DMs - do you use session summaries and I would like NPC help

[Elodan]

My group just finished the Whispering Cairn, . This is my first attempt to get behind the screen in many years and I thought it went fairly well. I decided to provide a session summary to my players after each game (I've attached a Word doc with all the summaries I've sent to date, excuse the spelling and grammar). I've found that it helps me keep better track of what's happening in the campaign. It also allows me to subtly (or not so subtly) reinforce important events, people etc. related to the adventure. Does anyone else do this?

NPCs are my weak point. I've left several loose ends with certain NPCs and I'm not sure what to do with them. How do you figure out your NPCs motivations and actions in relation to certain things happening in a campaign. How do you make them seem more realistic? Any advice is welcome.

Thanks

 

[BSF]

I design NPCs with goals. Everybody has a goal in life. It might be to have a healthy family, it might be to get rich, it might be to gain personal power, overthrow the king, reclaim a heritage, destroy a person/place/thing, cheat death, or whatever. NPCs have goals. Next figure out how motivated any given NPC is to attain that goal. Perhaps it is a hobby, perhaps it is a lifelong passion, perhaps a loved one will die if the goal is not reached. The point is, how hard will the NPC work to reach that goal? How likely is the NPC to give up? Now figure out what plan the NPC will put in place to reach that goal. While you are at it, toss in some personality traits. Is the NPC vicious and aggressive? Quiet and cunning? Add personality that seems to be in line with motivation and goals.

Now you have an NPC with a goal, a plan to reach that goal and you know how motivated the NPC is to attain that goal. If nothing interferes with the plan, then the NPC will attain the goal in x time.

This is where the PCs finally come in. Figure out a way for the PCs to interfere with this plan. Intentional or not, they will provide tension. These are what I call tension points. As the PCs apply tension, the plan will have to be adjusted. The NPC will adjust the plan based on motivation and personality. A highly motivated, aggressive NPC might personally confront the PCs. A lightly motivated, aggressive NPC might accost the PCs and berate them for interfering, then drop the goal.

Sometimes the PC's interference will be slight and not immediately attract attention.

So one shipment of slaves didn't arrive. That is going to set the demon summoning project back by a week, but kidnapping slaves is risky and sometimes it doesn't work out right. Time to find a new source.

Sometimes the PC's interference will be major and attract immediate attention.

The holy relic we stole from the Church of Pter was, in turn, stolen from us. Spies indicate the relic was snuck back into the Church a week ago. The people responsible appear to be the same ones that have stopped three of our kidnapping excursions in the last season. Hmm, these guys are starting to get annoying. Let's do something about them.

As the PCs apply tension to these plans, the NPC will adjust to still reach her goal. Sometimes the tension will break the plan. The most notable event is when the PCs track down the NPC and kill him!

Now, please note that this works for all manner of NPCs. Villians as well as potential allies. It is even possible that the PCs will interfere with the plans of a potential ally and instead create an adversary. Perhaps a good organization has spent months infiltrating a slave trading organization. The PCs lose a couple of family members to a slave raid and decide to 'fix' the problem. They track down the slavers and kill them all in a massive battle. After the fact, the good organization accosts the PCs because they killed an undercover agent. Now the leads to the mastermind of hte slave trading organization are all gone. The PCs have applied tension to the plans of both the good organization as well as the slave traders.

This is one of the ways that I make my world feel 'real'. There are NPCs of all sorts that have motivations and goals and the PCs interact with those NPCs. They help some, harm others, and decide to completely ignore the rest. Actions and consequences become the norm and my players expect to figure out how they can build alliances and identify enemies. Sometimes it is very easy to figure out who they are dealing with, other times, it is not easy.

Is this the sort of advice you are looking for?

 

[Tormenet]

Try downloading the NPC Generator found here:
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~sws99dsc/rpg/npcgen/

It gives no stats, but appearance and, rather handily, politics and motiviation. It is easy to modify to your own setting.

Realistic NPCs boil down to three primary things for me:
1) Me knowing what their goals are.
2) Me not coming out and telling the players what these goals are.
3) The players seeing the results of NPCs working toward these goals even when off stage.

1) Me knowing what their goals are.
If you know what an NPC is trying to achieve, it is easier to discern how they will act now (and for this to make sense-feel real- to the PCs once they figure it out).

My NPCs tend to always act in a way that advances them to their goal (self-interest). This is modified by their politics, motivation, my need for them in the campaign and the results of PC influence (diplomacy and such).

Goals can be simple things from "wants a rich husband for his daughter" or "wants to rule the world."

However, some NPC should have more complex goals: "wants to move his slaves through a route in the mountains, but cannot due to haunted castle along route, will seek to befriend PCs and get them to clear Castle without telling them real reason." Then a session or two later the PC will learn of a new slave route through the mountains, I've yet to see the players fail to go after someone who has used them.

(Total off topic note: We had a whole major side plot develop from a player leaving the game. I had his PC abandon the party, then show up again, as an NPC, working for the other team. His motivation, as originally written by the player, was to regain control of his tribe. I had him act in self-interest, he was not advancing this goal with the party, and ally with the PCs opposition by telling the bad guys about the cave, which was important to the bad guy's goals, to get the bad guy's help in realizing his goal. The players had a blast hunting him down and "liberating' his tribe.)

