Imperial Relationships (PFRPG) PDF

4.50/5 (based on 4 ratings)

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Imperial Relationships takes the expanded relationship rules introduced in Ultimate Relationships from Legendary Games and brings them to glorious life for players of the official published Far East Adventure Path for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. In this product you will find detailed relationship links for each of the four primary NPCs that accompany the PCs on their long journey to the Eastern Kingdoms, one each for the Caravan Master, Destined Empress, Elven Protector, and Mystic Seer, complete with boons, affinity notes, gifts and interactions, and dynamically interactive relationship ranks for each character.

The Far East Adventure Path is a long journey. Much like the strong traditions of literature and television series about journeys, the physical journey is also a metaphor for the inner journey that each character takes along the way, progressing into someone different than they were at the beginning. With Imperial Relationships, your PCs can forge deep and lasting connections with the characters they meet along their journey together. With their lives and fates intertwined, your game will never be the same.

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Keep Your Friends Close

5/5

Imperial Relationships is the first in a planned series of products focused around the NPCs of the Far East Adventure Path, detailing 4 major characters that the PCs get to interact with throughout the AP, and providing appropriate relationship ranks and boons, as detailed in Ultimate Relationships.

The Good
Everything.

You want more than that? Okay. Each of the four NPCs described herein gives you detailed (and I mean detailed) instructions on how to use them with the Ultimate Relationship rules, including, but not limited to: What their likely relationships are going to be about, what types of gifts and interactions they like, what types of characters they are particularly drawn towards, when they're prepared to actually adventure with the party, what relationship rank needs to be reached before they can enter a romantic relationship, and the absolute pinnacle of the product: fully detailed ranking up situations and interactions, including what the NPC is looking for, how they approach it, the DC of the necessary check(s) and what happens if the check to rank up fails.

The Bad
I literally cannot find anything wrong with this product. And since I refuse to write one of these reviews without saying something that's a negative, the "bad" is that this product is almost essential to get the most out of Ultimate Relationships.

The Conclusion
Do I really need to say much? This is excellent, a tour de force in how to build meaningful relationships with NPCs, detailed to perfection, with great insight into the minds of the NPCs in question, their goals, dreams and desires, and how you can weave them into the lives of the PCs.


An Endzeitgeist.com review

5/5

This pdf clocks in at 20 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page ToC, 2 pages editorial/introduction, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 12 pages of raw content, so what is this?

The short answer to this question is ultimately a very simple one - this would be the application of the relationship-rules (which unfortunately only work for 6-part-APs) to the Jade Regent adventure path.

Now obviously, as with the other AP-plug-ins, Legendary Games can obviously not use Paizo's IP and proper names, though it should be noted that you can't probably make the identity of NPCs more obvious to the discerning GM - each of the NPCs receives a precise moniker ("The Caravan Master") as well as an appropriate theme for the respective romances/relationships based on cards drawn by "The Mystic Seer."

The 4 NPCs covered herein all belong to the characters that denote the very core of the caravan and as such, have no real "abandon/joining the caravan"-clause - while each relationship does provide such lines, there isn't much that can happen in these regards. general affinity notes for the characters are provided and romance options depending on ranks are also part of the deal.

It should be noted that rank 7 usually is the one where PCs can initiate a romance, (with an exception, where that may be lowered to 5) and both 7 and 10 provide unique benefits for the PCs. On a nice side-note, the seeress does come with a cool prophecy to add to the game. The respective ranks doe provide sufficiently diverse challenges for the PCs seeking to get closer to a given NPC - whether it's showing your Knowledge of nature, proving your smarts or holding your liquor, the challenges can be pictured much like mini-skill-challenges. Now the respective challenges are not necessarily easy and require some forethought - people who don't have experience in nature will have a quite hard time wooing a certain elven lady, for example.

Now I mentioned unique benefits - these are interesting in that they can amount to almost class ability-level bonuses, rendering the wooing of a given character also mechanically something that rewards the PCs for the investiture in skills that would otherwise not necessarily be an optimized choice - I do like that.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I noticed no glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games beautiful two-column standard for Jade Regent-plug-ins. The pdf comes with beautiful full-color artworks for the NPCs. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Mark Seifter's first applied take on relationships is one I considered believable and fun - ultimately, this provides a nice emphasis for roleplayers - the respective rank-infos provide all the necessary information to properly portray the scenes and the relationships themselves feel believable and nice. So all perfect? No.

For one, I would have enjoyed more complex challenges - while no one keeps you from stacking the DCs together, a small guideline for more complex challenges would have been nice to see.

