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View Full Version : Gamer Humor A talk about NPCs, PCs, and DMs



Belac93
2016-06-05, 10:08 PM
So, we all know NPCs, right? They are the DM's pets, the player's second-best friends (or punching bags), they are hirelings, store owners, and all sorts of people. The one thing that a DM can't predict about an NPC?

How the players react to them.

You will spend half your preparation time writing out quick reference sheets for an NPC. The players are sure to love her! You think. It'll make the game more fun! Nope, sorry, PCs aren't interested. Finished your quest, bye forever.

And then they go and do some crazy bull, like making best friends with a random prisoner. Or, (in extreme cases, sandbox games and almost every ****in one of my games), devoting their entire campaign around this person.

NPCs are fun, and boring, and annoying, and helpful, all at the same time. PCs are the same way. Enjoy your games, no matter who you're playing. And remember, engage. Interact, talk, have fun with each other. The PCs are there because the DM wants to have fun, and the PCs are there because they want to have fun. And the NPCs are the DM's characters.

Pretty much what I'm trying to say is have fun, and most importantly, have fun with the people you are playing with.

Anyway, I have no idea where I'm going with this, I just wanted to brainspew. :smalltongue:

DJroboninja
2016-06-06, 12:30 AM
One little secret I've learned in making NPCs for many years -- ALWAYS figure out what will happen if the PCs kill them.

I don't care if it's a random merchant, their trusted patron wizard, or the f***ing king, always assume they will die and have something in place for what happens.

PCs need to know that theirs actions have consequences, but if they kill the sniveling mine manager who doesn't want to pay them for clearing out his mine, the only thing they don't want to hear is "uhhhhh he ummmmm uhhhhh the guards ummmmm" -- it breaks the flow and pulls the PCs out.

Also, it prevents you as a DM from falling into "favorite NPC" territory, wherein you love an NPC so much that you refuse to let anything bad happen to him -- he has a level 20 plot shield surrounding him at all times. If you have to plan the repurcussions of their death, you understand that they CAN die, and that is okay.

tl;dr - when making NPCs, assume they will die

No-Kill Cleric
2016-06-06, 12:50 AM
My party was joking about my characters backstory, since she was a low level noble running from an arranged marriage to Gaston+Prince Hans in one racist-against-dragons package that my character would show up at home married to a dragon or something.

The DM made a character for this, connecting him to my character's patriarch (a dragon).

My character would up marrying said dragon boyfriend while my character's official fiance used the wedding to assassinate the patriarch dragon for access into his horde of knowledge.

It was an awesome session. I nearly cried.

Gizmogidget
2016-06-06, 02:33 AM
Consider what would happen if the NPC is killed, kidnapped, paid a large sum of money, stolen from, becomes enemies with, friends of, protected from danger by the PC's. Remember that PC's will always do something unexpected, so be prepared as possible.

Secondly take time to create each NPC the PC's interact with because if you know your NPC's like the back of your hand then it brings much more to your world. If you tell your players that they go to the weaponsmith to fix their gear after the encounter with the rust monster, the weaponsmith will never be remembered. But if you tell them that the weaponsmith is Viseos and he has a 10 year old daughter Marian who wants to own a farm when she grows up then the NPC is remembered much more.

BWR
2016-06-06, 04:31 AM
Unless the NPCs are meant to be antagonists, I rarely have to consider what will happen if PCs kill them. My players generally don't go around killing people I don't intend to be killed.

But yeah, some NPCs end up being remarkably popular. A throw-away ogre from a module ended up being a PC's paladin cohort because the players thought the idea of an ogre paladin sounded cool, and everyone likes his personality.
One DMPC was loved by all the players and her death was more upsetting than the death of one of the PCs (though possibly not to the player of said PC).

Anonymouswizard
2016-06-06, 05:49 AM
Consider what would happen if the NPC is killed, kidnapped, paid a large sum of money, stolen from, becomes enemies with, friends of, protected from danger by the PC's. Remember that PC's will always do something unexpected, so be prepared as possible.

To be fair, if you know all of that the NPC will probably end up becoming the Barbarian's girlfriend or something.


