I have trouble running NPCs.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes me a while to get into character and even longer to switch between characters.\u00c2\u00a0 This isn’t news.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be surprised if less than 1\/3 of the posts here mentioned\u00c2\u00a0 this fact.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s something I’m aware of and I’ve been trying to work on.
\nI was talking to one of my PCs today, expressing this problem, and we came up with a possible solution.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but it’s definitely worth trying.<\/p>\n
Each game session I’m going to focus on one NPC.\u00c2\u00a0 Not at the expense of the party, mind you.\u00c2\u00a0 The NPC may not even get that much screen time.\u00c2\u00a0 But all my mental prep for the game leading up to a session will take place in one NPC’s head.
\nWhat I’d been doing up until now is spreading the love around all the NPCs pretty evenly.\u00c2\u00a0 I made sure to give them all memorable traits and I even tried to hit each of those traits whenever the players met with that character.\u00c2\u00a0 There were a couple problems with this technique.<\/p>\n
In the first session I fed the players 20 quirks in 20 minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 They met up with 6 or 7 NPCs, all of whom had 3 unique mannerisms.\u00c2\u00a0 All in rapid succession.\u00c2\u00a0 No wonder they thought the game was weird and quirky.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if they liked all those quirks, there was no way they were going to remember which NPC had the eversmoking cigar or which one rode a bobcat named Fefnir.\u00c2\u00a0 All these details did nothing but stress them out (see previous post).<\/p>\n
What’s more is that I tried to give the NPCs certain traits that I thought would be memorable.\u00c2\u00a0 This is backwards.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead I should throw the NPC out there and see what the players found memorable.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the next time they see that character, show them that aspect.\u00c2\u00a0 Telling them what they think is memorable is just silly.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea.<\/p>\n
The other thing we discussed was how I divide my roleplaying attention over several characters.\u00c2\u00a0 I think my RP ability deteriorates exponentially.\u00c2\u00a0 For n characters in my head space, I’m roleplaying at approximately 1\/n^2 of my capacity.\u00c2\u00a0 This is why I rarely like to be a PC in more than two games at once.\u00c2\u00a0 I just don’t have the brainspace to hold that many characters, so all of them get played poorly.\u00c2\u00a0 As a GM, I’m holding 10-25 characters in my head at any given time.\u00c2\u00a0 You do the math.<\/p>\n
However, if I pick an NPC and stick with him I’ll have the whole week between sessions to get into that character’s head.\u00c2\u00a0 He’ll get a solid introduction to the party.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Even if it’s someone who was previously neglected, that’s okay.\u00c2\u00a0 From then on I’ll be able to reinvoke that character very easily by mentioning what the players remembered (instead of what I told them to remember) and hopefully I’ll have an easier time conjuring up a character I’ve already spent time with.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the theory anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll see if it actually works.<\/p>\n
I think this approach is actually very close to what Lost does.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the part about making up bizarre, inexplicable storylines, and giving the audience more questions instead of answering anything.\u00c2\u00a0 The character focus.\u00c2\u00a0 When the show started, everyone was vague and indistinct.\u00c2\u00a0 Each character got an episode.\u00c2\u00a0 You got some insight into their past and mostly saw the episode from their POV.\u00c2\u00a0 After those episodes, those characters became more real.\u00c2\u00a0 You could relate to them and you knew what they’d been through.\u00c2\u00a0 I think that’s what I’m aiming for with this idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have trouble running NPCs.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes me a while to get into character and even longer to switch between characters.\u00c2\u00a0 This isn’t news.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be surprised if less than 1\/3 of the posts here mentioned\u00c2\u00a0 this fact.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s something I’m aware of and I’ve been trying to work on. I was talking to one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,8,12],"tags":[64,31],"class_list":["post-208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dnd","category-gm","category-observations","category-self-improvement","tag-lost","tag-npcs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}