Average cast of your game?

[martixy]

After introducing the 100th or so NPC in what is supposed to be an isolated island setting in my game I'm starting to wonder when is too much...

How many characters are you usually juggling in your game, either as players or as a DM?

[MesiDoomstalker]

Actively? Less than 10. Named NPCs who act 'off-screen' are rare because abjucating what they are doing, on the fly, in response to the active game session is hard. I'll have more than 10 NPC's named but most aren't active participants. Reactionaries or passive observers and the like.

[Spore]

I am not a long-time DM but the most I have seen ACTIVELY being useful to the story is 10-15. Of course the second guard to the left that appears when the group busts a cultist circle has a name and he might even get mentioned by it but he is hardly important.

More than 15-ish NPCs in one location get REALLY REALLY confusing; at least to me, because my memory for names is TERRIBLE! I routinely confuse new coworker's names on a regular basis, and our work force is just 8 regulars and 10-12 part-timers.

[Mastikator]

As a player I'm only juggling one, as a DM maybe 3-4 that act independently and a dozen more that have agency and goals but are mostly passive/busy. NPCs who leave the horizon of the players are dropped.

[Chad Hooper]

OP, do you mean "enemy" NPCs or friendly/neutral NPCs?

I've started a new thing in my game, where I give an XP bonus to any player who gives me name, profession, gender, and location of a friendly or neutral NPC their PC has developed as a contact "off-screen". Ditto for businesses they've passed but not yet visited.

Short-term, they're helping me flesh out an area of my long-time home-brew world that has not previously been played in. That adds depth and flavor to our current game. Call it a 50/50 chance they will pass through this area again after the Underdark phase of late Book 2 and Book 3 of the Night Below campaign boxed set. I'll have those businesses, and those NPCs or their descendants for future sessions (or future campaigns with this group or other players).

Long term, I'm slowly turning up the heat to cook them into perfect condition to segue over to Ars Magica in full Troupe-style play if we're all still together 3-4 real years from now and complete all the loose ends of Night Below. Not a simple endeavor, I agree, but I feel it worth trying.

A simple change of seating for today's game (moving seats of the couple, no less) changed the dynamics of role play greatly, but I digress.

[SirBellias]

Player? My character, the party, the 2 or 3 characters that are truly important to my backstory, and the few characters actively involved in the current situation. So, what, 10ish?

DM? I have maybe 15 Named NPC's written down as probably still around in my game that's been running for a good 2 years. The rest are probably written down on an old sheet. None of which are particularly important to whatever the current group is doing, but I know what they generally do and what they're probably doing if they party happens by. So passive.

There's like 3 or 4 that I give more thought to in any given session, and they will have goals that are actively pursued and a relevant degree of knowledge.

Anything else is made up on the fly, usually with some cursing as I try to find my free name sheet.

[martixy]

I mean, named, interactive, non-combat NPCs you as a DM create, or as players encounter.

My players have begun maintaining a spreadsheet of the various NPCs they meet, just so we don't go over "what was that guy's name again?" every time.

[Erulasto]

I personally try and name every single NPC the players interact with. I end up with exceedingly long cast lists for many of my games. Even if the players never encounter the character again, I find it helps with the immersion process.

Now admittedly, that approach works much easier - in my opinion - on a PbP game, where I have a bit of time to think of stuff like that in between posts. But it can be done in a face-to-face campaign as well.

Personally, I try and emphasize the RP aspect a bit heavier than the mechanics in a lot of ways but I think it really boils down to the fact I enjoy coming up with random NPC's.

So far, my players haven't complained much.

That being said, I do try to limit the amount that are active in a given scene, and if a situation calls for an abundance of them to be present, then many of them will fade into the background scene descriptions as needed.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I try to limit the number of on-screen significant NPCs pretty heavily, mainly because it gets confusing for me as a DM. And for players, keeping track of who is speaking gets hard (I have to flag those heavily, since I don't do voices).

My biggest scene recently was 5 active NPCs + 12 totally passive (set-dressing) ones. One of the active ones didn't get a name or more than a very basic personality ("officious and snotty") because he was just a majordomo.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Depends a lot on the game. For a "standard" game about rootless murder hobos maybe a dozen.

