The Heart Engine - A Social Game Structure
These are the rules I use to structure And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow, an eminently social game based almost entirely on player relationships. Hearts Aglow, however, deals with a university, but this doesn't need to be the case in your game. Instead of "Finals" you can very well have tax day, and instead of "studying" you can have the "tend your land" action, etc.
This procedure is very influenced by Ironsworn.
There was a flash and the floor seemed to fall upwards to meet my face. I smelled him before I saw him - amidst the static ringing in my ears, I smelled perfume and sweat. His hands around my collar, pinning my back to the wall. Out of the murk I shook out an image of his face, fiery tempered and yelling something indistinct. "Go to hell" I muttered with a smile, and only woke up again twenty minutes later, in the infirmary.
Before: The rules below talk about “Traits” and “Trait Modifiers”. These are groups of Personality Traits each character should have on their sheet. Traits are generated with a 3d6 roll and Modifiers are obtained in the same way as D&D (-3 for 3, +3 for 18, and so on). The Traits I use for my game are these:
Calm / Intense
Forgiving / Vengeful
Generous / Selfish
Honest / Deceitful
Merciful / Cruel
Modest / Proud
Outgoing / Shy
Prudent / Reckless
Responsible / Bohemian
Spiritual / Worldly
Trusting / Suspicious
Valorous / Cowardly
There are four weekends in a month and you get an action for each of them. During weekdays your character is assumed to be attending lectures and generally doing the work required to stay alive. Each weekend you can: Study, Hang Out, or Relax.
Studying gives you a +1 bonus for your midterms and +0.5 for your finals. It also gives you 2 Stress. You can take Stress up to your Responsible score before crashing out (you miss a full week and do something self-destructive in the process).
For both the midterms and finals, you roll 1d6 + Your bonus versus 2d10.
If you roll under both dice, you fail the test and immediately take half your Responsible in stress.
If you roll under one of them and over the other, you skirt by, take your trait modifier in stress.
If roll over both, you succeed with flying colours, lose half your Responsible in stress.
Missing Classes — You can miss 1 week of classes per term without issue. After that, the die you roll for your next exam is reduced by 1, so you roll 1d5, 1d4, 1d3, etc.
Relaxing removes 2 Stress.
Hanging out can either remove or increase stress, but it primarily affects your relationships. They go from -5 to +5, and have a number of steps to advance to the next level equal to that bonus. Every time you spend a weekend with someone, both roll 4dF + modifier of trait desired (which is our current traits divided by 4) - or roll 1d6-1d6 if you don't have Fate dice.
Identical results advance 2 steps. -2 Stress.
Results close by 1 advance 1 step. -1 Stress.
Results close by 2 advance 0 steps.
And results at 3 or farther numbers of distance advance 1 step in the opposite direction desired.
A difference of 6 or more advances 2 steps in that direction. +2 Stress.
You can hang out with up to 3 people at once, but you roll the same die for all of them.
Ignoring people for a season has a chance equal to the inverse of the current relationship in 6 to normalising towards 0. That is, if you have a relationship of +5 with someone, you have a 1 in 6 chance per month where you ignored them to grow distant.
You can add a +1 to a result by taking 2 stress, up to a maximum of +3 to the entire exchange. This bonus means your roll counts as 1 step closer and the relationship's does too. Other situational bonuses might also apply.
NPCs tend to have, at most, four relevant traits. The GM should only keep track of the modifiers, no need to know the numbers themselves (she can roll 4dF to figure out the modifier too).
Other actions may obviously be taken and adjudicated appropriately. For instance, a character and an NPC had their first time together in my game, I rolled Shy to see if the NPC would get performance anxiety (2d6 + Modifier to hit 8 works, or versus an opposing 2d6 roll), and when she didn't, I ruled this counted as 3 steps in the relationship.
For keeping track of relationships, we use this spreadsheet, which I left without a template just so you can see what it might end up looking like when you have a LOT of NPCs.
I also roll random encounters for each week, typically I do so before the game so that I know what is coming up - I do 1 in 6 chance and my table changes, but it includes social events like parties, encounters with the supernatural, brushes with their rivals, advancements of background events (you could have actions that Factions take on the table), things like that. Season as needed.
