Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Development Research: IC Family Trees

One of the widgets that's most excited me since day one of the Repository's planning stages has been IC family trees. In my mind, it would be the crown jewel of connection widgets. If I'd had my way it would have been one of the first things to go in, along with friend and enemy widgets.

Unfortunately, it's not nearly that simple. RP characters tend to have some of the most insane, convoluted family trees imaginable. They marry and divorce again and again, declare honorary brothers and sisters, adopt everything that moves, run into magic that causes immaculate conceptions, or are just plain weird enough that they reproduce through binary fission. Whatever floats your boat, man.

While that's cool and fun and my god am I dying to get it all on the site, it is requiring some serious planning so that the database and code that handles all this can be designed to hit that "just crazy enough to work" sweet spot.

So: Can you give a quick description of some of your IC family trees? What kinds of family structures, ties and modifiers are we going to need to account for?

Other than the standard family thing I have people having kids with multiple partners, adoption, half siblings, inbreeding, people of unknown parentage...

I guess thats all the unusual things I've got.

My character's parents were never married, but they were engaged before one of them ran off. Then they died and he was adopted by a dragon. (To put a very long story short.) And then HE adopted/apprenticed a shapeshifter who had been adopted several Times before but now she's gone off somewhere and has probably been adopted again. Oh and he's also been made a member of the family House Lightbringer which means he has a small honorary family, too.

Wow what I didn't realize how weird that sounds put together until I... well, put it together.

Even my most complicated situation (a world-traversing mage whose entire family died doing the same job he's doing, an undead doctor, and their adopted fairy-like daughter whose egg got slipped into the mage's bag on a mission by a mother unable to care for it) probably wouldn't call for anything especially complex. There, I'd just need something to mark the mage and the doctor as an unmarried couple, the mage's parents and siblings and declare them deceased (and perhaps as NPCs/background characters), and the fairy as the daughter (adopted) of the mage and the scientist.

As I think about it, perhaps there should be ways to denote the following:

Romantic:
- marriage
- "officially" in a relationship
- romantic/sexual involvement of some sort but not necessarily an "official" relationship
- divorced
- past romantic/sexual involvement

Non-romantic:
- close enough friends to be family, but not related
- function as parents/guardians for a child, but not romantically involved

Parent/guardian:
- biological parent
- adoptive parent/guardian (maybe with something to distinguish whether the adoptive parent is related by blood/marriage or non-related?)

And then other family positions, perhaps with a way to mark whether it's by blood/marriage/honorary/etc.

Perhaps you could add the character that's related, select the main relation to your character from a drop down box, and select a clarification from another drop down box, and living/dead status from another? Like... you'd add your character's late step-mother, and you'd select "Parent" from the first box, "Step" from second box, and "Deceased" from a third box. You could handle as much of that as possible that way, and then, to cover anything else, maybe give a checkbox that's like "hide vital stats"; it would hide those choices and allow you to enter your own info in a text field.

Yeah, main relation and then a drop-down modifier selection is definitely what I've been thinking so far. I'm not sure there will be a place for "super close friends" in the family tree, unless they've officially been declared as honorary adoptions or something. There also appears to need to be a place for NPCs to take places in the trees, alongside actual PC characters.

An option for NPCs (or offsite characters, or characters that aren't fleshed out enough to merit their own page on the RPR) would be really great, I think. I don't believe very many people have characters whose every relation is played as a whole character unto itself, and a lot of trees would probably end up incomplete or even unused if only people on the RPR were possible to put on them.

That's more what I was talking about. "Honorary family" is probably a better way to put it.

YES!
I have an elaborate family tree for four of of my characters, but almost everyone in those trees are NPCs/offsite characters/not characters at all (in the case of deceased ancestors).

The most complicated "family tree" I have is comprised of four genetically engineered creatures, two males, two females. Two of them consider each other as brother/sister, and the "brother" considers the second female as his sister as well, which the first considers more like a sort of aunt. The second male doesn't want to consider them as being related to him except for the second female, whom he sees as a younger sister. All of them consider one scientist as their mother, but none of them are even slightly related by blood at all!

I don't know if that made sense... o_O

My character Scars here on RPR has a brother, parents, a boatload of cousins, and his grandparents on his father's side, and only his brother and his mama have enough to warrant fleshing them out enough to put here, so off-site characters would definitely be a plus.

I don't think I really have much to add to the slots that are already suggested, but maybe you could add a custom slot, that people can make into whatever? I have characters who consider their creator family, but not in a parental sense, just as their creator. And I do have some slave characters that really like their Masters, but Master/slave is the only relation they have. And turn that around, and I know some of my Master characters consider their slaves family. Not all slavery is bad, right?

Well, I have a character who doesn't have parents, but an 'adopted' brother who looks after her. She gets separated from him, and then is adopted by a caravan and has many different relations to the members, like siblings, grandparents, mother figure, etc. Heh none of my characters have too strange a family tree, I guess.

I would definitely agree about the npc slots, though. I have so many characters I would love to place but that don't need a page on rpr.

I know this topic is a bit old but I just commented on the development log for this and thought I'd repeat part of that here.