For my mage school game there were;

About a dozen staff members and about two dozen friendly students especially roommates I kept things sane by basing about half of these on friends my players didn't know including their first names. There was also a group centered around an antagonist student, though she only had one named follower. There were also a few family members of a PC who the party spent a holiday with and a few contacts in the world outside the school.

I also ran a game centered in a hamlet of 150 or so adults where at a minimum every inhabitant had a name, gender, profession, and relationships status. The party regularly spoke to about 20; the sheriff, his wife, and two oldest children, the mayor, his wife (who was a witch), their daughter, the town blacksmith (brain damaged and could only reproduce pictures made by his sister (artist), the town drunk (party fighter's father), the potter, and the ferryman. Everyone else tended to just be another farmer/member of the town guard.

[Chad Hooper]

My players have been in a city of circa 20,000 people for a few weeks dealing with a couple of minor stories and gathering information, so at times there have been quite a few NPCs.

We had a cooking duel yesterday (totally unexpected) when a new "henchman" cook came to seek work. The Fighter PC who's been doing the cooking issued challenge, tavern patrons named a dish, and the five staff members of the Golden Oasis on duty were enlisted as judges. Ada and Fredric the bartenders, Ina and Renna the servers (Ina and Ada are fraternal twin sisters) and Kang Kai the bouncer.

All of these NPCs have a one-sentence or so bio and have been detailed ahead of time. I also had to improvise when, on the road, some of the PCs met a small wagon train at mid-day going the other way. Since I'm in a re-read of Feist's Rise of a Merchant Prince, the wagon's belonged to the trade cartel of Avery, Grindle, and Matheson, first names Rupert, Helmut, and Jorn. Plus their three guards. I currently know squat about them, only where they're bound, whence they came, and the gossip they shared with the PCs.

In the past I've had up to 20 NPCs with names and at least some dialogue/interaction with PCs in one scene at one time or another.

I try to generate a couple to 5 NPCs between sessions but sometimes prep time is hard to come by, or inspiration is.

[kraitmarais]

If a game lasts many dozens of sessions, there will be maybe a dozen NPCs who are (or potentially are) actively affecting the overall plot. In my experience, any more than that is just the DM pretending to be writing a novel instead of spending time creating a dynamic game for the players. There's only so much game time and narrative space that can be devoted to NPCs, while still also providing the same for the PCs.

[Darth Ultron]

I go for the cast of thousands. I like making and role playing tons of characters, so the players will encounter a lot of NPCs.

My game is hard for the casual player that ''does not like names". Even more so as I don't allow the casual player to do things like "ok, DM, my character goes and meets the um, One Guy, you know that guy with the scroll". That poor character will just be standing in the street as he does not remember ''that guys" name.

While some players ''can't'' remember names or ''think", I am happy to introduce the player to the concept of Taking Notes. It is simple enough: put down your phone and pay attention during the game, and when you hear something, anything really: write it down. Then amazingly you will have a piece of paper that says Scrolmun the Scroll Keeper-the guy that has that scroll I need.

Some clever players even record the game.

It is never too many....

[kraitmarais]

I go for the cast of thousands. I like making and role playing tons of characters, so the players will encounter a lot of NPCs.

My game is hard for the casual player that ''does not like names". Even more so as I don't allow the casual player to do things like "ok, DM, my character goes and meets the um, One Guy, you know that guy with the scroll". That poor character will just be standing in the street as he does not remember ''that guys" name.

While some players ''can't'' remember names or ''think", I am happy to introduce the player to the concept of Taking Notes. It is simple enough: put down your phone and pay attention during the game, and when you hear something, anything really: write it down. Then amazingly you will have a piece of paper that says Scrolmun the Scroll Keeper-the guy that has that scroll I need.

Some clever players even record the game.

It is never too many....

Tbh this sounds like a game that is all about you and not about the actual players. You've designed the game so that you have fun, which is fine, but have also designed a game that the players often find problematic and unfun, which isn't.

