Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1825871" data-attributes="member: 812">BSF is, as always, completely correct.Your NPCs are PEOPLE, right? So they have goals, they have needs, they make mistakes, they try their hardest, all that.Really, a great campaign is about great NPCs who cause trouble.I remember pitching a series idea to a producer, and he came back to us, saying, "You don't have a Relic".Now that's not gonna mean much to people who aren't 30+-year-old Canadians, but there used to be a Canuckistani TV show called The Beachcombers about life in a small coastal BC town. One character was named Relic, and practically every episode was about Relic coming up with some scheme to get rich quick or just cause our heroes pain, and our heroes' efforts to foil him.This producer had been one of the original creators of the show, and what he meant by saying "You don't have a Relic," was that we didn't have a character who could reliably generate stories -- who would ALWAYS be up to SOMETHING and thus always provide a problem for the heroes to solve.Your campaigns should have lots of Relics -- NPCs who are always up to stuff, sending out minions, feuding, scheming, lying, crusading, whatever. But doing things and having an effect on the world around the players. Some of those NPCs will doubtless be doing things that affect the PCs directly, and they'll be motivated to get involved in those schemes. And if they don't be sure to have at least a couple of NPCs whose schemes involve the PCs with or without their motivation!</blockquote>

Verification