Topic: Creating/Using Persistent NPC's in your World

[Spectre771]

This thread topic is something that I've (A) thought about for a long time, (B) been sort of opposed to for a long time, and (C) have been burned by more than a few times.  Having been keeping up with the thread started by...

(Druss_the_Legend:  http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=17442.0 )

...I've been more curious about this topic and am interested in what other GM's do for this situation.

A) When making NPC's, I've always wanted a world that was of my own creation or of the GM's creation, not something borrowed from other existing works.  Unless we are playing in the Star Wars universe or other similar game system with it's own canon and I  know I am in THAT universe, I don't expect other fictional personae in this gaming world.

Where do you/your GM's gather information to create persistent NPC's?  The NPC who runs the tavern where your party always goes to for underground info and is used in several campaigns?  The Prince of the Realm whom sends your party out on missions for the greater good?  Do you pull an existing characters from some other gaming world and try to convert that persona into RM stats?  Do you create your own NPC and just add the details as needed... then we segue back to the earlier mentioned thread... how much detail do you add to your NPC's?

B)  I was always inwardly opposed to having these "pre-existing" characters, albeit fictional, in the gaming world with me, and I still am opposed, but I've become a hypocrite lately with the passing of Terry Pratchett and I'll explain more later.  Yes, it's nit-picky, but I'm not playing in the Forgotten Realms World, so why is the King from that world in my Rolemaster world?   Why is that AD&D spymaster in my PC's gaming world?  It's a minor gripe and doesn't really impact gameplay.... except when it does.

How do you as players feel about non-RM personas from other canon/literature/lore being injected into your gaming world?

C)  More recently, one of the GM's used NPCs from the AD&D universe, which I never really cared for and certainly never read any fiction from, but all the players in my group had, so they knew what spells that NPC had, they knew what skills he had, what connections he had, all because they knew the NPC from the fiction they had been reading all along.  I wanted to attack him but they all said "No, we'll be able to use him later on, don't kill him."  OK, I can accept that I didn't read the canon, but they were pulling NPC's from that canon and I was definitely at a disadvantage in the AD&D setting.  It really detracted from my enjoyment of the game.  When we switched to Pathfinder for a bit, I thought I would be safe, but yet again, NPC's from AD&D were being used and there were 2-3 of us who never read any of the fiction and we all paid the price for it in game play while "those in the know" exploited that knowledge.

Do you, as a player, mind the injection of other NPC personae in your gaming world?

Now, for my hypocrisy: 
I always use "Grand Port City" as my primary starting point for new players in any RM campaign.  It's grown and developed over the 20+ years since I started playing RM back in 1989.  It was originally called Port City, it was devastated by a massive battle that was the result of the king being a greater mage-drake who had killed the actual king and systematically eliminated the heirs.  It was an epic campaign over 2 years in culmination.  In the wake of the destruction, it's discovered the heirs are also dead but there is still hope.  The search goes on.  In the meantime, the "clerk of the works", basically the Town Administrator keeps things running, overseeing the rebuilding of the city and the public works improvements... hence the new name Grand Port City, or New Port City to outsiders.

Anyway... I've been a huge fan of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series, and over the years, I've found that the Patriarch of Ankh-Morpork was very similar to the Town Administrator I had been using in my own fictional world.  When Terry Pratchett died, I finally just made the full jump and I use Vetinari as the Patriarch of Grand Port City.  He is just a perfect fit.  While I have a wealth of knowledge on Vetinari and some of his skills, no one in my group has read much, if any, of the Discworld series so it's not really impacting the gameplay for any of my players and they don't need to know anything about Vetinari and the rumours they pick up about him are fun.  Vetinari loves the power of running the city for which he grudgingly accepts the mantle, but with his rumoured ties to the assassin's guild, is it the perfect cover for him to gather limitless information on people?  And why is it taking so long to locate surviving heirs to the throne? 

