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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6085964" data-attributes="member: 7006">I'd suggest the answer is fairly straightforward:  the NPC is none of those things at this moment in time.As far as the PCs are concerned and their point of view... the NPC is only whatever they experience him to be.  All of the backstory/history/morality you've designed for this NPC does not exist until the point where their interactions actually reveal any of it naturally.So you have to ask yourself... what possible reason is there for this NPC to download an hours worth of information to the PCs?  If there is none (because the PCs just don't ask/care about it)... then they get just as much as they DO ask/care about.  If that means they miss out on 55 minutes of additional detail?  So be it.  And if that 55 minutes would have helped them to determine whether this NPC was good or evil?  Oh well!If you have this NPC running his own machinations in the background of the campaign and the PCs don't pick up on or care to pursue any of the seeds you might put out that illustrate what he is doing... then so be it.It's for this reason that many DMs write and blog about not getting "too attached" to your NPCs or what they are doing.  Chris Perkins on the D&D website has articles in his Dungeon Master Experience column talks about this quite a bit.  Because you can't FORCE players to care about your NPCs.  And downloading an hour's worth of information to them is certainly doing that.  And in fact... more often than not the players will actively REBEL against your ham-handed attempts to make them care about this specific NPC, because most players don't like the idea of being forced to care in one direction over another.If you make this NPC is interesting enough and compelling enough in just 5 minutes worth of interactions with the PCs... then you don't need to worry about the other 55 minutes worth of detail.  Because your players will WANT to follow up on it.  And then you can dole out the information slowly over time.  But if you try and MAKE them care by giving an inordinate amount of detail right off the top... you're going to end up with the exact opposite result than you want.</blockquote>

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