Relationship Maps

Arcaniac

Arcaniac

What does it do?

If you are not familiar with relationship maps, it is a way to represent your NPCs and how they relate to each other and the party. White Wolf used them extensively to represent the relationships of their NPC's within a Prince's hierarchy.


What does it look like?

A relationship map is more effective than a simple list as it provides a graphical representation of the relationship between the NPCs and the party.

I currently use FreeMind, an open source mindmapping software, to track the relationship of all my NPCs.

I have not published my NPC relationships to the internet (not sure how . . . yet), but here are some examples of how FreeMind represents a mindmap on other topics. It should not be too hard to make the logical jump on how you could use this tool as a Relationship Map.

http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Mind_Map_Gallery

Freemind allows me to do a number of things:

-compartmentalize my NPCs so that I do not get overwhelmed by the sheer number of them.
-represent their relationships to each other
-represent their locations and allegiances graphically

Micah

Ouch! I knew someone was going to ask for this sooner or later.

It's definitely a neat feature (and will go on the wish list), but is a long way down the road. We just don't have the time to dive into a visualization project right now.

AidanDark

It would still be cool though ;)

krank

Just wanted to say this would definitely be a GREAT feature, if implemented =)