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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
What proportion of the population are adventurers?
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7612639" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>And that is a good approach. When a system provides NPC statblocks like that, what it's really doing is filling in demographic details - this is what average persons with a given job look like. The only thing really missing from having a complete demographic system is an idea of roughly how common a particular type of NPC is - for example, how many NPCs with the Merchant statblock are in a typical town of 500 people. Quite often, rather than giving lists, a system effectively provides the answer to that through examples of play. That is, the system will provide some sort of supplement (often an adventure supplement or module) with a small sample town and a collection of NPCs that inhabit it. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Demographics let you get away not having NPC stat blocks, or having only bare minimums of stat blocks. For example, you can just say, "There is a blacksmith named Bob Black..." and focus on the sort of things that are important to play, if anything, about Bob without having to spend the time to develop a statblock for him. Interactions with Bob Black, can then be governed by pulling in a standard statblock, perhaps making some minimal adjustment (Bob you decide has 16 STR, since smiths are stronger than average merchants and Bob is burly), whether Bob is now trying to brain the PC's with a hammer, or the PC's are haggling with Bob over the price of shoeing a horse, you can assign attack ratings and DC to player charisma checks as they come up, rather than trying to figure this out in the middle of the game or wasting time developing stat blocks you don't need.</p><p></p><p>If the system provides you these standard stat blocks and you are happy with them, then great. Otherwise, you develop your own over time. Get in a barroom brawl with a sailor? Pull in the standard sailor stat block you used five sessions ago when the PCs were fighting pirates. </p><p></p><p>1e AD&D was really good about this, so that for example you could reasonably list a sandbox encounter of "Orc Tribe: 46 warriors", and have enough detail to improvise the encounter, or heck roll a random orc warband on an encounter table and be up and running with a full encounter in moments.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7612639, member: 4937"] And that is a good approach. When a system provides NPC statblocks like that, what it's really doing is filling in demographic details - this is what average persons with a given job look like. The only thing really missing from having a complete demographic system is an idea of roughly how common a particular type of NPC is - for example, how many NPCs with the Merchant statblock are in a typical town of 500 people. Quite often, rather than giving lists, a system effectively provides the answer to that through examples of play. That is, the system will provide some sort of supplement (often an adventure supplement or module) with a small sample town and a collection of NPCs that inhabit it. Demographics let you get away not having NPC stat blocks, or having only bare minimums of stat blocks. For example, you can just say, "There is a blacksmith named Bob Black..." and focus on the sort of things that are important to play, if anything, about Bob without having to spend the time to develop a statblock for him. Interactions with Bob Black, can then be governed by pulling in a standard statblock, perhaps making some minimal adjustment (Bob you decide has 16 STR, since smiths are stronger than average merchants and Bob is burly), whether Bob is now trying to brain the PC's with a hammer, or the PC's are haggling with Bob over the price of shoeing a horse, you can assign attack ratings and DC to player charisma checks as they come up, rather than trying to figure this out in the middle of the game or wasting time developing stat blocks you don't need. If the system provides you these standard stat blocks and you are happy with them, then great. Otherwise, you develop your own over time. Get in a barroom brawl with a sailor? Pull in the standard sailor stat block you used five sessions ago when the PCs were fighting pirates. 1e AD&D was really good about this, so that for example you could reasonably list a sandbox encounter of "Orc Tribe: 46 warriors", and have enough detail to improvise the encounter, or heck roll a random orc warband on an encounter table and be up and running with a full encounter in moments. [/QUOTE]
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