Topic: Levels of NPC's throughout the population of your game world.

[Thot]

I guess it depends on if you think the system rules are intended to apply to the average being in a given world. I don't think they are, but rather that they are intended to apply to 'adventurers', which are not the norm.

So when a given being just decides to be an "adventurer", it suddenly transforms into a different being? 

I firmly believe a good rule system can and should display every character in the game with the same rules. The bartender and the archmage, the farmer and the demigod, the dog and the dragon, all should be describable in the same rules system. Not only because each of those might be a PC in some campaign, but also because the players can then conclude from their player-knowledge of the rules about NPC's they encounter, and thus have a more consistent system to learn, which is just easier.

[Thom @ ICE]

Isn't it more that the high end of the bell curve are detailed because they get special abilities. The average folk and lower end of the bell curve don't have special abilities so they don't need extra documentation.  Your setting determines how steep the bell curve is, and where the midpoint is in comparison to when the special abilities begin.

Rolemaster is not designed for only one style of play. Rolemaster is designed to be able to be applied to any setting.  What Rolemaster does require is not a specific setting, but rather a specific game play style - a style that is detailed and "realistic" (to whatever extent you can add magic and dice roll representations of combat into a game).

[Thot]

I would certainly agree with that!

Coming back to the original question and looking at my rules set, I see that a successful average maneuver gives you 50 Experience Points... and certainly an NPC will have and opportunity to make one or more in his daily job an life each day?

Assuming it is just one such roll, or 50 Experience Points per day, we are talking about about one (early) level per 5 years.

[rdanhenry]

You underestimate. At 50 experience points per day, 10th level is achieved in 8 years. Even 10 experience points per day makes 10th level after 40 years of adulthood. As for elves and the like, after 1000 years, even 1 experience per day is level 16; 2 per day reaches Lord level (20) in 700 years.

(If it hadn't been for the emergence of the RMU project, I'd have been writing a GC article on the implications of the RM rules for levels for NPCs. The more narrative experience rules of RMU are looser and make it easier for a 10,000 year old elf to not have a triple-digit level, but everyone is the hero of his own story. Anyone not in a coma is gathering experience at some pace.)

[GrumpyOldFart]

And I think the number of skills needed to be classified as a professional in your given profession is more than a handful, and in some cases (like the magic using professions) a whole lot more.

Meh... varies with the profession, as you noted. However, not every "professional skill" is going to need to always be maxed out in order for you to be competitive in your job. A computer repair tech probably needs to have his software knowledge and his troubleshooting skills maxed out. Soldering? He should be at least competent, but probably not vital for him to be constantly at the peak of his abilities. Theory of digital logic? He needs to have the basics, but it's doubtful he will ever have the need for more than the basics during his entire career.

And yes, the number of skills that fall into those categories varies not only with profession, but with the local environment within which the character operates. That why I said "at least one or two skills" that are vital and several that aren't vital, but still job related. How many, and which, skills fall into which category are determined by how that character properly fits into the scenario, which is a judgment call you or I can't possibly make from here.

Only, I say higher than 90%, basically someone who is a full-on professional, say Thatcher, wouldn't be able to feed their family if 10% of their roofs leaked - or 10% of each roof leaked, however you want to look at the situation.

That only holds true if you don't count Perception as a job related skill. If he catches 90% of those errors (assuming you consider Perception not only job related but"vital") and fixes them before his customer ever finds out, the bell curve that gives him 90% success rate gives him a total 99% after failures perceived and corrected are factored in.

You're saying, if I understand correctly, that the RM system inherently means high magic.

I dunno what he's saying, but I'll throw in my 2cp here. In RM1 & 2, if you had a 75 or above in any of 3 out of 10 stats, you potentially had PPs available. Thus, if you're living in a village of 100, the bell curve says a handful of those people are potentially spellcasters. Any further limitation than that on how common spellcasters are is imposed by your scenario (danger of being known as a caster, difficulty of finding training, etc.), there is no further limitation inherent in the mechanics.

My familiarity with RMSS/FRP is much more limited, so I dunno to what degree that applies to them. RMU? We'll see.

