Posts Tagged by npcs
| June 13, 2012 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Or, The Saga of UFO Joe Situation Skipping as much of the stereotypical “in my campaign” braggadocio as possible, I had an unusual NPC in my 1980s monster hunter campaign. He would regularly call in to Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM” radio show under different names, but always had a frighteningly accurate synopsis of what the party had just done, and then veer off into crazy UFO conspiracy theories. The party came to call him ‘UFO Joe’. UFO Joe was actually the subconscious conscience…
| May 23, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
It’s Characters All The Way Down From both sides of the screen, characters are key. As a player, your character is how you explore the world: she’s the lens you view the world through, he’s the tool you use to interact with other characters, plots, scenery, and everything else in the world. As a GM, the depth of the characters that you introduce set the course of the game. Shallow stereotypes, quest vendors, and bland shopkeepers encourage the players to move their characters out into…
| May 9, 2012 | Posted by Scott Martin |
Characters and Depth No matter what game you play, a constant is characters. Players have characters that they can lavish attention and development on, while the GM often has numerous characters, great and small, to juggle. Whether you’re new to roleplaying, an experienced GM creating a monster who gets a few lines and expresses personality before the hacking begins, a player looking for tricks to get inside her character’s head, or anyone else looking to add some pizazz to their humble fighter, I have some…
| May 1, 2012 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
Some time ago, I was playing in a Savage Worlds convention game, and our party hit a major decision point in the scenario. Before the discussion/argument over what to do could really get rolling, the GM (whose name I have sadly forgotten) made a very important point. Instead of analyzing our Skills and Edges to decide what to do, we should look at our Hindrances, because they define the personality of our characters. (In addition, we’d get Bennies for following our Hindrances.) Savage Worlds almost…
| January 27, 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…
| December 15, 2011 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
If you want an NPC to be likable or to have some humanity, give him or her a sense of humor. Obviously, this will work with run-of-the-mill NPCs: badass mercenaries, otherwise boring experts, or just portable boxes of healing. But where this idea really works is when you want an NPC to be liked. For instance, let’s say you will be using an NPC as a hostage, and you want the group (and by extension, the party) to actually care about this person, make him…
| July 12, 2011 | Posted by Kurt "Telas" Schneider |
This is part two of a two-part series on index cards. The first part dealt with using index cards during game prep, and included a brief overview of what kinds of cards are available, and how to store them. While no single approach is ideal for everyone, this article will focus on how I’ve been using index cards, along with some ideas that I’ve seen in use, so please excuse the ‘in my campaign’ tone of it. As usual, feel free to take what’s shiny…