Will there be a way to download or upload trees at some point (doesn't need to be there to start with and could be a pay for thing). And if we can upload/download trees ever would it be possible to make the files in .ged or another family tree format so they can be edited/made with a family tree maker program?

I'm into genology and have been tracing my own family with a free though very nice family tree maker and I wanted to know if there's any chance I could some day make a family tree for a character on there and upload it to this site someday in the future or if the program wont be compatible with RPR due to the site using it's own stuff. It's not really a big deal but it would be a nice extra someday maybe.

I hope this is understandable.

Hmm...my IC family trees are usually blood-related siblings and parents, or maybe some 'adopted' siblings (as you said, declaring someone a brother or sister). My character might have a child, or maaaybe adopt someone. But usually the most my characters take in are stray animals. As for divorces, well, lovers happen and then they split. I've only had a couple characters actually get married. (shame on me for having loose chars :x *giggle*)

It definitely is!! All suggestions are welcome, even on old topics.

Although I'm not speaking for Kim, I don't think she will implement it as this is not something desired by the majority of users plus it sounds like it would need a lot of complicated coding to make it work. Then there's the size of the files: likely the way she has coded them right now is a lot smaller in size than having to upload a file and making the page work to decode it all. Plus security... There may be people who don't upload friendly files.

It's an awesome suggestion, I just personally don't think it's worth the trouble to implement it.

Sanne has a lot of good reasons why it'd be difficult. However, the main showstopper that prevents me from even thinking about it is that to my knowledge, GEDCOM is a proprietary file format. That means to use it, I would need legal permissions and licenses there's little to no chance I could afford.

Even with that aside, many of the people on family trees will likely be other characters on the RPR, not just text representations, so linking will be very different from what GEDCOM may be able to provide us.

Family Trees would be an awfully wonderful thing to include. The one I created took me... mm, a long time :p. And it's still not very understandable unless you know my roleplays.

For those who are interested.

So yes; mine is one of those twisty twirly ones with a very extensive family. Something that would help make it a little more presentable / understandable would be wonderful .

I understand. I knew it was a bit much to ask, but I'm glad I asked it anyway so I wouldn't keep wondering about it later.

My most extensive family tree comes from Ash/Luci/Ferous and connected.

Ash could be considered the patriarch. His brother is Set (Enemy). He has other brothers, Apollo (an aspect of Set, could be marked like a child, enemy), and others. Set was the primary avatar of an individual that was shattered, who became several pieces: Yakamoto, Foe, Mystic and many others, among which Dionysus is considered a brother of Ash but in fact descended of Set.

Ferous at one point was married to Set, but is marked as Ash's daughter. Luci is considered Ash's son. At one point they were a singular entity [Muriel]. Ash simply divided them. In family structure I would say Ash could be marked father and Muriel mother (even if it was genderless) from which Luci and Ferous descended. Luci is the father of Gabriel (played by Loki, by a mother named Jennifer). Gabriel is Raphael's half brother, sharing Jennifer as a mother.

Ash has about a dozen in character children (and in inference... far more) and about as many wives (and one husband).

Trying to think what else...

Gabriel is married to Asa, but they don't have any kids, uh...

Santhis was by no means blood relation to Set/Erodious, but at the same time was raised akin to a son; in fact, Zenthus would be his father. Santhis had a few servantspawn, primarily Alexa and Cerius, Alexa being a consort of Zenthus' in later years. About as close to a wife as the damn snake would ever get. Yes, grampa's little girl.

Taking a step back with Zenthus, he was an avatar of Zento, and his parents were obsolete; instead, his 'father' was his dark lord, Qinglau; Qinglau was son of Hel Crux the original demon king who he betrayed and... Rumea is an aspect of the shattered Hel Crux. However, all of this was in a world originally considered fiction to the world of Ash/Luci/Ferous, which Luci mused (Zenthus was his immediate "avatar" in the musing, making both Qinglau and Luci some level of parentage of Zenthus). Eventually the borders of "reality" were tested.

Zenthus created Wehfre as a servant, who by proxy sired a bunch of other characters, such as my Auroch and Rubix's Draeval. In essence, Luci and Ferous tell Draeval that they are his "great great grand somethings".

Yes, my characters have warped lines.

Suggestions: Not just descendent lines, but marked by colors either in line or name for Friendly, Enemy, and maybe Significant Other. Adopted lines may be cool, but might also make it all look like Charlotte's Web.

Oh, and Luci, Ash and Draeval (? I think? Or will soon) have kids with Namine.

Like literally. She's a goat Loki plays.

...

I just realized how bad this is gonna look for my stuff if there can be a long-reaching colortie for significant other. Um... Now I kinda wanna graph it...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v521/minerva_es/familychart.png

There we go. I'm sure it could be mapped out more clearly, this was just on the spot connecting and whatnot. I also did it on my laptop a friend gave me, which has broken red output so I think I accidentally selected the wrong dropdown color from Neji into "And so on ad infinitum", that's supposed to be matching green. Elsewise... you have the idea.

Kim's programming brain. I just brok'd it.