2) Me not coming out and telling the players what these goals are.
As in real life, my NPCs very rarely come out and say what they want. The fun for the players is trying to figure that out based on NPC behavior and other tidbits of info I'll throw out at random intervals.

3) The players seeing the results of NPCs working toward these goals even when off stage.

By knowing what they want, I can advance NPC plotlines off-stage if the PCs choose to ignore them. That results in bits of news the PCs can hear that makes things feel real. The world is moving forward around them. Just be sure to factor in what impact PC actions have on NPC plotlines, players like to see their actions influencing the world.

News arrives: Demaratos, who wants to secure his city's trade, is invading the land of the Agha Singh. The players knew of Demaratos' goal, but ignored it to explore the Valley of Colored Knots. Now the hear Demaratos is advancing an army and building strongpoints. If they go intervene, things change based on their actions. If not, they will later hear that Demaratos has seized the Agha Singh's most valuable iron mine and so forth. The world moves forward, it feels more real. This should be happening large scale (wars as above) and small scale (cousin Equila got married).

It is not hard, usually a few minutes thought pre-game as to what news can reach the PCs.

As for loose ends, you can run your game like the real world where not everything has a neat and tidy ending. I generally have a main plot and then throw a bunch of others out there and see what the players bite on. This results in alot of NPCs with unresolved plotlines. Equally, it give me something to throw in if the main plotline grows stale or I feel the need to change things to spice up a dry session.

Tormenet

 

[Tormenet]

BardStephenFox,

Apparently, we think alike. Same basic post at same time. Creepy.

Tormenet

 

[BSF]

Remarkably similar in many ways. I just kept my post relatively short since I was also being distracted by kids rampaging through the house. Your commentary on advancing plans 'offstage' is a crucial piece of the equation that I neglected to mention. It is one of the things that intrigues my players because they know if they ignore or miss something, it might come back at them later.

 

[DarrenGMiller]

I do session summaries every week on my web site/message board.

DM

 

[Tormenet]

My group just finished the Whispering Cairn, . This is my first attempt to get behind the screen in many years and I thought it went fairly well. I decided to provide a session summary to my players after each game (I've attached a Word doc with all the summaries I've sent to date, excuse the spelling and grammar).

Neglected to comment on this earlier.

Let your players do the session summaries, you carry enough load running the game. If they invest more time in the game, they take more ownership.

A sample of my player's write-ups (one of them kindly lent his tech skills and created a wiki for us and they've systematized the write-ups):
Sample Session Summary

Additionally, you get to see how they interpret what you're giving them.

 

[lior_shapira]

I've been writing session summaries for the past 2-3 years for the group I DM. I wish the players would take over, but they've grown lazy and dependent upon me writing if i ask them to do it, they start whining "but you write it better..." the kiss-ups

I do find them very important as they help remind everyone what happened, especially if we're forced to take a hiatus

 

[jdrakeh]

Does anyone else do this?

In the past when I've run a camapign, I kept an HTML journal. Now that I've discovered the magic of TiddlyWiki, I think I'll go that route when I next run a campaign.

How do you figure out your NPCs motivations and actions in relation to certain things happening in a campaign.

I start with a villain archetype ripped from a James Bond film (all Bond films feature great adversaries), then I add a mental disorder (if they're already megalomaniacal, I skip this step), then I add a lifestyle quirk (drug addicted, likes to wear velvet, connoisseur fine wines, etc), and finally I jar the whole thing out of frame just a wee bit by adding an unexpected admirable quality (is a patron of the arts, provides meals to the poor, etc).

Sure, it's formulaic - but it works.

 

[Haltherrion]

Session summaries are a great idea. I use them because we game infrequently (every 2-8 weeks or so) and it is very useful for both players and ref to have a reminder of what has happened. Also like them because they serve to capture the game for later review and rumination. Mine the good idea and remember the good times...

On NPCs, many good suggestions already but here are a few of my thoughts. Helps to separate the fully fleshed out and motivated NPCs from the minor ones (just like an author will do). If you have a small number of key NPCs, it is easier to manage them and keep them real. It is good to develop key quirks and traits for them to make them immediately memorable and recognizable to the players.

One suggestion writers get is to make their characters larger than life. It seems to be coarse and heavy handed but what is obvious in the referee/author's head is dim and obscure by the time it is translated into your words and transits the noisy clutter of the gaming table into the distracted consciousness of your players.

You can take "larger than life" too far but much more often, one errs on the side of subtle. If the character has a bloody streak make sure that nearly every sentence of hers mentions blood and mayhem, at least until the players understand this trait without question. Is the NPC cleric a pacifist? Create encounters that demonstrate this beyond a shadow of a doubt and show just how extreme he is (maybe he forgoes revenge even after the kobold tortures his wife and young children?)

On the motivation front, just treat them like your own PC and think what you'd do and why you'd do it.

Good luck!