Infinity Matrix: Relationships

A while ago the party made a vote to determine the direction of the campaign. Originally it was going to be a magic macguffin quest to stop a planet sized robot bent on destroying the galaxy, something simple and familiar. But they were so enamored with Hypercorporations that I gave out the option to instead have more social conflicts involving them and they voted in that direction's favor. To make this work out I decided to put a little structure into the campaign. They will go on a long-winded delivery quest before getting the opportunity to gain their own ship and dealing directly with hypercorporations. The bigger reason for the delivery quest is for them to meet NPCs. When they get an opportunity to actually run a ship they will also have an opportunity to recruit these NPCs as their crew or take action against them as enemies. To that end I needed a system of friendship to determine who they recruit and who they make enemies of. The system I landed on is an amalgam of the Relationship system in Ultimate Campaign, the Influence system from Ultimate Intrigue and the group Leadership system from Everyman Games' 'Ultimate Charisma'.

As a group and as an individual the PCs have a list of groups and individuals that they have relationships with. The relationship is defined by starting attitudes and move according to different actions taken towards them. For an individual you can declare that you want to start a relationship with that NPC followed by a social skill check that influences their starting attitude and also grants a relationship score equal to your Charisma Modifier (minimum 0) With favors (positive actions like gifts, quests, dates, ect) or slights(Negative actions such as attacks, theft and so on) you can increase your influence on that character. Unlike normal Relationship rules, this does not go into the negatives but favors and slights also affect starting attitudes, so if you have a high relationship score with a character that moves from Friendly to Unfriendly the numbers are just as high but the reaction is negative rather than positive. Basically betrayal and redemption is pretty powerful. To develop a relationship you can interact with favors or slights to increase the relationship score to a limit of your level plus your Charisma Modifier. Favors and slights will also change starting attitudes but keep in mind that ignoring them, doing a favor for someone they do not like or making a slight against something that they do like can affect starting attitude as well. 

Relationship scores come in tiers that have numerical bonuses.

0 is an acquaintance that doesn't really know or have a greater reason to trust/abhore you.
1-5 represents an Association. 
6-11 is a Friendship if their starting attitude is on the positive side of Indifference and Competition on the negative side.
12-30 represents Fellowship/Rivalry.
31 and up represents Devotion/Enmity.

These tiers are grant bonuses or penalties on various rolls equal to their tiers, so 0=0,1-5=2, 6-11=2, 12-30=3, and 31 and up = 4. For example a diplomacy roll against a character with a friendship that is Helpful would have a +2 bonus but this would be a -2 bonus if that same character was Hostile instead of Helpful. So the relationship score is levels of familiarity whereas attitude is the degree of cooperation.

This does not mean that relationship scores don't go down. Anything that causes distance will lower relationship scores like ignoring the NPC or doing something out of character. As such there is an added mechanic 'bond' which represents the principle the relationship is based on and the nature of it. There's no real list for what kind of bonds there can be and they are less mechanically relevant than alignment, but an example can be a bond is Family. You have a familial relationship and hurting other family members or not supporting family can lower relationship scores as they try to distance themselves from you. However the score doesn't lower and rather their attitude changes if you affect them directly with slights like attacking them.

Similar things happen towards groups and organizations only on a much bigger scale and has functions similar to reputation within the organization. Also, while starting relationships is voluntary with individuals any slight or favor towards an organization automatically starts one. To this end most organization relationships will be tracked by the GM.

Additionally collectively or individually PCs can form a special group called a 'crew'. Individually a player can lead a crew of NPCs who's HD is equal to the player's level plus his or her charisma modifier(Max individual HD is level-4). In order to recruit an NPC their relationship with the leader must be higher than their Psych DC (HD+Wis or Sense Motive Bonus). The crew member must also have an attitude of Indifferent, Friendly or Helpful at recruitment. The party can form a crew pooling the HD limit. This forms any sort of ship crew, guild, company and so on. Since this somewhat makes relationships similar to Leadership a lot of the same numbers apply. Things that affect Leadership scores can change attitudes and relationship scores, usually forming slights and favors. Also cohort feats were banned at the beginning of the game so that this system could replace it.

