"A World Worth Saving": Chris Perkins on NPCs and GMing style

[Celebrim]

I've been in games where the gate guard would have called in the entire militia, and sounded the alarm, if the players had answered like that. This is where reasonableness should come in. It makes the game more interesting if every NPC is not out to screw the players over.

That's the point where I run a diplomacy roll as a reaction check. Depending on PC making the roll and the results you could get everything from an apology by the NPC for asking (the Knight Templar on a roll of 6 or better), to refusing to open the gates and calling out other gaurds as a precaution (the Hobgoblin with the 'Cluelessness' disadvantage rolls an 8 or worse). One of the prior PC's actually would have been at risk of having crossbow bolts come his way on a bad roll.

Note that the situation changes significantly if it is say a hobgoblin town or elven town.

 

[D'karr]

Note that the situation changes significantly if it is say a hobgoblin town or elven town.

Sure, and if my party of heroes was going into a hobgoblin town, they would probably expect that everyone would be out to screw them. They would very possibly be correct. If they were going into an elven town then probably not.

The problem is that some DMs treat every NPC as if they came right out of the hobgoblin town, with no variation. There is never the elven town, everyone is a hobgoblin. From the comely wench at the tavern, to the bartender, to the money changer, to the king, to the king's advisor, to the PCs mentor. All of them asshats. That is what the article is addressing.

 

[Celebrim]

Sure, and if my party of heroes was going into a hobgoblin town, they would probably expect that everyone would be out to screw them. They would very possibly be correct. If they were going into an elven town then probably not.

No see, that's down right racist that is.

Not all Hobgoblins are jerks... just most of them.
And they don't treat everyone equally badly, especially not other goblins... at least, for goblin values of what constitutes bad treatment.

Besides, if anything in my game, you are more likely to get shot by the elves. The elves may be more merciful, but they are also much more xenophobic and paranoid.

My point was that the Knight Templar goes up to the gate of a hobgoblin encampment, and his expectations about how polite he needs to be to get in and how welcoming he can expect the town to be change for the worse. His rank is no longer recognized, and so the +3reaction bonus goes away. The xenophobia circumstantial modifier hits in, swinging things about another 4 points in his disfavor, and the base reaction goes from indifferent to unfriendly. Instead of being treated like Beowulf, he's now a suspicious 'ruffian'. The Hobgoblin on the other hand has exactly the opposite situation. His xenophobia penalty disappears, and he might even pick up a favorable social status bonus for being clearly warrior caste. Plus, there is a good chance the base reaction has gone from unfriendly to indifferent. Instead of being treated like a suspicious ruffian, there is a good chance he gets treated like Beowulf.

Now sure, there are some alignment issues where as well. The human gatekeeper is probably neutral. The hobgoblins are probably lawful evil. But my point is that how NPC's behave depends on a lot of things - who you are, past experience or reputation, who you are dealing with, how charismatic/diplomatic you are, exactly what you say ICly that contextualizes the interaction, and well a bit of luck. My point is that NPC's don't necessarily default to being helpful or unhelpful, but with a good role, even the hobgoblins might decide to treat the Knight Templar as a 'gaijin' warrior and at least afford him nominal courtesy, escort him before the Great Goblin and make some pretence of being diplomatic until they found out what he was about. Assuming he respects them, offers them some advantage, and follows the customs of their society, he might even find allies. And if he doesn't, well, he finds out about the 'evil' part of being lawful evil.

 

[S'mon]

Sure. The example is not to say, "If you do this, you'll have perfect PC-NPC relations." It merely demonstrates how a DM can present his world without being overly nice or overly antagonistic to the PCs. How you can have conflict and tension inside of a situation where PCs and NPCs are essentially on the same side.

There's the saying, "An armed society is a polite society." And just looking at it historically you can see this in Beowulf, you can see it in samurai culture, where everyone is carrying a weapon and interactions are highly ritualized, you can even see it in, say, Deadwood. Perhaps I wasn't able to get it across in my example, but one of the interesting things about Beowulf is that the widespread image of the poem is real earthy -- blood, guts, and Dark Ages. One can see that image play out in Gerard Butler's "Beowulf & Grendel", in the Zemeckis Beowulf film, even "the 13th Warrior". But in the actual poem a great deal is spent on highly mannered, semantically loaded speeches. It's glory-seeking Vikings downing mead in a dark hall, but the interactions are pure Shakespeare.

So the idea here is that you give that option to your players. You let the inhabitants of the world react honestly to their actions. If you are friendly to the innkeep, he is friendly to you. You may even have a conflict with someone, but that doesn't mean they are your lifelong enemy. You can meet town guards who are wary and on guard, yet courteous and helpful, if the PCs present themselves that way. In doing so, you give the PCs a place to go. If they want to get boorish, it has a relatively predictable effect on their environment. Likewise, if they treat NPCs with respect, they got positive benefits from that.