Assuming it is just one such roll, or 50 Experience Points per day, we are talking about about one (early) level per 5 years.

I figure the typical peasant could count on making a level every year or two, eventually slowing down to 1 every four or five years, so someone in his late thirties to early forties is probably 10th-20th level. However, mortality rates being what they are, a peasant living long enough to get past 25th level, in his late fifties or early sixties, is probably pretty unusual.

[rdanhenry]

Not really. Sure, medieval life expectancy was low, but given infant mortality was high, that doesn't mean the old were as rare as people seem to think.

If the average life expectancy is 30 and half the population dies in infancy, that means those who survive are living to 60 years on average. Which allows for plenty of mysterious old strangers.

[jdale]

I guess it depends on if you think the system rules are intended to apply to the average being in a given world. I don't think they are, but rather that they are intended to apply to 'adventurers', which are not the norm.

So when a given being just decides to be an "adventurer", it suddenly transforms into a different being? 

No, the opposite: when a being is different, they become an adventurer. Different in the sense of better aptitude (e.g. earning XP faster), willing to take on greater risks, acting at the limits of their abilities instead of repeating the humdrum. Of course not all of them become adventurers. Some might become leaders (of nations, ventures, expeditions, etc), some might become villains.


If people just kept consistently getting better all their lives, no one over the age of 40 would ever get in a car accident. In practice, people do get better over maybe the first 5-10 years of driving experience, but after that they aren't pushing themselves and they don't improve to any meaningful degree. I think for many skills, that is typical. You reach a plateau and without anything to push you, it's perfectly possible to stay there forever. Some people do push themselves further (e.g. professional race car drivers and stunt drivers) and reach a higher level, but it's not just number of miles driven that does it.

[markc]

My NPC vs PC 2 cents:
 I will use RMSS as my main example but also give some RM2 notes.


1) I have changed the fact that you need to have a specific Stat score for a profession. This has allowed for NPC's to have lower stats and take any profession (if appropriate for the game world, but in general in my world most average people are Layman profession doing every job there needs to be done)
2) The affect of 1) above is that average people do not have as high of stats as an adventurer (not always the case). So on average they have lower DP per level than adventures.
3) In the experience system doing the same task time and again does not generate the same experience in RMSS and I think RM2 vs the RMU rules.
4) IMHO RMSS and definitely RM2 do not give enough background skills, who ever heard of children not knowing how to run.

So #3 above provides diminishing returns for experience in RMSS and RM2 for doing the same thing day in and day out, this slows level advancement for NPC's. This can also slow level advancement for PC's as well if they keep doing the same thing over and over but in general from my game experience this does not happen very often.
#1 (house rule) and #2 (result of house rule) above means that NPC's will not have as many free DP's to spend on other skills besides those that make them $ and that they need to live. Where as the PC will be able to broaden the scope of the skills they know and break out of the mold of the average person.
#4 above makes PC's and NPC's less realistic IMHO but giving everyone more skills as an adolescent and apprentice is not liked by some people as they like to game will PC's and NPC's at low levels having very low skill score (I am not judging just stating what I have noticed others posting over the years since being on this forum). IMHO this is more of a problem for RM2 players than it is a problem for RMSS players, IMHO.

So those are my observations on why NPC's tend to slow in leveling faster than PC's do but in general I think NPC's live longer than most PC's if resurrection is cheep and readily available. 

MDC

[Thot]

[...]
If people just kept consistently getting better all their lives, no one over the age of 40 would ever get in a car accident.

There are ciritical failures. Also, you are assuming that people put more DP's into car driving when they are already sufficiently competent, and don't learn other skills instead from their XP.

Of course, many models are thinkable on how to apply the RM system to a given game world... none are invalid. But I don't like yours as much as mine. 

[Cory Magel]

I guess it depends on if you think the system rules are intended to apply to the average being in a given world. I don't think they are, but rather that they are intended to apply to 'adventurers', which are not the norm.

So when a given being just decides to be an "adventurer", it suddenly transforms into a different being? 

