Entanglements A Story Mapping Tool for RPGs

By Ewen Cluney

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 Table of Contents
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 2
Elements ................................................................................................................................................ 4
Phases ..................................................................................................................................................... 6
Using the Finished Map ........................................................................................................................ 8
Specific Games ...................................................................................................................................... 9
Reference Sheet ................................................................................................................................... 11

Credits
Written and Designed by Ewen Cluney (©2015)
Entanglements owes a substantial debt to the Pathways system from Margaret Weiss Productions’
Smallville Roleplaying Game. It and other Cortex Plus games are well worth your time, even if you
likely won’t have much use for Entanglements with them.
The following icons are from The Noun Project and are used under a Creative Commons Attrib-
ution license:
• Building by Antonis Makriyannis
• Café by Hyemi Park
• Key by Bucky Clarke
• Network by XOXO
• News by Wilson Joseph

Introduction
This is a set of rules for use with most any role-playing game to help you build up a deeply inter-
connected set of characters. It is essentially instructions for making a “story map” that shows rela-
tionships between characters, places, events, and objects that will hopefully help provide the basis
of an exciting campaign. It doesn’t replace the character creation system of whatever game you’re
playing, but it will definitely influence the choices players make in creating their characters. Using
Entanglements is fairly time-consuming, and it’s best to set aside an entire session for it, possibly
with character creation included. This in turn means it’s best for when you’re intending to commit
to a long-term campaign.

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 Preparation
Before you begin using Entanglements, you should have some idea what your game is going to be
about, and each player should have at least a basic character concept. A shared understanding of
what you want the game to be is important to ensure that the elements the players pick will work
with the intended setting and tone. In creating the story map, players have a lot of freedom to cre-
ate or introduce characters, organizations, and situations, so it’s important to be on the same page
about what’s suitable for the game.
You shouldn’t have your character completed already—it will definitely inform at least some of the
choices you’ll make to create your character—but you’ll need some idea where you’re going in order
to effectively choose elements for the story map.
If you’re doing this in person you’ll need a large piece of paper (or some other surface you can
write on), and if you’re doing it online you’ll need some kind of shared drawing tool, such as the
Google Drawings format in Google Drive or the map-drawing tools in Roll20.
Round Robin Setting Creation
Some of the best games to use with Entanglements are also ones where you have to come up with a
setting on your own, and more RPGs than not require you to drill down a little into whatever set-
ting they have before you can arrive at the basis of a campaign. An informal discussion can poten-
tially drag on and land in quagmires, and a “round robin” process is one way to add some struc-
ture to this process while letting everyone contribute.
The idea is pretty simple: go around the table taking turns adding ideas to the game’s setting until
you have enough to go on. The ideas can be as simple (“There are airships.”) or detailed (“The U.S.
government secretly preserves each President as an eldritch steam-powered cyborg, and Cyborg
Lincoln is the true ruler of the nation.”) as you want, but the point is to toss out neat ideas and riff
on what the rest of the group is proposing. If the group finds the idea truly problematic you can
ask that person to change it or come up with something else.
Mapping Tips
The story map you create in Entanglements can very quickly get complicated and confusing. Here
are a couple of tips:
• If you have a small number of player characters, placing the circles representing them to-
wards the outside of the map can make things a little easier.
• If need be, you can put “warp zones” on the map. Put an A in a circle in two places to indi-
cate a jump, and then move on to B and so on as needed.

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 Elements
The story maps you produce using Entanglements consist of several different kinds of “elements.”
These can be relationships, characters, assets, situations, etc. How they relate to things on the
character sheet heavily depends on the particular game you’re playing, but there most likely won’t
be a 1:1 correlation between elements and actual character traits within the game. See p. 9 for
some notes on applying Entanglements to specific games.
Elements by themselves don’t concern characters’ actual abilities, though they can imply a whole lot,
and in story terms can help reinforce a character’s talents. Many archetypes (wizard, martial artist,
etc.) imply a mentor or school that can be a secondary character or set, and a membership in an
elite organization helps show that the character is in fact an elite.