[jdale]

Personally, I would never adopt a character from another setting as written in that setting. I certainly might take inspiration and ideas, perhaps even basing the NPC on that character, but I would change the name and likely other details as well. If I were to tell the players that the NPC is based on that character (and I might not), I would want them to have some uncertainty about what is the same and different, and it wouldn't get mentioned at all until after the first encounter.

I feel like copying the name itself raises a big flag of disbelief and makes the game less immersive and believable. And at the same time, I'm never going to play the character exactly the way the character's creator had in mind, so why pretend? If I file the serial numbers off and give them a new name, the way I play the character can never be wrong.

[Peter R]

I do use a pre-made game world but I would never insert an explicit character from another setting, book or film. The closest I would come would be creating an NPC that was inspired by a fictional character but only I would ever know who that character was based upon and there would definitely be a name and appearance change.

I had a bear trapping barbarian who was sent on a quest by his village shaman to kill one of the PCs for crimes the shaman had foreseen. The barbarian was given a lot of self healing magic to protect him on his quest and sent on his way. Only I knew he was based upon the 800 Series Terminator.

[intothatdarkness]

I never use characters from other settings in my fantasy stuff, but I have been known to bring either historical and/or some fictional characters into my other games (Western and espionage in particular). There's always a solid plot reason for it, and they never stick around long.

[Spectre771]

If I file the serial numbers off and give them a new name, the way I play the character can never be wrong.

Awesome. 

How do you guys feel as players when the GM sticks in a blatant copy of an already existed NPC into your setting? 

I definitely feel that it detracts from the immersive quality of that game world.  In my mind's eye, I have given faces, voices, mannerisms to the NPC's as they are introduced.  As soon as the GM says "It's this guy from that show," I lose a little creative freedom in my mind.

[jdale]

I've actually never had a GM do that, as far as I can remember.

[Peter R]

I have never had that exact situation but for many years we played RM2 in middle earth with a complete Tolkien devotee. Every so often a key figure would pop up and we all just thought 'why are we here' as we instantly became surplus to requirements. Imagine being the ranger in the party with Aragon tagging along.

[intothatdarkness]

How do you guys feel as players when the GM sticks in a blatant copy of an already existed NPC into your setting? 

I definitely feel that it detracts from the immersive quality of that game world.  In my mind's eye, I have given faces, voices, mannerisms to the NPC's as they are introduced.  As soon as the GM says "It's this guy from that show," I lose a little creative freedom in my mind.

I'll have to toss out the classic "it depends" response. When I was a player in the James Bond RPG it's expected that Bond will wander through from time to time. We even had a GM who had Maxwell Smart wander through during a tense casino encounter. It seriously lightened the mood and provided a distraction one of the other players could exploit (my character was stuck at the roulette table facing off against the villain's gambling henchman). Any of the Star Trek RPGs are the same way. I have had a Bond type appear in a Top Secret game in which I was a player, and it wasn't actually that jarring. If the GM uses them as a stage prop in a sense it's not too bad at all. Where it becomes problematic is when they take over the game or the adventure. Personally, I think it's a bigger problem in fantasy games than it might be in other settings. Fantasy NPCs of that type tend to be overwhelming when compared to PCs. In non-magic settings...you have ways of dealing with them.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

A) I'm almost exclusively a GM and have been GMing in my own world (albeit through different systems: AD&D, D&D, Palladium, RM2, Legends, ...) for decades. To me, NPCs are to the GM what PCs are to players. A such, I create and flesh them out as I create my world, with absolutely no consideration for whether I'll use them one day (if ever) in an actual game. They're part of my world, thus part of my world-building, and I give them as much details as I feel when I create them, sometimes even writing short stories featuring them since, after all, I create them because I felt inspired by something in them, may it be their background story, personality, concept or anything. My world exists outside of my GMing (in fact, I started GMing games inside it because I had it developed for some time) and independently of my games, thus my NPCs, as actual people of my world, exist outside of my GMing, meaning as characters rather than NPCs.
As such, whilst I may be inspired by characters from outside works, I never directly convert one from another game, as he wouldn't fit in mine.

