Demonic Incursions and Other Shenanigans in the Relationship Hexmap

Years ago (11 years ago - just let that sink in) I wrote an entry about using a hexmap to plot out interpersonal relationships. I deployed this system informally for a Cyberpunk 2020 game I ran for some time, but otherwise never did anything with it.

The basic idea behind the relationship hexmap was coming up with a visual way to keep track of the social dynamics between NPCs. I'm not sure it is actually a great way of doing that, but it is worth fiddling around with. Have a look at this example (and excuse crappy visuals and silly names):

So: blue blobs are physical locations which connect NPCs. Green blobs are NPCs. If I had PCs in there, they would be purple or some other colour, but PCs complicate matters a bit too much. 

The Blue Room is a bar; Frasier, Eric the Red, Miss Moss and Temujin are regulars at it. They are connected to each other through the bar. 

The Art School is an art school; the Cathedral is a cathedral. Same idea.

The circle of people around the Art School (students and teachers) is connected to the circle around the Cathedral (church officials, parishioners, etc.) because Swedish Amanda is a sometime lover of Vivaldi. And it is also connected to the Blue Room because Billy Bob and Caligula have hated each other since they were childhood "friends", and Caligula happens to be married to Miss Moss, who goes to the Blue Room a lot.

Bill and Wendy are a married couple who are otherwise not connected to the other NPCs in the chart.

In the bottom right are Jeremy's gang - a bunch of hoodlums with their eponymous leader. 

Now, the most obvious way of using something like this (I emphasise that I'm aware this is all rather half-baked) seems to me to be to track relationships in an investigative kind of game, whether a police procedural, a Call of Cthulhu style paranomal investigation affair, or whatever. The PCs encounter Vivaldi and ask him questions and pretty soon they're led to Diana Ross and hence the Cathedral, and also perhaps to Swedish Amanda and thereby the Art School and that circle. As it becomes necessary the hexmap expands in size and more and more people are added.

Another use for it, however, might be to function as a visual aid or reference for running a "demonic incursion" type campaign in a location not amenable to geographic representation.

Imagine for the sake of illustration the campaign is about a cell of madmen, eccentrics and weirdos who have discovered that sinister alien presences are manifesting themselves in their local city. One could deploy a method similar to that I advocated here and in the follow-up here, but transposed to an abstract non-physical "map" like the relationship hexmap above. So, what you would do is list the locations and NPCs present on the map in a table, like so:

Dice	Hex
1	0203 Temujin
2	0302 Frasier
3	0303 The Blue Room
4	0307 Vivaldi
5	0308 The Cathedral
6	0309 Bishopy McBishopface
7	0402 Eric the Red
8	0403 Miss Moss
9	0404 Caligula
10	0406 Swedish Amanda
11	0407 Diana Ross
12	0408 Woolly Mammoth
13	0505 Billy Bob
14	0506 The Old Monkey
15	0510 Aragorn
16	0601 Bill
17	0604 Karl
18	0605 Art School
19	0606 Bartholomew
20	0608 The Whisperer
21	0609 Jeremy
22	0701 Wendy
23	0705 The Silver Fox
24	0706 Dorcas
25	0709 Cthulhu
26	0710 The Artful Dodger

Now, instead of generating a "demonic incursion" and locating it on a physical hexmap, you instead associate the "alien presence" you'll be generating on your cool random table with a location or person. So, let's imagine your "alien presence" generator looks something like this:

D6	Base type	Number	Ability Orientation	Motive	Special
1	“Gray”	Single	Combat	Kidnap	Rivalry with other presences
2	Insectoid		Psionic	Raid	Limited time
3	Blob	Pair or small group	Mutation	Breeding	Wounded or sickening
4	Monstrous		Possession	Personality stealing	Driven insane by Earth conditions
5	Robotic	Large group	Manipulation	Study	Non-corporeal
6	Shapeshifter		Confusion	Settlement	Must eat continually to survive

And you roll for your "alien presence" a blobby thing in a pair or small group, oriented towards confusion, with the motive of settlement, and having been driven insane by Earth conditions. And then let's imagine that you roll a 26 for its association, and thus come up with the Artful Dodger. This now gives you the hook: the member of Jeremy's Gang in question sighted these strange presences (maybe the cellar of a house he was burgling) and they deployed their confusion-causing powers to make him blind and scramble his power of speech. He has turned up at Jeremy's hideout and the other members of the gang can't figure out what's wrong with him. Knowing the PCs, they get in touch and ask them to investigate. 

And so on.

C+ so far - must try harder. But I think the effort could be worth it.

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