Posts Tagged by npcs
| April 10, 2013 | Posted by Martin Ralya |
Jesse Butler of Calico Games offered me an advance copy of Short Order Heroes, his combination light RPG, character creation supplement, and spontaneous NPC creation aid, and liking how it sounded I accepted his offer. It’s on Kickstarter for $20, with more cards possible if stretch goals are met. It’s that last use — NPC creation — that interests me, and that I think is most likely to interest Gnome Stew readers. I’m a sucker for anything that lets me quickly develop characters, like our…
| January 30, 2013 | Posted by Guest Author |
John Fiore is a “low-prep” GM and a connoisseur of stuff that makes his life easier. His guest article sold me a set of these little cubes on the spot. Thanks, John! I wouldn’t have spent a single minute with Caitlin — let alone date her for almost six months — had I known in advance that she was a militant vegan with severe dependency issues and a fondness for Coldplay. Our relationship was, at best, terribly inconvenient for me, and I could have done…
| December 6, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Gnome Rodeo! It’s time to don tall boots and prepare to ride the range on our battle sheep. What have our keen eyed scouts found? Skills: I’m a big fan of thinking about skills, but we’ve got a patrol to keep on keepin’ on. Fortunately, there are some mighty thoughtful cowpokes (sheep-pokes?) who’ve begun talkin’. Kate Elliot leads off with a discussion of skills from a writer’s point of view. She points out how unusual (or less expected) skills can set a character apart, create…
| August 9, 2012 | Posted by Patrick Benson |
Ever play poker? You might be dealt three of a kind, but you are never dealt three of the same. One eyed jacks, suicide kings, and the Black Mariah all stand out from amongst their peers. “Three of a Kind” is a series that is all about providing you with three distinct versions of an NPC archetype for you to use in your game, as well as some tips on how to use the archetype itself. So ante up, because you have nothing to lose…
| July 26, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
NPCs in Character Driven Play No matter what system you’re playing, NPCs make things come to life. Some of my favorite advice for creating NPCs comes from Dogs in the Vineyard, which encourages you to create passionate NPCs [via some specific prompts and guidelines], then encourages you to have them strive to accomplish their goals. They’re driven people, so what they do–whether good, short sighted, or villainous– is sure to draw the PCs’ involvement. Fundamental concepts for character driven play are developed in The Art…
| June 28, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Last week I shared a technique that’s been around for a while; much of it was borrowed fro Chris Chinn’s blog and old RPG.net articles. Building a conflict web is a way to quickly interrelate people, and have them react to each other’s fortunes and misfortunes in life appropriately. It’s another way to juggle lots of NPCs–similar to the matrix method Bryan B discusses in the linked post. Last time I wrote, there was an image of a complex web of names near the top–something…
| June 22, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Places are cool, but it’s people who make a world. Welcome to the next installment of Deep as a Puddle: streaming NPCs. Or at least creating several interlinked puddles. Whatever the analogy, we’re making groups of NPCs, while still trying to keep them interesting, with individual details and motivations. If you wind up with guard #2, you’ve gone down the wrong path. This trick is for building NPCs in thematic batches. You’ll find that creating a few related NPCs can produce interesting interactions, relationships, and…