B) If a character fits, it fits, regardless of the inspiration source. On the other hand, if he doesn't, he doesn't.
That being said, what the hell is a "non-RM persona" after all? RM is a game system, not a world! One can perfectly play Greyhawk with RM if one wants so. To me, a world shouldn't conform to a game system: it's the game system that should conform to the world. If a character or his concept fits the world and not the game system, then modify the latter to conform to the former.

C) I fail to see the actual difference between this point and point B.

[Druss_the_Legend]

My campaign world is set around sanctuary Thieves World. That city setting has its established NPC characters and have featured in many books which gives both players and GM (me) a useful reference but its only a starting point. The setting has evolved quite a bit over the years (3-4) we have played in the setting. Iv added a number of my own npcs and the pcs now have a wide range of enemies and allies linked to various factions and guilds... a thieves guild, two rival assassins guilds, two rival magicians guilds, an evil demon worshiping blood cult and an ex-gladiator crimelord who has recruited the pcs... there is something sinister and mysterious afoot, spies have infiltrated the guilds and the crimelord boss who leads the pcs has discovered a spy among his own men who is working for one of the assassins guilds. The pcs have recently uncovered a plot by the blood cult.

What started as a hunt for an NPC called The beggar King has escalated into an epic plot involving the forces of chaos. If the cult succeeds the city and its residents will be in great peril with the forces of chaos using vampires and demons to cause much death and mayhem.

[Cory Magel]

I'll have NPC's with varying levels of detail based on their intended interaction with the PC's created up front.  The GM's I've played under have not used a world that they've really fleshed out to be a true 'setting'. They've always been a bit generic.  We did play in the Forgotten Realms in our D&D days and did play MERP in that setting, but since the early 90's it's been fairly non-specific.

I, on the other hand, will/do have a defined setting with specific cities, kingdoms, continents, etc.  There will be things fairly unique to it, such sea and (very limited) air travel being preferred partially to land travel due to the dangers of the world.  So I will have NPC's that 'grew up' in that world which I have to create.

I have a bit of a philosophy on the level of detail with NPC's and the most important one is: Do I want the interaction with the NPC to be left, at least partially, up to chance and/or do I know how I want it to go?  An extremely simple example would be: The PC's go into a random town to have their armor repaired.  They go to a blacksmith.  Does it matter to me what the blacksmiths skill level in working armor is?  Do I want there to be a random chance he fails?  If he does fail randomly, wouldn't he just repeat his work as it was his failure?  What would then be the point?  Cause a unplanned delay?  Would such a delay matter?  If not, why bother?  If it would matter will that random event tamper with an already planned timeline in the story that I won't want tampered with? For me, I know how I want it to turn out and, therefore, I don't need to know that blacksmiths skill level.  So much of the decision on how detailed to make an NPC is: A) How much interaction will the PC's have with them? and B) Do I already know how I want those interactions to go?

I absolutely will take PC's from past settings that I could drop into the world, particularly since those settings were often so generic, and the players who played them have always seemed to get a kick out of that in my experience.  However it's highly unlikely I'm going to pull in a well known fictional character from a setting I didn't create.  I think the most likely ways I might do something like this is using something more universal like the Four Horsemen or, on a more humorous note, maybe 'The Doctor' if the PC's do something like pray for Divine Intervention and roll triple open ended.  On the other hand I might pull material from another system and some 'normal' NPC's that are in that material might come along with it, but they wouldn't really be anyone near the level of, say, Drizzt or Aragorn.

[Druss_the_Legend]

My campaign world is set around sanctuary Thieves World. That city setting has its established NPC characters and have featured in many books which gives both players and GM (me) a useful reference but its only a starting point. The setting has evolved quite a bit over the years (3-4) we have played in the setting. Iv added a number of my own npcs and the pcs now have a wide range of enemies and allies linked to various factions and guilds... a thieves guild, two rival assassins guilds, two rival magicians guilds, an evil demon worshiping blood cult and an ex-gladiator crimelord who has recruited the pcs... there is something sinister and mysterious afoot, spies have infiltrated the guilds and the crimelord boss who leads the pcs has discovered a spy among his own men who is working for one of the assassins guilds. The pcs have recently uncovered a plot by the blood cult.

