Expanded Relation Mechanics

I like the rules for Relations in the KULT Corebook. They're pretty awesome. 

Relation moves are fun, and just varied enough to cover a few distinct situations that are likely to come up now and again... yet at the same time simple and unobtrusive enough to stay out of the way when not needed.

There are just a few things that irk me about these rules, as written.

 

For one, +0 Relations seem to be pretty useless. 

I mean, the section about Relation moves in the Corebook even points out that those same moves only apply to Relations of +1 or better - so one could ask: Isn't it kinda pointless to even have the +0 ones in the first place?

So I mostly just ignore these. Any old NPC the characters meet could become a +0 Relation pretty much anytime they wanted them to. It just doesn't do anything, mechanically.

If they want to create truly meaningful Relations, they have to get them at a value of +1 (or better). To this end, I let players use the same rules that allow you to modify an existing Relation value by +/-1 at the end of each session - and just let them turn an established NPC (or a newly invented one, sometimes) into a new Relation at +1, if they want to.

 

However, I do like that the "intensity" of Relations comes in three tiers, going by RAW. So what I did after de-facto "losing" the +0 tier, was that I introduced a new third tier. 

Yes, you guessed it, I have Relations range from +1 to +3 now.

 

This allows me to bring a little bit more granularity to the descriptions of how important someone (or something, someplace, etc.) is to any given PC. The new categories can look roughly something like this:

+0    someone you know, but don't really care too much about either way

+1    a friend, helpful colleague, sympathetic neighbor, former lover, or distant relative

+2    best friend, lover/spouse, close relative (e.g. parent, child, sibling)

+3    soulmate, sole surviving relative, oldest & truest friend since childhood...

 

The Relation moves stay unaffected by these changes, as I find that they work just fine with this new scale.

Yes, that means that you'll have to Keep it Together at -3 in order to bring yourself to actively harm a Soulmate-tier Relation of yours... and that you'll lose 3 Stability if they're hurt or harmed (and 6 Stability if they die)... But that seems fair enough, in fact. 

In return, you are also able to regain up to +3 Stability when having scenes of closeness and affirmation with them.

 

As for Start-of-the-Game considerations, I let players choose either one +2 and two +1 Relations at the start of the game, or one +3 and one +1 Relation. 

The idea behind the latter being that, if there is someone that important to you in your life, you'll have little time, energy, and emotions to spare for other people of minor importance besides this one predominant affection.

 

Negative Relations

Sometimes people have asked me about these. Can you have Relations going below zero? And if so, what would that mean?

Here's how I have handled that in the past.

Note: I don't always use the below mechanics as a general rule in every game, mind you.

But if a player specifically asks for it, and it makes sense in the fiction (and let's face it, The Avenger is the prime suspect here, tbh. It has also sometimes crept up with The Doll or The Broken... and it could theoretically come from anyone...), then I may draw on these ideas.

It's mostly just about doing two things:

Expand the Scale Downwards

This one is easy. Decide whether you want to go all the way down to -3, or to cap it at -2, and inform your players of the new range of values y'all can now play with.

PCs with Disadvantages such as Oath of Vengeance, Nemesis, Rival, Wanted and the like, may express a desire to choose one negative Relation right out the gate, at the very start of the game. If they ask for that, let them.

For anyone else, just introduce NPCs during the course of the game as normal, and watch your players' reactions to these various people. Later, for example when asking the players at the end of every (or some) session(s) whether they'd like to modify any of their existing Relation values, you can also ask (or suggest to) them if they want to gain a newly introduced NPC as a negative Relation.

Perhaps ideally start most of them off as just a -1 Relation, unless that NPC has already ruined the players' plans especially disastrously, committed unspeakable atrocities against their loved ones, or similar horrors.
Normally, however, you can still let them drift their favorite antagonists gradually to the very bottom of the sympathy scale, all in good time.

 

 

Inverted Relation Moves

This one is hardly any more complex - it just requires an inverted reading of the existing Relation Moves.

So, for example, Wish no Harm becomes Wish Them Harm, where you have to Keep it Together in order to hold back from hurting your Relation (or sabotaging their plans etc - the move explicitly points out "indirect harm" as part of its trigger) when you have an opportunity to do it but it would be impolitic to seize it right now. 

On a success with complications (10-14), you may hold back from harming your enemy, but in addition to the normal outcome of the KiT move, you also take a +Relation penalty to any other moves you make during the same scene.