Relationships (Lines)
Relationships are the connections between things, and thus they’re represented by lines between
different elements. Each relationship should end up with a description written along the length of
the line. These descriptions don’t need to be detailed, but they do need to explain what it is that
joins the two elements together.
Examples: Business rivalry, has a crush on, uses for transportation, has terrible nightmares about

Secondary Characters (Squares)

Secondary characters are the people and other actors that take part in the story. These will become
important non-player characters, and can range from valued friends to desperate enemies.
Examples: Classmate, Colleague, Lover, Parent, Sibling, Teammate

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 Situations (Triangles)
A situation is some kind of event or potential event that is important to
the character(s) in some way, whether it’s a past event that shapes them,
something currently ongoing, or a possible future problem.
Examples: Occupation, Pending Invasion, Pogrom, Power Manifestation,
Questionable Experiments

Assets (Diamonds)
An asset is something in the world connected to the character. Assets connected to your character
aren’t necessarily assets her or she can actually use—assets cover plenty of things that could be ad-
versarial to or simply desirable to a character—so make it clear in the relationship description what
your connection to the asset actually is. There are four different kinds of assets: extras, organiza-
tions, props, and sets.
Extras
Extras are minor characters that make themselves useful to a character in some way.
Unlike secondary characters, relationships with extras are largely pragmatic. They
can be contacts that provide information or services, or just flunkies at a character’s
beck and call. Extras can include a group of people, such as a squad of soldiers, who
mostly act as one in the story.
Examples: Alchemist, Doctor, Gadget Guy, Servant, Scholar, Security Team, Scien-
tist, Soldiers
Organizations
Organizations are established groups of various kinds. Depending
on the scope of your campaign this could range anywhere from a
powerful government to a school club. Think about how your
character relates to a given organization.
Examples: Army, Corporation, Government Agency, Religion, Re-
search Facility, Secret Society, Thieves Guild
Props
A prop is an object of major importance to the story. It is most likely
a MacGuffin in the classic sense; a thing that the characters desire
enough for it to help drive conflicts.
Especially in games where items are a major mechanical element,
keep in mind that a prop element doesn’t necessarily mean a charac-
ter gets to possess some particularly powerful thing. A sword that
people would fight wars over might not have the slightest hint of
magic if it’s got the right history behind it instead.
Examples: Autographed Baseball, Crown Jewels, Legendary Sword, Magical Key, Special Formula,
Suitcase Everyone Wants, Vial of the Z Virus, Vitally Important Data Crystal

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 Sets
Sets are places of significance to the characters. A set can
be a place they specifically own or control, or just a place
that is somehow significant to their affairs. A team’s se-
cret base, the bar a character owns, and a pizza place
where they hang out can all be sets.
Examples: Bar, Bowling Alley, Café, Mansion, Military
Base, Newspaper, Restaurant, School, Store

Phases
When you use Entanglements, the players are going to go through a series of “phases” that represent
different periods in the characters’ lives. Different characters’ phases don’t necessarily correlate in
time, so a 200-year-old elf and a 2-week-old robot could still go through the same number of phases
if it comes to that. Instead, the phases represent more the thrust of their formative experiences and
entanglements. On the other hand, if your game is based around several pivotal events, you could
deliberately make each phase correspond to a particular time period.
The number of phases the group goes through will Phase Type Title
determine the complexity of the resulting story map 0 Setup Setup
and how long it will take to create. As a rule of thumb,
1 Major Origin
I recommend doing 5 phases on average. The table to
2 Normal Early Development
the right has a suggested default pattern of phases, but
3 Meta Branching Out
of course you can customize it to your tastes. We’ll get
4 Normal Stumbling
into the types of phases below, but I recommend hav-
ing the first and last phases be Major Phases. 5 Major Turning Point
6 Normal Aftermath
Before you get into the normal phases, you’ll need to 7 Meta Profession
place the players’ characters on the map. For each PC, 8 Normal Aspirations
draw a circle with the character’s name in it. Draw two 9 Major Destiny
lines between each of the PCs, representing their rela-
tionships with one another.

Taking Turns
It isn’t absolutely necessary to have the players take turns adding elements to the map, but it can
make things less confusing. For each element allowed in a phase (Major and Meta phases have two
each), go around the table once letting each player add their element.
To keep up a bit more variety, players cannot use the same shape twice in a row.

