NPCs

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RPG Blog Carnival: Life and Death in RPGs… – Pt. 1 – Life

March 4, 2011 in blogs, Gaming, PCs, Resources by Fitz | 16 comments

This month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is Life and Death in RPGs (see here for the kickoff article) and shockingly enough in the insanity of my last few weeks, I have some ideas to share…

Let’s start with Life, and then we’ll work on Death in the next post.

Dice for various games, especially for rolepla...

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For me, “life” in RPGs is more than deciding who lives and dies in a combat or trying to keep my PCs alive. It’s the roleplaying side of the house that keeps me interested and excited. So I try to define more than what a character can do and delve into why they can do it, when they learned it, and how they learned it or use it.

In the original Moebius Adventures system, we broke character creation into two large chunks – Childhood and Professions. Childhood covered everything up to age 12 or 14. And a character’s childhood might be very different than their choices of Profession. Look at a character like Conan. He was a normal child until he watched his family and village get slaughtered and was then taken as a slave. You think that might have shaped his attitudes, knowledge, and skills a bit?

So I propose that when folks are creating characters that they think about it in those two major buckets. What did the character learn as a child that has stuck with them into adulthood? And what choices might they have made as far as their professions go (or what choices were made for them)? Obviously not all skills you learn as a kid are useful. But many we continue to develop throughout our entire lives.

You could even go so far as to build in a tree of known associates. Who did your character grow up with? Have they kept in contact with any of those folks? Or did they part ways? Was it an amicable departure or one with enmity? Is it someone you might encounter during a game? What happens if a childhood enemy faces you as an adult? How is that different from a random monster encountered in an adventure?

Perhaps your character did or didn’t have a great family life growing up and they simply wanted to get out and explore the world or get away from what they knew before… What events shaped the decisions to learn particular skills? Did your parents teach you to forage and hunt or were you orphaned early on and forced to scrounge for food, learning what you could to stay alive? Did you gain any scars from early practice of weapons skills? Did you witness the death of a family member that you still seek revenge for years later (think Inigo Montoya)?

Not only do you end up with a basic history of your character to go with the skills they have, but you end up with contacts you can leverage in-game and that your GM can use to help tie things together and make them easier to relate to for your character. It works to the benefit of both the player and the GM to develop more backstory to better inform future events.

Yes, I know that D&D only gives you a few skill points here and there. Other games have the same issue. But slot a third or even a half of those skills towards defining your knowledge from childhood and you’ll end up with a better idea of where your character came from.

Next time we’ll talk about Death in a variety of ways. Stay tuned for part 2!

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Immortals’ Wake: Kwelan Outpost of Rivergate

February 8, 2011 in Immortals' Wake, NPCs, Rivergate by Fitz | No comments

As you head west through Rivergate, you will eventually come to the edge of town. Past the final few buildings, you’ll see the Brigade Outpost set about 100 yards away. The outpost itself is little more than a walled courtyard roughly 25 feet wide and long. The walls rise fifteen feet with crenelations and towers at regular intervals.

To enter the outpost, you must cross through a set of reinforced oak doors and then an iron portcullis. Set in the middle of the walls is one large building that serves as barracks, armory, and stable. The relatively small size of the contingent (fifteen to twenty at any given time) uses the fortified outpost as their base as they patrol the area and collect taxes due.

Though Rivergate is on the edge of the Dominion of Kwela, the Brigade keeps an eye on Dominion interests in the region. Those interests include ensuring the safety of travelers along the road, collection of taxes, transport and delivery of tax monies to the capitol, and helping with town security when asked. The Brigade is on good terms with the Reeve Lelas in town, but at odds with the Town Council over use and disbursement of tax money.

Each cart that enters or leaves town is assessed a tax by the Kwelan guards on duty. Two scribes work at the outpost and handle the assessment and collection of taxes owed to the Dominion and the town. Carts may be charged anywhere from 5 sp for a half-full cart to 10 sp for a full cart, with additional costs for weapons shipments. Merchants delivering goods are given a parchment note indicating that taxes have been paid so they only have to be charged once.

All silvers collected are split between the town and Dominion coffers. A vault exists within the outpost that is guarded day and night. Once a month the proceeds are divided and delivered to the Town Council and the Kwelan capital of Volu.

In addition to the collection and disbursement of taxes, the Brigade patrols the roads leading from Rivergate to the crossroads about 50 miles east of the outpost. At any given time there may be one or two patrols along the road on a 3 or 4 day rotation to the inn at the crossroads – The Spinni Inn.

For a list of NPCs, see after the jump…
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PC Therapy?

September 13, 2010 in Inspiration by Fitz | 2 comments

A concept came up in discussion a couple of weeks ago about how to resolve inter-party issues. We’re not going to try it ourselves, but I wanted to write about it a bit to share it and ponder the idea a bit.

It’s simple really…

For each other character in the group, a player will write down in a few sentences what their character thinks of them. So if you have four PCs in a group, character A will write about B, C, and D. Character B will write about A, C, and D, and so on.

And if you really want to make things interesting, you can also ask for feedback on what the players think about their character and the others in the group.

The GM would then gather these little summaries and… then what?

That’s really where the idea stopped. What would the GM do with these little snippets of information? Would they distribute them to the players after sanitizing the text a bit to protect the players? Perhaps come up with the top 3-5 things for each character and distribute that?

