>From: "jorganos" <joe_at_...>
>
>The grey areas where my ally Ragnar and myself become rivals, or where
>my rival may have reasons to come to my aid.
>
>The well respected and likeable nemesis.
>
>Conflicting emotions to flavour a relationship.
Jane has a good point that you can load up on relationships as one way to push this along.
But I think that the key here is that characters are not required to act on their abilities.
I pause to let that sink in.
Nowhere in Hero Quest does it say that if a character has "Ally of Ragnar" that he has to come to Ragnar's aid, if Ragnar is in trouble. Nor does Ragnar have to come to aid you. This is all rather patently obvious when you have a situation where there's a conflict of interest. You have "Ally of Ragnar" and "Love Gertrude" and it turns out that Gertrude and Ragnar are sleeping together. Do you still have to come to Ragnar's aid? Or still be there for Gertrude?
In fact, this is often where the abilties change to reflect the situation.
The only thing that abilities do is to serve as TNs in conflicts that involve them. Yeah, if you want Ragnar to do something, but haven't come to his aid of late, you might not get your augment to your roll to convince him. Heck, that Ally ability might act as a penalty as Ragnar is angry with you for your acts.
But that's the choice the player makes. He can follow the character traits he has, and get bonuses, or he can ignore them and typically get penalties. So there's an incentive to play to those abilities. But not a requirement.
This is what makes relationships so entertaining. Not that they're some unbreakable bond, but that they will get broken, and when they do, that's an entertaining part of play.
Same with personality traits, in fact. If a character has cowardly on his sheet, and he does something brave, he gets a penalty. But he gets to do it, if the player wants. These sorts of reversals of personality are found all over literature, and are key to drama. As are cases where the character upholds his, well, character. It's always a decision, and an interesting one because the abilities exist. Not a straightjacket.
So use the entire character sheet for ideas for motives for NPCs. Is Ragnar also a swordsman? Is there a powerful magic sword to be obtained? Then maybe he puts that over his alliance with the PC. Or maybe he pointedly does not. Either way, we get to see the ability in action.
The complexities involved with relationships and character motives come from the fact that they all have many of these things, and they are all interacting all the time. Which motive is the character going with today? Well, simply play them like real people who might have all of the characteristics (abilities) of the character in question. Not just by a single relationship.
Mike
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