What started as a hunt for an NPC called The beggar King has escalated into an epic plot involving the forces of chaos. If the cult succeeds the city and its residents will be in great peril with the forces of chaos using vampires and demons to cause much death and mayhem.

since we have started roleplaying online i have noticed a bit of s shift towards more detailed conversations between the npcs. This allows their motivations and goals to manifest themselves in a different way and gives me as the GM a record of what they have said.

We use Roll20 and facebook for live and offline conversations (NPC to NPC and PC to NPC) I will sometimes use dialogue like this to set the stage of the adventure prior to playing live and it adds a bit of a starting point for live role-playing with there already being something to use when roleplaying a scene out live.

my goal with NPCs is to give them some memorable dialogue and something of a realistic personality and some tangible goals which can be felt/experience by the players when they interact with them.

[tbigness]

I generally use the personalities in the modules that I use for source material. If there is a blank for a NPC to be used as "persistent" then I will create the personality as a PC version with stats, Flaws, and history. I have had them injected into the game as allies, enemies, hirelings, and most of the time as story resources.

[Spectre771]

B) That being said, what the hell is a "non-RM persona" after all? RM is a game system, not a world! One can perfectly play Greyhawk with RM if one wants so. C

non-RM-persona =  a persona NOT from the GM's Rolemaster world, or from Shadow World, or other Rolemaster supplemental fictional writings, as an example.

Yes, one could play Greyhawk with RM if one wanted.  Which isn't the topic of the post.  How do players feel about having "other 'known' NPC/Actors/Fictional Characters/personae" injected into their RM session.

I've been following with great interest and enjoyment (on another board) a D&D module that has been converted into RM and is being run as PBM... but in that instance, that's different from what I'm asking.  That is a complete conversion of one module into the RM game system, not having an AD&D NPC from one of the AD&D modules injected into the RM session where a portion of the players are at a disadvantage if they haven't been following any of the AD&D novels, fictions, short stories, gaming modules, etc.

Or having Aragon tagging along in your RM campaign, or having James Bond and Maxwell Smart come into play for a session.

[Spectre771]

I absolutely will take PC's from past settings that I could drop into the world, particularly since those settings were often so generic, and the players who played them have always seemed to get a kick out of that in my experience.  However it's highly unlikely I'm going to pull in a well known fictional character from a setting I didn't create. 

Yes, I've done that several times, sometimes out of necessity.  When I was in college, we would take turns GMing and the GM's PC became an NPC for that session or was "sent off on a quest."  That practice continued with some of us over the years and the PC somehow morphed into an NPC, particularly for those who graduated and moved far far away....

With my current game group and campaign, Havelock Vetinari is the first "known" fictional entity I've added directly into my RM gaming world as an NPC.  He was simply the perfect fit as he was fulfilling the same role in the Discworld series that my "nameless/faceless" NPC was fulfilling in my RM world, and my own little homage to my favorite author.

I also LOVED the idea of "...bear trapping barbarian who was sent on a quest by his village shaman to kill one of the PCs for crimes the shaman had foreseen. The barbarian was given a lot of self healing magic to protect him on his quest and sent on his way. Only I knew he was based upon the 800 Series Terminator."         Awesome, Peter R!!! 

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

non-RM-persona =  a persona NOT from the GM's Rolemaster world, or from Shadow World, or other Rolemaster supplemental fictional writings, as an example.

There's nothing like "a Rolemaster world", really, since Rolemaster is a generic fantasy game-system (contrary to, say, RuneQuest, which used to be tailored to the world of Glorantha): you can use Rolemaster with whatever fantasy world you want. What you apparently meant was "a persona not from your game world", as the same problem would arise if one meets a ShadowWorld character in Glorantha or the Young Kingdoms, regardless of the game system.

Yes, one could play Greyhawk with RM if one wanted.  Which isn't the topic of the post.