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 Types of Phases
There are three types of phases—standard, major, and meta—that work a little differently in terms
of what kinds of elements players get to put in.
Standard Phase
During a standard phase, each player gets to add one new element. You can add a character, asset,
or situation and draw a line from it to your character, or just draw a line from your character to an
existing element.
Major Phase
A “major phase” is one that represents a major turning point in the characters’ lives. During a ma-
jor phase each player adds two new Elements instead of one, but otherwise it works like in a stand-
ard phase. Roughly one out of every 3 phases should be a Major Phase.
Meta Phase
A “meta phase” is a phase where players also get to play with other aspects of the story map. In ad-
dition to adding one new element like in a standard phase, each player gets to do one of the fol-
lowing:
• Draw a line between any two non-PC Elements and define a relationship between them.
• Destroy a line between their PC and a given Element and add a new element and relation-
ship. This implies that something happened to sever one relationship and foster another.
• Introduce an element/relationship to another player character. The other player gets to de-
fine the nature of their characters’ relationship with that element however.
Roughly one out of every 4 or 5 phases should be a Meta Phase.

Does the GM Get a Turn?

Assuming you’re playing a game that calls for having a Game Master, it’s up to you to decide
whether the GM will actually be adding things to the story map. Chances are the map will be more
than sufficiently large and convoluted with just the players adding to it, but if as the GM you want
to have some creative input into the whole thing you can simply fill in stuff on each phase as per a
player, adding new Elements that relate to the PCs and NPCs. The only difference is that as the
GM you don’t have a character of your own, and thus aren’t limited to elements that connect to a
given character.

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 Using the Finished Map
The story map will provide you with a whole lot
of ideas, but it will still take some a little thought
to fully flesh out the story.

Triangular Relationships
One key thing to look out for on the story map is
places where multiple characters have conflicting
relationships with a given element. The classic
love triangle is an obvious example, but anything
where relationships are at odds is a potential
place to make things more interesting.

Wedges
Whoever’s job it is to drive the conflicts in the game, they can look at the story map and look for
places to drive wedges, to threaten and generally mess with existing relationships. If there’s a trian-
gular relationship, look for something to exacerbate it. Even if a relationship is non-triangular, you
can find interesting ways to mess it up.

Implied Elements
The story map can cover most of the major elements that will go into the game, but it can’t truly
be comprehensive. An organization will have leaders and members, characters will have other
characters around them, locations will have any number of people associated with them, and so on.
While the map is a very useful tool, it should not limit what you bring into the game.

Late Additions
For any number of reasons you could find yourself needing to introduce new player characters af-
ter the fact. You may need to update the map to reflect things that have changed in the game, so
go ahead and do that before a newcomer gets started. The simplest way for a player with a new
character to go about things is to just run through the same phases as for the original PCs. That
will give them plenty of opportunities to give their character ties to existing elements, as well as to
add some new ones.
It’s up to you whether you want the new PC to start off with relationships with all of the other PCs.
Sometimes this will make perfect sense, and other times it’ll be tricky to pull off, so you may want
to have a new character start without relationships with other PCs until the player draws them in
(though in that case you may want to give them a couple extra element choices).

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 Specific Games
This section discusses a few specific games that you might use with Entanglements, though of course
there are plenty of other possible ones you might use. It would be problematic to use with a game
that already has a lot of front-loaded story/relationship setup, and it’s at its best when it can help a
game with a more freeform setup process.

Dungeons & Dragons

It’s best to figure out your character’s race and class before you begin using Entanglements, but not
too much else. Classes will often imply a lot of possible elements—clerics are part of a religion, wiz-
ards learned magic somewhere, etc.—even if you decide the earlier phases represent things that
happened before the character took up that class. *
Character things like feats, prestige classes, backgrounds, and themes (depending on the edition or
flavor of the game you’re playing) can reflect the elements on the story map. You might go as far as
to set specific trait choices in specific phases too; for example, in a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
game that starts at 3rd level I might set up phases like this:
Phase Type Title Trait Selection
0 Setup Setup Race
1 Major Origins Alignment
2 Normal Apprenticeship Background & Personality Traits
3 Meta Development Class Level 1 & Ideals
4 Normal True Calling Class Level 2 & Flaws
5 Major Destiny Class Level 3 & Bonds
Magic items tend to be a big deal in D&D, so it pays to remember that a prop element is not the
same thing as a magic item in the conventional sense. A magic orb that can resurrect the demon
god needn’t be anything special while in the hands of a player character, or what serves as a level-
appropriate standard magic item selection could turn out to be a prop with greater story signifi-
cance.
Fate
If you’re familiar with Fate, it should be obvious that the elements you create in Entanglements
should strongly correlate with your character’s aspects. As usual, aspects require a certain finesse to
write, and while your character’s elements will strongly suggest several, you’re still going to need to
put some thought into how to make really meaty aspects out of them.
For Fate Core, the three phases described in the book (Fate Core pp. 38-44) can correlate to some of
the phases of Entanglements, with things like skills and stunts going in the remaining phases. For
Fate Accelerated, the assignment of aspects, approaches, and stunts is likewise a natural thing to in-
tegrate into Entanglements phases.

