How to handle mass NPCs traveling/following the PCs?

[fba827]

Those in my group are welcome to read/post just remember I'm accounting for a possibility, not something that will necessarily come to pass.


Here is my issue in a nutshell:

The PCs have the potential to take a bunch of refugees (let's say 30-50 NPCs for the sake of discussion) on a dangerous and lengthy cross country journey to last for a long campaign arc.

The obsessive-compulsive part of my wants to detail the NPCs (at least to the point of name and one defining characteristic). But the realist in me knows that would be too much to keep track of for a whole campaign arc. I also think such a thing would turn focus away from the PCs and instead focus too much on management of the NPCs (which I want to avoid).

But, I do, however, still want the presence of the NPCs to matter for something (and not just be a "mass of people that blindly and silently follow them session after session, and appear/disappear as often as a wizard's familiar does").

So I was considering that I would track two things 1) The morale of the group of NPCs and 2) The health of the group of NPCs.

For tracking morale, I was thinking either:
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a) Set up some sort of continuum, similar to the disease track, where the PCs can use diplomacy/intimidate once per day to move up or down the track (the one check accounts for an overall day's worth of efforts). And failures would result in things like slower speed (the NPCs are too busy squabbling or being annoyed to move fast, etc), and success might mean moving faster or finding more food along the way because they are more participative in the process, etc.

or, b) set up a scale similar to the concordance of artifacts, where I have a starting value and various things/events/triggers that raise or lower concordance. And for different levels there would be different effects (such as slower speed or faster speed or maybe better perception to avoid being surprised, etc).

These ideas are both similar but offer subtle differences in how they play out (option a is a bit more player participative since they'd get to use their skill checks on a daily basis; option b is a bit more reactive to events that happen and might mean a little less bookkeeping)
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For tracking health, I was thinking:
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taking some number, treating it as the average endurance check modifier and then making a check based on the type of environment that they traveled through for that day. Any failure divided by 5(?) might represent the number who ended up ding that day from the journey/environment/sickness/poisoned food/etc. (so even a failure might not result in deaths if the failure is less than 5 due to rounding down).
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Anyway, these are all just loose ideas in my head. I'm not trying to worry about details of the mechanics just yet. Just trying to get things I should take in to account/etc.

So I turn to the masses here.

1) How have any of you handled a large number of NPCs traveling with the PCs for a campaign arc?

2) Should I really just give in to my weakness and name each of the NPCs (but perhaps divide them amongst the players so that I don't have to control them?)

3) Something else I should take in to account (aside from morale and health) that I am not even considering here?

4) should I really just avoid this situation like the plague and not let it go in this direction (which I could do too without it being 'mean' though one of the players has hinted that he wants to do this so I'm entertaining the idea)?

5) (for those of you that read it) any comments on the potential framework of the mechanics that i put in spoiler-blocks above?


Thanks in advance.

 

[Quickleaf]

I think you hit on the best solution for your situation - using the artifact concordance rules as a guideline.

1) How have any of you handled a large number of NPCs traveling with the PCs for a campaign arc?

It seems I have a habit of campaigns with excessive numbers of NPCs (not all of equal importance/screen-time mind you). In our current campaign, the PCs are gathering allies to oppose an evil prince. Some may travel with PCs, but most are operating behind the scenes. Even in combat. For example, PCs got elven allies who lead them to enemy camp, took out enemy scouts (all in the trees off screen, no rolls), and when it came to a mexican standoff with a bad guy threatening to kill hostage, the elves helped funnel him into a pit trap. In that situation I named the elven druid leader & his son...but I guarantee none of the players will remember their names after a session.

I wouldn't name each refugee. Just the ones you need for a given adventure. For example, what if a bad guy is hidden among the refugees? Or someone is trying to hide their child's illness afraid they'll be kicked out of camp?

Unless you really intend to kill off refugees, I wouldn't bother keeping track of health. You decide as a DM what suits your story.

I think it's a fantastic direction for a campaign to go in! Don't fight it.

As for framework, do you want the refugees to be more of an asset or liability (or both)? That determines what happens at each "concordance level". Jot down some things that PCs can do to increase/decrease it, but keep in mind this is a group of people who are together because of necessity no necessarily because of unity.

 

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You only need to detail a few of them. If they're going to be a huddled mass of misery - describe maybe two in detail and another five in passing. Later on you can flesh out any that need it. So maybe the political and religious leaders of the refugees, and then a few words on some wino, or a dude with a walking stick, or a particularly wretched family. There's no point fleshing out 50 NPCs that will never see the light of day.

Maybe, just maybe have a few notes about the intentions/motivations for percentages of the refugees. Say 25% want to survive to get to x, 50% will settle anywhere, 25% are just going with the flow.

 

[DarkMasterBR]

Have you ever watched Lost? Imagine if they gave each of the 48 initial survivors the same screen time. Instead, they chose to focus in only a dozen or so, and the rest is just background.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

The first and most important question here is "What are the consequences of all/some/none of the NPCs completing the journey?" So far all you've given are benefits or penalties from having the NPCs following along. If the result of getting all the refugees to the new place is "yay, we did it," I wouldn't even bother tracking live and dead. If you're going to hand out XP or gold, scale treasure bundles or do some sort of worldbuilding/storybuilding based on living refugees at the end of the journey, then track population to your heart's content. Otherwise, what does it matter? If you're really dead set on doing it (heh heh), I would decide what actions or rolls constitute NPC mortality and roll a d6 or maybe d8 each time that happens to determine the body count rather than try complicated math (and I love complicated math). NPC death should, of course, affect morale.

On the other hand, I think morale is a much more useful and interesting thing to track and I would use the disease-track system because it gives the PCs more agency (thank you Mouseferatu). You can always rule that certain events trigger specific movements along the track, but I think that if you base the movements on those events and the players take the idea in a totally different direction than you expected (as players are wont to do), it's more easily circumvented.