I’m working on a Solo RPG supplement around modeling relationships with NPCs, it’s meant to be genre/system-agnostic so that it’s not tied to any specific setting or ruleset per se. It’s just something that could be used alongside other games if a player wanted to include a companion NPC (romantic, platonic, business, whatever) in their game and work out how that NPC might behave in different scenarios, or provide different prompts for random events or different factors that might affect how two characters relate to each other. In a weird way, it’s trying to gameify or abstract out 1-on-1 character relationships (PC to NPC).

I was kind of just throwing the idea out here for feedback and ideas on what other factors I might consider when trying something as stupid weird as trying to model human relationships? As this is mostly intended for solo RPGs (though it could be used in multiplayer RPGs), I’m not trying to overcomplicate things, alot of things in Solo RPGs are left open and to the discretion of the player, but it can be helpful to have an unbiased set of Oracles to help with generating ideas the player can react to.

The general idea is kind of weird to me, even attempting to model something as crazy and convoluted and messy as human relationships just seems like an exercise in futility, but I figured I’d try it anyways for the challenge. The closest thing I can think of that’s similar to this is a “dating simulator”, but in my mind that’s not really the point of this, this is more a general storytelling tool that helps create potential plot points or drive character development. Most RPGs tend to focus more on action & adventure, while kind of ignoring social interactions.

Currently, the basic mechanic I’m going with is that the relationship status exists in two different ranges: Current Mood and Relationship Level. Current Mood is a short-term reading on the relationship (5 steps, from ‘Very Negative’ to ‘Very Positive’), while Relationship Level is the overall state of the relationship between characters, (10-steps ranging from ‘Hatred’ to ‘Love’). Individual actions/events push the Mood up or down, which if it reaches either end of the spectrum (1 or 5) and goes past either of those numbers, it pushes the Relationship Level up or down a level. So even if the Current Mood is ‘Very negative’, the overall Relationship level might still be high, it just indicates a rough patch, while conversely, just because you have a good day in a shitty relationship, doesn’t mean everything is gravy.

After that, many of the other tables are a series of Oracles that help determine NPC character elements, like a supplemental character generator for determining personality, appearance, beliefs, quirks, sexuality, and other non-mechanical factors. There’s also randomized Oracles similar to Ironsworn Action/Theme tables or even topics of conversation and the general disposition of the conversation.