The same way equipment and gear help you get things done in the dungeon, friends and contacts help you get things done in the city.
What this is for
No rules are needed to legitimize PCs' relationships with NPCs, but procedural scaffolding cuts down on ad-hoc decisions and provides rationale for how both the players and GM may approach this dimension of the game. Like how I use reactions tables and x:6 chances in circumstances I want to avoid GM fiat, a procedure for camaraderie takes the fiat out of PC-NPC relationships.
Not every friendship needs to follow this procedure. If the circumstances are such that it's obvious an NPC is friends with a PC, let it happen.
The Friendship Simulator is a way to provide texture time spent in town between adventures. Downtime is inevitable in OSR games, but it's largely unexplained what you're supposed to do other than research spells, heal, and wait for your stronghold to be built (and train I guess if you're playing AD&D). The common fix is writing a menu of downtime activities, but this procedure is an experiment in another approach: instead of giving players more activities, give them more tools. With an abundance of hammers they'll see nails everywhere.
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| Antoine Marchalot |
Meeting Contacts, Making Friends
Friends start as contacts. Contacts are acquired the same way hirelings are: hanging out at bars, wandering aimlessly, and greasing palms. Other activities, like carousing and insinuating yourself in local drama, may also net you contacts.
A contact can be tapped for one favor or bit of information. Make a reaction roll to determine how they follow through.
2-: Refuse to help and they drop contact
3-5: Refuse to help; they're busy
6-8: They help but ask for time (1 week) or something in return (1d6x50 sp or its equivalent)
9-11: They help
12+: They help and a friendship is born
Unless a contact becomes a friend, the relationship ends after they help you—whatever they owe you has been repaid.
Instead of tapping a contact for a favor, you can pursue a friendship. This takes a week of downtime getting to know them. At the end of the week there's a 50% chance the friendship is reciprocated. This can be attempted up to three times, after which the contact ignores you because you're not getting the message.
Because adventurers lead fringe lifestyles, they can only accommodate a number of friends equal to the amount of retainers they can recruit. There is no limit to how many contacts they may have.
Contacts and friends can be organized in the following categories:
- Rich
- Tough
- Streetwise
- Connected
- Famous
- Eccentric
- Weird
- True
If a player is looking for a specific sort of individual you can let them choose, but it's more fun to roll. NPCs may fit in two categories, but never more.
Rich
The extreme distance rich friends have from the tragedies of this fallen world make them enthusiastic, generous, and uninhibited. Occasionally they fall victim to bouts of melancholy or get embroiled in petty disputes, but by and large they are easygoing and carefree. Rich friends value old-fashioned courtesy and you swallowing your pride when they show you off at dinner parties.
Lean on them to spot you money, get you into a fancy party, or lend you some credibility when dealing with the aristocracy.
Tough
Tough friends are bruisers, risk-takers, and braggards. They are earnest, brave, and impulsive; they drink hard and love harder. Tough friends value mettle above all and have little respect for bellyaching and bullshitters.
Lean on them for protection, intimidation, and shit-kicking.
Streetwise
Streetwise friends are cooler than you. They know all the gossip. They'll tell you who's legit and who to avoid, where to buy and where to sell, and if there's ever a time to lay low they're the first to know. Streetwise friends are witty and have effortlessly good taste; they are inevitably prey to some vicious vice that lends them a sense of mystery and danger. They value the free flow of information (there's no fun in keeping secrets) and someone that can hang. They have a casual distaste for squares and a very serious hatred of narcs.
Lean on them for rumors, sourcing fences and contraband, and underworld dealings.
Connected
Connected friends have some ambiguous but important-sounding position in the local government, a guild, or some other enterprise. They make themselves indispensable by doing the work of three people, which they always complain about but actually love. Despite being chronically overworked, they always remember your birthday. They value low-drama collaborators and not having their time wasted.
Lean on them for official permissions, insider intel, and cutting red tape.
