PDA

View Full Version : DM Help Making a character endearing.



Atsull
2014-10-28, 07:53 PM
I've just given my group a sentient mecha to serve as a rogue, which they sorely need. I want to make this character kind of clueless about the world, since the mecha has to learn, and it's only about 2 weeks old. (It learns very quickly.) In classic DM style, I'm planning to have it heartlessly murdered by a future bad guy. What have you done to make characters more endearing and semi-cute, if only to make their death more heartbreaking?

(Un)Inspired
2014-10-28, 08:01 PM
Ha! I did the exact same thing with a warforged fighter in a 4e game I ran for a party without a defender.

Out of action you've got to have the mecha flatter the characters without being insipid and in combat make him useful to your players without stealing the spotlight

Atsull
2014-10-28, 08:06 PM
Ha! I did the exact same thing with a warforged fighter in a 4e game I ran for a party without a defender.

Out of action you've got to have the mecha flatter the characters without being insipid and in combat make him useful to your players without stealing the spotlight

I like this idea.

Thought: Characters fail a bunch of rolls and end up hopeless. Suddenly, enemy is shot by crossbow. Mecha comes down, and they realize it saved them all. Then, It asks nothing in return.

(Un)Inspired
2014-10-28, 08:14 PM
I like this idea.

Thought: Characters fail a bunch of rolls and end up hopeless. Suddenly, enemy is shot by crossbow. Mecha comes down, and they realize it saved them all. Then, It asks nothing in return.

I would avoid this sort of thing. After all, you don't want your party's machina buddy to be of the deus ex variety.

Your team isn't gonna feel heroic if they get there butts saved. What I would do is the reverse. Have them save him from overwhelming odds then have him reward them and marvel at their awesomeness. Then when it comes to other fights don't have him be useless or they'll hate him for being dead weight.

Atsull
2014-10-28, 08:39 PM
I would avoid this sort of thing. After all, you don't want your party's machina buddy to be of the deus ex variety.

Your team isn't gonna feel heroic if they get there butts saved. What I would do is the reverse. Have them save him from overwhelming odds then have him reward them and marvel at their awesomeness. Then when it comes to other fights don't have him be useless or they'll hate him for being dead weight.

never played Deus Ex before, so I don't understand the reference. The mecha has no belongings other than his weapons/other tools, So the reward situation doesn't quite work.

(Un)Inspired
2014-10-28, 08:45 PM
Deus ex machina is a plot device where tension is resolved by author fiat rather than through character development. If you save your party with a new npc they're gonna feel like the focus is being taken away from them.

Players want to save the day, not have someone else save them.

Red Fel
2014-10-28, 09:50 PM
I agree with (Un)Inspired. Endearing is something you can't predict. You can build the sweetest, kindest, funniest, most entertaining and lovable NPC, and your PCs will murder the crap out of it; you can create a loathsome cesspool of despicable filth and the PCs will want to turn him into a mascot.

Play your NPCs sincerely. Let them be who they are. Your players will like them or not. There's not much you can do to enforce that. And if your players end up disliking Robo-Tyke, they really won't be that broken up when the BBEG breaks him up. That's just how it works. So kill someone they do care about. Because great DMing is all about being adaptable. :smallamused:

AceAwesome96
2014-10-28, 09:50 PM
I agree with (Un)Inspired and I think he's giving out some good ideas here. Take it from me, in the most recent session that I was playing, the guest GM must have felt like he needed to GMPC to make his character more awesome. While it worked for him, I was unimpressed by the amount of deus ex machina he implemented (3 times, by the same character no less). The reverse method that (Un)Inspired mentioned would work on me if I was in said game, mostly because my character would likely thereafter share a bond of trust and friendship with that character... Until you kill off said character of course.

Also, this character could be forever grateful (think the aliens from Toy Story) and that's when you introduce his personality to further develop a bond. You said that you wanted him ruthlessly murdered by a future bad guy, maybe have the character try to save the party like they did for him but he fails and dies?

