Great Moments in DM NPC play

[Rel]

I've had a few performances that I'm proud of but one of the best was just a couple sessions ago. The party accidentally wound up in Hell and was being pursued by a large pack of devils that they knew they couldn't defeat. They're trying to find a hiding place to hole up while they figure out how to get out of Hell when they encounter an invisible Erinyes named Jalena. Jalena offers to hide them from the other devils if one of the party members will just give her a simple kiss.

They KNOW this is a bad idea. They KNOW that it is probably going to have terrible reprocussions. They're right on the verge of deciding to make an almost certainly suicidal last stand against the horde of devils. Then the party Rogue asks for the Jalena to show herself. She appears and I describe her as "the unholy union of Lucy Liu and Monica Bellucci". The Rogue says, "I'll kiss her."

If that's where the story ended, I wouldn't be telling it.

He manages to make his saving throw against her Charm Person effect but she keeps up her end of the bargain and invites them all into her lair to hide from the devil horde. They discover that it mostly consists of a single large room filled with bed. Over the course of the next half hour or so I engaged in a very sexy conversation with the player of the Rogue as I roleplayed Jalena trying to seduce him with promises of lots of information and blistering skill in the sack.

Let me make it clear to those of you who have never met me that I am male and I don't look one damn thing like Lucy Liu or Monica Bellucci. And the player in question is also male and VERY heterosexual. But on the basis of good roleplaying alone, I talked the player into "becoming more intimate with her", whereupon he fails his Will save the second time around and finds himself signing a rather unfavorable contract. And the player wasn't the least bit upset about it. He knew what he was, um, "getting into" and basically said, "The way you described her and portrayed her, I just couldn't pass it up." Instead of being upset, he bragged that the "useless" Endurance feat he had to pick up to qualify for the Royal Explorer prestige class had finally paid off.

I gave myself a little pat on the back for that one.

 

[SpringPlum]

Well, this story isn't about any of my NPCs but will instead give props to my DM. In one of his epic campaigns, about 50 sessions or so, from the beginning our party had a sort of wise advisor. He was from an elf-like race, very long-lived. His name was Torwin and he had been part of one of PCs grandfather's party from a previous campaign. A little over halfway through the campaign, he sacrificed himself to save the rest of us and died a pretty long and excruciating death. Torwin had been a father figure to most of the party. By the end of the game, everyone was in tears--guys and girls. Especially since a couple of the players knew him through 2 campaigns. Our DM was pretty proud of himself (and he had a right to be) that he could create such a powerful moment.

 

[Whitey]

Long live the three dimensional NPC!

When I DM, in whatever game, I consider it my first responsibility to come up with engaging NPCs. I take this pretty seriously. The PCs do things, the NPCs do things, and this interaction impels the whole adventure.
There's a lot of roles to fill in a world - the party gets the heroic ones (or most of them) and then there's everyone from swineherds to sovereigns to succubi to cover. But let me pick one example, which would be better than exposition.

Brenner the paladin. His parents are very minor nobles, but they're in good with the local clergy, and they have some auguries performed on the lad. The prophecy about him isn't so great.
When he dies, he gets consigned to the Abyss. Whoever kills him goes as well.

To avert this, he's given a scrupulously scrupulous upbringing, and trained in paladinery. Things are going pretty good for him, and when he's grown up to adventuring age he gets told about this prophecy. Cautious fellow he is, he leads an exemplary life, and most hostiles that try and kill him end up in the Abyss anyway courtesy of his sword. Word of this prophecy and his prowess gets around, and most things evil learn to leave him be. He retires after a fine adventuring career and devotes the rest of his days to teaching young folks about the virtue of virtue.

Then he dies. But keeps moving around. Undead.

This is a bit alarming for him. He tries to resume his life in unlife, remaining righteous, but his spirit begins to decay with his remains. His prophecy proves inevitable. Soon he's cursing such a fate and the gods that would let it befall him, further condemned with each passing day - in time he vitiates all his good deeds and earns the Abyss, as the prophecy foretold. By the time the party meets him, he's bones in armor, past the point of fighting just anything in front of him to end such an existance. He's moping in dungeon ruins, between fits of blasphemy and pleas for redemption, up agains the irrevocability of fate.

The up shot of this long-ass post? One hostile, in one encounter, and they talked with him the whole session. No casting, no charts, no nothin'. They talked about fate and faith and all those crunchy hero issues. I was one happy Whitey for it. An NPC that's not just a cog in the works, but one that brought the party into something bigger than the game.

 

[MerakSpielman]

This story doesn't exactly fit this thread, but it's close enough that I thought I'd toss it into the mix.

Many of my players are smart. Damn smart. When I DM, I often feel that they're outsmarting me at every turn, figuring out conspiracies and extended plotlines from the scantiest of clues, etc... This doesn't quite work, since their characters are probably not as smart as they are, and the NPC organizations of the world should be able to out-think them more often than they do. Here is one instance where such an organization out-thought the PCs (or, more accurately, I out-thought the players).

The situation: The party has been adventuring on an island and collected a great number of magical items they want to sell. They are sailing in an ex-pirate ship they captured while at sea with a band of very loyal sailors. They return to the main port of their home kingdom - a wretched hive of scum and villany more or less ruled by the Thieves Guild. They have had run-ins with the guild before, and are not on good terms with them. The party figures - quite accurately - that the guild will attempt to steal the magic items before they are sold.