The average shmo is different from the average player character.  I don't think anything needs to be super detailed that isn't going to interact with the PC's in any meaningful way.  If something other than the average shmo is going to interact with the PC's then you probably planned it and have an NPC for it (and, in my view, will probably be a Layman).  Are you going to FULLY build an NPC blacksmith that the PC's only do as much as haggle about the cost of purchases or repair as a full on character?  Probably not.  If you are, are you going to build it the same way you would a PC?  Probably not.  Firstly, you only need to know their crafting skill levels if you intend to leave the results to chance.  Secondly, if you do want to leave the results to chance what skills will you want to know?  Unless they are going to pick a fight with the random blacksmith (who is probably going to surrender in the face of an armed and experienced adventurer) you only need to have a handful of skill totals.  If the blacksmith is secretly a 10 level alchemist then it obviously has an official place in your setting and isn't just the average shmo.  If it's some random blacksmith in some small town you need what?  Crafting skill, trading/haggling skill... that's about all I'd need, and only if I didn't want control of the outcome.

I firmly believe a good rule system can and should display every character in the game with the same rules. The bartender and the archmage, the farmer and the demigod, the dog and the dragon, all should be describable in the same rules system. Not only because each of those might be a PC in some campaign, but also because the players can then conclude from their player-knowledge of the rules about NPC's they encounter, and thus have a more consistent system to learn, which is just easier.

They use the same rules, but they do not always apply in the same way.  An uneducated potato picker who lives in a flimsy shack and works for a landlord all their life isn't going to learn much more than how to live the way they do (cooking, fire-starting, how to tell when and where you need to pick a potato, a little haggling maybe...).  A craftsman is going to be a Layman, but you're only going to bother with that in situations such as the blacksmith mentioned above - i.e. someone that interacts with the PC's and, again, you're only going to BUILD the NPC as you would a Layman PC if you want to leave the interactions to chance.

Now, if you want to build a set of NPC's for random use in your world that's great, but I wouldn't bother doing that in most cases because I don't want the PC's effectively dealing with the same blacksmith every time they go looking for one.  Even city guards, while I would have some pre-preped, I don't want to be the same guards they run into in any locale.

[RandalThor]

I dunno what he's saying, but I'll throw in my 2cp here. In RM1 & 2, if you had a 75 or above in any of 3 out of 10 stats, you potentially had PPs available. Thus, if you're living in a village of 100, the bell curve says a handful of those people are potentially spellcasters. Any further limitation than that on how common spellcasters are is imposed by your scenario (danger of being known as a caster, difficulty of finding training, etc.), there is no further limitation inherent in the mechanics.
<snip>
I figure the typical peasant could count on making a level every year or two, eventually slowing down to 1 every four or five years, so someone in his late thirties to early forties is probably 10th-20th level. However, mortality rates being what they are, a peasant living long enough to get past 25th level, in his late fifties or early sixties, is probably pretty unusual.

This seems pretty reasonable to me, though you might want to do the math again after you hear this: You don't imagine that peasants avoid all contact with hostile entities, both in creature form and/or civilized being form, do you? The typical fantasy world is filled with dangerous creatures and beings (much more so than our world) so the typical farmer, craftsman, sage, etc... is going to have to deal with something like this from time to time. I wouldn't be surprised if every year at least one such event is encountered, likely more. I imagine that things like this would bump up their XP/year significantly, and be a great reason why they need to have some combat/action skills along with their normal professional abilities. (And in high enough levels to help ensure their survival.)

My familiarity with RMSS/FRP is much more limited, so I dunno to what degree that applies to them. RMU? We'll see.

In RMSS/FRP PPs are gotten like Hits, they are developed as a skill - that anyone can learn.

If people just kept consistently getting better all their lives, no one over the age of 40 would ever get in a car accident.

There are ciritical failures.

That was what I was thinking. check this:

Disproportionate Population / Fatality Ratio: Teens make up 10% of the population but represent 12% of car crash fatalities

Teens = Highest Risk Group: For every mile driven, teens between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times as likely to be involved in a car crash

Found here: http://www.autos.com/driving-and-safety/car-crash-statistics-based-on-age-and-location

Of course, many models are thinkable on how to apply the RM system to a given game world... none are invalid. But I don't like yours as much as mine. 

