The narrator has the ability to lay down Goal cards for players to pick up, which can be things like "Find out why Martha has been so quiet lately" or "Fall in love with Tom". However, it would be very interesting if players could do the same thing. The fact is, the narrator is not directly involved in the relationships between player characters. Relationship goals probably work best if they stem from what's going on with the characters internally, and only the person playing each character really knows that. Which is also why I suggest laying them down for optional pickup, rather than handing them to someone who for all you know has no interest in using them. This will also make relationships less predictable for the players, if someone other than who they expected picks the Goal up. Which is really more realistic, because can you ever really know or predict what someone else is feeling?

Doesn't have to be in the form of cards, but a formal way to establish relationships would help every story.

Most especially, I want to be able to require each player to establish one relationship before the game begins, or to require one relationship between each player, depending on the game.

Important to note that some relationships will be current, but many will be past (ex-friends, ex-lovers) or future. That last ones important: I don't need all my player's characters to know each other coming in, but I will need them to form relationships quickly for the story to work.

I agree that the player to player dynamic really needs something more from the mechanics. While characters can collaborate on the same challenge, there's not much of a sense of teamwork and nothing to stimulate character interactions. This becomes more apparent with more characters in a game.

As a narrator I just use goal cards for that.

I think that function can be covered by other cards that exist.

This could be interesting... I had a different idea of what you meant by the title, which sounded like you wanted a separate set of cards explicitly for player to player interactions (in the vein of a game like Dragon Age or something, where you can collect like/dislike points into companions), but what you have... might work. Sounds complicated, though.

These seem like Assets and Goals to me. I gave one of my PCs "Police Favors" he can call on, for instance. I also gave them optional goals to reflect which NPCs they suspect of the crime (my story is a mystery). They can play the goal cards as they take actions to prove NPCs guilty or clear them.

Use Goals:- I have several characters in my game who now have Goals along the lines "Resolve your dispute with X", "Find out if Y feels as strongly about you as you feel about them, without risking rejection" and "You think of Z like a little brother. Protect i from harm".

Of course if you do this with Goals you need to ensure that you as the narrator also set Challenges which allow them to play these Goals - challenges like "Plan for the assault on Demoncove", "Talk through the unspoken thing which as come between you" or "Train to use the new weapons you've just received". Things which might be considered social or logistical challenges.

The best way to work out what these challenges need to be:- Ask your players what they want to do next and challenge accordingly.

I already use Goal cards to reflect a relationship in Natural Causes, the Ghost Whispering goal card reflects the symbiotic relationship between a char and the ghost who needs his help. It refreshes when they complete it, providing them a slow but steady stream of Strength from supporting that relationship! Works nicely I think.

@Green Dragon That makes sense up to a point. You can only "complete" a relationship at that point. And any subplot cards you play against an obstacle 1) come out of your allocation of 3 cards for that scene, and 2) do not give you either a strong or a weak outcome on your obstacle. They are neutral.

So by making an asset you can play on another player means that when you cooperate on an obstacle you gain a bonus with your allies and a penalty with your rivals. And being able to withdraw your relationship cards means you can recycle them on a scene-for-scene basis. That reflects the changing dynamic of real relationships.

Often in my storium games, the players create really in-depth characters with intricate backgrounds, but none of the characters have anything to do with each other. Aside from forcing the characters to bond by saying, "Thou SHALT bond with one another," how can we use storium mechanics to allow bonds to come more naturally and possibly reward them for doing so?

To me, relationships important enough to quantify are Subplots.

@Haystack I'm not sure that woks all that well as the number of cards you can play is fixed at 3 in a scene. If you play cards against relationships it reduces the number of cards you can play against obstacles in the scene. If the narrator has used all of his challenge points then you'll come up short.

@zZZman74 I mentioned earlier in the comment thread that players should have only 1 relationship card for every 3 characters in a game to give away. in most games that would mean 1 or 2 cards. And you have no way to renew them. Like Assets they are static. But you would have the ability to withdraw them from players as relationships change and evolve.

@Zzzman74 - You don't want to play any card on every challenge, that's why having a different card type and more options would help not hurt in that department. More cards you put out there the more variety the game has and complexity is not a problem as the system is so straight forward.

I like the relationship card idea but I think it'd need to be used sparingly. You don't want to play the relationship card in every situation or it'd get stale.

The option to give such cards should be limited.

It seems to me that relationships could be played out through challenge cards that players could issue to one another. For example, I'm Martha and I give you a challenge "Find out why Martha has been so quiet lately" or "Turn Martha against Roy." This has the advantage of being consensual, as you can simply ignore the challenge if the relationship doesn't interest you.

It may be better to think in terms of relationships as processes rather than assets.

I really like C David Dent's idea of players giving each other cards to use. Nice thing is, since players can give each other cards, we can experiment with this right now!

While this would require all characters to be made around the same time (perhaps concurrently or in turns) it does have a lot of upside and other RP systems (Fiasco comes to mind) do so for that very reason.

Someone's been playing Dungeon World- awesome!

Sounds like an Asset. Rely on it too much... and it will go away or change.