Trainer:
A Trainer is someone who can provide professional training in no more than three skills. Depending on the type of Trainer, the sorts of skills available may be limited.. A trainer may derive her income from training people (e.g. Martial Arts Instructor) or they may simply be an active professional who has agreed to train you on the side (ex. your neighbor that is in Army). Trainers require fair compensation for their services. Specialized skills like electronics repair are most likely going to cost a lot more to train than mundane ones like fishing.
Patron:
A Patron is someone who supports you financially. They provide a fixed income payment to the character in exchange for some kind of reciprocal obligation. Larger income payments require larger obligations in return. A patronage could be as simple as a retail job or as complex as a vassalage. If your character has a job, it must be reflected as Patronage by an employer. The income payment may be in monetary units or in goods and services. The GM must approve the relationship before you can begin play.
Retainer:
A Retainer is someone that you are paying in order to secure their services. If they accompany you in your travels, they should be paid a sum commensurate to the tasks they are performing and the risks that they are exposed to. Classic retainer concepts include the mercenary soldier, the travel guide, the squire, or the shield bearer. However, sometimes you may not want them to travel with you but instead stay in a single location and perform a task. For example, you might want a fletcher (producer) to be on contract making arrows specifically for you in a nearby town. You provide him a steady income and he is a reliable source of arrows for you. The possibilities are endless. The size of your payments should correspond to the value of the services rendered. A retainer can refuse to follow orders that they feel they are not being paid enough to carry out (e.g. suicidal charge into enemy ranks). The GM must approve the relationship before you can begin play.
Ally:
An Ally is someone who has a strong personal loyalty to the character. In most respects, allies are similar to a
Retainer. However, instead of being paid in proportion to the risks taken, allies are entitled to pay, treasure, or other proceeds as if they were another member of the party. Furthermore, they should not be ordered around or treated like inferiors. They are, for all practical purposes, simply additional party members. The GM must approve the relationship before you can begin play.
Contact:
A Contact is someone who provides you with information. You must pay for the information you recieve and the information will be limited by the nature of the contact. For example, Military contacts will be limited to information related to their role as members of the military. Unless the military is fighting crime or engaged in black-market dealings, that military contact should not know anything about the criminal underworld.
Relationship Trainer +0 Patron +0 Retainer +5 Ally +5 Contact + Favor + Hospitality + Resource +0 Ancestor +0 Family - Friend - Lover - Rival * Enemy * Debt *
Favor:
A Favor is someone who owes you a limited debt that cannot be repaid through money. Favors can function as
Allies, Contacts, or Resources. The character can decide what function they will serve when the time comes to call in the debt, so they have a great deal of flexibility. However, after you’ve called in a limited number of favors, the debt is repaid and the Favor must be removed from your character sheet. The GM must approve the relationship before you can begin play.
Hospitality:
A Hospitality relationship is with a person who can provide you shelter and basic supplies in times of extreme need. This might be a local priest who can hide you in his church, an outlaw who lets you stay at his camp, or a local merchant who lets you sleep above his shop. These services and supplies are provided free of charge, but if restitution is not eventually paid in some way, the relationship should decay.
Resource:
A Resource is someone who functions as a secure connection to a particular type of good or service. Unlike if they were a Retainer, you are one of many customers. You simply have a secure access point for this resource and do not have to waste time looking for a vendor. Depending on the nature of what is being purchased, this may make them an illicit or legitimate individual. An illicit resource could be a criminal who provides the services of a fence or sells contraband goods like drugs or weapons. It could be a member of the military selling weapons on the side, a politician accepting bribes in return for favors, a psychiatrist selling controlled substances, or a slave trader operating in an emancipated area. A legitimate resource could be an owner of a legally operated gun store, a quality blacksmith that you have a rapport with, or a translator you know will accept small payments for limited translations. Illicit connections are inherently more difficult to contact than legtimiate one’s due to the secret nature of their lifestyle, unless they live in a society rife with corruption.
Ancestor:
An Ancestor is a deceased relative who can provide basic access to a skill that is related to their type. In practical terms, an ancestor can give you the ability to take a single skill up to amateur level despite lacking the life
experience prerequisite. For example, a military ancestor could provide access to the sword skill up to amateur level despite the character lacking combat training. Some skills have minimum attribute prerequisites (ex. most academic skills require a high Cognition) and Ancestors cannot bypass this requirement. You can take this for a
Skill which you get at amateur level through your Culture. In that case, you start with the skill at trained level.
Family:
A Family relationship is a partnership based on mutual obligation. A family member can function as any
relationship worth or more points, but carries with it a strong obligation of loyalty and assistance. Your parents might be providing you with income as a kind of Patron, but you would have a strong obligation to assist them in a wide range of tasks and could possibly be ordered around slightly. Your uncle might be a kind of trainer whom you would feel obligated to help out because he is down on his luck. A family relationship is a cheap way to gain access to a lot of things, but be careful to not drown yourself in obligations. A family relationship does not necessarily have to be someone you are technically related to. It may include extremely close friends that are might as well be family members.