Ditto. 

[jdale]

If people just kept consistently getting better all their lives, no one over the age of 40 would ever get in a car accident.

There are ciritical failures.

That was what I was thinking. check this:

Disproportionate Population / Fatality Ratio: Teens make up 10% of the population but represent 12% of car crash fatalities

Teens = Highest Risk Group: For every mile driven, teens between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times as likely to be involved in a car crash

Found here: http://www.autos.com/driving-and-safety/car-crash-statistics-based-on-age-and-location

Yes, that's why I said people do improve over their first 5-10 years of experience. 9 years gets you to age 25, which is the last point where you'll get an insurance discount based on years of driving experience. The insurance industry does not think the next 30 years of driving experience make a meaningful difference in your chance of an accident.

[RandalThor]

[tangent]Not in the past, but they are beginning to now. "Safe driver discounts."[/tangent]

[yammahoper]

Limiting spell users; Prime Stats of 90.  Like any rule, this can be ignored.  By DESIGN, it presents a very real limit.

On exp; when a mnv becomes routine, it is 1/2 exp.  When it becomes familiar, it is zero exp.  For day to day living, this is a real limitation on gaining levels.

[Lord Garth]

I don't feel the need to populate worlds with more than a few demi-god level NPCs.

This is exactly the attitude I was talking about. Thinking that a 50th+ level character is a "demi-god" is just wrong in my opinion. In D&D, sure, they would be, but in RM not so much.

Your opinion is different from mine, but I wouldn't call you out as being wrong or having a wrong attitude for viewing the game world one way or the other.

Back on topic, in the end it's going to come down to how you want your PCs to interact with the world during a campaign, their starting level, and how long it's going to last. Every single GM I've gamed with, and myself as a GM, knows that in the end it's about the players having fun. Give them a clear vision of the world from the get-go and populate the world accordingly. Personally, I've never ever gamed, or had the desire to do so, an average Joe, but at the same time I don't want my PCs to do as they wish all the time. Thus, I place a few over-powering figures, Archmages, Warlords, kings, minor deities ... in my games, and then have important but not all powering NPCs hover around the 20-40 level mark. In most campaigns my PCs will at most aspire to equal these figures over time, yet still be significantly less powerful than the greater ones, what with campaigns starting at level 1 and coming to a conclusion around the level 20 mark.

Local Militia will be around level 5-8 and a captain of the guard will be level 12-ish or so, for instance.

[OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol]

The idea that every nation wouldn't be massively supporting the learning of the greatest natural resource in the world is sort of silly.

Nations would... for the elite. I mean, it wasn't for the past few centuries that mere literacy wasn't a matter of the elite so do you really think they would teach peasants magic whilst they wouldn't even teach them to read and to write? If anything, the existence of magic would reinforce the class separation between the elite and the low classes, since the argument "noblemen/clergymen aren't really different form us" would be wrong. They would: they can manipulate magic. But, teach lower classes magic and give them the potential to rebel? Oh, come on.

What I am doing, and sure I admit it may be a bit silly of me, is extrapolating what I believe a game world would be like by the RM rules - if a GM doesn't do something special to make it different (i.e., insisting that only 1% of the population even has a chance at learning magic, etc...).

The GM wouldn't have to do anything: the world would do it itself. I don't know if you realize but, in our real, actual world, access to mere guns is restricted, especially in about 99% of the world (i.e., save for a few countries such as the USA), access to heavy weaponry (bazookas, tanks, etc.) is even more and access to nuclear weaponry is restricted at a country, international level. Therefore, I think it'd be pretty obvious that powerful magic, were it to exist, would be restricted, if not because of its destructive power, at least because it would upset the economy (and history proved again and again that lobbies like to remain lobbies and crush people who would threaten them).

Which puts you in the position of making whole new rules for non-PCs, which I don't think is a great idea.

Not really. Existence != access. A game that takes place in the modern world may have rules for nuclear weapons and ultra-modern fighter jets to which the PCs and NPCs may have access (say in a James Bond kind of game). However, how many people in the world do you think would have access to such items/technologies?