But how does that information help the player? Once a character is created, it’s tough to change their personality or how they behave towards other PCs or NPCs.

Would this technique be more useful to a group just starting out or a group of more experienced roleplayers?

I think in our case, this technique would be very interesting, but ultimately self destructive. I’m not sure any of us would be prepared for what might come to the surface.

Any thoughts?

–Fitz

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How do you make module-driven games seem less railroaded?

May 24, 2010 in Advice, GMing, Seeking Feedback by Fitz | No comments

Hi all…

Yes, it seems that nearly every time I post anything these days, it’s asking a question. But before I ask, let me provide some context…

We have a very small group (currently 2 or 3 players depending on the week and a GM) playing a D&D 3.5e adventure set in one of the Paizo Pathfinder adventures (Second Darkness). The GM (Mike) and I have been discussing the fact that, like every other module-driven adventure either of us has played or run, it seems very linear. And, dare I say it, a bit boring for those of us playing who prefer story and emotional depth over combat.

Sure there are a few mysteries left. We only play once a month or so and sometimes not even that, so getting through significant parts of the adventure is iffy at best. And it probably doesn’t help that the two PCs in our group that are supposed to know and like each other are drifting apart (but that’s a tale for another day), so that’s not helping us move forward much either.

But here’s the issue… if the GM lacks the time to spin off his own ideas to make the setting more lively and engaging for the PCs and the PCs can’t stay together, how do we make the game more enjoyable across the board?

I suspect that if Mike as GM can find some nuggets of creativity in the module to build on, that’s one way to do it. And as a player, I can try and invest myself more in the world as well – perhaps going so far as to define NPC “friends” he may have met during spelunking beneath the city, in the wilds, or while avoiding the less natural parts of town (he’s a druid who’s probably swinging from neutral good to true neutral soon after some experiences he’s had in the campaign).

What do you do, as a player or GM, to make campaigns based around pre-written modules seem more lively? Or what do you do to revive fading campaigns when the enthusiasm starts to die?

Mike and I are both curious what others who have faced similar issues have done to help the situation… And not just what worked, but what didn’t… So we don’t unwittingly step in land mines trying something that probably was a bad idea from the get-go.

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated. I’ll try and sum it up in a separate post so others can benefit from the combined wisdom.

Thanks!
–Fitz

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RPG Blog Carnival: NPC Show and Tell…

April 28, 2010 in NPCs by Fitz | 1 comment

I’m coming late to the RPG Blog Carnival this month, but better late than never, right?

Superman II
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NPCs are an area where I either go very deep or very shallow. For example, a common theme I have in running a game is putting an Inn/Tavern in every town and there always happens to be an old man or woman at the desk or available when someone rings the bell.

This old person inevitably was a) cranky, b) hard of hearing, and c) difficult to deal with. So whenever the PCs would try and find a room for the night, they’d have to verbally spar with the desk jockey.

Desk clerk (DC): “Eh?”
PC: “We’d like a room for the night.”
DC: “A broom for flight?”
PC: [speaking up] “A ROOM FOR THE NIGHT.”
DC: “You don’t have to yell… I’m not deaf you know… I have a couple of rooms with one bed in them, but all 5 of you might have to draw straws… or there’s the [mumbles] common room…”

Yes, I like to torment my players. It’s part of the fun of being a GM.

On the flip side of the coin are characters like Lady Dagor, the female knight in charge of the Order of St. Greggor – a group of knights seeking the destruction of all demons in the world of Immortals’ Wake.

In her case, I always had a mental image of Sarah Douglas as Ursa (Zod’s second in command) in Superman II, but a bit shorter and wearing a combination of chain and plate mail. She buries her contempt for civilians well, but holds them somewhere above pond scum in the order of things.

Dagor focuses on two things. Firstly, she studies all the battles between the knights of her order and the Changed demons who control raw elemental energies. She feels she has a better understanding of how her enemy operates than they do in many cases and far more knowledge than many of the organizations also studying the demons (including other church members, the House of the Magus (mages), and the Chasers). This feeling of superior knowledge is both a good and a bad thing.

Secondly, she focuses on strategies for capturing, testing, and killing demons. Using her knowledge of how they operate and many of their tactics, she finds weaknesses to exploit and is constantly instructing those under her command to test such weaknesses vigorously in the field.

Lady Dagor is a stern task master and a good soldier, but also knows how to play the political game. As the first woman in charge of the militant order of the Church of the Mother, she knows she is empowered to do just about anything in the name of the Church. But even with this knowledge, she obeys the letter of the law and will rarely break with church doctrine.

It was her laugh that I settled on first. A haughty, full-bodied laugh that has been practiced and perfected over the years to throw off allies and enemies alike. She has few friends, and only “befriends” people if it is politically or strategically necessary.

But at the bottom of this superiority complex and the haughtiness, she devoutly believes in the teachings of the Mother. What she is doing is right on every level and that gives her the strength to do what she must. Is she evil? Not from her perspective.  But from other people’s perspectives? Yeah, probably.

Some NPCs, like Athena from Zeus’s head, come fully formed in my mind when they appear. Others sneak up on me. And others just pop up like that damn innkeeper. “Eh?”

–Fitz

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