Which is exactly the topic since Greyhawk isn't a world originally conceived to be played with the Rolemaster rules. Yet, if you play in it using RM rules, how would it be weird to meet a GreyHawk personality? Yet, a player not familiar with the world of GreyHawk would be "at a disadvantage if (he hasn't) been following any of the GreyHawk novels, fictions, short stories, gaming modules, etc."
Similarly, if there were a lot of "novels, fictions, short stories, gaming modules, etc." taking place in ShadowWorld, a player not familiar with them would be equally "at a disadvantage if (he hasn't) been following any of (them)" when meeting a character from one of them, even if this character had his place in the world.
In the end, to me it seems you're mixing two points, both being independent of the game system being used (i.e., it doesn't have to be RM!):
1) The GM using a character out of place in the world,
2) Complaining about meeting a character with whom you're not familiar whilst it seems the other players are.

How do players feel about having "other 'known' NPC/Actors/Fictional Characters/personae" injected into their RM session.

Why must you insist on the RM part? Because players would feel differently if it were to happen in another game session?

[Thom @ ICE]

Let me jump in here....
There most definitely are D&D, RM, HARP, and other system worlds...
They are settings that were developed within the structure of those systems, and while yes - any system can be used with any setting - there are definitely some that fit much better especially in regards to the published setting material.  Forgotten Realms is an AD&D2e setting.  It lost a lot when they tried to shift it to new systems.  Shadow World is an RM system.  Cyradon is a HARP system.  Greyhawk (to me at least) will always be a D&D system.

Now, as for injecting characters from those settings into your game world - if I am playing in my game world, and someone brings in the character of Galdalf or Aragorn or Frodo (whether they use that name or not) but the character is clearly created with the same back story and powers/abilities and they become a major NPC... I personally don't like it. It feels to me like a complete cop-out by the GM.

If however, the character is simply reminiscent of a famous character or if the clone is just a side character (meeting the over the top warrior/barbarian who stole a precious gem from an evil wizard's tower fortress nearby and now is drunk and has 5 beautiful women with him in the side room of the tavern), then I love it.    It adds a sense of excitement when I realize the connection.

[arakish]

I'll answer each section.

Where do you/your GM's gather information to create persistent NPC's?  The NPC who runs the tavern where your party always goes to for underground info and is used in several campaigns?  The Prince of the Realm whom sends your party out on missions for the greater good?  Do you pull an existing characters from some other gaming world and try to convert that persona into RM stats?  Do you create your own NPC and just add the details as needed... then we segue back to the earlier mentioned thread... how much detail do you add to your NPC's?

Most often, I get inspiration from characters in the novels I read.  And from some movies.  A good example is a female character who rescues some children, ages 12 to 17, from certain death.  Eventual, but it was certain.  I did a combo of Bannor as a female with an anime character from the Animatrix.  However, I did this using my version of the RMU system for my world of Onaviu.  As I do, they tend to morph into something entirely different.  I have never converted any characters over from other systems except way back in 1982, 83, 84 when we did the full switch to the RM system from DnD.  Other characters I have created in other systems, tend to stay in that system.  I have had players desire to convert characters from other systems, but I never allowed it.  Sometimes, they tend to unbalance things.

How do you as players feel about non-RM personas from other canon/literature/lore being injected into your gaming world?

See above.

Do you, as a player, mind the injection of other NPC personae in your gaming world?

Since I am the player, I have to let it happen.  It is the GMs world, not mine.  Sometimes I have disliked it, sometimes not, sometimes hilarious.

Now, for my hypocrisy: 
I always use "Grand Port City" as my primary starting point for new players in any RM campaign.  It's grown and developed over the 20+ years since I started playing RM back in 1989.  It was originally called Port City, it was devastated by a massive battle that was the result of the king being a greater mage-drake who had killed the actual king and systematically eliminated the heirs.  It was an epic campaign over 2 years in culmination.  In the wake of the destruction, it's discovered the heirs are also dead but there is still hope.  The search goes on.  In the meantime, the "clerk of the works", basically the Town Administrator keeps things running, overseeing the rebuilding of the city and the public works improvements... hence the new name Grand Port City, or New Port City to outsiders.