[yammahoper]

In the end, NPC's level and skills are determined just like a PC's.  Their position in the world/community, career and life choices. 

So I see definition in each of our respective games for what is average, skilled, below average, or exceptional as being the guiding factors to determining any NPC's level.

[RandalThor]

LG: My bad, man. I just get frustrated as I cannot seem to find anyone of similar mindset, and certainly not to game with in my area. Also, it sounds like your ideas on NPC levels are fairly close to mine; the example of the local militia sounds good to me.

Sure there would be restrictions and some nations would be more strict than others, but you also have to take into consideration the extremely dangerous world in which these people live. (The only reason our world is more dangerous overall, is due to the presence of nuclear* weapons; on a day-to-day basis, most of our world is much less dangerous than the typical fantasy world.) A small group of trusted individuals are not enough when every settlement you have is threatened by: orcs, goblins, dragons, manticores, displacer beasts, winged panthers, great boars, horse vipers, ihl wolfs, strider birds,  tatzelwurms, hydras, sea serpents, chimeras, darkhunters, ice spiders, minotaurs, mist monsters, panthersharks, thraxx (I really dig these guys), will 'o the wisps, demon whales, hippocampus, mercats, nators, raths, red jaws, spinesharks, spiderbats, winged eels, banshees, blacksnakes, harpys, griffons, roc, sirens, sky sharks (hey, these guys don't need a tornado!), viperhawks, winged wolves, and all the things that can be summoned from other planes or the other peoples that inhabit the world with humanity.

Trust me, I have thought about this topic a lot over the years. Sure you would have those nations** that are really strict and all of that, but then you would have others that aren't - just like now. (And it is a much different beast keeping a physical item out of peoples hands than ideas and knowledge, which has been shown in our own history.) And when your family's survival is likely predicted upon you being able to kill the beast breaking down your door right NOW, you might be inclined to make sure you can.



*Of course, there is nothing saying that there isn't the magical versions of such weapons.

** I don't think that you would have these nations spanning tens of thousands of square miles, or more, in such a world though. I think it would be more like city-states and large tracks of wild lands. Largely because, unlike in our world, the wild lands would actively resist our encroachment.

Edit: Got this thread confused with the magic affecting your game world one. D'oh!

[intothatdarkness]

Limiting spell users; Prime Stats of 90.  Like any rule, this can be ignored.  By DESIGN, it presents a very real limit.

On exp; when a mnv becomes routine, it is 1/2 exp.  When it becomes familiar, it is zero exp.  For day to day living, this is a real limitation on gaining levels.

Prime stats will effectively limit both Essence and Mentalism without any GM intervention. GMs can easily (if they wish) control access to Channeling spells by requiring them to come through gods or some similar mechanism. And that's in addition to the PR hurdle. And there's a fair amount of lower-level magic in RM that's effectively civilian magic. All that's needed aside from the PRs is a good idea of how that magic is accessed and shared or passed on.

None of this is especially difficult if the GM puts some early, basic thought into the setting. Done well, or at least with some consistent planning, it creates a "real" environment that's both fun and challenging for players. I always did some leveled NPCs just because. After all, who's to say that a high-level fighter might decide that she wants some quiet life and retires unnoticed to a small village in a nearby province that might not have heard of her?

[Lord Garth]

LG: My bad, man. I just get frustrated as I cannot seem to find anyone of similar mindset, and certainly not to game with in my area. Also, it sounds like your ideas on NPC levels are fairly close to mine; the example of the local militia sounds good to me.

No worries. About players in your area ... I just lost one of my players for at least two years (he's going to be a father again) so go figure... Anyhow, rethinking my position (I wish I could game MORE and think LESS about gaming) on high-level NPCs it probably boils down to the level of detail I need to bring into the game. To clarify, there would a substantial amount of level 50-100 in any game world, what with gods, demigods, demons, arcane drakes, archmages, undeads ... the thing is that PCs will rarely get to explore the whole world. Thus, as a lazy GM, I don't flesh out the complete world, just the parts they, my players, need for their own gaming.