And the player isn't the character; just because a player doesn't remember a particular NPC's name doesn't mean that the character doesn't. The character has tons of differences from the player, which is the whole point of playing the game. It's especially mean and boorish to expect players to keep track of more NPCs in a game than there probably are acquaintances in their actual life.

It really sounds like your players are stuck with you in a heavy-handed game out of a lack of options to play elsewhere, and you're just exploiting that fact.

[Minty]

I just had a look in the website database for my group's current campaign, which has been going on for about 3 years. We have a home made private wiki type thing for character bios, session logs, etc. It's pretty sweet.

There are currently 227 named NPCs (of which 33 are dead), ranging from bit parts that haven't been seen since their solitary appearance 3 years ago, to major characters that accompany the party everywhere. There are probably a handful of minor named characters that never made it into the DB, and a few are characters that players made up for their backgrounds that haven't actually appeared in game. 3 are former PCs.

Our game is sandboxy and heavy on interpersonal drama (there are multiple love triangles) and political drama, so this tends to result in a lot of developed characters.

[Reversefigure4]

Once it gets up to a pile, I need to take notes. I have 87 at present in our large Kingmaker campaign.

I'd certainly never expect the players to remember them all, though - with the speed of dungeon crawling, it's very possible that a person your character met 2 days ago of game time is somebody that the player met three months ago, real time.

[JBPuffin]

Honestly? It’s very rare for my NPCs to really be doing anything. Casts grow at a decent rate; although most of them don’t have names, they frequently come back for seconds (or thirds, fourths, guest party membership, etc), and usually “the guard you met when you fought off those bandits” is enough description to go forward with. I barely keep notes for most of them - last sesh, the party met a elven demigoddess I made a fuss over as if I’d planned her in before (but had literally made up on the spot), and I only remember her name because it took so bloody long to come up with (Ardwen, btw). Main reason for this right now is that the campaign started with Mines of Phandelver and has since fallen off the wagon (despite the party still ostensibly pursuing a variant on the main quest of the adventure...) and the absurd levels of improv I reach with each session, leading to some real oddities...so glad it’s not a serious-minded game.

I will add - like Darth Ultron’s way of thought. Heck, as both a player and GM, since I got a computer that can run Audacity, i’ve recorded every session i’m present for.

[Mordaedil]

Tbh this sounds like a game that is all about you and not about the actual players. You've designed the game so that you have fun, which is fine, but have also designed a game that the players often find problematic and unfun, which isn't.

And the player isn't the character; just because a player doesn't remember a particular NPC's name doesn't mean that the character doesn't. The character has tons of differences from the player, which is the whole point of playing the game. It's especially mean and boorish to expect players to keep track of more NPCs in a game than there probably are acquaintances in their actual life.

It really sounds like your players are stuck with you in a heavy-handed game out of a lack of options to play elsewhere, and you're just exploiting that fact.

To save yourself the headache, it might be worth looking at that particular posters thread history, it's a lot of things suggesting this guy isn't going to be convinced by us telling him he's doing things wrong.

[Darth Ultron]

Tbh this sounds like a game that is all about you and not about the actual players. You've designed the game so that you have fun, which is fine, but have also designed a game that the players often find problematic and unfun, which isn't.

Odd that it sounds that way to you. I have lots of things I do in the games I run, and if a player does not like it, they are free to leave. If your a player that likes to not pay attention and just say ''yea, whatever, we go over there and do things and stuff", then your not a good fit for a player in my game.

And the player isn't the character; just because a player doesn't remember a particular NPC's name doesn't mean that the character doesn't. The character has tons of differences from the player, which is the whole point of playing the game. It's especially mean and boorish to expect players to keep track of more NPCs in a game than there probably are acquaintances in their actual life.

Really? I don't think it is that hard for normal people. And sure the player might not remember everything...but that is what taking notes is for.

It really sounds like your players are stuck with you in a heavy-handed game out of a lack of options to play elsewhere, and you're just exploiting that fact.

Not at all. No one is stuck in my game. If you don't ''like'' it here, chances are you won't be here very long. A LOT about by game is designed to get rid of casual jerk players. And it works very well. The average casual jerk player, for example, will refuse to take any notes what so ever. The same way the average casual jerk player won't even want to talk or interact with any NPCs, and just wants to do mindless endless combat.

