens may have a hobby or academic area they specialize in. Club members may be able to provide specialties for areas the Sleuths have some knowledge of. For example, a Computer or Photography Club member might be able to provide Electronic Surveillance, or Fraud Identification.
Sleuths with a Relationship to the NPC can "borrow" those abilities, either by involving the NPC or (with something like Firearms or Sport Fishing) borrowing the specialized tool involved. This, of course, can get the Sleuth into trouble.
Additional abilities get added over time, as builds awarded between sessions by the GM (page 83).
Location
Each Relationship character has a place she frequents where she has influence. If it’s a Location with a Threshold Cost for the Sleuths to enter, having a Relationship with them can allow the Sleuths to waive the cost. Choose a Location during character or Town creation (pages 92-93).
See pages 122-130 for more on Locations.
Recording Relationships
Players write down their Relationship characters on the character sheet for their Sleuth. The entry will look like this:
Monica Park, Jessica’s Mother. Loves me and worries I’m pushing myself too hard. Love 6.
ABILITY: Forensics
LOCATION: Medical Examiner’s Office
The GM tracks the Sleuths’ Relationships using her own Supporting Cast Checklist. This gives a space to record relevant information about the NPC, and to keep track of how much she has come into play during the game.
The entry on the GM’s Supporting Cast Checklist will look like this:
Monica Park, Jessica’s Mother. Love 6. Forensics. Debt. Medical Examiner’s Office.
For important NPCs, the GM can also write out their information on a note card, adding Thumbnail and Trouble. It’s fair game—indeed, it’s practically mandatory—to use these NPCs to get the Sleuths into trouble, especially after a bad throwdown or other contest where they are used.
An entry on a note card might look like this:
JESSICA’S RELATIONSHIP:
Monica Park, Mother. Love 6.
THUMBNAIL: Biggest Fan: Believes in her daughter, but is worried that Jessica is pushing herself too hard. May suggest distractions from schoolwork.
TROUBLE: Deeply in debt and suddenly without her husband’s income.