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An alternate take on relationships as a trait came to mind. I haven't chewed on this long, but I thought I'd see what people thought:

Presently, the die value represents roughly how helpful the NPC in question is towards your character. When you might actually tap said dice is extremely situational.

What if instead, the dice themselves represented your relationship with that character? How well you knew them, how strong your connection and history is. Those dice might be tapped on social conflicts with that character, or maybe even when the character in question was the subject of a conflict, like a small-scale passion drive. In practice, it would mean that if your character had a brother who was an NPC, you could have a 2 die relationship with them and those 2 dice would come in any time you were trying to talk your brother into (or out of) doing something, or when said brother ignored your advice and you had to save his ass in a bar fight.

The trade off here, of course, is that we wouldn't have the the nice clean "what will they do for you" line -- you could have a 3 die relationship with someone and the two of you hated each other, but in some ways it strikes me as more flexible and interesting.

It'd need refinement, but it strikes me as an interesting direction.

What is interesting about that is that the relationship can work both ways, creating it's own complications.

If you have a 2d relationship with your brother you get 2 dice to use to manipulate him. But he might also gets 2 dice to do the same to you, in a different circumstance. Or even, you get a 2d penalty to lying to him, because he knows your tricks so well.

The thing about it is that is becomes pretty much a social skill bonus vs a single NPC when most of the other traits are basically "social skill bonus X under condition Y" already.

thirtythr33 wrote:If you have a 2d relationship with your brother you get 2 dice to use to manipulate him. But he might also gets 2 dice to do the same to you, in a different circumstance. Or even, you get a 2d penalty to lying to him, because he knows your tricks so well.

Not only that, but when a bloke has your 2d Relationship at his mercy, doesn't that mean that you take a -2d penalty when you try to influence that enemy?

Agamemnon wrote:The trade off here, of course, is that we wouldn't have the the nice clean "what will they do for you" line -- you could have a 3 die relationship with someone and the two of you hated each other, but in some ways it strikes me as more flexible and interesting.

Define hate. As in "I will see him fall no matter the cost" hatred, or "He might be the most unbearable fool out there, but he is MY FOOL" antagonism? I believe that the existing "In an antagonistic relationship" already covers it, and the "What he will do for you" part is pretty neat to GM.