Building Rapport b/w PCs and NPCs

[mac1504]

What tricks and techniques do you have or use to help build rapport, or more importantly (to me), specific feelings between your PCs and NPCs in your games?

I ask because I am planning an adventure where the PCs will start the campaign working for a very charismatic resistance leader and that NPC will eventually be captured by the BBEG and (hopefully) used as bait to lure/trap the PCs. I want to build this NPC up as someone the PCs respect and would(possibly) die for.

I was hoping that I could get some advice on evoking this type of feeling from the PCs during the course of the campaign.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

For your instance, I would hold off for some time before doing what you suggest. I would play up the individual as a leader. Show him doing heroic things (without diminishing the PCs activities). Have him reward and praise (both in public and private) the accomplishments of the PCs. Have him mentor them. Have him be the key to obtaining some of their goals (ex: he introduces one of the PCs to another NPC with the knowledge required to achieve a desired or ideal Prestige Class, Feat, Spell, etc.).

Generally, make him someone the PCs look forward to having around.

Otherwise, they won't care once he's not.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

Well, I have two instances that I know of that worked.
The first was an elven ranger who basically hung off the fighter's arm, trailblazed, guarded the important NPC, and gave him (the fighter) better pieces of the catch.

The other one is in my current game. There's a smith who is supplying the players with most of their incoming loot, giving them advice, IDing their treasure and teaching them how to use their powers. He has a daughter who cooks, thinks the heroes are neat, generally agrees with what the party says, is polite, and fades into the background.

They're ok with the smith, and would probablly bail him out of trouble, but they'd go to near the ends of the earth to help his daughter.'

What does this tell us? My players like people who don't push into the spotlight, but take a supporting role (which is similar to my players themselves).

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

I have terrible luck trying to make an NPC that the PCs will like; usually I just make a lot of NPCs, wait until I see which one they like, and then abandon the ones they spurned. Or let the players have contacts, because that way they make their own NPCs that they're guaranteed to like.

But obviously, that won't work here.

I'd go along with Bendris Noulg for the most part, but maybe with more emphasis on making this guy helpful. One of the few things I've found that seems to make PCs like NPCs more is when they're actually helpful.

So if all the PCs are going to work for this guy, I'd say have it be more of a partnership than a leader/follower arrangement. Make the NPC really like and rely on the party. When they ask him for assistance, he doesn't hesitate to provide as much as he can (and more than is actually safe or sane for him to provide under most circumstances). If they get in a jam, he does everything in his power to help them out. He doesn't lie to them, cheat them, treat them as inferiors, go out of his way to prove how much cooler he is than they are, or do other similarly negative things. If they ask for something he can't provide, he apologizes for not being able to give them that but also provides the next best thing, because he isn't stingy.

I figure most players, when confronted with an NPC mission-provider like that (one which is almost diametrically opposed to every other NPC leader-type they've met in other games), might actually end up liking him. Then when he gets captured, they might think about trying to get him back instead of thinking "Hey, looks like we're in charge now!"

Worth a shot, anyway.


Oh, and for your own sake, make sure the players know that they're going to be making characters who are going to be working for this resistance movement, and that they're all completely on board with the idea. It'll be hard to get them to have any kind of loyalty to the leader if they aren't even interested in being loyal to the movement.

--
i'm sure you're already doing that, but if you weren't, it's worth it to warn you
ryan