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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Introducing a Lore heavy NPC
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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6086159" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I should have been clearer - I was having in mind that these would be existing characters/monsters that the players already know about.</p><p></p><p>Just an example: when the PCs encounter your new NPC, they also learn (in some appropriate way) that (i) s/he was once an ally with the PC's patron, and (ii) s/he has been working in conjunction with a mind flayer. Is the NPC good? (Ally of patron.) Is the NPC evil? (Working with mind flayer.) Was the PC once good but has now been corrupted? Was that corruption due (in part, in whole) to the mind flayer's mind control? This sort of approach makes it fairly easy to set up the moral ambiguity and uncertainty that you want, because it leverages parts of the gameworld and the backstory the players are already familiar with (their patron; mindflayers).</p><p></p><p>Another example from my own game: when the PCs encountered Kas: (i) they already had his sword, which one of them was wielding without knowing what it was, and which another was burned by when he touched it because that other PC was a bit of a Vecna sympathiser; (ii) Kas was trying to kill the woman that the PCs were trying to resuce; (iii) there was at least some evidence that the woman the PCs were trying to rescue was a necromancer, and all the PCs hate necromancers; (iv) the PCs realised that Kas had an alliance of some sort with the Raven Queen, who is the patron god of two PCs and revered, though not exclusively, by a third. These different considerations generated uncertainty, and a type of open-ended possibility, about how the players (and hence their PCs) would <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?313724-Actual-play-the-PCs-successfully-negotiated-with-Kas" target="_blank">respond to Kas</a>.</p><p></p><p>A third example, from the first X-Man movie: we learn that Magneto attacked Wolverine (and Rogue), and that Prof X and the X-Men rescued Wolverine - implies Magneto bad; and then not long after we learn that Magneto can shield himself from Cerebro because he helped Prof X built it - implies Magneto good, because Prof X has already been established as good. So we, the audience, have a degree of ambivalence about Magneto's villainy (and that will be reinforced as we work out that Magneto was the boy at the start of the movie, a victim of National Socialist extermination policies).</p><p></p><p>This is good advice! And I think it lends itself well to the "relationships" approach I'm suggesting.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6086159, member: 42582"] I should have been clearer - I was having in mind that these would be existing characters/monsters that the players already know about. Just an example: when the PCs encounter your new NPC, they also learn (in some appropriate way) that (i) s/he was once an ally with the PC's patron, and (ii) s/he has been working in conjunction with a mind flayer. Is the NPC good? (Ally of patron.) Is the NPC evil? (Working with mind flayer.) Was the PC once good but has now been corrupted? Was that corruption due (in part, in whole) to the mind flayer's mind control? This sort of approach makes it fairly easy to set up the moral ambiguity and uncertainty that you want, because it leverages parts of the gameworld and the backstory the players are already familiar with (their patron; mindflayers). Another example from my own game: when the PCs encountered Kas: (i) they already had his sword, which one of them was wielding without knowing what it was, and which another was burned by when he touched it because that other PC was a bit of a Vecna sympathiser; (ii) Kas was trying to kill the woman that the PCs were trying to resuce; (iii) there was at least some evidence that the woman the PCs were trying to rescue was a necromancer, and all the PCs hate necromancers; (iv) the PCs realised that Kas had an alliance of some sort with the Raven Queen, who is the patron god of two PCs and revered, though not exclusively, by a third. These different considerations generated uncertainty, and a type of open-ended possibility, about how the players (and hence their PCs) would [url=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?313724-Actual-play-the-PCs-successfully-negotiated-with-Kas]respond to Kas[/url]. A third example, from the first X-Man movie: we learn that Magneto attacked Wolverine (and Rogue), and that Prof X and the X-Men rescued Wolverine - implies Magneto bad; and then not long after we learn that Magneto can shield himself from Cerebro because he helped Prof X built it - implies Magneto good, because Prof X has already been established as good. So we, the audience, have a degree of ambivalence about Magneto's villainy (and that will be reinforced as we work out that Magneto was the boy at the start of the movie, a victim of National Socialist extermination policies). This is good advice! And I think it lends itself well to the "relationships" approach I'm suggesting. [/QUOTE]
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