S'mon's latest activity

I'd be willing to pre-order this if Amazon hadn't just cheated me out of $40 over the holidays (ordered a book that didn't ship, now...

For me, the answer is dependent on many things. For games like D&D with classes and levels, I don't think that having the rules for NPCs...

Is Soth an NPC? (and can monsters be NPCs?) Sure seems that way since the mid 80s at least ;)

They become NPCs when the GM starts thinking of them as a character. Social interaction usually forces that, yes.

NPCs do succeed IMCs - I default to rolling a D6 - "1" they do really badly, "6" they do really well. So villains can fail and redshirts...

For sure I never see a party of npc succeed an adventure, unless for sad DM who play alone.

It sure seems to infer that any creature that is an individual is an NPC. Generic creature or monster doesn't count. But as soon as...

Branching Path: Cousin of the railroad (possibly actually what some people are calling a railroad), except that there are a number of...

Even detailed sandboxes have random encounter charts, so at least some level of improvisation is necessary above and beyond the fact...

Well, it's certainly a common feature of some sandboxes, especially the hex crawls that were really the first kind of map associated...

Traditional sandboxes tend to have a mix of pre-populated material, procedural content generation tools, and some expectation the GM can...

It's more about the lack of constraint on player decision making. The essence of sandbox play is to drop some characters into a setting...

Oh gods no. Different rules and treatments. It makes it so much easier to make NPCs when you can make them however you like without...

I am at once okay with that "spellbook" being incomprehensible garbage to the PC wizard AND letting the PC wizard decide charm missile...

I run in a very improvisational style and yet ran Avernus which is railroady as all get out*. Improvisation meant weirdo NPCs and random...