I realized today that relationships in the ES should be their own agent. This gives a relationship actual mechanical power in the game. It could be rolled against by any person in the relationship and like any other agent, it can be depleted.
This makes things really interesting because you can use the relationship to influence the people in the relationship, but using it too much (abusing it) can make it fall apart.
It could also be used to explain what happens if an NPC has their energy depleted via social attacks. They would essentially be “reborn” as a relationship to the player character.
The GM could bestow a relationship agent to a character if they think the situation warrants, the players could also use an advancement phase to build their own.
There’s a bunch of different types of relationships that would be interesting. Love interests could be used to fight aggressive actions. If you had a Hate relationship, it could help with tests of endurance when going after your enemy.
You could even model a Mentor relationship with this because the mentor can help with training rolls but when the relationship depletes the Mentor has taught all they can, or all they’re willing to teach.
I’m debating if I should formalize this in Jump Temp. On the one hand, it really should be a function in any game, but I’m not really sure if it fits in the Jump Temp story.