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.

Starfinder is Coming!

So over at Paizocon the past weekend it was announced that Paizo would release a new RPG for GenCon 2017. This is big news since Pathfinder is basically Paizo's only RPG, but where I lost it was when it turned out that it was basically Pathfinder in space, and is called Starfinder.

If you've been with the blog from the beginning you'll know that I have an unhealthy obsession with using Pathfinder to play sci-fantasy in space. I've collected a ton of third party material to facilitate playing a space campaign, I've been running a scifi campaign using Pathfinder for a few months now, I've made articles on what classes and races and house rules to use. So obviously the news is a big deal for me. And by big deal I mean that I jumped and shouted a bit about it.

Here's the rundown of what's happening.

• Starfinder will be billed as its own RPG. It will come out as a core rulebook and have new rules that will be playable without Pathfinder. 
• The release date is GenCon 2017 with no Pathfinder release for that GenCon.
• At the same time it will be OGL and thus have some kind of compatibility with Pathfinder, at least in regards to monster stat blocks. What this will actually mean is currently unknown but I've been seeing the words 'backwards compatibility' and 'new AC system' so the range on how much converting you'll have to do to say, bring in a catfolk Bard using Pathfinder rules is pretty wide. 
• The Starfinder Core Rulebook will contain the core rules and setting information. The setting is basically Golarion, or rather Golarion's solar system only without Golarion. There's a gap in time where Golarion was taken away by the gods with no information as to where it is or what happened during the time gap. Where Golarion once stood is now Absolam Station, a Babylon 5-like central point of the setting and instead of Pathfinders we have Starfinders investigating the nature of the time skip and Golarion vanishing. 
• The predicted page count is at 540 right now. 
• The Distant Worlds book will be the baseline for the setting as it already details Golarion's solar system. This means that we'll see some of those space Ratfolk and Androids are a core race. The core races from Pathfinder will be around but it looks shaky as to whether or not they will be a large part of the core races because there will be at least one non-humanoid core race and there will be an emphasis on aliens. I speculate People of the Stars will give us some clues.
• Several upcoming, and possibly delayed, 3pp products are on board. Aethera is doing something. d20pfsrd.com Publishing changed the name of their project from Starfinder to Starjammer and will have something by the launch of Starfinder. LPJ will be working on something. Until more information comes out it looks like a lot of upcoming projects may or may not have monkey wrenches thrown into their work, especially with the large influx of scifi Pathfinder material. Either way third party publishers will be heavily involved, and in some cases directly talking with Paizo in making launch pretty pretty content heavy.
• There's one subscription line that will include the Core Rulebook and an adventure path. The adventure path will include new rules, monsters, and equipment along with adventures. 
• There will be new classes, equipment and races. The setting and ruleset is distinctly science-fantasy so we get things like magic laser cannons and magical computer hacking. This also means that the assumed laws of physics will be rule of cool or action movie logic rather than be completely simulationist. 
• James L. Sutter will be the creative director of Starfinder. Other names on the project include Rob McCreary, Owen KC Stephens(!!!), and Sarah Robinson. 
• There will be no public playtest. There will be a playtest though. They're reaching out to community members for it soon.  

I am totally excited but also a bit worried. Despite backwards compatibility I really wonder what the fate of the products i already have is. Will Psionics fit in or will I have to get new psionic books? What about Anachronistic Adventures or The Machinesmith?  Some Pathfinder stuff I got specifically to play scifi Pathfinder so I'd like to be able to use them. But if the whole backwards compatibility thing means that Pathfinder classes still work then I'll be all good.

Otherwise I have quite a bit of faith in this project, particularly because I obviously already believe Pathfinder can do space science fantasy. Having a new Pathfinder that is focused on the genre has got to be good. and if not at least I have some compatible material for Pathfinder that I can use to continue to play scifi campaigns. Really, I'm practically playing it already so why not? When it comes out I'll probably be covering Pathfinder and Starfinder equally, especially with all the third party gear that will probably bankrupt me at launch. I'm pretty sure that once it comes out it will be my new favorite thing ever and eventually become my primary RPG to play. I'm still working on my overview of D&D 5th edition and really I feel sorry for it. I like it, but prefer Pathfinder, but once Starfinder is out I won't have time for a second fantasy game. Maybe I can squeeze it in between Pathfinder games but I don't see that happening too often. Owen K Stephens is also a big chunk of hope for me as well. I've gotten plenty of products, both Paizo and third party, that have his name on it and more often than not it's something amazing.

But the worst part of this is the wait. It comes out in over a year and potentially drags projects that were going to be released soon towards that date. I'm playing Space Pathfinder now. I don't want to wait a year to see how this affects me. And I definitely don't want to wait longer for the things I backed on Kickstarter, or even the things I've been casually watching on Kickstarter. Heck even Dreamscarred Press has been playtesting psionic tech rules that I needed published months ago, is that going to be pushed back a year too? And this is all probably going to come out all at once at GenCon. Well I know where my birthday money is going. And probably my Christmas money too. Better start saving up now.