RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Would it be possible to put up the update on the Legendary website for those who have bought it there? Currently I cannot even access the original PDF that I bought there.
Send me an email at makeyourgamelegendary@gmail.com and I'll send you the updated file.
Revised Review done!
I've added a fair amount to the detail, and removed one of my gripes and replaced it with another. Overall the rating remains the same for this - 4 stars.
For me it could get a full 5, if there were detailed examples - it wouldn't even need a fully fleshed-out NPC, just an example normal rank, an example breakthrough rank, and a few thought-prompting situations that could be used as milestones. Everything else is so brilliantly detailed it doesn't need any more.
Updated to reflect the changes made. For 2 bucks, I consider this pretty much the epitome of a nice, self-contained system.
Nice to see that last star on your review, Endy!
Combined with Mark's input on this thread, I would have given it 5 myself, but I can't quite get over Milestones (super-picky of me, and Mark's been so brilliant about engaging on it that I feel quite guilty to stick with 4 stars myself).
This is a solid product, extremely useful, and it gets a huge recommendation from me as the go-to guide on having interesting and dynamic NPC relationships, it's just not quite perfect.
I absolutely get your reasoning, Chem! I was oscillating between your stance and the one I settled on and used my review on Incantations for Zombie Sky Press from back in the day as a guideline - another 2-buck self-contained system. For consistency's sake, I ended up upgrading the verdict all the way, but if that hadn't been a precedence for consistency's sake, I may have ended up with your stance. Anyways, I enjoy reading your well-reasoned reviews! :D
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Got plenty more in the works (mostly LG stuff, it seems), just need to get in the right mood. Planning to do Imperial Relationships next, just to round this product off, then squeeze the individual UR minis in between more Mythic Monsters, and see what else I've got on my shelves.
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I also think that having an expansion for the "Kingbreaker" AP would be a fantastic idea. I incorporated Dudemeister's Venture Capital modifications and one of the deals that the players took to gain extra BP was that they had to agree that any of the PCs who were kingdom leaders had to be married. One of my players had managed to get the hand of one of the daughters from a minor branch of House Lebeda (I broke down the Houses so that there was the Main House and then a bunch of smaller Branch Houses that shared the same last name but served to accumulate wealth and prestige as a tithe to the Main House; that way players can still do political deals with the Noble Houses but without being directly debted or mired by the civil war politics of Brevoy). That still leaves me with 2 PCs and one GM-controlled PC to arrange marriages for. And they want the journey itself to be memorable.
Hence why I like these products, :)
Cheers!
CB out.
With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...
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It's a cost-benefit thing, which from the comments Mark has made makes it a tough call.
It takes a long time to do a full relationship write-up for a single NPC. I've managed it for a few, and it pays off at the table, but from LG's perspective, they have to balance sales against Mark's freelancer cost, development, art, layout, and a few dozen other things, and if a product doesn't sell (and unfortunately it looks like the singles just don't sell very well), there's not likely to be more in the series.
Personally, I'd love to see some generic NPCs, as well as ones from the Righteous Crusade AP, and I'm more likely to buy collections than I am singles, but I can't begrudge Mark and Jason making business decisions based on past sales experience.
Thus my desire to do whatever I can to make this particular line of products keep going.
It's a cost-benefit thing, which from the comments Mark has made makes it a tough call.
It takes a long time to do a full relationship write-up for a single NPC. I've managed it for a few, and it pays off at the table, but from LG's perspective, they have to balance sales against Mark's freelancer cost, development, art, layout, and a few dozen other things, and if a product doesn't sell (and unfortunately it looks like the singles just don't sell very well), there's not likely to be more in the series.
Personally, I'd love to see some generic NPCs, as well as ones from the Righteous Crusade AP, and I'm more likely to buy collections than I am singles, but I can't begrudge Mark and Jason making business decisions based on past sales experience.
Thus my desire to do whatever I can to make this particular line of products keep going.
