PCs: Doing the Work So DMs Don't Have To

[Ranis]

Recently, I've noticed that my PCs are fleshing out my NPC's more than I did originally. Is it a good thing that they're demanding more out of my world than I did up front, or a bad thing that I'm not fleshing out my world as well as I thought I was?

[Wolf53226]

That really depends on what you were missing out of the NPC and who the NPC is. Important NPC should probably be fleshed out much like a character, with a back story and everything, but if they are asking some local blacksmithe about his family, that is probably going too far.

[technomancer]

I would place this situation firmly in the catagory of "I don't need to do it until I need it." You didn't need to flesh out those NPCs until the players started looking into it. Why bother doing extra work when your players may or may not ever even know you did it?

Though, you may want to come up with several mad-libs style backgrounds, where you just fill in a few nouns and adjectives, and you have a background.

[Ranis]

I would place this situation firmly in the catagory of "I don't need to do it until I need it." You didn't need to flesh out those NPCs until the players started looking into it. Why bother doing extra work when your players may or may not ever even know you did it?

Though, you may want to come up with several mad-libs style backgrounds, where you just fill in a few nouns and adjectives, and you have a background.

This, this is good to hear. One of my PC's came up to me and offered to draw some of the NPC's he felt would be a bit more well-represented with some pictures. This forced me to come up with actual descriptions of them for him other than "He looks badass," so I'm beginning to wonder if I should just be more descriptive with my NPC's.

[Sahegian]

Descriptive text is great and all, but if you get too descriptive about any one character it instantly becomes important so you have to spread it out evenly. Make a group of baddies and give one an interesting element that you describe more than the rest. Everyone in the party jumps on that one as they expect that to be the leader/most dangerous in the group when maybe it just had a really cool hat.

So you sort of have to be all or nothing with that type of description else you give away things you don't necessarily want to or give misinformation. In my opinion though it is worth the trouble to be more descriptive. It makes the game much more real although it takes a lot more work to make unique and interesting cannon fodder.

[Toliudar]

PC's react to detail as a sign to pay attention. Sometimes, a wealth of detail (especially if it's detail you're pulling out of your a** on the spot) can be a great source of richness - and occasional humour.

However, if I as a PC were to walk into a blacksmith shop, and be greeted by a six-sentence detail of the smith at work, I'd assume that he's a major character, and I should be going on alert to try to further the story with this guy. Anything he says or does takes on unnecessary significance, and the chance of me making some weird assumption - that sends the story offroad and into previously uncharted (and potentially uninteresting) territory - increases dramatically.

If your players are helping you flesh out detail on recurring NPC's, it means that they've formed a kind of bond with those characters - congratulations. If it doesn't serve your story, you can either indulge it, gently redirect them, or be ready to go with it completely and face the potential for it to derail your action.

[Shiny, Bearer of the Pokystick]

The watchword for NPCs, and for settings generally, is basically to provide texture- there's a great article about it right here on GiTP, and I've always found it one of the more useful tips available.

You can keep up a little mystery if everything is just interesting enough- but never paragraph-long description, and never 'it's a chest'.

[Olethros]

I played in a 2nd ed canned adventure once that used the "details = important" ploy to great affect (and annoyance). Things like, "you listen carefully at the wall and hear the sound of dripping watter", hours latter, after expending time and resorces to finally "bybass" the wall, we discover the roughuen stone the wall was covering and a natural cave-drip. It really forced you to stay in character and react "naturally," as apposed to acting like a player.

[Ranis]

If your players are helping you flesh out detail on recurring NPC's, it means that they've formed a kind of bond with those characters - congratulations. If it doesn't serve your story, you can either indulge it, gently redirect them, or be ready to go with it completely and face the potential for it to derail your action.

This is extremely encouraging. I've just been more aware of the fine line between showing them that "This NPC is important" without making it blatantly obvious, but at the same time, I don't want it to be as easy as simply stating detail, but at the same time, if I gave immense detail to every NPC, walking through a town would take 3 hours out of game with me describing things. I don't want to take that long, and I'm sure no one else does either, but it's just sometimes extremely frustrating finding this delicate balance.

Thanks for your input, guys. This is very insightful to me.

[KoDT69]

DMing aint easy, holla if ya hear me!
I have had this problem changing between groups that I DM. One group cares nothing for more than a basic plot that calls for them to beat stuff to death and take the treasure. Group 2 prefers a grand scale epic adventure in which even a few commoners gain backstories and all semi-important NPC's get a full life history. The one thing I hate doing is trying to name them all. Due to the normal player tradition nicknaming stuff anyways, I just give the description and ask them to pick a name they can remember from that. Much like OotS extras names we give them like Grand Larceny Guy, Contankerous Old Geezer, and Police Chief, some of the names are a literal description with capitalized letters in front It is inevitable you will throw in some random stuff like a new fashion style unique to the new city they arrived in or something and the players will assume it's a cult thing, a gang thing, or the town is brainwashed by a wizard. Don't be afraid to just come out and say through the NPC "I'm sorry, but I cannot help you in your mission, I'm an insignificant peopn in the grand scheme of things". I always have to fight with them over not overinvolving the general populace into their exploits.

[Kel_Arath]

DMing aint easy, holla if ya hear me!

HOLLA! i hear that

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Hey, if your players are actively helping you build a more complex world, don't take that to mean you're not doing your job- you're in fact being a very good DM. Clearly, they're very, very into the game.

If an NPC isn't overly important at the time but the PC's want to learn more, don't sweat it- make it up on the spot. Ad-libbing is perfectly normal in good DMing.

[storybookknight]

Holla!

Spend time on the ones you think are necessary to spend time on, otherwise let the players chip in! I know for my own part, I've had one or two NPCs basically sprung on me by the players cooperating with my subconscious.

As an example, there was a guy who wrote a newspaper article that the players decided they liked, but nobody really remembered his name.

He's now the recurring character Artiklos Duid (i.e. Article Dude).

This actually works if you have trouble remembering people's names... the police cheif can be Guy Polizei, the thief can be Katt Burler, etc.

[Ranis]

Holla!

Heh, thanks for the insight, guys. This is wonderful, getting the exact opposite comments I expected to receive, actually. It's actually something I didn't expect them to do, but in retrospect, when I made 5 MS Word documents, all 8+ pages long, about my homebrew world, they demand as much detail from my world as I put into it to begin with; really my fault I guess. However, I really don't mind it now that I can read their intentions for what they are and that they're not trying to take stabs at my creativity, as I had previously thought.

On a side note, my ad-libbing skills have increased tenfold since I've DMed. I have literally no problem coming up with things on the fly, because I don't have as much time as I'd like to work on my world anymore, with Finals coming up and all. So, this is extremely good news. Thanks again!

[Kiero]

Anything that results in an increase in player participation and engagement, and general group collaboration is a good thing, IMO. But then I'm a lazy GM who expects the players to be doing as much creating of the gameworld as I am.

[Matthew]

Yes, indeed. D&D is a collaborative stoy telling game, amongst other things. There's nothing wrong with letting the players do some of the work, in fact, it should be encouraged. It is nice to have everything prepared beforehand, but it is time consuming and, in reality, just not often possible.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Plus, they're totally going to give you plot hooks like that. I love it when the PC's actually search for more reason for you to complicate the plot. It seems to happen most when the PC's truly enjoy the story you're setting upon them.