Anyway... I've been a huge fan of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series, and over the years, I've found that the Patriarch of Ankh-Morpork was very similar to the Town Administrator I had been using in my own fictional world.  When Terry Pratchett died, I finally just made the full jump and I use Vetinari as the Patriarch of Grand Port City.  He is just a perfect fit.  While I have a wealth of knowledge on Vetinari and some of his skills, no one in my group has read much, if any, of the Discworld series so it's not really impacting the gameplay for any of my players and they don't need to know anything about Vetinari and the rumours they pick up about him are fun.  Vetinari loves the power of running the city for which he grudgingly accepts the mantle, but with his rumoured ties to the assassin's guild, is it the perfect cover for him to gather limitless information on people?  And why is it taking so long to locate surviving heirs to the throne?

Nothing wrong, nor hypocritical about that.  I've done such.  Also see above.

rmfr

[Druss_the_Legend]

Some random thoughts on npcs in my campaign. for me, i am trying to let the player characters shape the world they are in. this means their interactions with prominent NPCs can potentially have a massive impact on the story. iv introduced a lot of different characters in the past few years and it might be time to ease back on the new npcs and consolidate a little or i run the risk on over complicating the story and campaign in general. its hard to do, give the pcs the control but as a player its what i would want. i think my campaign is needing some more stability. with too many npc characters in play the pcs are in danger of being lost and relegated to minor parts of the story. i like to give them more status as heroes or heroes in the making. this is in line with the books i like to read - i have been heavily influenced by David Gemmel, his style is gritty and real with heroes and anti-heroes with epic stories arcs where the pcs can and do influence the outcome of the story, not always to plan but always influencing it.

i guess it comes down to what sort of flavour campaign you run. im into heroic fantasy style stories. magic exists but it is uncommon, feared and unpredictable. priests worship gods and the gods can influence events in subtle through their followers. to me the pcs should be at the centre of the story. even if they dont realise it immediately, their actions shape the direction of the story.

[Spectre771]

Some random thoughts on npcs in my campaign. for me, i am trying to let the player characters shape the world they are in. this means their interactions with prominent NPCs can potentially have a massive impact on the story. iv introduced a lot of different characters in the past few years and it might be time to ease back on the new npcs and consolidate a little or i run the risk on over complicating the story and campaign in general. its hard to do, give the pcs the control but as a player its what i would want. i think my campaign is needing some more stability. with too many npc characters in play the pcs are in danger of being lost and relegated to minor parts of the story.
...

Kudos.  Excellent points.  I have one GM who very literally has the backgrounds, names, lineage, ages, birthdates, etc., of every NPC in the cities and towns.  It does feel like we, the PC's, are now "insignificants" in the incredibly intricate and detailed NPC world.  At one point, I was writing down pages of notes to try to remember all of the NPC's we ran into, who they worked with, who they liked, what their political ties were.  It was so overwhelming, I just gave up and focused on playing my PC.  At the end of the campaign, we had a nice "debriefing", and I admire and respect the GM a lot for doing this.  He wanted to know what we liked/disliked about the campaign, the gaming style, so on.  It was sort of an honest open round table discussion.  He pointed out that he didn't like how we lost interest and didn't seem to pay attention to him when he made all the effort to put all of this detail into the world and we just glassed over when he started going into the details. 

I then had my opportunity to explain to him that my PC is a nomadic-nomad, barbarian.  Basically he was a member of a nomadic tribe, but exiled from THAT tribe and had to wander around even more to avoid other nomadic tribes as those tribes don't like exiles.  Being in a city setting with hundreds of people, staying in one location, the same lodging night after night was incredibly foreign and counter to everything that made the PC.  To play the PC more true to character, I really didn't have to care about all those masses of people.  And honestly, the details didn't really help gameplay, it just slowed things down tremendously.

I can't stress enough the respect I have for the GM for having the debriefing.  It was basically saying "tell me what you liked and didn't like about me."  That took a lot of courage and testicular fortitude to open himself up like that. 

(Thank you, Mike, if you're reading this.)