Lots of excellent, excellent advice!

For GMs who say their PCs act boorish/jerkish, have you tried following advice like this and Perkins'? My experience is that you get what you encourage. I've seen PCs betray an NPC employer they thought wasn't paying them enough, but if NPCs respect and praise the PCs they may well do the task without demanding pay at all.

 

[Manbearcat]

I think a lot of this stems from the early D&D cultural adage of "the world is out to get you" which promoted GMs toward being relentlessly (and utterly strangely) antagonistic toward PCs. This conditioned a considerable number of folks to develop that M.O.; all NPCs are hobgoblins. I think if the early D&D cultural adage would have been something more in line with "a good game challenges the players in fun, genre-relevant ways that emerge during play", we may have had less of that. We may have seen more chase scenes with gorges manifesting over rises after failed Ride checks than we would see Hobgoblinification of the gameworld's populace.

 

[S'mon]

I think a lot of this stems from the early D&D cultural adage of "the world is out to get you" which promoted GMs toward being relentlessly (and utterly strangely) antagonistic toward PCs. This conditioned a considerable number of folks to develop that M.O.; all NPCs are hobgoblins. I think if the early D&D cultural adage would have been something more in line with "a good game challenges the players in fun, genre-relevant ways that emerge during play", we may have had less of that. We may have seen more chase scenes with gorges manifesting over rises after failed Ride checks than we would see Hobgoblinification of the gameworld's populace.

Yeah I agree, there's a lot of unrealistic adversarialism, even in the 1e DMG; there are several cases where Gygax seems to encourage screwing the PCs over even when it would likely be in the NPCs' best interests to be more reasonable - over sharing spells, for instance, or NPC adventurer party reactions to PC offers of alliance. A lot of that seems to be for Gamist reasons, but IME it can hurt both versimilitude and drama.

 

[Manbearcat]

@S'mon The unfortunate thing of it all is that it didn't even accomplish (presumably) what it was looking to accomplish. That sort of relentless play doesn't allow players to initiate causal logic and make informed, optimal strategic and tactical decisions because, as you pointed out, much of the adversarialism doesn't even make sense. It just engenders player paranoia and them trying to figure out the deranged nuance of their resident GM's gameworld, anticipate it and pre-empt it.

A proper step on up challenge system would take advantage of several vectors (environment, social, political, etc) but each of those obstacles to be overcome would make sense and the mechanics of the resolution would be transparent enough such that PCs could make informed decisions during conflict resolution. Playing blind-folded rock/paper/scissors with a madman is not a step on up challenge.

 

[Libramarian]

I don't disagree with any of the conclusions (more useful in the sort of game where the typical adventuring hook is an NPC giving the PCs a quest, rather than a treasure map/dungeon rumor, but pretty good advice nonetheless) but if it weren't for this thread I would have stopped reading after the first two sentences:

"A campaign needs to earn the players' respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome campaigns get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised players, and for good reason."

That seems way too biased in favor of the players to me. Let's try transposing the the player and GM role here and see how badwrong it sounds:

"A player character needs to earn the GM's respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome PCs get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised GMs, and for good reason."

I would argue that if you think one of these attitudes is acceptable and the other not, you're too biased in favor of the players.

If you're doing a story-focused campaign with a specific theme (e.g. fantasy supers) then the players have just as much responsibility to play to that as the DM does. If a player is not really grooving on the DM's scene-framing then I think they should talk with them OOC and suggest some changes, and work together to get the game going in the right direction. I don't agree with this attitude that they're allowed to act like a petulant child and "rip the campaign to shreds" unless the DM sets everything up perfectly to coax great roleplaying out of them. I don't think that's a wise approach and reminds me of what the Forge essays call ouija board playing.

 

[Manbearcat]

@Libramarian Good post. Gratuitously adversarial GMing and gratuitously adversarial PCing belong in the same woodchipper. Feet-first.

** These do not include standard GMing whereby you're constantly applying genre-relevant pressure nor does it include instigator PCs.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

"A campaign needs to earn the players' respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome campaigns get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised players, and for good reason."

That seems way too biased in favor of the players to me. Let's try transposing the the player and GM role here and see how badwrong it sounds:

"A player character needs to earn the GM's respect if it has any chance of survival. Too many potentially awesome PCs get ripped to shreds by disaffected and disenfranchised GMs, and for good reason."

I would argue that if you think one of these attitudes is acceptable and the other not, you're too biased in favor of the players.

I tend to hold that both these statements hold some truth about the social contract necessary to run a good game; the players should be trying to earn the GM's respect or at least actively doing their best not to rub him/her the wrong way just as much as the GM needs to do his/her best to ensure that the game is as much fun for everyone as possible.

I don't see adversarial DMing or intentionally nasty players so much anymore, but I've been at tables where this was the norm, and I think the culture and history of a given group has a lot to do with that.