I have a core of good players. Good players that like to take notes and then read them over looking for hints and clues. For example, I use a lot of real naming conventions. People from place X have names like Y, and such.

[Minty]

The average casual jerk player, for example, will refuse to take any notes what so ever. The same way the average casual jerk player won't even want to talk or interact with any NPCs, and just wants to do mindless endless combat.

I am by no means a casual jerk player. Over the last 3 years of my current campaign, I've written over 100,000 words of in-character journal entries, another 100,000 words of text-based roleplay with the GM exploring my character's relationships with various NPCs as an aside to the main tabletop sessions (I also built a custom forum with character sheets and dice rollers to facilitate this for the group). It's got to the point where I feel like I know some of these NPCs better than I do my own real life acquaintances. I find excessive combat encounters boring - my group usually has one combat scene roughly every 5-10 sessions.

But... I also refuse to take any notes whatsoever during play. I am not a note-taker by nature. I didn't even do it at university.

I think any group with a long-running, in-depth game with many characters and heavily invested players should have some sort of wiki that the group can edit to keep track of that information, because while I'm not a note-taker, other players in the group are. Fortunately in my group, 4 out of the 7 members (including me) are software developers, so we made our own web app to precisely meet our needs, but we started with an off-the-shelf free wiki which wasn't too bad either.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Ya an absolute insistence on names seems a little odd, more like a computer game or Google maps than reality. In reality I'm perfectly capable of going to that noodle shop in Brookline with the green awning and I'd expect my character to have the same ability in his own world.

[Lorsa]

I ran a sci-fi game recently where the PC (there was only one), was a captain of a space ship. The first one hosted a rather small crew, but after she upgraded to a bigger one, it had a named crew of 41 NPCs (all interacted with at some point, and with unique personalities and appearances). I know this number because they are all listed in an Excel document. That didn't include the ~20 NPCs who had once been part of the crew but later left for other ships. Nor did it involve the ~10 NPCs who lived on planets that the character knew and often interacted with. That places the cast of NPCs around 70 for that campaign. Admittedly it was getting a bit difficult to handle at the end.

Currently I am running a Vampire campaign for the same player, where I have a similar Excel document with 77 named NPC vampires. Granted, the player hasn't met or interacted with all of them yet, and I think the game started with only 54 (between 50-55). Add to that one or two regular humans the PC has contact with and roughly 10 named ghouls. So almost 90 named NPCs.

These two campaigns have really been the ones with largest number of named NPCs, but from only those two it seems like the average cast is about 80. I've ran some campaigns with that player before where the number ended up closer to 30 I think

I like to make realistic worlds, and realistic worlds come with real people, not just cardboard cut-outs.

[avalkauskas]

The longer you play, the deeper your NPC rolodex

In a brand new RPG/world? Probably under 10

In a campaign setting built over a decade? 1000's+++!

[kraitmarais]

casual jerk players

I strongly suspect that there is indeed a jerk in your game, but that it isn’t one of the players.

[Darth Ultron]

But... I also refuse to take any notes whatsoever during play. I am not a note-taker by nature. I didn't even do it at university.

I do recommend note taking, but I don't require it. and, as I mentioned, some players record the game. Also, sometimes, if the players are friends, only one needs to take notes and they will share them with the group.

Some people can just, amazingly, remember names even after only hearing them once. Often people that have to do that sort of thing for a living.

Ya an absolute insistence on names seems a little odd, more like a computer game or Google maps than reality. In reality I'm perfectly capable of going to that noodle shop in Brookline with the green awning and I'd expect my character to have the same ability in his own world.

Well, saying '' that noodle shop in Brookline with the green awning" is more then enough a specific place. I'm talking more like player is just "Whatever, we go to the place and talk to that one guy, you know that guy ".

Though I would note that in Reality, people can remember names of stores, restaurants and people.

I strongly suspect that there is indeed a jerk in your game, but that it isn’t one of the players.

Well, of course I kick the jerks out of my game. You can often find them on a game night, alone, walking the streets...often crying and sad.