I've already given players a rundown of getting relationship points with NPCs with them keeping track through a friends and foes sheet from Dyslexic Studeo's character sheets but it is next week that I'll be revealing the full scope of it and why it will be important to make friends now so that they will have a better crew for later when they have their own ship.

And there you have it. Quick and dirty relationship rules for building a crew. I'll be using the same system in future campaigns where the campaign goal is to build kingdoms, gain allegiances or build a pirate crew. As i tinker around with it more I'll slowly introduce modifications using Everyman Game's Ultimate Charisma. For examle, the relationship tier will serve as a bonus rounds of the Antagonized condition and I'll connect it more to reputation.

Infinity Matrix: Character Creation.

The Infinity Matrix campaign is well under way. I'll be making updates every two weeks as we continue the campaign with some GM information in between to give an idea of how to pull it off. We just completed our session zero.

Not many of the house rules had to be clarified. I had most everything I intended written down on handouts so it was just a matter of pointing out clauses that explain what's going on. The only issues I had with rulings were with people that weren't all that familiar with the game to begin with.

Some of the players took great advantage of the house rules, particularly the technology discount and weapon sizing revision. This produced a lot of cheese such as one player taking a class that grew him two extra arms with the intent of wielding four firearms with Multiweapon Fighting. Same player is wielding small sized firearms to make them light weapons to knock 2 off the off-hand penalty, which I allowed. A number of the players have taken to cybernetic implants as well boosting some numbers.  Despite all such things, one thing that was surprising is that all the incredible numbers is in their damage capabilities. AC, saves, attack bonuses and HP is actually kind of piddly which worries me a little bit as creatures with similar advantages could easily kill them just as quickly as they can be killed, effectively making a game of rocket launcher tag at level 3.

On session 1, which is in two weeks, I'll start off with a moderately high amount of CR1 and CR2 creatures to test the waters and see how much punishment they can actually take. My guess is that they'll plow through monsters like butter but have a hard time getting hit so high amounts of appropriately powerful monsters would work out best. Luckily I have some time to sort out humanoid creatures that have the same advantages that they do because that could easily kill them.With monsters I can just modify them up to adjust to whatever's going on. I start off with a base of what's appropriate for their levels and then templates versions in case they start dying before they can do anything. The templates from the Advanced Bestiary help out a lot in this.

From my last post I eventually decided to add a weapon training feat to the game. This was popular for anyone that wanted to use a firearm but it did reveal one issue with firearms in general which was that it was a very feat intensive fighting style. This makes me less worried about too much  damage coming from firearms because anyone that gets out a cheezy amount of damage out of it has to pay the feat price but no one is so hard hit by it that anyone is avoiding firearms.

As anticipated Fantastic Technology from Fat Goblin Games was a BIG hit at character creation. I wanted to use more dynamic monsters and equip the players with actual technology at level 3 despite technology being super expensive so I implemented this house rule:

For the purposes of character creation technological equipment is 10% of it’s normal cost and psionic and alchemical items are 50% their normal cost. This cost reduction is applied after changes such as masterwork, enchantment and material. Items technologically modified or made of skymetals, nanoweve, or plastic are considered technological. After buying equipment each character has 100 gp remaining regardless of how much of the 5000 gp was spent. 

Plastic was from Fantastic Technology and effectively is mithril that doesn't adjust the armor category and actually makes the armor cheaper, so rather than make adjustments from Anachronistic Adventures this just made armor better and cheaper by material conversion. It also made melee combat actually possible with a higher variety of weapons which was big for everyone. The technological modifications allowed players to dip deeper into the technological while still having a foot in comfortable and familiar territory. Basically, big shout out to Fat Goblin Games. 

As for other things that were popular; I'll have the full build breakdowns in two weeks as the finalized characters trickle in but I have one class from It Came from the Stars (Starseed), two psionic classes (Soulknife and Psychic Warrior), two from Anachronistic Adventures, (Enforcer and Cogiator), and one from Classes of NeoExodus (The Host).  

Starting two weeks from now I'll try to make a report on each session to give details about how I'm running the campaign, but in the meantime I'll post some more about the world and the campaign including maps and plot lines.