Mastikator
2014-10-29, 04:28 AM
I once made an endearing PC who woke up early to make breakfast for the other PCs. He was also totally defenseless in combat and against the concept of fighting in general and always opted for a diplomatic solution for every problem, even when it was bandit cultits out for our blood.

Nobot
2014-10-29, 04:47 AM
While not exactly 'endearing', you could opt to let your players control the mecha themselves (always or only in combat). If given to the right player, the mecha will become a party member. If given to the wrong player, it will be used to set off traps and carry stuff. So be careful!

Added advantage 1) you won't have to deal with the hassle of controlling an extra NPC.
Added advantage 2) in combat, you don't have to work out dice rolls for NPC vs. NPC, which is usually boring.

prufock
2014-10-29, 07:16 AM
I once made an endearing PC who woke up early to make breakfast for the other PCs. He was also totally defenseless in combat and against the concept of fighting in general and always opted for a diplomatic solution for every problem, even when it was bandit cultits out for our blood.
I did something similar, though my NPC wasn't as anti-combat. He was a level 1 factotum, who acted as a multi-tool for the mid-to-high level party, doing things like
- cooking
- sewing
- setting up camp
- tearing down camp
- caring for horses
- gathering information in towns (often returning with black eyes)
- carrying the party's standard
- securing rooms at inns (often with a discount)
- medical services

Nothing particularly combat-oriented. If a fight broke out he would usually just try to stay out of the way, maybe taking a pot shot with his bow if the situation presented itself. He wasn't a coward, and would step in to try to protect the party if he could - like feeding one of them a potion if they got dropped in combat.

He was always the first one awake and the last to sleep (except those taking watch), so everything was done in a timely fashion for the PCs.

He's still around, and the party seems to actually care what happens to him, though I'm not sure if "invested" is the right word. They have become half-jokingly convinced that he is in fact a god in human form, since he has survived a couple of things that could have killed him.

DireSickFish
2014-10-29, 09:00 AM
Making a NPC endearing to the party is something I have greatly struggled with. Some one off PC's turn into recurring characters because the players like them, and I've had to phaze out others because they didn't gell. Granted sometimes I keep an NPC around -because- the party hates them. Some of it is my fault for not RPing the character like I intended.

Things I've found that PC's -generally- like:
-Funny accents, if they sound distinct and comical they leave a better impression
-Being useful, this doesn't mean they solve problems for the party. This means when the party asks them to help out or do something that they will contribute. This could be as simple as providing the location of a badguys hideout or letting them have a safe spot to sleep for the night.

I once tried to make a "cool" cleric of Illmater. He was supposed to be an old guy who was understanding of not everyone needs to be pure to be good. Find the party a sweet fight club, buy the party booz ect. What he instead came off as was an old senile man who couldn't stay out of trouble. And they had to watch him like a hawke because as soon as there backs were turned he'd wander off!

gom jabbarwocky
2014-10-29, 08:51 PM
Making an NPC endearing to the party is almost entirely up to random chance and the capriciousness of the players. The best advice I have is that to make the party feel benevolent to a character, they have to be helpless in any situation that involves combat and utterly dependent on the party for anything requiring violence to solve. And yet, this character must have one or more intrinsic abilities that make them valuable, like they have a lot of contacts or have access to a wealth of intel. Something that the PCs can't steal or buy from them.

However, to give you an idea of how badly this can backfire, I'll share an embarrassing story of the reverse. In a game I ran, I tried to make an NPC as annoying as possible. They were utterly useless in every way, constantly wasting party resources, providing counter-intuitive "help", being snobbish, and speaking with the most annoying, grating, high-pitched, weaselly voice I could muster. The purpose was to create a moral dilemma, where the party would later be asked to do this good thing that might accidentally help this NPC, who they were supposed to hate with a passion usually only directed at talk radio personalities. Instead, they loved him in complete defiance of all common sense and self-preservation instincts.

