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Recovered: I think I might know someone…

When I first moved to Buffalo and didn’t know anyone in the area, I ended up staying with my girlfriend’s roommate’s mother’s friends in the area (they were great people). When someone on the OSR discord was asking for a good contacts system I thought I would try my hand at one that reminds me of that connection. I figure this is probably half a solid contacts mechanic, so I hope someone gets use out of it.

An oil painting. An old man in a suit holds his arms out behind the shoulders of two younger women with groceries and wine.A Happy Meeting, Pompeo Massani 1920, via Wikimedia Commons

Draft One

Roll Relation (1d20, 1d10) Ability (1d6) Strength (1d8) Weakness (1d12)
1 classmate fence item loaded owe them money
2 roommate carry stuff trustful addiction
3 friend employ party respected snitch
4 fiance(e) get information loyal hunted
5 drinking buddy get item manners dumb
6 ex teach skill cautious cowardly
7 landlord learned unwashed
8 tenant strong hidden
9 coworker bad blood
10 boss cursed
11 brother mad
12 sister busy
13 cousin
14 uncle
15 aunt
16 niece
17 nephew
18 mother
19 father
20 grandparent

This is what I made initially, and you can see it with a little more in the Google doc. When you have a chance to meet new contacts, you can roll up a contact at two removes (e.g. 1d20 and 1d10 under “Relation”). If that contact doesn’t work out for you, add another d10 to relationship, then another d20,1 and so on each time you need a new contact before you can naturally make more.2

Draft Two

Then I thought I’d try automating this process, because that’s trendy these days. This generator owes a lot to Betty Bacontime and Spwack’s work, but I had to rework it to make it do what I wanted it to.

An oil painting. A bored woman leans outside a barred windowsill, talking to someone through it. A small child pulls her away while looking over her shoulder; there is a troop of guards around the corner.Visit to the Prison, Theodor Leopold Weller 1835, via Wikimedia Commons

This post was first shared on February 7, 2019.

  1. Alternating d10 and d20 avoids awkward results like “my brother’s sister” because all the family relations are in 11-20.↩︎

  2. the idea behind the tertiary contacts is that the relationship is more tenuous, your information less sure. That’s why you wouldn’t start there, but it’s what you’ve got to work with unless you can spend some more time meeting people (at the expense of some resource).↩︎

Tags
RPG Programming Generator Mechanics Tables Recovered
Date
October 20, 2023
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