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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 325635" data-attributes="member: 172">At least not for me. Sheesh, people. I know a lot of people respect my judgement, but I do occasionally speak for myself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I agree that certain software tools are helpful. And I also agree that NPC stats are pretty trivial. But I said that, didn't I? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That doesn't sound too bad. But sersiously, I still think it has limited appeal for me personally. My reasons for not liking this approach too much are twofold. One, as I said before, even in a fairly big resource of this sort, I often find that nothing fits just right and I end up severely tweaking it and making a lot of it up myself. Two, I am of the campaign style that I prefer to skip over "inconsequential shopkeep yammering" and there are few enough NPCs that I feel are important enough to give this much detail to that it is not too much of a task.Sure. But I imagine that many GMs will find as I did that learning the skills for yourself might be a better investment in the long run, as you can better adapt it to your game's needs.Quite possibly. I'm just speaking for myself (and perhaps some others out there who might feel as I do.)I've been frequently told -- and agree -- that one memorable quirk is all you really need to make NPCs stand out. Trying to give players the life stories of minor NPCs is often lost on them/goes over their head/under their radar screens OR serves as a distraction from the real stories. NPC details are garnish, IMO. You don't need to heap it on. Often a table of quirks, mannerisms, motives, and whatnot, can give you much more mileage that fully fleshed out NPCs that don't fit and have more detail than will ever be pertinent or exposed in the game.Yes, I do think that. I find that a great many of these location and NPC books only has a handful of items that a particular GM would like. Heck, I think that about Enemies & Allies and Urban Blight, so don't feel alone there. The difference for me is that when I do need those details, it's more of a service to me when you need exacting game mechanics on the fly. Making up NPC personalities is a bit easier to wing... and I consider myself no master of NPCs.1) The more fully fleshed out they are, the harder they are to work into a campaign, as more details have a chance at being at odds with the campaign assumptions.2) Trying to squeeze detail into inconsequential encounters (which is really the only way I can see using a large portion of the contents of such a book) can really make a campaign drag, IMO.</blockquote>

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