On a failure (-9), in addition to the normal outcome, you cannot control your hostile impulses and must harm your Relation, going about it as viciously as possible.

 

Regain Stability turns into something perhaps better named Insufferable Presence. 

In a scene where you must endure your Relation's proximity and are subjected to their gloating, mockery, spite, or other form of mental and emotional torment, your Stability is decreased by a number of steps equal to the strength of the Relation value.

 

Lose Stability, on the other hand, becomes more like Schadenfreude or Vengeful Glee. 

If a negative Relation of yours is seriously injured, your Stability is improved a number of steps equal to the strength of the Relation value. Double that number if the Relation dies.

(In the above, note that "seriously injured" can, especially depending on the context of your particular campaign or scenario, be fulfilled by things other than purely physical harm. A business rival's ability to antagonize you could be "seriously injured" by you burning down one of their factories... or setting the IRS on their trail under forged pretenses of tax fraud. Your former abuser who wants you back in their filthy clutches could be "seriously injured" by getting the court to finally have that restraining order issued. That lictor which has foolishly kept making enemies of your PCs could be "seriously injured" by the PCs ripping open a sizeable portal to Inferno right there in the city / district / building it was supposed to be guarding against just such intrusions...)

As I said in the beginning, I really like the rules for Relations in K:DL - and I like even more to expand, modify, and twist them around! I hope I have shown you some ways in which this can be done, and given you ideas to use in your own games.

Homebrew Move: A More Cinematic Helping & Hindering Variant

 

Freshly ripped from the Vortex, and viciously channeled through the nightmare realms of Togarini and Malkuth, I bring to you:

Helping

When you support or assist another player character’s Move, explain how you do it and roll +Attribute, where the Attribute may or may not be the same that the helped player is using.

15+    Your assistance allows the other PC to increase the result of their roll by one tier (fail → partial → success). If they already rolled a full success, the GM may at her discretion allow them to pick one more question, edge, or option than normal. 

10-14    You face a hard choice of how deeply to invest yourself in helping your fellow PC. Choose 1:

- Increase their result by one tier, but suffer a cost or complication for it.

- Your help remains inefficient and adds nothing to their result.

-9    This went wrong badly. Choose 1:

- Reduce the other character’s result by one tier.

- Hurt yourself or get in trouble in the course of your supporting actions. The GM makes a Move against you.

Hindering

When you try to hamper or prevent another player character’s Move, explain how you do it and roll +Attribute, where the Attribute may or may not be the same that the hindered player is using.

 

15+    Your interference forces the other PC to reduce the result of their roll by one tier (success → partial → fail). If they already rolled a fail result, the GM may at her discretion make a harder Move on the character than she normally would have. 

10-14    You face a hard choice of how deeply to invest yourself in sabotaging your fellow PC. Choose 1:

- Reduce their result by one tier, but suffer a cost or complication for it.

- Your hindering remains inefficient and removes nothing from their result.

-9    This went wrong badly. Choose 1:

- Accidentally improve the other character’s result by one tier.

- Hurt yourself or get in trouble in the course of your interference. The GM makes a Move against you.

Commentary:

Possible Costs and Complications

You can use any of the standard repertoire that seems to fit the particular situation and characters involved. You hurt yourself or someone else, draw unwelcome attention, lose something important, get yourself (or someone else) in a bad spot, destroy something valuable, use up resources, leave traces, etc. 

Reasons for Using This

If you're unhappy with the Corebook move only offering some simple numeric modifiers, and would like more interesting things to happen when the spotlight shines on characters trying to assist (or sabotage) one another - use this. 

It has a greater chance of affecting the outcome of the helped/hindered PC's roll than the Corebook version, so you get a bit more bang for your willingness to use up your spotlight "merely" in support of a fellow PC.

Reasons Not To Use This

If you want to keep things fast-flowing, and not detract attention from elsewhere in a tension-ladden scene - probably don't use this. 

There is a clear caveat to this variant move: It can tend to derail things a bit, as the helping/hindering character is prompted to make choices, weigh consequences against each other, and so on. Additionally, as soon as costs and complications are to be chosen, the GM must take care to maintain a tight reign on the scene's direction and pacing - keep in mind that the most important thing to focus on should still be the acting (not the helping/hindering) PC's move, and that should resolve dominantly in the narration. 

Whatever cost, hurt, unwelcome attention, bad spots, or loss of resources the other person has to deal with as a result of their interference, should probably be handled later - or alternatively very briefly - in order not to muddy the waters of your fiction too much. 