Secondly take time to create each NPC the PC's interact with because if you know your NPC's like the back of your hand then it brings much more to your world. If you tell your players that they go to the weaponsmith to fix their gear after the encounter with the rust monster, the weaponsmith will never be remembered. But if you tell them that the weaponsmith is Viseos and he has a 10 year old daughter Marian who wants to own a farm when she grows up then the NPC is remembered much more.

The thing is, I know that as a player who the party becomes attached to is rather arbitrary and has nothing to do with how fleshed out a character is. The weaponsmith has a daughter? Well we don't care, because we're too busy squeeing at how an aircraft engineer has semi-adopted our engineer, or for some reason become attached to the Skaven's employee who's only personality is 'occasionally sends reports and wants a permanent position'. Heck, we got more attached to the Skaven ambassador than our police contact, despite most of the party never meeting him and him barely having an established personality.

Sometimes it works out, as the same group has latched onto plot-important characters, but never as strongly as 'Docka', who didn't even have a name and just helped us in the final session by running out of the crowd and punching a terrorist in the face.

hifidelity2
2016-06-06, 06:03 AM
Unless the NPCs are meant to be antagonists, I rarely have to consider what will happen if PCs kill them. My players generally don't go around killing people I don't intend to be killed.

But yeah, some NPCs end up being remarkably popular. A throw-away ogre from a module ended up being a PC's paladin cohort because the players thought the idea of an ogre paladin sounded cool, and everyone likes his personality.
One DMPC was loved by all the players and her death was more upsetting than the death of one of the PCs (though possibly not to the player of said PC).

I have no issues with the PC’s killing NPC’s – even main BBEG ones – if I missed something and they were able to exploit it then good on them

It’s the throw away NPCs that can trip you up – You mention the “insert occupation” NPC and then suddenly 6 weeks later the party go to find him for info / help/ to offer help and you suddenly need to actually give him a name, goals etc

I swear they do this on purpose just to watch me run around thinking of a memorable name.

Knaight
2016-06-06, 08:02 AM
It’s the throw away NPCs that can trip you up – You mention the “insert occupation” NPC and then suddenly 6 weeks later the party go to find him for info / help/ to offer help and you suddenly need to actually give him a name, goals etc

I swear they do this on purpose just to watch me run around thinking of a memorable name.

I'm an extremely improv-heavy GM. One of the very few exceptions is that I tend to have lists of names sitting around, precisely because of this sort of thing. Granted, character names are generally a non issue, but related issues where the PCs hail a (space)ship and suddenly I need a name for it crop up all too often, and those tend to introduce a delay.

SirBellias
2016-06-06, 01:28 PM
Treat your NPCs like stolen cars. Keep them in the cross hairs. Drama Fodder.

Or, if you're running a more sane game, give them something they do, a way of talking, a funny accent, and a name, and your PCs might remember 2 of those at once. (I rarely run planning heavy games, so for the faster improvised ones I pull things out of the air, and those are always much more memorable than anything I make beforehand.)

Geddy2112
2016-06-06, 02:30 PM
The most important thing about the game is that the PC's are the heroes/villains/main characters. They are the focus of the game and the setting. What they do should matter more than an NPC, and the DM should never put an NPC on equal or greater importance than a PC. The moment that happens, the game is no longer in control of the players and they are just pawns in the DM's story. No NPC is unkillable or too important to the story that the PC's must be forced to interact with them. The players>NPC's full stop.

So in some sense, I support the ability and right for players to kill NPC's, sometimes without a lot of good reason. No NPC should be plot armored and everything that has stats can die, can be hit, can fail a save, etc. That said, if your 1st level derp PC fighter wants to pick a fight with the temple high priest, it is not plot armor when the naturally more experienced and advanced priest mops the floor with said PC. Stealthing every NPC with high level to prevent murderhobodom is not the right answer either-let them go on killing sprees through commoners, and instead of having the shopkeeper be a level 20 wizard, have some higher level bounty hunters come and hunt them down for being murderhobos. Regardless, let the PC's do all the choosing and the NPC's react as they will in an organic fashion.