I also would have loved perhaps a reaction-guideline for two-timing or cheating/jealousy - as written, there is not much consequence here and all those less pleasant components are left to the GM. While this in no way impedes an otherwise nice applied take on the relationship-rules (one that I hope will be expanded further by more relationship-pdfs!), it results in me feeling a certain lack when reading this pdf. hence, my final verdict will "only" clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.


3/5

The big thing to note about Imperial Relationships is that there are a lot of terms and functions that make zero sense unless you're using Ultimate Relationships. Because of this my previously review of Ultimate Relationships applies here and will change once I'm done with this review as I review these PDFs as one entity. I could gripe long and hard about how these two should have been one product but I'm going to assume that Ultimate Relationships was meant to be able to apply to more adventures than Imperial Relationships. I also won't let that reflect on both reviews and they will share the same star rating.

In case you weren't around from my initial impression of Ultimate Relationships: "I wasn't too thrilled with this.

From the description I expected a more robust way to use Ultimate Campaign's relationship subsystem or a simpler way to do it. But overall I felt that the rules inside were more complex without enough benefit to use it as opposed to the relationship rules in Ultimate Campaign. It also seems to mostly function within the context of an adventure path meaning it takes some work and guessing to do this with a module or homebrew campaign. "

Now that still kind of holds true with the addition of Imperial Relationships. The key thing I'm missing is what ranks mean in the context of any game, meanwhile Ultimate Campaign grants examples and defines what each relationship score range means and defines them beyond numbers. How this changes with Imperial Relationships is that you are granted examples via 3 NPCs that define for themselves what each rank means. For the purposes of those three NPCs this is actually extremely useful as a plug in for certain adventure paths, and for those APs I would consider using it. Buuuuut that only goes so far for me. Its only three NPCs I don't like the new relationship rules for use outside those NPCs for being more complicated and having less defined numbers than the relationship rules that appear in Ultimate Campaign. If you're running 'Certain APs' I think Imperial Relationships and Ultimate Relationships will make it more interesting than it normally is so I gotta give an extra star rank because it is useful in it's plug in context. But it's at a price of a fiddly new version of an existing subsystem so I'm knocking both books down to three stars and both PDFs are being ignored until I need to plug it in to 'Certain APs'.


A Great Supplement for role-playing

5/5

This is a review for 'Imperial Relationship', a supplement by Legendary Games, my first review ever. I'm not a native speaker (I'm German), so I may have fumbled my language skill checks from time to time. Give me a note if I wrote something wrong and I'll try to make myself more clear.

Imperial Relationships has a short introduction and about 3 pages for four NPCs, so you'll get about 13 pages of information with some nice pics (and a cover and so on on top).

I'll start my review with the not-perfect parts.

First of all, Imperial Relationships needs Ultimate Relationships (also by Legendary Games) to fully function, for Ultimate Relationships gives the groundwork Imperial Relationships builds on, so plan to add this to the costs. Ultimat Relationships is good on its own though, so thats no real problem aside from the price tag.

Second, Imperial Relationships is meant for the Jade Regent AP and describes the four main NPCs the party knows from the beginning, but sadly none of those they meet later on, though I hope there'll be more material at one time for the other NPCs who may or may not join the caravan at a later stage, like the viking in Brinewall or Aeysha, the girl that the PCs may rescue in the 'Road to Destiny' supplement, also by Legendary Games.

Third, even with both Ultimate and Imperial Relationship you'll have to look through some of the material in the Adventure Path to fully get everything together, thats because the rights of the names and some other rights lay by Paizo and not Legendary. You can understand most of the references like Destined Empress really easy, though trying to circumvent the word 'Szarni' for Sandru is amusing to read. There is some stuff about the four NPCs in the Character part of 'Brinewall legacy' and in the 'Relationsship score'-parts of the original material that I guess Legendary Games wasn't allowed to copy, so you'll have to add this to the characters, but that's no problem with a little bit of work.

On to the good things:

Imperial Relationship (and Ultimate Relationship) is so good you may want to buy it even if you don't plan on ever playing the Jade Regent Adventure Path. It helps you to flesh out important NPCs, I plan to use the ideas for my oncoming mastering of Slumbering Tsar, which has nothing to do with Jade Regent or caravans whatsoever.