*
This is also true of games like the various World of Darkness titles, where there are strong archetypes that say a tre-
mendous amount about a given character.

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 Fudge
If you’re using one of the basic forms of Fudge, you can simply let map elements inform how you
pick skills, gifts, and faults. For something a little more interesting, you can integrate Entanglements
into the game a little more directly. Make map elements correlate directly to appropriate gifts and
faults, and let characters assign one or two traits of another kind (a gift, fault, or a skill/attribute of
a given rank) in each phase. If you’re using the 5-Point Fudge system, you could have players assign
one of their points during each phase, and then assign skills according to the point totals that re-
main at the end.

GURPS
GURPS has a number of character traits that you can base off of elements from the plot map. Only
certain kinds of relationships with other characters will count as Advantages or Disadvantages
(such as Allies, Enemies, and Dependents), but most asset elements will make good character traits
of some kind.
This advice is equally applicable to similar traditional point-buy systems such as Hero System, Open
Core, Big Eyes Small Mouth, OVA, etc.

Powered by the Apocalypse Games

Apocalypse World and other PbtA games tend to be a little tricky to integrate with Entanglements be-
cause those games tend to have a built-in relationship system of some kind. Here are some specific
suggestions for some selected PbtA games:
• Apocalypse World’s Hx rules only concern relationships between PCs, so that can be one of
the phases, followed by more typical Entanglements stuff. On the other hand, several charac-
ter types include things that definitely count as Elements, so you may want to set aside a
phase to put those things on the map.
• For Dungeon World, you can of course take an approach similar to what you’d do with
D&D, though I recommend integrating the selection of Bonds with some of the phases.
• For Dragon World (by yours truly), I recommend having players assign a Story Thread dur-
ing each Entanglements phase.

“Roll Your Own Traits” Games

There are several games where the players get to write up their characters’ traits however they want.
These include Primetime Adventures, Risus, and Wushu, amongst others. As usual story map elements
can’t map directly to character traits, but will often strongly suggest them. For example, a Set Asset
on the story map will make a good candidate for a character’s Personal Set in Primetime Adventures.
Also, the Risus Companion by S. John Ross is an excellent resource for any of these kinds of games.
One key bit of advice from it is that when you’re making up traits you can make them more awe-
some by adding more specific and flavorful adjectives to them. When it comes time to look at the
story map for ideas this is handy to keep in mind because it means you can take several different
map elements and combine them into one trait.

10

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 Entanglements Reference Sheet

Phase Type Title

0 Setup Setup
1 Major Origin
2 Normal Early Development
3 Meta Branching Out
4 Normal Stumbling
5 Major Turning Point
6 Normal Aftermath
7 Meta Profession
8 Normal Aspirations
9 Major Destiny
Standard Phase
During a standard phase each player gets to add one new element. You can add a character, asset,
or situation and draw a line from it to your character, or just draw a line from your character to an
existing element.
Major Phase
A “major phase” is one that represents a major turning point in the characters’ lives. During a ma-
jor phase each player adds two new Elements instead of one, but otherwise it works like in a stand-
ard phase. Roughly one out of every 3 phases should be a Major Phase.
Meta Phase
A “meta phase” is a phase where players also get to play with other aspects of the story map. In ad-
dition to adding one new element like in a standard phase, each player gets to do one of the fol-
lowing:
• Draw a line between any two non-PC Elements and define a relationship between them.
• Destroy a line between their PC and a given Element and add a new element and relation-
ship. This implies that something happened to sever one relationship and foster another.
• Introduce an element/relationship to another player character. The other player gets to de-
fine the nature of their characters’ relationship with that element however.

11

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