I have also noticed too many NPC's catering to the party splits the party-why be friends with the party when you can surround your character with an echo chamber of NPC's tailor made to your interest and backstory? I know it might be harder for the civilized cleric and the feral savage barbarian to work together when they have little in common, but if they don't learn to roleplay and halfway like each other, the party goes on permanently divided as people who have no reason to work together aimlessly wander. I have seen games torn apart because there were NPC's that players could run off to, leaving the party in the dust. Any time I DM, I force the party together off the bat with some forced isolation or cohesion-wash ashore from a ship and the only survivors, long mission into the wilderness, prison break into the wilds kind of thing. Once the party has actually gelled, then they can run off and roleplay on their own.

CharonsHelper
2016-06-06, 02:46 PM
One little secret I've learned in making NPCs for many years -- ALWAYS figure out what will happen if the PCs kill them.

I don't care if it's a random merchant, their trusted patron wizard, or the f***ing king, always assume they will die and have something in place for what happens.

PCs need to know that theirs actions have consequences, but if they kill the sniveling mine manager who doesn't want to pay them for clearing out his mine, the only thing they don't want to hear is "uhhhhh he ummmmm uhhhhh the guards ummmmm" -- it breaks the flow and pulls the PCs out.

Also, it prevents you as a DM from falling into "favorite NPC" territory, wherein you love an NPC so much that you refuse to let anything bad happen to him -- he has a level 20 plot shield surrounding him at all times. If you have to plan the repurcussions of their death, you understand that they CAN die, and that is okay.

tl;dr - when making NPCs, assume they will die

I think that's mostly just your group. :P I don't think I've played with anyone quite that murderhobo-ish outside of a player or two playing PFS at a con.

Max_Killjoy
2016-06-06, 05:00 PM
So... longish story follows... you have been warned...


Long ago at a gaming table far away, I ran a fantasy-setting game in which a group of mismatched tomb-raiders, tome-seekers, and swords-for-hire (that is, the PCs) were hired by a well-respected nobleman to retrieve an artifact from a hidden cult -- before it could be used to restore "an old god of the demon realm" from her ancient defeat/imprisonment/exile. (Think something like the scene in Conan the Barbarian with King Osric, perhaps with less spittle.)

So off they went to steal the artifact, having been promised great riches for returning it intact. After much sneaking, searching, and slaying of guards, they escaped with the artifact. Fearing pursuit, they took refuge in a ruined-looking circle of standing stones, to watch for any trackers overnight.

And then one of the characters, the squirrelly wanna-be wizard, says to me "How do I talk to the thing in the artifact?"... I looked around the table at the other players for a second, thinking one of them would say "NO!" or "What?" or "You damn fool!" After a moment of silence, I said "You recall that Count Esteemed* told you that it was highly dangerous to even directly handle the artifact." The charming bandit says "Yeah, don't none of us trust that guy, gotta figure out what's really going on."

Given who they were and what they knew by then, I really didn't have a fair and justifiable way to say "You can't", so there in that dark and lost place, they awakened the old goddess and made a pact with her, and released her from the artifact. She could not tell them an direct untruth, and could not harm them, but they had to be careful because of her tendency to say true things in ways open to interpretation, and general way of "thinking sideways", and she wasn't bound to actively keep them from harm.

And that's how I had to create, on the fly, the NPC from hell (literally). They'd sit around their campfire at night drinking and talking "philosophy" with the Damned Goddess of the Demon Marches, the Margrave of Ashes... :smalleek:


* made up name because I don't remember names from this campaign any more...

Scattered across many sessions, I had laid a few oblique crumbs of foreshadowing, thinking that it would be just enough to have the players kick themselves during the eventual big reveal. Somehow, from that, between sessions, they'd talked and decided that they didn't trust a damn thing that was going on and that they were on their own with no one to trust. I really was subtle and only gave the crumbs out individually, but I guess they actually compared notes for once. The Count really was up to something -- he was a member of a secret cult himself, a worshiper of the devourer aspect of a different god... an aspect who planned to devour every other god until it was all-powerful. They weren't supposed to figure it out until they'd already helped him feed his patron a couple of these trapped old gods. They certainly were not supposed to ever talk to one of them.


Someone's question on another forum reminded me of this old game a while ago, and it's what inspired me to start working a new game setting for a possible new campaign, or at least just for fun.

