Ginger Stampley, at Perverse Access Memory asks two questions, this time, in her 71st Game WISH
column. The first is:
When you plan or play your NPCs, do you intentionally leave out some of the story for each? Do you hold something back and let the Players imagine the rest or do you present NPCs from the core of who they are? Is time a factor-- a short game or one-shot not allowing much character depth? Does NPC expertise shine through? Or are there character foibles that cloud the better qualities of the NPC? Are there short-cuts to get this across?
Well, I'll deal with the easy parts first: I don't run one shot or intentionally short games. I almost finished that with, "And I never have!" but on reflection, I did once run a one-shot adventure, but it wasn't high on characterization, so to speak.
Regardless, I generally don't do it, so it's not even close to my expertise. Thus, all my answers are in the context of longer running games.
Like Ginger's NPCs in House of Cards, I have two or three main categories for In Media Res, my Nobilis game. The obvious split is between beings of power (Excrucians, Imperators, extremely powerful spirits, the Erus, other Nobles, etc) and... well, everyone else, really, with the possible exception of Anchors (of the PCs and the NPCs alike.)
The other split, more relevant here, is the purpose for which the character exists. Some NPCs start out as filler, essentially-- I might need some random Chancel inhabitant or person on the street, or the situation might even require that some Noble show up previously unrelated to the plot as a sort fo a walk-on. These characters tend to get the template treatment-- I'll jot down a few notes about who they are and why they are where they are, and if they develop further in play, that's great.
Other NPCs are created with a certain role in the story, large or small. For these NPCs, I can't (and don't try to) detail everything about them, but I certainly need to have them more grounded than the filler characters. I don't think that implies that I intentionally leave anything out of their backstories, either. A minor peeve of mine is Schroedinger's NPC who, in the process of developing himself, also manages to say or do whatever it is that's necessary to get the plot moving in the direction the GMs want. If I intentionally left sections of background blank, the temptation to do that would be too strong, I think.
And while I represent them, as much as I can, from the core of who they are, that core is certainly not (I hope) readily apparent the first time they walk on stage. Zelazny is reputed to have said, once, that a key to characterization was for the author to know at least one important thing about each main character that the readers didn't. It was never clear to me if that implied that it was something the audience would never figure out, or merely something they wouldn't figure out until much later.
Regardless, I've been trying to take that maxim and alter it for role-playing-- many of the major NPCs with definite story roles do have qualities on which they act, that are not at all apparent to the players at the moment. I've found it useful so far, though, to have those hidden pieces of character motives be linkages to other important NPCs or places... in some cases to NPCs that haven't shown up, yet, or places that have not yet been visitted. In my experience (or at least in my mind) that makes the setting more dynamic than static-- if the PCs pull on the thread of one NPC, they might find several others moving in ways they didn't expect at all, for better or for worse.
I also very much assume that the players will eventually reason out, spy out, or in some fashion discover some of these hidden motivators, whether Zelazny intended his audience to discover his or not. I regard this as part of the reward of playing.
And that, I think, implies that there are NPC foibles in the game. I don't think that precludes expertise from shining through, though, where appropriate.
(And my players are invited to speculate on which NPCs had story roles from the beginning, and which were fillers, as long as they don't expact me to actually confirm or deny anything.)
Posted by John Novak at November 17, 2003 11:28 PM