Entanglements

Games Wulin
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Placeholder topic for Entanglement discussions. Have at!

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I’m shopping around for a PC candidate for:

General: I have discovered my friend _____ has been consorting with _____ from an enemy clan.

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If I can’t find takers for this, I’ll take offers for another entanglement that another player wants to pitch!

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Update: taken

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@Dave Maybe something that ties into your agenda “Show how wisdom provides solutions.” So maybe one of the ones like “Someone has betrayed X, but they won’t believe me”

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So I’ve a basic story entanglement with my father, Zheng, who, having been hired/dragooned by Lord Aoshi to be his court chef, has saddled me with this quest.

That’s kind of a one-dimensional (me and him), not involving any PCs.

I took a look at the existing Entanglements, and Silent Sun seems to have the fewest, so in the interest of addressing that, I propose:

I promised my friend father Zheng that I would aid the troublemaker Sun.

That begs the question of why my father would ask this of me, esp. if framed in that fashion. Protected from what or whom? If Father is working for Aoshi, is there something that Sun has done to endear him to the lord? Or, conversely, to draw his ire, and thus, out of resentment for his state, my father’s desire to then see Sun protected? Is there some tie in there to his wife, Su Wen, or her family? (What if Kai Ling, sister-in-law to Lord Aoshi, were also sister of Su Ning, Sun’s erstwhile mother-in-law?)

Anyway, that’s my suggestion, @garrett, if that works for you. If not, I’d be happy to Entangle with you in some other fashion.

Thanks for the idea, @fragolakat … that Agenda/Study area is interesting, since my character concept is not nearly as wise and dispassionate as the rest of the playbook seems to assume (I’m leaning into the skilled/trained/knowledgeable side of it, rather than the wise and contemplative side).

For me, then, that agenda item reads, “Show how knowing how to cook a great meal provides solutions.”

In the course of analyzing where adding an Entanglement made most sense, I fleshed out the notes on the NPC page to reflect the defined Entanglements further.

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Zheng knows what’s up with Su Wen, probably knows who Silent Sun is, and knows Sun is risking a couple lives to come back here to help Su Wen out with whatever she asked him back for. So yeah, sounds good to me.

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I like this!

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I think that was the last of the outstanding Entanglements. Thanks, folks!

I would like some discussion, next time around, no doubt aided by the relationship chart Mike is putting together, of sort of what our daily lives (and interactions) look like. While we certainly have melodrama a-plenty already, I want to have a sense of the status quo before something starts (or accelerates) all the falling dominoes. That may be as simple as a once-around-the-table “So what does your day look like today … so far?”

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I put together a really quick one and let me tell you, James’ assessment that “all roads lead to Zemin” is not wrong.

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graph TD
Zemin --- Lei
Zemin --- Shu
Zemin --- Zhi
Zemin --- PengLan
Zemin --- Sun
Zemin --- Bao
Zemin --- KungGunlan

Lei --- Bao

PengLan --- KungGunlan
PengLan --- Zhi
PengLan --- Shu

Shu --- SuWen
Shu --- PengLan
Shu --- Zhi
Sun --- SuWen
Sun --- Shu
Sun --- DanTiao
Zemin --- DanTiao
Zheng --- Sun

Bao --- Zheng
Bao --- Sun
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A slightly less all-over-the-place version of the graph with full names. Also, Sky Daughter Shu has the second most connections after Zemin.

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This also lets us know Su Wen and Two Handed Zhi are both going to be important figures in the game (since each has connections to three PCs). Also, Zheng and Su Wen have the distinction of being the only two names Zemin doesn’t have some connection to.

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You stay away from my wife

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I believe that an in-character version of that statement is exactly why Zemin has no connection to Su Wen.

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Just in case we needed an even more complicated relationship map…

PCs & NPCs diagram
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The angry-looking-measel circles are to mark relationships where someone may be dealing with Inner Conflict. If they happen where two lines cross, the crossed lines are WHY there’s a problem.

If lines cross and there’s no marker, the crossover doesn’t mean anything.

Red lines are blood relations or marriage.
Pinks are various kinds of physical relationships or romance.
Oranges are where it might come to blows.
Purple is probably unrequited sad-factories.
Black or blue is just… a relationship or loyalty.

Dotted lines implies it’s not out in the open, not widely known, or generally impermanent.

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I have put a copy of this into the spreadsheet, because God knows I’ll be looking at it frequently. :slight_smile:

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Great tracking. Only three issues I see.

  1. Sky Daughter Shu’s relationship with Su Wen is complicated because of both her belief that Peng Lan and Su Wen were lovers in a past life and also Su Wen’s status as Silent Sun’s wife. So all four of those folks lines should meet in a messy tangle.

  2. At my eyes just not great or is the line between Zemin and Kung Gunlan red? It’s hard to tell because if it is pink then (I think) it’s the only solid pink line anywhere here. Which just says a lot.

  3. Zemin’s relationship with Dan Tiao is what complicates Silent Sun’s relation with Tiao. But with them all in different quadrants of the chart, I can see how representing this could be messy.

Also, what do the arrows represent?

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Yeah basically I just couldn’t get all the right lines to cross all the time, so I just marked problem lines on their own, if they didn’t cross. It should only be an inner-conflict-rolling entanglement for the owner, though, which is what I was marking.

  1. At my eyes just not great or is the line between Zemin and Kung Gunlan red? It’s hard to tell because if it is pink then (I think) it’s the only solid pink line anywhere here. Which just says a lot.

It’s a darker pink, to show it’s an actual relationship that’s being acted on physically. There’s only one other line like it, and it’s dotted, so it doesn’t show up as well.

  1. Zemin’s relationship with Dan Tiao is what complicates Silent Sun’s relation with Tiao. But with them all in different quadrants of the chart, I can see how representing this could be messy.

yeah I just flagged the lines of the person who ‘owns’ that entanglement - as I read it, it’ll only force inner conflict for the person who ‘owns’ the entanglement.

Also, what do the arrows represent?

Directions a relationship flows. whoever it’s pointed AT is theoretically more invested IN than invested personally. In a case where it was even or unknown, I did double arrows or just left it.

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Got it. Thought it might be difficult to represent all these with a single relationship chart that wasn’t character centric (as in, only representing one character’s relationships with all the other characters) and it appears it very much is so.

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For sure. My goal is mostly to give a pretty broad overview, with some tickler-reminders when we venture close to something that would trigger Inner Conflict.

It’s going to get more complicated, because we’ve got some other town ‘lords’ that haven’t been created yet. I wanted to save some as blanks.

The only real problem I can see with the current social landscape is we don’t have many women. I’m considering redoing at least the garrison commander, and I need to work some stuff out for the various martial art styles in the area and some of those potential factions.

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