The party's plan: Auction off the items on their ship. One of the items is a Sword of Truth (no, not like in the novels. This sword, when drawn and leveled at somebody within 5', will quiver if they tell a lie) and they plan to ask each person boarding the ship "are you either a member of the Thieves Guild or part of a plan to steal our items?" I forget the exact phrasing, but needless to say, nobody who wasn't legitamatly trying to bid on the items was going to make it onto that ship. The party plans to ambush the thieves before they can be themselves ambushed. They have their wizard in the loft, doing Detect Magic to spot illusions or misdirections. It was all rather neat. The ship's crew will be standing around holding weapons and looking like tough goons.

What happened: I literally had five minutes to prepare this encounter. I ran into the other room where there was a computer loaded with an NPC generator. I randomly generated 12 rogues of 5th-6th level who were going to be the task force assigned to get the magic items. I looked at their (more or less random) skills and abilities and hatched a plot while the players were in the other room hatching theirs.

The encounter: Various wealthy merchants and nobles of the city have arrived at the ship - by boat - in the middle of the harbor - to take part in the auction. One of them has a couple guards who register as evil when the cleric specifically checks them. Figuring they're part of the plot, the whole party focuses on them. They were indeed part of the plot - a distraction. The real rogues have slipped aboard the ship while the characters were in town advertising the auction and slaughtered the ships crew. One of the rogues had a really high disguise modifier and disguised his team to look like the crew. Mundane disguises - no magic to detect. The party never questioned, detected, or payed any attention to their crew whatsoever, which is why they were so shocked when their fiercely loyal crew simultaniously sneak attacked every member of the party half-way through the auction. The poor wizard was in the crows nest with 2 backstabbing rogues and only survived 'cause she had featherfall memorized and jumped out.

I rolled up the whole surprise round while the auction was going on, damage, ACs, etc..., and just declared the results suddenly, out of the blue, "Ok, the +1 longsword sells for 2145gp. Canter, you have been sneak attacked for 12 damage. Serena, you have been sneak attacked for 23 points of damage...." finished off with, "You all turn in shock to see the members of your crew with bloody weapons." At this point, the player who is arguably one of the smartest and who had been largely in charge of the party's plan actually pounded his fist on the table, "DAMMIT! It's the crew! Our own crew! The BASTARDS!" He was so angry at being out-thought in what was essentially an equal and fair battle of wits.

The party went on to wipe the floor with the rogues, but still treated the whole encounter as though they had failed miserably. It was a shining moment, and still lives on in infamy at our table.

 

[Harlock]

Okay, these have been fun, and I'll ad my own crowning achievement in NPC play.

The players were newcomers to D&D and roleplaying (my wife and her sister both wanted to learn how to play, so I developed a campaign for them back when 2nd edition AD&D was out), so I created an NPC "guide". Someone who would fill the roll of tank, since it was needed and someone who could be used by me to give advice to the novice players by in character means. He was a dwarven fighter named Auglin Stonehammer.

Through the course of weekly sessions I developed a nice gruff, grumpy but tender-hearted dwarf for them. He got to know the party and let his guard down for them, exposing his soft underbelly of kindness and morale boosting by harumphing at just the right times to get a laugh. The PCs genuinely cared about Augling and interacted with him in character almost all of the time.

Then, one day as they left their hometown and base of operations to perform ascort duty for a local trader with whom they'd had kind dealings before, Auglin saw a group of Orcs on a hill in a high savannah grassy area. The orcs spotted the caravan as well and began shouting threats and taunts in dwarven and Orcish. Overcome by his hatred of his mortal enemies the orcs, Auglin charges the four orcs. The characters were about fifth level at this point, and I felt it time to test their mettle and also felt, if need be, they could spread their wings and fly on their own.

Auglin's charge was ill advised, for hunkered down at the base of the hill, hidden by the high grass, were two Ogres. Auglin was slaughtered in two rounds, before the PCs could arrive to support him. The look of shock on my wife and sister-in-law's faces was astounding. They got mad at me. Really mad.

At that point, I knew that they had invested a great deal of interest and emotion for the grumpy old dwarf, and they relentlessly attacked Auglin's killers, overpowering them with their strongest attacks and blind rage. It was a thing of beauty to see two novice players come into their own.

Soon after the smoke had cleared and the evil humanoids were in tatters they held a funeral for dear old Auglin. They held up the caravan for the rest of the day but would not even hear of not giving their compatriate an appropriate funeral for the sake of saving time and avoiding the creatures of the night.

Never again have I achieved that level of devotion to an NPC from my players, but being inspired by the stories in this thread, I think I just might get back on track.

 

[Orius]

My best NPC ever was the gnome gem dealer, Glin Scheppen.

One of the PCs wanted to sell some gems the group found in the latest dungeon. Instead of going to the moneychanger, who was only a block away from the inn, he decided to head into the gnome quarter. He got lost in there, and it took him an hour to find the building in an area of the city that was only about 4 blocks square.

Glin was very absent minded. He wanted to know if the PC had brought a gem for him to name. He kept rambling on, letting the conversation constantly get sidetracked onto tangents. He didn't know the right date, in fact, he was about 12 years off. He appraised the gem twice, getting a different value each time. The PC took the second value, becuase it was higher than the first value Glin gave him. He was the most fun NPC I ever played.

 

[Argent Silvermage]

Wizardru has some really vivid NPCs. From years playing with him and the Meepites we have dozens of NPCs that have interacted with our various characters and many of them are remembered even today.

From thew Android superhero in a Gurps game that would state the obvious in a round about way. "Yes. we are having a picnic. Witness the Hibatchi."
to Meepo... Ah Meepo.

If you want to know how an NPC can really impact a game just read the instalment of Wizardru's story hour Probably updated Monday 1/12/04 to see just how an NPC can effect a game. Especialy one Kayleigh Drake.