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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BSF" data-source="post: 1975300" data-attributes="member: 13098">This is good general advice, but it isn't always true.  *shakes head in disbelief*  Let me share with you a little experience I had.  Last campaign, I wanted the main PCs to have more downtime.  I also wanted to show off different aspects of the game world and have a fallback position if a player couldn't make a crucial session.  Since one of the early PCs had left the group in-character (Player brought in a new PC when this happened), I revisited that PC.  This PC had volunteered to serve the local lord, thus taking her out of the adventuring group.  I decided the local lord would set her up special-forces style.  So, what I did was talked with the player, then setup a thread on the messageboard I was running at the time.  Basically, it was a thread asking for volunteers for a special task force.  They would have to interview with the established PC.  OOC - I told the players to make a PC that would pass muster, create a new account, login as that new PC and post in the interview thread.  I made it clear that I didn't need to accept PCs, the established PC had to accept them onto her team.  The player posted the general questions the PC would ask and much fun was had with in-character interviews.  Actually, it was great!  One Player tried to get a questionable character in and was rejected.  They did some great scene painting.  The group ended up with 10 total memebers out of a 7 member group.  Eh?  What?  The math doesn't work out.  Oh yeah, I threw a couple of ringers into the group to try to keep it lively.  (I hate the PC halo affect where you accept any other PC just because the guy sitting at the table won't have anything to do if you reject him.)  I was surprised when all my NPCs were accepted.  I was even more surprised when the players wanted me to keep them in the game.  We had a good time with it and those NPCs turned out to be some of the groups favorite NPCs.  But it was a little bit of work to pull it off.  First of all, once it became clear that they wanted me to keep the PCs in the game, I statted them out and always kept them 1 level below the party average.  They were good at what they did.  Good enough not to be a liability, but not so good as to outshine everyone else.  Two of the NPCs were easy to run being a rogue and a fighter/rogue.  The third was a cleric.  Fortunately, the party took care of the cleric in the first adventure the group went on.  He got caught KO'd in a friendly flamestrike.  Oops!  He didn't make his save.  I didn't even roll.  He just didn't make a save.For the remaining two DMNPCs, I was able to run both of those NPCs quicker than many of the opponents.  They weren't stupid, but the range of options kept it easy.  I was also never afraid to hand them off if necessary.  If it was going to be a large, complicated combat, I would offload those two NPCs to any player that wanted to run them.  They all knew what the personalities were like and I would summarize quickly as well.  Even when the NPC was in somebody elses hands, they were pretty much true to character.  (OK, that is a testament to my players as well.)  It worked out well.  Better than I ever expected.   But it was a bit of work and I specifically did everything I could to make the DMNPCs useful resources.  I didn't need them to "keep interested in the game".  It was an experiment that went off in a direction I didn't expect.</blockquote>

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