Famous
Famous friends are outgoing and glamorous and always failing to keep a low-profile. They're some variety of performer or artist or folk hero known far and wide throughout the land. They are distinctly well-mannered and gregarious if a bit off in their own world. They're always the unwilling participant in some drama or other yet it's no secret they thrive off the attention. Famous friends like having their ego stoked but also need you to keep it real with them. They get turned off by sycophancy. Famous friends always have a nemesis, a rival or notable detractor, that they will need you to be fully against. Associating with their nemesis will undoubtably ruin your relationship if word gets back to the famous friend.
Lean on them for influencing trends, impressing people, and drawing attention.
Eccentric
Eccentric friends are kooky and curious and excited about everything. Any time you go over to their place it's packed to the ceiling with evidence of their newest obsession. You're always finding them absorbed in some questionable experiment or pinned beneath a collapsed apparatus. They are relentlessly optimistic, nonjudgmental, and eager to share their interests with others. They are used to being written off, but still value someone who takes them seriously (despite their offbeat approach to fashion and personal grooming). They can't be bothered by naysayers and pragmatists.
Lean on them for odd jobs, knowledge on niche subject matter, and repairs. They might throw in a few "improvements" for free.
Weird
Weird friends are pariahs, hermits, and entities who don't fit in normal society—the kind that get the torch-and-pitchfork treatment if they visit town. Unnerving to most, but not to you. Weird friends are in-tune with many worlds beyond our own and spend their time communing with beings unseen by normal men. You are likely their only "mundane" friend. They value people who know what trees call one another and can hear the songs whispered by the stars. They are curious about but generally don't care to be involved in the struggles of civilized life.
Lean on them for credibility among unseen powers, mystic insights, and freaking people out.
True
True friends are unremarkable save for their bone-deep admiration for you. They are provincial, stoic, kind, averse to change, and above all dependable. No songs will be sung of them but they act with virtue nonetheless, as if they knew no other way. They have perhaps a superficial vice that only lends to their chumminess. True friends expect nothing from you but your camaraderie; abuse and neglect only makes them wish you'll find your way back to who you were, you they know you to truly be.
Lean on them for anything. They don't stand out in any way but will follow you without question.
Loyalty
Each friend has a loyalty score, similar to hirelings. When you ask for them to stick their neck out for you, make a loyalty check on a 2d6. If it rolls below, they follow through and their loyalty reduces by 1. If it rolls above, the PC can either back off, in which case their loyalty is reduced by 1 and the friend doesn't follow through, or the PC can press them, which will get them to do the favor but their loyalty is reduced by the difference. True friends only reduce loyalty on a roll of double sixes. A friend whose loyalty drops to 1 won't do any favors, but the relationship is still salvageable. A friend with a loyalty less than 1 is no friend at all.
A week of downtime spent fostering your relationship with a friend adds 1 to their loyalty score, up to a maximum of 10. Loyalty may only be raised above that by doing your friend a major solid or by going on a daring misadventure.
Misadventures take 1d3 weeks and will leave you 1d10x100 sp poorer. There's a 1:6 chance your friend gets killed, injured, kidnapped, or imprisoned, which has circumstantial consequences but results in the relationship being put on indefinite hold. Otherwise, their loyalty increases up to baseline (determined by Charisma) +1d4. You can only go on one misadventure with a friend—they know better after the first time.
Other things friends are good for
They'll pitch in for your funeral if you die. Each friend shells out 1d4x50 sp, save for rich friends who ostentatiously drop 1d4x500 sp and send flowers to each surviving PC.
A friendship can become a romance. A friend who becomes a lover is True in addition to their other type for the sake of determining loyalty. Their heart breaks every time you leave for adventure.
Using This
This is essentially just a way to set up players getting to go "I know a guy..." You can probably do that with an abstracted just-in-time system or quantum NPC but that's no replacement for actually knowing a guy.
How friends and contacts are useful in city adventures is self-evident, but in circumstances where the town is just a place to crash between adventures then friends hold less immediate value. That being said, consider: Dealing with NPCs Should Be Expensive and Irritating.
This should be extended to dealing with anything in town. Everything costs money, takes time, and has a chance of failing. Having the right friends reduces the friction. Couple that with upkeep costs and faction developments and you have sources of time and money pressure to keep players on their toes. Towns should be boring, sure, that's why you go on adventures, but that doesn't mean they should be easy.