NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8976588" data-attributes="member: 42582">Here's a thought - a tip, if you like - that builds on the OP.To run a game based on character => situation => setting, rather than the more mainstream setting => situation, let go of setting prep.Really let it go.For instance, with your NPCs: conceive of them in their relationship to the character as a presence in the situation - perhaps the NPC is asking for something, or offering something, or forbidding the PC from doing something. If the NPC is taken from the build of a character - eg the character build lists them as a rival - then the NPC's initial role in the situation might be obvious. Otherwise that role might be invented by the GM, either because it seems fun and/or appropriate (Given the sort of thing you've described your PC as doing, it makes sense that someone approaches them and asks them their what their business is here on the docks among the warehouses) or because it follows as a consequence for action resolution (Given that you just failed your Inconspicuous check, it makes sense that a burly bruiser type comes up to you and tells you "We don't want you hanging about - why don't you make yourself scarce!").Then resolve the situation, using the tools the game gives you, and construct your setting in response to that - eg suppose that the situation is the one of the bruiser telling the PC to make themself scarce, and then the player declares action which successfully reduce the NPC to a weeping, quivering wreck, perhaps the NPC starts babbling about their family, and how the PC should spare them because otherwise "How will my family make a living?"In building these elements of setting, have regard to how they can interact with the prepared characters to create new situations. Eg the example I just gave will work especially well if the character includes an element - say, a Belief in Burning Wheel or a Milestone in Marvel Heroic RP or an Alignment in Dungeon World - that means that looking after innocent families, or scorning family relationships, is salient to them. Suppose, on the other hand, you have a character who doesn't have that sort of element but has one that is about honour, it might be better not to construct some setting around the NPC, but rather to have the weeping, quivering NPC plead for their own life, thus provoking the player of the character concerned with honour to respond to this display of dishonour.(Full disclosure and acknowledgement: for me, the clearest and most influential statement I have come across of the approach to NPCs I've just described is from Paul Czege, <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1361" target="_blank">here</a>.)Notice that the approach to NPCs I've just described will only work if you have some technique for resolving PC-NPC interactions other than extrapolation, by the GM, from their pre-established backstory for the NPC. This is one way in which mechanical details of systems, and differences between them, can become quite interesting.</blockquote>

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