[Knaight]

The longer you play, the deeper your NPC rolodex

In a brand new RPG/world? Probably under 10

In a campaign setting built over a decade? 1000's+++!

Both of those numbers seem odd. Granted, the extent to which extras (very minor characters that hit the name, personality, non-combat interaction list) count is a bit vague, but 2000 NPCs total is a lot of characters, and as the campaign setting build up NPCs the chance of a new NPC showing up instead of a pre-existing NPC declines.

As for the brand new RPG/world, I usually make new settings for every campaign. My notes are minimal, and it's still really common for me to have 20-30 named NPCs specified before the campaign starts. PCs then might come with attached NPCs (e.g. "this character has a sister"), and then once the first game actually starts more NPCs tend to start showing up.

[RazorChain]

When I start a game I have 100+ NPC's already. These are just in the background and the PC's might never interact with them. This is just part of world building and might just be included in rumours. I mean the PC's never met Salah ad-Din but they heard of his demise or Richard Cœur de Lion but they heard of when Duke Leopold V of Austria captured him when he was returning from the crusade.

I mean just in the PC's home city of Tarento I have a roster of 100+ NPC's. The PC's always shop their elixirs at The Crooked Cauldron run by Bonifacio, they tend to drink at the Silver Stallion and know the barkeep, Sylvestro and Maria who brings their drinks. If they need information they head to Kurn, who runs the Happy Mermaid but is mostly an info broker who deals both with the alley and the avenue. They know all 3 and have had dealings with two of the criminal kingpins of Tarento, Francis Corleone, Alfredo Capella and Felix Jaeger, they even know some of their henchmen as well like Mario Gallo and Helmut Stahl. When they are in the city they either stay at the Castle with their patron Barone Rosefort or at Ernalda's lodgings...run by Ernalda of course. When they need the city watch on their side they go to Capitano Iason, because they saved his bacon and he is forever in their debt.

After almost three years of this campaign I probably have 500+ NPCs, most of them are just in the background doing their things, running shops, living their lives.

[Aetis]

Actively? Less than 10. Named NPCs who act 'off-screen' are rare because abjucating what they are doing, on the fly, in response to the active game session is hard. I'll have more than 10 NPC's named but most aren't active participants. Reactionaries or passive observers and the like.

Ditto. I have about 10 plot-central NPCs and rest are shopkeepers with awkward speaking tics.

[Calthropstu]

In my own sandbox campaigns? 200+ is what I write up, generally only about 1/4 of them will actually be encountered, and just under half will affect the campaign. Most of the rest are story archs the pcs never get involved in, quests that are eliminated due to pc actions etc.

Active at the same time is probably around 20 or so unless the pcs are relentless in tracking down every member of "mildly aligned to bbeg organization of random thugs" (which happened once and I had nearly 40 of them written up just in case)

[Geddy2112]

Certainly the longer the game and larger the world, the more NPC's I tend to have named and fleshed out(classes, backstories, names etc)

In my last campaign, the know world had 12 sovereign political units/countries, with a couple of notable guilds/organizations. Each of those had around 5 notable NPC's, giving me right around 100. These are NPC's who have made a major impact on the world at large, and are at least in part responsible for the setting as it is. They not only have agendas and desires, but they have the power and agency to change things. I found it to be about right, with room to add more and no major wasted effort spending hours building characters the party will never see.

As for the rest, they are certainly not nameless without any backstory, but they don't have any power or impact on an individual level. A king may have a compliment of guards which as a whole, are a part of the king's power. Each of these guards has a name, parents, backstory, some class ranks etc but on an individual level this detail is usually irrelevant. If players ask or want to know, it is there but these people are always generic enough I can make it up on the fly. Name, title/job, 2 sentences about description and backstory, and one unique feature. I find this enough to be immersive but not overwhelming with usually erroneous details, it also saves the legwork of making thousands of characters.

I find this helps my players as well-if they are floundering on who to talk to/interact with/where to go, it is a quick filter for NPC's. They pass on the quick nondescript ones and hook into NPC's I clearly pull up on my tablet.

This strategy also works fairly well for monsters and enemies. Nondescript skeletons vs detailed lich lords.