Yup. The secret for GMs with this system is that you don't have to do all the work of detailing all 10 ranks right away; just figure out the overall arc and then keep yourself ahead of the PCs' interest in the NPC (or perhaps challenge yourself on the fly and don't come up with the overall arc even). This allowed me to have 54+ of these for my home game without expending impossible amounts of effort, since most of them the PCs didn't pursue very far. But the "First Rule of Dungeoncraft" method doesn't work for a published product, and making one of these that's really thoughtful and expresses the NPC's personality takes a while.
@Sales stuff: That's almost entirely right (the other discussion of that has been in the Cassisian Detective thread). One difference is that Legendary usually actually works with royalties rather than rates, if you're wondering about why I said the low sales led to personal burnout for me on finishing the later singles, rather than it leading to someone at Legendary being hesitant on ordering more. Without getting into numbers, I will say that the singles take me generally longer per word than most things I write and have by last check made if I recall somewhere around 10x less per word than my usual per-word rate (Compare to the main UR which has made more than my usual per-word rate; so lots of people are excited about the system, they just haven't been buying the singles). So assuming synergy from having more options out there cancelled out fatigue (which is most likely being generous), it would take 10 of the singles to equal the main rules. Now, that was before this new sale, and the number is always slowly increasing, so things might change, and I will say I'm thrilled by the reception to these main rules!
Ah, I wasn't sure which pay method LG used (should have guessed, though). Thanks for the insight, Mark.
I am, as you might have guessed, hugely enthusiastic about these rules, and want to see more examples (I think it's fair to say that the rank-ups you've generated are an order of magnitude more thoughtful and creative than my own ideas).
If it's not too much to ask, where does Imperial Relationships fit into this discussion? It's superb, and raises the question of singles versus compilations (with a side-order of DO NOT BURN YOURSELF OUT for good measure).
Ah, I wasn't sure which pay method LG used (should have guessed, though). Thanks for the insight, Mark.
I am, as you might have guessed, hugely enthusiastic about these rules, and want to see more examples (I think it's fair to say that the rank-ups you've generated are an order of magnitude more thoughtful and creative than my own ideas).
If it's not too much to ask, where does Imperial Relationships fit into this discussion? It's superb, and raises the question of singles versus compilations (with a side-order of DO NOT BURN YOURSELF OUT for good measure).
Imperial is in between, but considering it released alongside UltRel as the only source of UltRel-style NPC write-ups at the time, I'd expect it to have a bump. It also involved four NPCs that people would be extremely likely to want to use with relationship rules and had some other differences.
Thanks so much for the kind words and for the review of ImpRel (I'll probably talk about it more in the ImpRel thread)!
With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...
I will say that, if we do find a way to keep doing these, two of the NPCs in my archives, while I wrote them for my Far Eastern home game, are perfect for a Winter AP
Always a pleasure, Mark, and as I've said elsewhere, each one of these NPCs gives me great ideas for NPCs in my home campaign, which is probably why I'm constantly harping on about generic NPC UltRel write-ups (if only it wasn't so hard to persuade my players to have their characters get to know NPCs, but that's another matter entirely). I'm also hugely aware of the effort involved, and you'd need compelling characters, background, and a whole host of other things before even getting to the UltRel stuff.
I really want this to be a going concern as a product line, because it provides something for GMs that can be tough to manage at times: good, developing relationships with NPCs.
With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...I will say that, if we do find a way to keep doing these, two of the NPCs in my archives, while I wrote them for my Far Eastern home game, are perfect for a Winter AP
** spoiler omitted **
Oooohhhh....
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...I will say that, if we do find a way to keep doing these, two of the NPCs in my archives, while I wrote them for my Far Eastern home game, are perfect for a Winter AP
** spoiler omitted **
Nice. Both of those sound pretty neat. :)
Always a pleasure, Mark, and as I've said elsewhere, each one of these NPCs gives me great ideas for NPCs in my home campaign, which is probably why I'm constantly harping on about generic NPC UltRel write-ups (if only it wasn't so hard to persuade my players to have their characters get to know NPCs, but that's another matter entirely). I'm also hugely aware of the effort involved, and you'd need compelling characters, background, and a whole host of other things before even getting to the UltRel stuff.
I really want this to be a going concern as a product line, because it provides something for GMs that can be tough to manage at times: good, developing relationships with NPCs.