On the flip side, the most endearing NPC I've ever made was a complete accident - in a cyberpunk game the characters needed a doctor, so I made up on the spot experimental surgeon Toby Cook, who had an unnerving tendency to be constantly high on his own experimental pharmaceuticals, and thus spout inane and sometimes worrying dialogue; "After re-attaching your leg, try not to lean on it too much or it might fall off. Just kidding! But seriously, it might fall off. Also, your urine might turn blue for a while. That's normal." Created purely by accident with no forethought but necessity, the PCs nevertheless devoted much of the campaign saving him from being murdered, even when it was detrimental to their long-term goals.

jaydubs
2014-10-29, 09:12 PM
I'd suggest two principles for NPCs designed to be likeable:
-Be useful, make the PCs feel useful, or both.
-Don't overshadow the PCs. They're the ones that should get the spotlight, so your NPCs should be less cool, less competent, and less assertive than the PCs. Let them be awesome. Let them solve the problems (though occasionally using the NPC as a tool). Let them make the important decisions.

(Un)Inspired
2014-10-29, 10:20 PM
I think what really needs to be taken away from this conversation is that while it's difficult to make your party fall in love with your npc its easy for them to be irritated by it and even easier them to be apathetic towards it.

People have given good accounts of what has worked for them in the past when it comes to getting players to like their npcs and some has been said about what you must avoid to invoke the opposite reaction. It still seems that there's a multitude of tiny variable in your players playstyles and in-the-moment attitude when you introduce your npc that determines how they will receive it.

Ultimately follow the advice we have given for trying to get your players on board with your mecha and for gods' sake avoid the pitfalls that will lead to them hating it; be flexible and hope for the best. Ultimately, DMing a table means that you're still part of a cooperative story and sometimes your players just aren't going to react the way you want them to.

Being a DM is like making love, if you try to force things too hard no one's gonna have fun.

gom jabbarwocky
2014-10-29, 11:14 PM
Being a DM is like making love, if you try to force things too hard no one's gonna have fun.

LOL.

True dat.

SiuiS
2014-10-30, 12:00 AM
I like this idea.

Thought: Characters fail a bunch of rolls and end up hopeless. Suddenly, enemy is shot by crossbow. Mecha comes down, and they realize it saved them all. Then, It asks nothing in return.

What you just described is quite literally the exact thing players complain about DMPCs for and any player who had dealt with one or who reads Roleplaying forums is going to kill the mecha immediately to either stop the DM from interfering at the party level or to prove the DM is being railroad-y (if he doesn't let you kill the mecha).

Tengu_temp
2014-10-30, 12:36 AM
There are no rules to making likable characters, beyond the very general "find out what your PCs find likable, then make a character who's like that". Create a character they like, and you'll be able to break all the rules regarding power levels or spotlight.


What you just described is quite literally the exact thing players complain about DMPCs for and any player who had dealt with one or who reads Roleplaying forums is going to kill the mecha immediately to either stop the DM from interfering at the party level or to prove the DM is being railroad-y (if he doesn't let you kill the mecha).

Bull. I wouldn't kill it because I care about RP consistency, and I'm not playing a rampaging psychopath. Introducing an NPC by making it bail out the PCs is hard to pull off, but it's not a warning sign in itself. The NPC being obviously overpowered and/or trying too hard to be cool is.

Prince Raven
2014-10-30, 10:23 AM
I had an NPC in my Dark Heresy game who was only really there to be tailed to a den of heresy (where else?) Instead my players end up capturing, and in the process ended severing one of her legs and the opposite hand. After helping her recover and learning more about her circumstances, they revealed themselves as Inquisitorial agents and showed her the sort of people she was really working for (she, of course, had no clue she was working with heretics, and believed the party to be the heretics). One of them began to develop quite an attachment to her, and they were a bit flirtatious. Eventually they trusted her enough that the tech-priest replaced her limbs, and she set off with them to redeem herself by taking down the institution (a church, btw) that had raised her to worship false saints. By this point all my players liked this NPC a fair bit and were talking about taking her with them off-planet once they were done.
She ended up being brutally murdered in front of them by a psychically dominated scythe-wielder they thought was an ally, gotta love Dark Heresy.

So, the lesson of my story is... um... guys like damaged but cute blondes?

Marlowe
2014-10-30, 11:11 AM
OK. I'm going to state the obvious and say that if you're going to ask for help about a campaign running on this forum it's good etiquette, as well as basic common sense, to place a note saying "MY PLAYERS DO NOT READ", or something of that kidney.

