Legendary Games' "Ultimate Relationships" is now added to the Ultimate Edition ruleset, and becomes standard across the Battlegrounds (including the upcoming TaleSpire-powered West Marches campaign) effective immediately: http://vault.dndbattlegrounds.net/pathfinder/1st-edition/3rd-party/legendary-games/ultimate/Ultimate%20Relationships.pdf
It will be first tested in the upcoming Ruins of Azlant session on Thursday at 10 PM UTC, but they might not end up utilizing it in that session because... they're in the wilderness.
Please familiarize yourselves with these rules as soon as possible. It's only 14 pages; less without the covers etc.
I was almost ready to publish my Ultimate Seduction ruleset when I came upon this booklet, and decided that these rules make more sense than mine as a basis on which to build a relationship system, because these rules are more general. Mine were hyperfocused on sexual relations, intending to build marriage, procreation, and eventually bloodline mechanics on them, but even more fundamental are relationships in general, also of a non-sexual nature, and these rules really deliver on that score. They are fairly simple in themselves, but very powerful and broadly applicable. Of course, when you plug them into our game, they add almost a whole order of complexity to it, with Camaraderie Points, Relationship Ranks, Affinities, Milestones, and perhaps even Relationship XP to now keep track of. All this new stuff by the way will be tracked in the Notes section of your character sheet on Fantasy Grounds, so get ready to start using that a lot more than currently.
I do have some issues with these rules. Number 1 is that the rank-ups are based on which book of the Adventure Path you met the NPC in, with later NPCs requiring fewer camaraderie points, presumably because you get less time with them. But I want this system to be used also for standalone adventures that have nothing to do with Adventure Paths, or even for briefer one-shots, so we'll need to do some tinkering here to make it work. Keep also in mind that the typical GM retires his players' characters at the end of a campaign, but in my Battlegrounds characters are never fully retired until they're dead. In my game, at the end of a campaign, all living characters move to the 4X layer, and are still playable—though now on a monthly turn schedule—on the overworld. They can move around and basically continue playing using the Downtime rules from the "Ultimate Campaign" book, plus more rules I will introduce. So there's still plenty of time for them to continue relationships with characters they met in an AP's Book 6 or whatever. So we might be able to get around this issue just by trashing most of the Ranking Up table in page 6, keeping only the first column. I can't prejudge this issue though, we just have to start using the system, understand it at a deeper level, and then just trash the second and third columns as we get to them.
Another issue concerns romantic relationships. The booklet does allow for them, but in a very vague manner. Keep in mind that, just as in real life, romantic relationships should be among the most important ones, not because hoes before bros, but simply because that's where descendants and ultimately bloodlines come from. So it's disappointing that these rules allow romantic connections to happen between any characters, even if horrifically mismatched in terms of stature, based on simply the Rank level. You should not be allowed to marry into nobility, for example, let alone marry a queen—or even a goddess—just because you grinded through the ranking up system for half a campaign. So we definitely need additional seduction, marriage and procreation rules on top of these, and I pretty much already have them ready. I'll be posting them as soon as we get the hang of the base relationship system outlined here, and there will be a new Charisma-based Seduction skill and Pick-up Artist feat, which I will also add on Fantasy Grounds.
Another issue to clarify concerns so-called Participation:
I will spec out each NPC individually on whether or not they are open to tagging along with you at all. For example, Sandpoint's sage, Brodert Quink, isn't likely to want to go adventuring, so if Rory keeps investing in the relationship he should be able to figure out that he isn't getting a cohort out of it. Probing for an NPC's motives and plans should reveal whether he's open to tagging along for adventures.
In three further supplements, which I have, Legendary Games specs out three NPCs for their Relationship system, and each of these is 7 pages! So I have to do this for every single NPC my players are interested in. It is therefore good for you to signal to me in advance when you take an interest in an NPC and plan to invest effort on him or her, so I can build them out in this way. You can do this publicly in your team's Discord text channel, or if you think you might have competition from another player, you can DM me on Discord. Just a line saying "I am interested in Brodert Quink and might be investing into him", should do. And of course once you've set your mind on someone, let me know asap.
A final note for now concerns the one active romantic relationship we already have in the Battlegrounds between shock's Martus and Ameiko in Sandpoint. This was built on my seduction proto-mechanics, and we will just have to convert the relationship to these new rules. We'll do that in the Rise of the Runelords thread, because it is a one-off case that doesn't concern any other players or campaigns.
If you have any questions, objections or suggestions regarding these rules or anything I said above, post it in this thread, not Discord. It is important to keep these discussions in one place, because we'll have to do quite a bit of tinkering until we get this system fully integrated with everything else I have planned, and working perfectly.