Friend:
A Friend relationship is generally the same as a Family relationship, but it is more fragile to maintain and the obligations it carries are weaker. Friendships require more maintenance than Family relationships, since the bond is based purely on association without any blood ties. You also should have a harder time getting a friend to help you with a serious problem than getting a family member.
Lover:
A Lover is an extreme form of friend. Such relationships require a large expediture of time and energy to
maintain, but in turn provide a near perfect alignment of interests. A lover will do nearly anything for you, if you are keeping the love alive. A lover that is ignored or scorned may be developed into a Rival or Enemy by the GM.
Rival:
A Rival is a low-intensity foe who is not actively attempting to attack the character. This might be a local aristocrat whose childhood boyfriend was stolen by the character and any time she gets a chance to foil the character she will take it, however she does not actively chase down the character to do her harm. The GM will probably place the rival in a position to block your progress. For example, if you need special approval to access the royal vault to look for a particular item, that aristocrat will probably be the royal treasurer. This makes your gameplay experience more challenging. Unlike most other relationships, which cost Connection points, Rivals give you connection points to spend on other connections because their net effect is negative. They exist precisely to foil your character. A Rivalry gives you an amount of Connection points equal to the point cost of the Type so a Military Rival is worth -5 points.
Enemy:
An Enemy is a high-intensity foe that actively tries to attack the character. That local aristocrat might have been so offended by the slight against them that they have dedicated their life to killing you. They are not waiting passively for you to run across them. They are hunting you down. The GM will probably have enemies show up at precisely the wrong time and do precisely the wrong thing. You arrive just in time to see them escaping with the treasure. They show up to challenge you to a duel when you are exhausted or injured. They are your own personal villain. This makes your gameplay experience much more challenging. Unlike most other relationships, which cost Connection points, Enemies give you connection points to spend on other connections because their net effect is negative. They exist to seriously challenge your character. An Enemy gives you an amount of Connection points equal to twice the point cost of the Type, so a Criminal Enemy is worth -0 points. The point value is also used by the GM to determine how dangerous the Enemy is.
Debt:
You enter into a Debt relationship when you borrow substantial amounts of money. The lender is assumed to have significant resources at her disposal to enforce debt collection. In practical terms, the debt is used to purchase Property. The point value of the connection is not based on the type, but instead you gain additional property point per point of Debt. So if you get 8 points of property to use, your debt connection is worth
-8 points. You must use all points gained for the same piece of property, but you can take multiple debts for multiple pieces of property.
The debt also creates an ownership relationship for the lender against the property you purchase (collateral). So if you use the 8 points of property to buy a house and then you default on the debt, the lender can seize the house in compensation. Whether the debt is subject to interest and the amount of interest being charged will be decided by the GM based on the appropriateness in relation to the setting. For example, a modern mortgage could carry a fixed interest rate of somewhere between 5% and 8% in the United States. However, in a different setting, that percentage might not be appropriate.
The above description applies to legitimate debts, like a house mortgage. However, you may want to get a lot of money and not be able to put up collateral to support it. In that case, you can borrow through illegal connections at twice the standard rate (i.e. you gain additional property points per point of Debt). The lender does not have legally recognized rights against your collateral. However, if you default, the lender becomes an enemy with a value equal to twice that of the debt value (e.g. the -8 point debt would become a -6 point Enemy).
4
Chapter 7:
Skills
Skills:
Every character begins play with a number of skills. These represent the ability to accomplish specific tasks. Skills have four levels; untrained, amateur, trained, professional. An untrained level represents no training at all. For most people, the vast majority of possible skills are unknown. An amateur level represents a self-taught or very minimal level of training. A trained level represents comprehensive training in the particular skill. A professional level represents comprehensive training paired with significant experience in the field. Most people will not reach a professional level in more than a handful of skills during their lifetime.
For example, with respect to weapons. Most people have never used a weapon and would be considered untrained. A conscript soldier would have an amateur level of weapons training. A soldier coming out of her first battle or the kind of intense training available to 0th century soldiers would be trained. A veteran soldier with lots of experience under her belt would be a professional.
Many life experiences are prerequisites for particular skills and serve as gateways into whole skill subsets as a result. For example, without appropriate weapons training, a character cannot raise any skills related to weapons to the trained level. The requirements for each skill are contained within the description.
This translates into a world where training is at a premium. A trained individual is far better than an untrained one at accomplishing a task. Someone who has never picked up a sword in her life cannot put up much of a fight against someone with comprehensive training. A talented professional is near unstoppable. A great swordsman kills most opponents with a single blow. A veteran thief can hide in the smallest shadow. A master spy can talk his way out of nearly any situation.
Skills Point Cost
Untrained Free
Amateur 4
Trained 8
Professional 6 if Exceptional Talent Above -