This variant houserule is being playtested in a game I'm in right now, so there may be additional insights to share about it some time down the line. In the meanwhile, comments and opinions are welcome, especially (but not exclusively) if you should feel inclined to playtest it yourselves, definitely let me know your thoughts!

Quick and Dirty Skills for K:DL

 

So, normally this game really doesn't need a detailed skill list, nor countless numerical stats for all kinds of things a character can do.

Also, the PCs' Advantages tend to cover what little is needed in that vein - and even more elementary than that, we can usually make do with clever employing of some Basic Moves, or just letting the fiction guide us in our judgment calls. 

But...

some players have expressed a certain feeling of being somewhat at a loss "when looking at my char sheet for clues for what my character could possibly try to do in [any given] situation"...

Because sure, especially as a player new to the system you can get the impression that, yes, you get your basic attributes, and they're kinda sorta supposed to tell you about your character's overall strengths and weaknesses. But if you're not yet very well trained in reading those Attributes and the attached Basic Moves for the full wealth of what actions they can represent in the game - well, then you might be missing a certain 'middle ground', namely the area between "those three extra-special thing you get to be able to do" and "just the basic Attributes and Moves".

Thinking about how to help those kind of players find into their groove with the game more easily, I remembered something I did almost two years ago now, when adapting An Echo From the Past  to the new 4th edition ruleset.

See, the original premade PCs for that scenario, from 1st edition Kult, had a shitload of skills with various numerical values, as they would. Naturally, when adapting things to K:DL, I sought to identify the two or three most essential aspects of these characters' abilities and turned selected appropriate Advantages to represent those. But I was left with a lot of additinal info, which somehow would've felt wrong to just omit, and so I decided to add the boxes you can see above and below to each of their sheets.

(pictured are excerpts from Mats' and Marcus' sheets. The full scenario including premade PCs is available for free at https://kultdivinitylost.com/resources/)

Some of my players who come from more traditional gaming backgrounds have commented that these "skill boxes" have rather helped them gauge their characters and get into their roles a little bit better and quicker than in RAW K:DL sessions they had for comparison.

The observation has stuck with me in some corner of my brain and now recently I've gotten to thinking...

So Here's A Little Homebrew System 

Adding quick and easy "areas of general competence" like that to your PC sheets:

Look at your Active Attributes. The four of them that have positive values attached (+1 or better) you can pick skills for. For each of those Attributes choose one or more skills that fit the areas of life covered by that Attribute, and the number of skills you may select is equal to the modifier you have in the respective Attribute. 

For example, Coolness +1 will allow you to choose one (1) Coolness-based or Coolness-appropriate area of general competece.

Intuition +3 will allow you to select three (3) areas of competence that seem fitting to your character being able to read persons very well, act empathetic with people, lead them on, or otherwise understand what makes them tick.

If you're playing with standard starting characters, your positive Active Attributes of +1, +1, +2, and +3 will give you seven (7) slots to fill in the beginning. At your GM's discretion, you might be asked/allowed to add more later, for example when you increase your Attributes through advancements.

Note that the characters in Echo do not precisely conform to these guidelines, since I just made them up, but those PCs were written a couple years ago! Upon a second look, however, I seem to intuitively have arranged things so that it largely makes sense after all. The PCs sheets in there could be adapted to this newly minted homebrew system with minimal effort, in fact.

You can make up the names for the areas of competence (vulgo: skills) yourself. Try to stick to a middleground between specific and general - just like most trad games tend to have them. WoD, CoC, D&D etc all make for okay sources of inspiration there. Ideally, they'll be a bit less specific than Advantages, but a bit more so than Basic Moves. 

(So don't port over 'Perception' from D&D because that's already an Attribute in K:DL. But Stealth, Acrobatics, Lore: _______, Sense Motive, or whatever might be just fine. Probably don't take something like Use Magic Item though, since that feels like it would be a whole Advantage all of its own in K:DL)

 

     Examples:

A junior police detective who turned into The Avenger after the death of his brother at the hands of an organized crime ring led by corrupt state attourney. He has Perception +3, Violence +2, Coolness +1, Reason +1, and his Advantages are Instinct, Intimidating, and Survival Instincts.

He might go for being skilled in the areas of:

Sharp ears, Search, Assess Group Dynamics, Handguns, Grappling, Move Silently, Police Procedures.