Imperial Relationships strenghtens the interest in the NPCs, strenghten role playing, and encourages a friendly race to reach and master the 'Breakthroughs' with the various NPCs. When my group leveled up, they always had a look at their notes regarding the NPCs while doing the skill points. 'If I put something into this skill, it will help me with Koya... ' was something I liked hearing behind my screen. And getting through the first breaktrough with Shalelu, a real tough nut to crack, was celebrated like the win against a boss monster.

Thoughts about improving the material:

I'd add Aeysha Villani (out of Region F in 'Road to Destiny' which fills the hole in the trip to Brinewall, where Legendary has the full legal rights) as an example, either for free as advertising or inside Ultimate Relationship to promote Imperial relationships, since without Imperial Relationships I had troubles comprehending Ultimat Relationships, and this may frighten away customers from this real good product.
I would also have liked to see one enemy as an example for the 'other side' of relationsships fleshed out, maybe Ranulfr from 'Road to Destiny' would be a nice example for the same reasons as Aeysha.

Conclusion:

If you like role playing you'll want to get your hands on this supplement (and its 'mother' Ultimate Relationships), even if you don't plan to play Jade Regent, its that good, even if the price tag is a bit high.
I hope there will be additional material for all the other NPCs who may join the caravan, and maybe also for the enemies of the party.

Have fun!


Webstore Gninja Minion

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Now available!

Liberty's Edge

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MINE AT LAST !!!


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This is really neat, I'm already part way through running Jade Regent and don't want to upset the relationship rules already established, i was able to take the ideas presented in this document and oever lay them on top of what I was already doing to create much more depth and personality to the main 4 NPS's from this AP.


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Huh, one of the most popular items in the online store right now and yet no one seems to be commenting on it?

Can anyone please give us a rundown on what you get with this PDF?


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You get the 4 key Far Eastern Adventure Path NPCs, with boons, affinity notes, gifts and interactions, and then 10 rank ups each, which allow you to explore the NPC's feelings and backstory and feel like you're really becoming closer to that NPC, not just gaining a bunch of points. They follow the rules for Ultimate Relationships and are thus also a really good example of those rules even if you're not running a Far Eastern Adventure Path and just want to see examples to help you in your own campaign.

Shadow Lodge

Are you guys doing another in this line to discuss some of the other NPCs that appear in the later books in the Jade Regent line?


doc the grey wrote:
Are you guys doing another in this line to discuss some of the other NPCs that appear in the later books in the Jade Regent line?

Actually, I'm working on some of those right now! I'm really excited about the possibilities for using them both in a Far Eastern AP or even in a separate home game. I hope people will like them enough to allow me to continue until you guys have them all!

Shadow Lodge

K, well I can say I think the system is tally intriguing and wasn't too see more. With both books in hand the system seems to be really cool and the examples presented in imperial relationships helps make it a lot easier to start building your own versions of those progressions or insert them into your own campaign for another character.

All that being said I really wish that this book and Ultimate Relationships could have been combined into one book. I feel like the later could have really benefited from having working examples right next to the rules rather than having to buy a whole separate book.


doc the grey wrote:

K, well I can say I think the system is tally intriguing and wasn't too see more. With both books in hand the system seems to be really cool and the examples presented in imperial relationships helps make it a lot easier to start building your own versions of those progressions or insert them into your own campaign for another character.

All that being said I really wish that this book and Ultimate Relationships could have been combined into one book. I feel like the later could have really benefited from having working examples right next to the rules rather than having to buy a whole separate book.

We were this close to that, and it was my initial project idea, but the thing is, the way we did it, people who aren't running a Far Eastern AP are more likely to be able to notice and enjoy the new rule subsystem than if the whole thing was Imperial, and with 4 Far Eastern examples, it couldn't have all been Ultimate Relationships. The only option turned out to be the split.


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As I mentioned in the Ultimate Relationships thread, thank you to everyone who made Imperial Relationships a part of your game! I'm working on a series of minis that can be generally be retooled to fit in your campaign but particularly cover characters you might meet in a Far Eastern campaign. It's your interest, as expressed by talking about the product, buying it, and leaving reviews that help inspire me to get more of these out there!

~Mark


Any suggestions for how to implement this new system in an already-running game?

the details:
I'm running Jade Regent for a six-player party already half-way through the Hungry Storms. Two late-comers decided to be Ameiko and Sandru, so they are no longer NPCs. The relationship scores kinda fell apart somwhere after the Road to Destiny plug-in. I think they might really like this new system though but how to implement it? Help!