Dunsparce
2016-06-06, 05:36 PM
It's always amazing when a minor NPC or random encounter fodder becomes a party favorite.

In a D&D 3.5 campaign I ran, the party Paladin was trying to convert a barbaric tribe to his giant robot god(makes sense in context, I swear), and he failed so horribly at his rolls I decided to throw him a bone and say the village idiot converted on the spot. The PCs immediately latched onto the guy and insisted on taking him into the massive dungeon in the area with them. I had to quickly stat up a Barbarian with 3 Intelligence and the party kept gushing over him the whole time as I decided to make him mostly non-verbal and trying to solve the puzzles via headbutting them repeatedly until they broke(It worked a few times, I publicly rolled a 20 on the strength check so I couldn't justify an excuse to why it didn't work). By the time their zany world-hopping adventures ended, he had long left the party to become the chief of his tribe and surrounded by wealth and women because the party wanted it that way.

digiman619
2016-06-06, 06:54 PM
We had a similar experience when we were running Wrath of The Dragon Horde (a 5e module; 1st part of a AP). There was a woman pulling a last stand as she was surrounded by kobolds. She rolled amazingly well, taking out three of the kobolds herself. We escorted her and her family to the keep, where a cultist and his group of kobolds were blocking the entrance. After the cultist tried to fry one of her kids (who luckily made their save), she threw her javelin at him, oneshotting him. She was so awesome, she ended up joining the party! (i said she should go Paladin, but was outvoted and she went Cleric (with the War Domain)). This was the party that later killed an adult blue dragon at 1st level, but that's another story...

Honest Tiefling
2016-06-06, 07:00 PM
I tried to RP on an online game (Neverwinter Nights, if anyone cared). Many NPCs under many different DMs were always hostile, condescending or outright rude to the PCs...Even good aligned ones.

So when a generic wizard guy was the only one to treat the PCs with respect, he became a firm favorite among many players. Many people were actually sad when he died, and before that, often inquired about him out of character. Many PCs even tried to give him a respectful burial and monument.

I think his name was even randomly generated...

JAL_1138
2016-06-07, 10:25 AM
There are several decent books out there that consist solely of premade NPCs--sometimes as system-specific stat blocks, sometimes as generic names, descriptions, backgrounds, and motives. These are sometimes quite helpful (and sometimes are pretty much a waste of money), but IMO even the good ones would work best as seeds for your own ideas rather than things to run by-the-book. Players will catch on if all your NPCs are yoinked straight out of the Pathfinder NPC Codex, for example, although probably fewer will catch on if you're using Masks from Gnome Stew.

braveheart
2016-06-07, 02:48 PM
Always be prepared for your party to take pity on something.

I was running a Star Wars campaign abd the party had been hired to take out the new spice cook on the world, they busted in and lit up the cook, but the apprentice sireendered. She was then taken into hut custody and I thought she was gone.

Lo and behold when everything goes sideways and the party needs to escape the planet, one of them remembers her and convinces everyone else to help him rescue this unnamed NPC.

PrincessCupcake
2016-06-08, 10:50 PM
If it's innocent-looking expect PCs to do one of two things:
-distrust it intensely
-adopt it
Sometimes both at the same time. (This happened with a random Drider they came across. Half the party distrusted it and wanted to leave her where she was, so her kin could find her eventually. The Paladin had other ideas, and began retrofitting the cart and a large tent to accommodate this Drider during transit back to her home town.)

The Fury
2016-06-10, 12:13 AM
I don't run games often. I just don't think I'm good at it, I've done so a few times and NPC and Player Character interactions are often weirdly surprising. Like that time that the players decided they needed a hireling, one PC listed his specific criteria for the party's new employee. Just to troll them a little bit I made the first candidate someone that fulfilled none of the stated criteria-- to my surprise, the party hired her on the spot.