 

A trader of antique books and trinkets who became The Occultist after stumbling onto an unsettling undercurrent of Hidden Truths gleaned in artifacts from a number of apparently unrelated ancient cultures. She has Reason +3, Intuition +2, Soul +1, Charisma +1, and her Advantages are Crafty, Occult Library, and Thirst for Knowledge. 

She might choose to be competent in:

Research Rarities, Appraise, Identify Ancient Languages, Sense Buyer's Interests, Leading Questions, Meditation, Haggling.

 

GMs may wonder how to handle these areas of competence mechanically in their games. 

• Most simply, let it influence your decisions on when to require a dice roll  for some action a player announces, and when not to. In areas the PCs are competent in, they should more often succeed without needing to roll.
• When in doubt, consider allowing the character to take a +1 to their roll  in cases where they are competent but you still deem it necessary to ask the dice for input as well.
  
• Additionally, you can encourage players to add a greater amount of input  to the communally created fiction of the game.
  

Someone who plays a character that has Lore: Ancient Religions may welcome opportunities to tell the group some nifty details about that stuff every now and then.

Someone who is adept at messing with Security Systems can share their ideas about how these might work in a situation like the one at hand, what might be necessary to circumvent or disable them, and what risks it might entail to attempt doing so.

• Finally, make it a habit to be more forthcoming with information  when telling the players about their characters' observations in the world, when these observations revolve around their areas of competence.
  

Someone who is explicitly adept at conducting Obductions should probably get told more details about a mutilated corpse the group is examining, than someone whose best skill in that vein is First Aid.

Someone competent at Reading Body Language might gain easy insights on most people, but could be fooled by a competent actor, or when a conversation happens without the ability to see the other person (e.g. in a phone call or voice chat, confession booth, another inmate heard only through the airvents from another cell in the mental facility's high-security tract...)

 

At first glance this may seem like a lot of additional minutiae to track, but I wager you won't need to worry too much about it. Most likely, you'll practically never have to think of those 'skills' yourself - the players will remind you of them when they feel they're needed.

A typical request may sound something like 

   "Yo, so it says here that my guy is good at _______, maybe that can help us here?", 

or maybe 

   "I wrote down I'm trained in _______, so I might want to use that to..."

You'll have to make a judgment call then, but you'll do so in the sweet glow of the player already being invested in the scene, since they're looking for creative uses to apply their character's capabilities to the horrifying problems you put before them.

And isn't that exactly what we're wanting them to do?

Homebrew Move: "Refuse Death"

 

Death can be a pesky problem for a GM, especially if it happens right in the middle of a session and would leave the player without something to do for the rest of it - and doubly so if their character's involvement in the story just got interesting, and you are loathe to just let that doomed soul go.

Fortunately, in KULT, Death is Only the Beginning, and so you never have to let it force your hand.

Some of the official and unoffical scenarios for the game already have built-in countermeasures against untimely character annihilation. Island of the Dead, The Summit, and Wind on the Leaves for example, all have their various workarounds to prevent players becoming deprived of a way to keep participating in all the  fun  ahem, horror!  we're having...

Often, such workarounds are based on the pervasive presence of the Death Angels in the fiction. But the ability to cheat the Reaper is not exclusive to the forces of Inferno. In fact, souls fall through the cracks in the Demiurge's crumbling machinery all the time - and through Limbo, Gaia, Metropolis, or the extremes of their own Madness or Passion, may well find their way back to Elysium.

Here's a custom Move to represent this:

(Disclaimer: Yes, as the GM you should only use this move if you're comfortable with it happening in your scenario or campaign.
If you don't feel that the Illusion is sufficiently unstable, or powerful otherwordly entities may be paying attention in the general vicinity this happens, by all means don't use it!)

 

Refuse Death

When you die but refuse to give in the afterlife's pull on your soul, roll +Soul.

(15+)

You may return into your body (if it's not too destroyed) in short order and inhabit it again, at relatively small cost. 

Alternatively, you find another corpse nearby that is well suited to contain you.

In either of these cases, you become a living soul animating a dead body.
Talk to your GM about the exact ramifications of that.

Also choose 1:

• Reduce your Stability by -2, or to Anxious (whichever is lower).
• Mark a permanent Serious Wound that cannot be stabilized or healed except by restorative Death Magic.

(10-14)

You manage to struggle back into the world, but it may take some time (though merely a couple of scenes may pass in Elysium), and it will cost you. Reduce Stability by -4, or to Unhinged (whichever is lower).

