Are you able to say a bit more about the mix here?
Are you able to say a bit more about the mix here?
Yes....I had started my previous post with the intention of elaborating, but then had something come up and wasn’t able to get my thoughts down.
This will perhaps vary from game to game and what the goal of any given game may be, but generally speaking I like to have the players create their PCs with goals and drives in mind that will likely bring them into conflict with some NPC faction or other. This can be loose or very specific, whatever each player prefers.
I take that pool of material and then I kind of build on it a bit. Maybe expand an organization a bit, maybe create a specific NPC as a representative of a faction. Take a PC goal and imagine what type of people might be obstacles to that goal. I look at PC relationships with friendly NPCs and I see if any conflict seems inherent there.
Once I’m at this point, I’ll usually have my own ideas inspired by the character creation process, so I’ll sprinkle them in as well.
What we wind up with is a starting scenario with a variety of NPC antagonists that can range from minor annoyance to bitter enemy. Usually more than enough to get us started.
Then once we’re going, I kind of take a similar approach; I pay attention to what the players focus on, the NPCs that they love to hate, the goals they pick for their characters. I also will ask them questions at times...about their character’s past and who they know and so on.
That’s my general approach, but as I said, I adapt it a bit depending on the game and what we’re looking for.
In my recent Galaxies in Peril campaign (it’s a Forged in the Dark super heroes game), I created the central villain and his organization, who serve as the impetus of the starting situation and premise of the game. The setting is an island nation, an archipelago, that is a haven for scum and villainy in a very classic Marvel or DC style universe. The premise is that this outsider shows up and somehow encloses the entire nation in a dome of pure darkness, cutting them off from the outside world (very tropey, I know....no he’s not Mr Byrnes).
I asked the players to create some factions that may be present in such a place. The players each contributed a few, some just ideas or concepts, some which included members and resources and goals and so on.
Then when we made our PCs, each player needed to select some kind of rival or enemy for their PC; this is standard FitD process and the playbooks even have a list, but we chose our own.
One PC was a former mercenary trying to go straight, and he chose a bloodthirsty merc as his rival, with the idea that this NOC is what made him want to go straight.
Our magician PC picked the Lord of Dreams as his rival, a pure lift of Morpheus from DC’s Sandman. Rival is not the best term, but they had an odd relationship. It was more that Morpheus was mercurial and far removed from human understanding that made the relationship volatile.
The third PC was an alien AI constructed of a crystalline mineral. His enemy was an intergalactic bounty hunter who had tracked him to Earth and the island.
Then the players had to select some factions that weren’t happy with them (again, standard FitD process based on crew upgrades).
By the end of session zero we had something like 30 factions, probably rough sketches of at least that many NPCs, and a handful of more detailed NPCs. Along with the main villain and his whole organization. Plenty to get us going. We just wrapped our first “season”. We’re taking a break to play something else, but the plan is to go back to this game pretty soon.