Then there's times when PCs just decide to befriend that one NPC. In a lot of cases it makes sense, a typical campaign setting can be a pretty cruel place, so when you meet someone-- anyone that's actually genuinely nice to you, you try to keep them around. In a game I'm running now, the party's Ranger decided she wants to be best friends with an NPC that has once tried to kill her and the rest of the party, casually insults and threatens the party, is possibly concocting a villainous scheme and may be contemplating suicide. All in all, I thought this NPC came off as really unpleasant so I was pretty surprised. Not so surprised that I'm just going to hit the Ranger with a "Nuh-uh! She's evil and you can't change her!" I think I'd actually prefer if the Ranger's efforts to redeem this NPC start to sink in. I guess in the end, everyone needs a friend, though I wasn't thinking I'd get something so idealistic from that player, that NPC and that campaign.

Sajiri
2016-06-10, 04:28 PM
My DM and I (doing single player RPs) have several situations of minor/random NPCs becoming favourites, or ones intended to join never having interest.

In our pirate campaign where I'm the player, he introduced a little kitsune boy who was meant to be a minor side character that my character saved, just to explain some plot stuff. Instead she adopted him, and he practically became the DMPC, devoted his life to finding and rescuing my character during a 10 year time skip where she was trapped in another world. Now he's a 20-something year old attractive kitsune man with a bit of a joke about how all the women on the ship have a thing for him while his mother is being overprotective because no woman is good enough for her son.

Same campaign, early on I decided to just do some general interaction with the unnamed npcs of the crew, so the DM randomly generated an npc for me using my rolls (funnily, I rolled 1 for everything). Generated a lawful good, aasimar paladin type character, seemingly completely out of place on a pirate ship, but he became my favourite npc of the lot (because he's lawful good, not lawful stupid). Now he even seems to be my character's lover which will be interesting when the lawful good paladin - chaotic neutral pirate conflicts come up :smallconfused:

Same campaign again, there are two characters I can think of that were intended to join me. One has shown up constantly but has been turned away each time. Now it turns out she's become the empress of the enemy nation in the war that's going on. Another was a guy that was knocked unconscious and I guess I was meant to take him with me and recruit him, instead shot him in the head right there. He had a special wind domain power (special system granted through a crystal that fuses with a persons heart that's a major plot point in this game, there's a lot of those crystals), because he died my character's daughter instead went and took that crystal and the wind power instead during the timeskip.

Different campaign I'm also the player of. The first evil character was introduced, he was definitely creepy, it was I think intended he'd be constantly messing things up for my character. Instead I loved the guy because the way he was introduced was just great, it was essentially a musical. Now he's tagging along and it's such amusing and interesting interactions because that npc and my character are complete opposites. Good and Evil stuck together.

In the campaign I run where my DM is the player, I made one character up on the spot, literally making up her background as I was making her introductory posts, she's seemingly became the player's main partner/friend in the group. I introduced his mother in one session, was meant to be a short interaction, instead he wanted to take her with him while travelling when I was not prepared for that at all. Now I've been making up this background for her, turns out she was quite the badass in her youth.

Then there's the innkeeper. In a town that was dealing with kidnapped children and missing townsfolk, I had the player staying with a farm couple, then threw in a random line 'even the innkeeper went missing after he went looking for the kids, just like everyone else'. It was just a way of explaining why the player wasnt staying at the town inn, instead he latched onto this as a plot point, trying to dig up information on the guy (I just assumed he was like everyone else who walked off into the woods and died), instead after all his effort I decided to just put the guy in there and let him be rescued, now he's travelling with them too.

Gizmogidget
2016-06-10, 04:34 PM
To be fair, if you know all of that the NPC will probably end up becoming the Barbarian's girlfriend or something.



The thing is, I know that as a player who the party becomes attached to is rather arbitrary and has nothing to do with how fleshed out a character is. The weaponsmith has a daughter? Well we don't care, because we're too busy squeeing at how an aircraft engineer has semi-adopted our engineer, or for some reason become attached to the Skaven's employee who's only personality is 'occasionally sends reports and wants a permanent position'. Heck, we got more attached to the Skaven ambassador than our police contact, despite most of the party never meeting him and him barely having an established personality.

Sometimes it works out, as the same group has latched onto plot-important characters, but never as strongly as 'Docka', who didn't even have a name and just helped us in the final session by running out of the crowd and punching a terrorist in the face.

That is why you flesh out all the NPC's so that if the players decide to become friends with the passing stranger instead of the brave knight you can be prepared to see what that NPC might do.