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Given that you only have two NPCs to worry about, one possibility is that you could have your PCs do a retrospective / flashback episode for those two NPCs, wherein you take the campaign so far milestone by milestone and retcon a bunch of conversations. Another possibility is to just treat those Part 1 NPCs as Part 3 NPCs for the purpose of CP needed (thus lowering the number of CP needed to rank up) and just carry on as normal. That could be your easiest bet. Cheers!


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Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Another possibility is to just treat those Part 1 NPCs as Part 3 NPCs for the purpose of CP needed (thus lowering the number of CP needed to rank up) and just carry on as normal. That could be your easiest bet. Cheers!

That is effortless. Thank you. It's probably a testament to how robust this system is that that answer comes so quickly.

EDIT: I can't wait to get to see the same treatment for Vaylenchek and Ulf. Vaylenchek especially needs some romance.


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Dustin Ashe wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Another possibility is to just treat those Part 1 NPCs as Part 3 NPCs for the purpose of CP needed (thus lowering the number of CP needed to rank up) and just carry on as normal. That could be your easiest bet. Cheers!
That is effortless. Thank you. It's probably a testament to how robust this system is that that answer comes so quickly.

I needed a system for my home game that worked with the fact that there are currently roughly 30 relationship links available at each milestone, and 6 PCs, and I wrote it all out more carefully to release to you guys with this book (and URel). If it's flexible enough to work for that without causing my head to explode, it makes it easier for me to bend it to handle queries like yours!


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I hope we'll soon get Imperial Relationships II with all the other NPCs for Jade Regent. The first installment really adds lots of depth to the whole Adventure Path. Keep on your great work!

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

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Thanks for the great review Oliver! Mark has been busy with some other projects, but we are hoping to get rolling again with some follow-ups to Imperial Relationships later this month or early May.


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Reviewed firs on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS and d20pfsrd.com's shop.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games

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In honor of the release of our new Ultimate Relationships series, we are delighted to make Imperial Relationships our TWO$DAY 2-dollar product of the week at the Legendary Games webstore!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Reviewed!

So. Damn. Good.


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Chemlak wrote:

Reviewed!

So. Damn. Good.

Oh man, thanks for the great review!

Of note for anyone wondering (I was, for instance), I checked and Imperial Relationships is considered part of the Ultimate Relationships family of products for the 50% off sale on Legendary's site!


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ummm...is there any way to buy this my google-fu is failing me and it says unavailable here i can only find "ultimate relationships" I've just started book 5 of Hell's Vengeance and the group would like to do Jade REgent but are afraid of the terri-bad caravan system and this seems like a really cool idea and possibly a replacemet (i still dont fully understand)

Sovereign Court

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Why is it unaivalable now ? I would understand a physical product, but a .pdf ??

Liberty's Edge

Maybe try on Legendary Games website.

I think it is a matter of commercial agreements, not of overall product availability.

Paizo Employee

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Stereofm wrote:
Why is it unaivalable now ? I would understand a physical product, but a .pdf ??

Legendary Games delisted their entire Far East product line. Blog explaining the situation here.


Ssalarn wrote:
Stereofm wrote:
Why is it unaivalable now ? I would understand a physical product, but a .pdf ??
Legendary Games delisted their entire Far East product line. Blog explaining the situation here.

The right call.

Liberty's Edge

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keftiu wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Stereofm wrote:
Why is it unaivalable now ? I would understand a physical product, but a .pdf ??
Legendary Games delisted their entire Far East product line. Blog explaining the situation here.
The right call.

A bit rough though for this here product. And I guess we will never get those for Suishen now ;-;


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

That's a pretty fair point, given how tightly this product ties into Ultimate Relationships and is almost required to make URel work, plus with this being a plug-in for existing AP characters, it might not fall foul of the cultural sensitivity issues that made LG pull the Far East line (a decision I wholeheartedly support, btw).

The most significant problem is that it's probably not a huge seller, so the cost of a cultural sensitivity review might be beyond the value this product has to LG.

Given how much I love this product and the value it adds to URel, I will see if I can have words with the relevant parties and come to some sort of conclusion.

Marketing & Media Manager

If you’re seeing racism then flag it and move on please. This product is unavailable for a reason. We’ve clearly stated intolerance is not welcome here. This is not a place to discuss, debate or argue about the decision to make the product unavailable. I don’t have Moderation authority, so I will request that this thread be closed, internally.

Customer Service Representative

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I am locking this thread. There is nothing to be gained by bickering over this. When the publisher says they should have thought about the impact of the product, and offers up an apology for it, you might want to reflect on that a bit more before jumping on here defending something that was delisted with good reason.

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