Honest Tiefling
2014-10-30, 04:17 PM
Don't cutscene the death. Sure, enemies might target it first, as it is a mecha and I assume it looks mildly imposing to the average joe. But a death you cannot prevent or do anything about often feels cheap. Have the enemies act sensibly and go with what happens, you never know, they might save him.

I would just try to make the character believable in the first place, taking cues as others have said of what the players enjoy. If it works, it works, if it doesn't...Give them a reason to kill him and don't stress if at first you don't succeed. I have found that players often form attachments only when they have a choice in such.

And if you succeed, they might try to repair him, fair warning.

Fortis
2014-10-31, 01:46 AM
First, I'm rather new to DMing, so I don't have much to draw on. But it's been my experience that it's hard to predict which NPCs the PCs will latch onto. In my own campaign, I've made NPC villagers, and designed them to have their own quirks and to be helpful to the Party. But out of the blue, they also decided they liked this one random clockwork scrap golem minion they met in battle that was bantering in it's own robotic way. After the fight I let them take said scrap golem back and repair it and reprogram it.

Also, if you're planning a death ahead of time, that's fine. Just don't make a pattern of it. Not saying you're doing this, just cautioning. PCs, I've also noticed, cotton pretty quick if befriending NPCs just means they die to Cruella de Sauron in the near future.

The Great Wyrm
2014-11-04, 11:41 AM
I just found this as well. A spoiler would have been nice.

Dunsparce
2014-11-05, 10:53 AM
Even though I've never been a DM myself(yet, I'm working on it), just like how players might ignore or even hate an NPC that was created to be liked, sometimes they latch on to the weirdest things. In one campaign I'm in, we spared a living table during an encounter where all the furniture in a room attacked because he was quite hilarious with the quips he made throughout the battle, so we spared him, had him follow us for the rest of the dungeon, and eventually we gave him to a rich guy to use him because his lifelong dream was to be used as an actual table instead of an attack dog.

Atsull
2015-03-31, 09:25 PM
I just found this as well. A spoiler would have been nice.

nnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooo... Change of plans is necessary...

goto124
2015-03-31, 09:37 PM
Just keep throwing NPCs and see which one sticks? :P

Mr Beer
2015-03-31, 10:01 PM
Definitely have a cool, handsome, slim guy, all in black, dual wielding blades with swordsmanship far superior to the PCs or indeed anyone they've ever met. Women throw themselves at him, enemies surrender at the mere sardonic crook of his eyebrow.

Constantly tell the PCs how impressed they should be by the NPC, who is called Razorblade McDeadly. Maybe have McDeadly order them around in a condescending manner and be utterly immune to any physical or magical violence they might offer him.

Players love that guy.

goto124
2015-03-31, 10:10 PM
Should've colored that blue. Like this.

DigoDragon
2015-04-01, 07:42 AM
-Be useful, make the PCs feel useful, or both.
-Don't overshadow the PCs.

Agreed. And do RP with the players a bunch. Give the NPC a personality with likes/dislikes and quirks that the players can relate to. I actually got one D&D group to become enamored with an evil red dragon because her plots were actually useful to the players and she didn't mind working along side them from time to time. The PCs started forgetting that she was evil and eventually refused to harm her when her schemes finally came to fruition! XD

They still had to stop her, but even then the party was forgiving and tried to turn her with the power of friendship. It eventually worked.



Just keep throwing NPCs and see which one sticks? :P

This is another good point! Mileage varies so you want to toss a few NPCs and when the players gravitate to one, you snatch that as the centerpiece to your plan.

Keltest
2015-04-01, 07:44 AM
Our party named the NPC Paladin's warhorse Sillypants. We shall never forget you Soldarn!

Also, we burned off the NPC dwarf Berserker's beard when we met him. That made for an interesting journey.