Also, choose 1:

• You had to escape purgatory: Mark 2 permanent Serious Wounds and get the Limitation Inhuman Appearance, all of which is only curable by Magic or the interference of Higher Powers.
• You were forced to make a Pact with a powerful entity in order to come back.
  Perhaps an Angel of Netzach, a Death Magician in service to Malkuth, or a Nepharite of Thaumiel...?
  Your body is fully restored, but the entity will demand services from you in the future.
• You became an incorporeal ghost: Free of spiritual debts or physical wounds, but you'll need to find (and possess) a new body on your own, if you want to become anything else than an aetherial phantom again.

(-9)

That went really badly. You cannot return during the ongoing session.
(But maybe ask your GM if there's some nice NPC nearby that you could play for the remainder of it?)

During downtime before the next session, discuss with the GM what your options are.

Examples:

• You return in the body of a young child or frail elderly person,
• You're wholly enslaved by a Higher Power,
• You have permanently turned into a Child of the Night as you succumbed to your Shadow while on the other side,
• You only have very little time to spend in Elysium before you're reclaimed by whatever terrifying afterlife awaits you,
• ...
  

Alternatively, perhaps your soul was dragged into the abyss after all. Maybe it's time to put together a new character and talk to the GM about how to introduce it into the story. Perhaps some fates are to be averted neither by men, nor gods...

GM-Advice on getting Broken

in the course of Refusing Death:

For characters of low Stability, the trauma of death - not to mention the harrowing experience of fighting one's way back from it - may prove fatal to what remains of their frayed emotional composure and mental resilience. If that happens, roll with it for all it's worth!

When a PC gets Broken by the Stability loss prescribed by the above move, let this happen as normal in the game: The GM makes a Move... or hell, Make Two! Simply because, shit, that was a fucked up thing to go through, right? Right!

Often when coming back from the other side, and all the terrifying sights and sensations it inflicts, we feel drawn to reunite with those we love and trust the most. You can Shift a PC Through Time and/or Space, and let them appear at the doorstep of their family's home, or in another player character's immediate vicinity. Very little time may have subjectively passed in Elysium, while the returned person may have weeks, or even years, worth of memories of the suffering they endured to get back here.

Having Fragments of the PC's Dark Secret Manifest around them can be used to convey the sense that something has come back with them, and is haunting them now. You can blur the lines about whether these manifestations are just figments of the character's imagination, demonic emanations from the netherrealms that followed them here, or independent entities all on their own. But either way, they will bodily exist, living and breathing (or at least solid and tangible, in the case of it being objects or locations) in Elysium, now.

Getting a New Disadvantage is also entirely not unreasonable. Perhaps a Sexual Neurosis for someone who escaped the hells of Gamaliel, Greed for someone who had to bargain with Yesod for their return, or a Drug Addiction for someone who has felt the sweet embrace of Achlys while on the other side.
Nightmares, Phobias, Mental Compulsions, and Repressed Memories make for viable choices across a wide range of otherworldly experiences, as well.
Becoming a Fanatic is another highly viable option for someone who has faced extradimensional entities, and the organisations and monsters serving them - and may express as either a determined support of their means and ends, or as an equally relentless opposition against them.

The options of Undergoing Change, where two Attribute values are switched, is especially fitting for PCs who have just overtaken a new body. Or, you know, those who had their personality sufficiently torn apart and remade differently than before.

Similarly, Switching to a New Archetype can also be highly believable in a situation like that, depending on the character and details of the surrounding fiction.

Perhaps he used to be a Drifter, or a Ronin, or a Scientist...
Whatever it was, he may be something different now.

Finally, attaining a Glimpse of the Truth can in fact almost be taken for granted, considering the entire circumstances of the very roll that led to all this.

As a note on personal GMing style, I tend to play this particular option way stronger than the corebook suggests, since I consider +1 experience a bit mild, all things considered. I usually give them +5 xp, so in effect a free advancement. This option is clearly meant to alleviate any other consequences you may choose to inflict on the PC, and I find it works very well to 'reconcile' players a little bit with the horrible costs of their mental breakdown.

That said, it also makes for a very good takeaway from a trip beyond Death itself. It's a fairly common pattern in folklore and myth, after all: The traveller to the spirit realms brings something back with them upon their return. Deep insights, newly acquired powers, or another reward for their harrowing tribulations on the other side...