How To Make Friends and Annoy People

I was talking with some friends about solo roleplaying games, and one of them expressed the need for a relationship manager, interested on the ability of pestering a character to the point it gets hostile. So, I hacked this pretty quickly, inspired by Mythras' Passions, The Black Hack and the classic Reaction table on OSR games.

The Relationship Stat

For each NPC, roll 2d6. This value is their initial Relationship with the PC.

Ask for Help

If you ask an NPC to help you that may require something from them, you roll against their Relationship. You add your Charisma modificator to the Relationship and roll a d20. Rolling under their Relationship is a success, rolling over is a failure.

These rolls may crit if you believe that's significant. Usually, roll-under rolls (Like this one) crit with 1 and fumble with 20, but it may be too jarring if you use a roll-over system. Up to you.

Improving or Worsening relationships

Different actions that affect a character may improve or worse those relationships. While relationships can start somewhere from Hostile to Helpful, relationships can improve from there. Doing nice actions, like giving gifts, compliments, or doing bad actions, like insults or violence, can alter their relationships with you.

Convincing People

Besides improving their relationship with you or not, some requests may require some convincing, like asking for money. Besides their relationship roll, also do a Charisma roll of whatever DR you consider correct. The Charisma roll will determine if you obtain what you want, but the Relationship roll determines how much your relationship is hurt. An NPC may give you what you want but be angry about it (Charisma success, Relationship Failure) or it may refuse to help you but maintain good terms with you (Charisma failure, Relationship Success).

Meaningful Actions

You probably don't want every relationship to reach "Would Die For You" in a single conversation, nor it would make sense for become a "Nemesis" and hate you the rest of their lives for an insult (At least, not usually). For people that know you but don't have any meaningful connection besides a passing conversation, they would remain somewhere between "Hostile" and "Helpful". Something particular must happen to go beyond these levels. Perhaps, that adventurer who you made a favour may consider it meaningful enough to be an Ally. Perhaps, after many adventures, that adventurer may become a "Personal Friend", even have "Total Trust" on you after saving their life one too many times. Perhaps, one beautiful night of full moon and an exchange of flower, that adventurer "Would Die For You".

Or perhaps, not. Perhaps that adventurer that helped you that night, and you thanked him by stealing his magical familiar heirloom, and now they will become your "Nemesis" and hunt you down to the end of the Earth.

In any case, it's up to you. You can either let the number go up or down but maintain the relationship the same (So you can ask many favours from a friend with little consequence) or cap the numbers at those levels.

Merchants

Perhaps one of the most important characters to keep a good relationship with it's a Merchant. A friendly merchant will sell you goods more cheaper, while an angry merchant will try to rip you off or refuse to sell anything.

As a rule of thumb, "Indifferent" merchants will use normal baseline prices, and will go up or down 20% for each relationship level from there. A successful Charisma roll may lower the price 10%, or 20% with -1 to the Relationship. A Crit will lower it 10% more.

You may want to adjust reactions and prices based on the merchant's personal necessity or greed.

Town Fame

Perhaps, you are a Folk Hero of sorts. A Zorro protecting the people against the corrupt, the criminals and, sometimes, the military. Having fame all over the region, in any case, you are not unknown and your fame precedes you. Instead of rolling Relationship from each individual on the street, roll for the whole town. Every NPC will have that Relationship with you by default. Important NPCs may either have their own Relationship roll or you may roll 1d2, lowering the relationship one level on an odd number or increasing it one level on an even number.