A few of the NPCs I made up for my home game of a Far Eastern AP would be even more generically useful, though I believe that all three relationship singles in the Ultimate Relationships line so far are usable in a wide range of games (the least generically usable is probably the Viking Shieldmaiden, even though she isn't actually a Far Eastern character herself).
If the current format of sample relationships doesn't pan out...well, as an alternative, what about general relationship toolkits for themes? Milestones, boons, etc. for piratey, viking, far eastern, varisian, urban, horror, kingdom building campaigns, for example (with, perhaps, nods to when in Skull & Shackles they'd be appropriate). You know, thematic expansions? They'd still retain usefulness for APs and have a broader appeal for people not using APs? Since the base system sells well, perhaps taking the focus from the particular into the broad may be an option. Just an idea, of course!
If the current format of sample relationships doesn't pan out...well, as an alternative, what about general relationship toolkits for themes? Milestones, boons, etc. for piratey, viking, far eastern, varisian, urban, horror, kingdom building campaigns, for example (with, perhaps, nods to when in Skull & Shackles they'd be appropriate). You know, thematic expansions? They'd still retain usefulness for APs and have a broader appeal for people not using APs? Since the base system sells well, perhaps taking the focus from the particular into the broad may be an option. Just an idea, of course!
Hmm. That's an interesting idea. Off-hand, I don't think that would work. Each character is different based on that character's story and personality, and so I don't think generic milestones without characters in mind would be fully possible. You could list a skill and a DC, but UR itself tells you how to calculate those DCs, and the main thing is you couldn't really have the character bio information and breakthroughs. I try to write products that I would be excited to use for my games, and it's the human element of these NPCs that really make me excited about the ones I've written so far. It's probably not surprising that the base system is going to have to sell at least somewhat better than the products that use it (since you need the base system to use them, so it has to be more), and part of it might simply be a factor of rules systems and subsystems selling more than worked-out examples because not as many GMs are confident that they can create a new system from scratch as are confident they can use the system to create stuff themselves. It's interesting, and it does show that splitting Ultimate and Imperial Relationships (at one point way way back it was a single product, and back even before that when I first imagined it, before I worked at Paizo or had the idea picked up by Legendary, I even had the insane idea to have the whole UR line as one enormous compilation product with the rules and the 50+ relationships) was a really good idea, even though it leaves UR without any worked-out examples.
With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...I will say that, if we do find a way to keep doing these, two of the NPCs in my archives, while I wrote them for my Far Eastern home game, are perfect for a Winter AP
** spoiler omitted **
Oh I would love to see the one about
Oh I would love to see the one about ** spoiler omitted **. Especially if they're based on the one from what I still think of as 'the Baba Yaga AP'. I liked that one and I long hoped someone among the 3rd party publishers would do more with the character.With your Winter AP line starting up (two products, anxiously waiting on more...), any updates on the possibility/timeline for a Winter Relationships book...I will say that, if we do find a way to keep doing these, two of the NPCs in my archives, while I wrote them for my Far Eastern home game, are perfect for a Winter AP
** spoiler omitted **
You could definitely use it there, but you'd need to add in a plot element to cover the source of the malaise.
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I think Endzeitgeists idea is really, really good.
Doesn´t need to be fleshed out for every single character, but something more along guidelines and examples as well as providing good mechanics goes a long way.
Other APs and adventures can then be used with it and GMs and players can put in some own stuff.
I would certainly like that and know some gaming groups who could make use of it.
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?
Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.
Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better basic framework to use for P3 or P4 style social links in a Persona game.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better basic framework to use for P3 or P4 style social links in a Persona game.Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
And Persona 5 ;)
With that in mind, how to surprise my players. They are fans of the franchise, but I don't want to reveal its a Persona game until their shadows appear.
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I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better basic framework to use for P3 or P4 style social links in a Persona game.Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
And Persona 5 ;)
With that in mind, how to surprise my players. They are fans of the franchise, but I don't want to reveal its a Persona game until their shadows appear.
I don't have a PS4, but I have followed up on P5 enough to know that the system has changed but not enough to know how much it changed, so I didn't want to assert it worked for P5 without proof. If it does, even more awesome!
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I added a review for Ultimate Relationships. Please continue generating NPCs for it! Please!!