Beta Centauri
2015-04-01, 08:49 AM
I've just given my group a sentient mecha to serve as a rogue, which they sorely need. I want to make this character kind of clueless about the world, since the mecha has to learn, and it's only about 2 weeks old. (It learns very quickly.) In classic DM style, I'm planning to have it heartlessly murdered by a future bad guy. What have you done to make characters more endearing and semi-cute, if only to make their death more heartbreaking? Asked my players to create them. People tend to care much more about things they helped create than things created for them.

Mr.Moron
2015-04-01, 09:22 AM
NPCs are no different than any other characters or people. In general folks are going to like people that:


Share in their mannerisms.
Reinforce their worldview.
Provide to them value.
They can provide value to.
Express positives opinions about them.


In general if you want an NPC to endearing you should make them have just a little bit in common with every PC/player, and all those bits should be something the players/PCs like about each other. They should avoid questioning the PCs actions and when they must only for clarification or providing useful context - never as criticism. They should be useful to the PCs just not so much they can steal the spotlight. They should have their own problems that can be solved the skill sets of the PCs. They should at least occasionally be impressed by the things PCs do and openly express that.

DigoDragon
2015-04-01, 10:34 AM
Asked my players to create them. People tend to care much more about things they helped create than things created for them.

I've done this from time to time and it too works well to get players invested in NPCs.

JAL_1138
2015-04-03, 06:47 PM
Look at Legion from Mass Effect, Robo from Chrono Trigger, and Data from Star Trek. Base his mannerisms on them to some extent.

If you can squeeze in the Mass Effect line "Does this unit have a soul?" twice, you're gold--once innocently, like around the campfire, and once right before the lights in his eyes go out when the BBEG kills him (have the mech linger a little bit, severely damaged, until the BBEG is gone, long enough for them to check on the 'bot).

SiuiS
2015-04-05, 02:11 AM
Our party named the NPC Paladin's warhorse Sillypants. We shall never forget you Soldarn!

Also, we burned off the NPC dwarf Berserker's beard when we met him. That made for an interesting journey.

There was a hell red barbarian once, with a warhorse that became interesting when it was key to defeating an ambush (deadly hooves!), named Eschaton. No one bothered with that though, clearly his name was Esteban. The barbarian was quite irate about that... After he died though, they awakened his horse, who was all too glad to be Esteban because that was a name. He was the damned finest vow of poverty monk you ever saw. Had the complete rapid strike feat chain and touch of golden ice and got one guy to every fail that damn saving throw... On the same Attack he died anyway.

Players latch on to the weirdest BS.



Bull. I wouldn't kill it because I care about RP consistency, and I'm not playing a rampaging psychopath. Introducing an NPC by making it bail out the PCs is hard to pull off, but it's not a warning sign in itself. The NPC being obviously overpowered and/or trying too hard to be cool is.

You're a remarkably intelligent and mature person, I've found, and I fully believe you would give this random Deus ex machina NPC the benefit of the doubt.

In general though, he wouldn't get it. And I'm not saying that's always a warning sign. I'm saying players are always a superstitious and cowardly lot, who will take it as a bad sign regardless, because of memetic transmission.

Kami2awa
2015-04-05, 04:01 AM
I have only 2 pieces of advice:

Advice you'll hear again and again:
- Don't overshadow the PCs, *ever*. It doesn't go down well, and makes the game boring and unfulfilling for them.

Less frequently given:
- Don't re-use this character. Having the same character turn up across worlds can get boring after a short while (unless they are some kind of dimension-shifter for whom it makes a certain amount of sense). Having them turn up again within the same setting is fine, but avoid bringing them back from the dead or similar.

Loxagn
2015-04-09, 05:29 PM
It's hard to predict what the party will find endearing. One character that cropped up in a campaign of mine was a butler/bodyguard to a major antagonist. He wasn't terribly well-developed in my opinion, but largely was there essentially to act as a shield if the party decided they were done playing things subtly and trying to get into the villain's good graces. He also sat in on their meetings and promptly served just about any request the party made, food or amenities-wise. Soft-spoken, polite, stayed out of the way most of the time.

For some reason the party loved him. Ended up fighting alongside him in an effort to repel a Bigger Bad later on, and openly mourned when he got killed in the fighting. As a result, said Bigger Bad is now the most hated character I have ever created. Go figure.