Relationships in Gateways

Recently, some larps have attempted to combine romance/rival/friendship (such as my Falling in Love and Tombstone’s Pardners) rules into a single coherent system. 

I’ve found these a bit uneven, but I thought Gateways’ version was the best so far. Here’s how it worked.

Relationships

The relationship rules covered allies, rivals and falling in love. The mechanics were optional, so that if you felt that, through roleplaying, your relationship with another character was developing, you could short-circuit the bookkeeping and simply give that character a relationship card.

Photo by TsiJon

Relationship cards

Each character had several relationship cards. They all worked the same, and they looked like this:

Avery Grayson’s Ally/Romance/Rival (pick one): You may Assist or Hinder the named character.  Permanent. No more than three relationship cards (one of each type – ally/romance/rival) may affect any single skill check.

You gave your card to your ally/rival/love interest, and they could then use it to assist or hinder you in skill checks. They didn’t need to have a relevant skill, but just being present helped (or hindered).

(I explain Gateways’ skills and task resolution system here.)

One thing I really liked about the relationship cards was how seamlessly they fit into the task-resolution system. And as a writer, I appreciated that Gateways’ authors hadn’t needed to invent unique heart abilities for each character, which were a feature in other games. With 79 players, that would have been a lot of rival/ally/romance abilities!

Paramount relationships

Characters also had paramount relationship cards – for the single most important person in your universe. (Maybe “the one”, or a ride-or-die ally, or perhaps even your nemesis.)

Your paramount relationship card looked like this:

Avery Grayson’s Ally/Romance/Rival (pick one): You may Assist or Hinder the named character. When you do, draw from the SAME deck. Permanent. No more than three relationship cards (one of each type – ally/romance/rival) may affect any single skill check)

So this ability is more powerful than a regular Assist or Hinder, as drawing from the same deck gives you a better chance of drawing a higher card.

Developing a relationship

So while I suspect a lot of relationships were cemented through roleplaying, how did the actual mechanic work? Well, it was very similar to the system I outlined in Writing Freeform Larps (and refined here).

The inside back cover of each character booklet included a table which looked like this:

Character	Romance	Ally	Rival
Character 1		III
Character 2	II
Character 3	IIII
Character 4			II
Example indicators of an ally/romance/rival relationship: Give me something I value / Take something I value from me Put yourself at risk to assist/defend (or to hinder/attack) me Go to a social event with me Help me accomplish something important to me Tell me something secret about yourself Discover we have a common/analogous history or trauma Do something important to assist/harm someone I care about Make me laugh, cry, or share some other emotional event Share a romantic and/or sexual encounter with me Discover we have ‘chemistry’ (Romance only – you have chemistry if you both draw the same number from a Skill Deck. Return the card and shuffle after the first draw.) Tell me how important I have become to you (ie, give me a relationship Ability card)

Notes

• The suggested target number was five, so if someone ticked off five indicators, you would give them a relationship card.
• There were specific rules for some aliens as they couldn’t form relationships.

Changing Relationships

And if you felt your relationship had changed, you could reclaim your relationship card (or change it). I have no idea if anyone did this – I didn’t.

What didn’t work

So for me, the rivalry ability card didn’t really work. Identifying a rival was fine, but I’m not sure how effective the ability card was, as I can’t see it being used much.

For example, I developed a rival during the game (although I forgot to give them a rival card – probably because this was new to me), but he was never present when I made skill checks, and vice versa. So while the rivalry card was nice to roleplay, it had no mechanical effect (for me, at least).

Mind you, I’m not sure what would make a rival ability actually work. Maybe that’s work in progress!

Gateways’ task resolution rules

Gateways was a weekend-long SF larp that I played in February 2026. It was conceived and written by Martin and Helen Jones, and Nickey Barnard, with additional material by Alan and Charlie Paull, and Megan, Michael and Peter Jones.

I wrote about the game on my blog, but here I want to discuss Gateways’ task-resolution rules.

Photo by TsiJon

Skills

Each character had a number of skills, rated as follows:

1. Trained
2. Competent
3. Expert
4. Phenomenal

There were very few characters with 4-rated skills. My character had five skills rated 2 and 3. Skills included things like Self-defence, Medic and Scientist (Physics). (I had a total skill rating of 10 – I don’t know if the GMs balanced the number of skills across the characters. I think that’s something I would have done.)

In general, if you wanted to do something, it ought to be something you could realistically do. My character had no experience with computer hacking, so I would not be expected to try it.

Task difficulty number

If you were attempting something (fix a reactor, heal a character, hack a computer), the GMs would set a target difficulty for that task. The difficulties were:

1. Easy (Anyone with basic training in the skill should succeed at this – no check needed).
2. Moderate 
3. Hard
4. Very hard
5. Exceptional
6. Impossible

The skill check

To make a skill check, a character added their level in an appropriate skill and drew from a Skill Deck (a deck of five cards: +2, +1, +1, 0, 0). The GMs had maybe 20 Skill Decks dotted around for players to use.

So if you had a skill of 3, your result would be between 3 (if you drew a 0) and 5 (if you drew a 2).

Helping and hindering

Assisting: Characters can assist if they have a suitable skill, or an ability, or because it makes sense. For each character helping, make a second skill check and choose the best result. (Don’t forget to return the cards after each draw!)

Hindering: Characters might want to hinder a task. Hindering is just like helping, but the worst result is chosen.

Several characters simultaneously assisting and hindering: These cancel each other out until whichever side has the most remains. (I never saw this happen.)

(If you play ttrpgs, you may recognise assisting and hindering as rolling with advantage or disadvantage.)

Results

If our result was…

• Lower than the difficulty number? Bad luck, you failed.
• Equal to the difficulty number? Success, but with complications.
• More than the difficulty number? Hurrah, you succeeded.

Player-v-player contests (including combat)

The system is the same for player-v-player contests, except that the opposing players play against each other. Whoever gets the highest result wins. (Ties are draws.)

Combat

For combat, if you are beaten by 1, you can either surrender or flee. If you are beaten by 2, the winner chooses the outcome. You might be injured, captured, or even die (but only if dramatically appropriate).

Wounded characters get wound markers, and all their skill checks are hindered until they are healed.

With multiple combatants, opponents should pair off. Unmatched characters can assist someone on their side.

Learning skills

You can train someone to a level one less than the skill you have. So a character with a level 2 skill can train someone to level 1.

Limitations to training:

• Training is limited to level 1 during the game only. Training to higher levels requires longer than is possible in the game. (Although there may be exceptions…)
• A character can only learn one skill in a single game session, and the training session should be roleplayed out. If the skill involves using a piece of equipment, that equipment must be available for training.
• Teachers can only teach one skill, but can teach up to three pupils per game session.
• The new skill is available at the start of the next game session. Add it to your character booklet.

Abilities

As well as skills, there were a handful of abilities scattered around. Not too many, which made it both easy to manage and (I imagine) easy to write. For example, my character had a research ability that let them look stuff up (ie, ask the GMs).

Did the system work?

The rules worked really well – they were just detailed enough to allow for some variety, but not so detailed that things became too complicated.

I’d seen similar systems in other freeform larps, but I think this was the best variant I’ve encountered so far. But perhaps that’s because I engaged with it more (I often don’t engage with the rules much).