Sure, I'd be happy to. As I said up top, each character, PC or NPC, gets a little sticky. PCs have stars on them. This first picture is at the end of our last session. All the purple strips on the top right are new folks that Hooch convinced to come back with him instead of dying. The collection around October is hir new following - the arts&culture contingent. The rest is a bit of a mess, but it's worth noting that Barbecue is right near Marlena and Nash, with Hammer under Nash, because they are in the middle of a thing.
This is a remnant of our last session. I made tags for all the NPCs who jumped Hooch and his gang when they were on the trail home. I should have taken a picture of the map I made with giant graph paper and some wooden blocks, where we used these tags and the relevant PC tags to show who was where during the fight. Worth noting here is that Two-bit, who was in on the fight, is solidly still in the thick of things with Enough-to-eat's holding.
This is a remnant of our last session as well. This is the line-up that survived the battle, before I put everyone back on the first page.
Ok, now I've got everyone back home, nice and tidy. I've written over the purple NPCs onto green tags, to show they were from the Warrens, and put them in close to the PC who has the most connection with them, so West is over with October's followers, Always Flowers is with Burroughs, and Clearasil and Two-bit are in Hooch's gang. Technically, all four might be in Hooch's gang, but we'll have to see. A thing to notice here is that I've added in a little green tag for the landscapes: Windmill, Pit, Edge, and Old One-eye. I'm not sure which goes where yet, but I think it's a good idea to have them on there.
The problem with tidy is it's also boring and status-quoish. Since I know I'm going to write a love-letter about illness, I make some little green squares and decide who gets sick. I think a bit about disease vectors and infection clusters and natural immunity. I also write a little note on each of the NPCs, to help me see what their motives are, what parts they follow around. Each one gets w:[thing they want] under their name. I go with the first obvious thing I think of. These are simple and straightforward folks. One of the kids w:a pet, some of the adults w:sex, a couple get weird things like w:layers to hide under. Wonder what's up with that NPC? Maybe I'll follow that up sometime.
This is where I start looking hard at how to make my PCs lives not boring. What's the natural trajectory of the NPCs wants, and where/when/how do they intersect with the PCs? Here's what is now clear to me that wasn't before:
-9 year old orphan girl Trout is w:a dad who will protect her, and heck, who better than Barbecue!
-Waters, who has written on his tag that he hates brainers, is moving fast towards confrontation with Burroughs, which is especially interesting since Burroughs just switched splats and is now an Angel! What is that about?
-Marlena is sleeping with Ribbons! Who knew? She's angling for him to take over the Trailjacks, and she's getting him in on poisoning Hammer.
-Nash/Hammer/Hooch = huh. We'll see.
-Spot and Crille both w:Blues for their girl. Who will win?
-Boy howdy Tinker and Spice and T-bone sure look tight.
I notice that the grouping around October is still stubbornly static. Time to change that.
-I'll bring Baby (w:the next fix) back in as a an avenue for some of the Trailjack's good stuff going to October.
-Stinky (w: an inner berth in the garage) and Shithead (w:avoid blame) are messing with Sun (w:status) about being all fancified and putting on airs.
-Frog's got connections to Harrow down the hill, and he's marked as sick - Harrow is w:medicine
-Nightingale (w:parts to make stuff) is cozying up to T-Bone for some crazy reason
-Two-bit (w:get back to Warrens) is slinking off the page at the bottom
And now I weigh out what's happening and decide who's most likely to die next, and mark them with X? on little pink squares. Hammer, Jennette, Tinker, Crille, a couple others. I look first at what's obvious (Hammer), then what's not boring (Jennette, Tinker), then who's not pulling their weight as an NPC (Crille).
But that still doesn't quite hit the PCs where I need it to hit, so what about killing off T-Bone, who is the Trailjacks mechanic? That would leave Waters, who hates Hooch's buddy Burroughs, and Nightingale, who's not as good and is Water's sister, as possible options for keeping the bikes in decent running shape. Now that is not boring!
So, at the end of this less than 30 mins of moving things around and marking them and so on, I have these solid triangles:
Solid red lines are PC-NPC-PC triangles, dashed red lines are ones I think are rising but I'm not ready to count on. Black lines are NPC-PC-NPC triangles, and therefore less urgent. Yellow are just NPCs, but still worth noting for future development. I know who is where, what their motivations are (NPCs at least), and how that's going to intersect with other characters. There's plenty of room for things to shift and develop in play, and the relationships between the various characters is pretty clear.
Ok, questions?