Building NPCs

I've been reading the 5e DMG of late, and the other night I came across the section on building NPCs, which suggested that a detailed NPC could be written up with 10 sentences.

How I laughed.

Yes, it is true that writing 10 sentences in the format they suggest will give you a fully detailed NPC. But you'll almost certainly get a better, stronger, and more memorable NPC with three bullet-pointed items. And, specifically, the Three Most Important Things about the character.

What's funny is that D&D already knows this, and indeed encodes it pretty firmly in its design: PCs are largely defined by their race, class, and background.

The thing is, if you have only three things to hang a character on, you're much more likely to bring those three things into play, where if you have ten sentences it's likely you'll miss most of them, or you'll end up with something unfocussed.

(It's also important to be careful when picking the Three Things to make them individual facets of the character: a (1) steadfast (2) knight who (3) fights evil doesn't actually give you much more to play with than simply a (1) knight - the other two can easily be implied. But a (1) jovial (2) beggar who (3) dreams of adventure gives you much more to play with.)

It's also worth considering that D&D is, by design, a game of archetypes (elf, dwarf, fighter, wizard...). As such, it lends itself particularly well to this "three things" model - pick a solid archetype (mob boss, bounty hunter, guard, barkeep...) and then elaborate from there. And, as a rule of thumb, you then want two things that reinforce the archetype and one that subverts it - (1) steadfast (2) knight who (3) hates the poor.

And there it is. How to build NPCs in three easy steps.

Out of Reach

D&D has lots of great named villains: Strahd (okay, he's basically Dracula), Lord Soth (um, Darth Vader), the Lord of Blades, Orcus, Azathoth, Lolth, Demogorgon, Tiamat, Vecna...

But there's a huge great problem with virtually all of them: they're all high-level foes. Indeed, many are top-level foes and some are even above top-level foes - even 20th level PCs (30th in 4e) can't really hope to defeat these foes.

What that means, in practice, is that players come to a campaign with the cool promise of going up against Strahd (or whoever) and then months later they finally get to do so. Which is probably long after the campaign has started to drag. And that assumes that they get there at all - most campaigns fizzle long before reaching the top levels. Indeed, in 27 years of gaming I've only ever seen one campaign reach 20th level, and that was right at the end of the last session. (Plus two that reached 15th level, one that reached 11th, and a few that reached 9th.)

Basically, D&D has loads of great villains that are all completely useless.

(They frequently get around this by introducing an 'aspect' or 'avatar' of an evil god earlier, or by having a weakened version of the beastie show up earlier. Generally with the caveat that the PCs thus don't get to 'really' kill the villain if they win; all they do is drive him back to his extra-planar home. I'm really not sure that helps, though - is it really that much of a triumph to defeat baby-Tiamat and send her home to think again after months of playing through "Tyranny of Dragons"?)

Basically, what I'm saying is that D&D needs lots more named villains at lower levels. And it really needs to stop boosting the level of every 'iconic' villain every time they go up an edition - these things are meant to be beaten, not put on a shelf to be looked at wistfully.

Time For a Cull?

At the weekend I spent some time boxing up about half of my RPG collection. The shelves on which it had been stored have finally given up the ghost and are beyond the possibility of repair. This isn't a huge shock - take some cheap shelves from Argos, assemble badly, massively overload, and then leave for years and you're not going to have a good result!

Boxing all of these up really brought home just how much stuff I had accumulated, and really suggested that I should be having a cull of these books. This is tricky - the collection represents an accumulation of books acquired over 28 years (less a few things that were passed down to ARG, a few things that are somewhere in my parents' loft, and a few things that have just been lost). On the other hand, the reality is that not only will I never use "Relics & Rituals" again, but in fact I've never actually made real use of that book, or many others. And I can hardly claim to have some deep, abiding emotional tie to that book, or again to many of the others... though I do to the collection as a whole.

And on the other other hand, there's the issue of waste. For most of these books there really isn't any resale value, and indeed it would be more hassle than it's worth to deal with them on eBay. In many cases, the best destination for the books is recycling. As I say, it's a waste.

(Worst of all, this represents the opening of a floodgate. In addition to the RPG library, we also have a massive library of novels we'll never read again, and most of which weren't very good the first time out, a huge stack of DVDs that should be reduced, and so on. Basically, we just have too much stuff. But that discussion takes us into the territory of the other blog.)

One thing that does seem certain, though, is that some of these books won't be coming back out of the storage boxes even if they are kept. Any issues of Dragon magazine prior to #250 are included in the "Dragon Archive" PDF collection, and likewise any Pathfinder Adventure Path volumes are probably best accessed via PDF rather than having them take up room on shelves (unless and until I actually run them, at which point I would recover the physical copies). In some ways, it's unfortunate that I don't have PDF versions of everything... but, of course, if I did then that would just be yet another form of clutter, rather than a replacement...

The bottom line is that it's all just too horrible, and I'll clearly just have to keep them all!

Firefly: Freedom Flyer

This month's "Lost Episode" saw the Crew helping an old war buddy, Maggie Miller, get her life back together after the Alliance decide to renew old scores.

This was probably the most satisfying of the series so far, partly because there was absolutely no "evil mayor" character getting in the way (and, indeed, the obligatory Alliance commander barely featured), partly because it made more use of the sci-fi part of Firefly's foundations, and partly because I did a slightly better job in editing the adventure for the time.

The Crew this time was four members: Ali (Zoe), Josh (Wash) and Emma (Mal), and the newcomer Finlay (Jayne). This slightly new group composition did give me a moment's pause: I opened the adventure with the inciting incident, then stopped talking in the expectation that they'd take over and... silence. Fortunately, they quickly got going from there, and once things were in motion they stayed suitably active. So, that was a relief.

The other thing that this group did was that they took the acts of the adventure in a rather different order: I'd already edited Act One down to almost nothing to save time, so they tackled Act Two, then Four, and than an entirely new act, and then Act Three. That was, of course, absolutely fine - a good adventure, and especially story-based adventure, should only ever provide a suggested order of events, with the PCs having flexibility on how they actually tackle things. Plus, their final approach was rather novel, I thought, and in keeping with the character of the show.

One thing I'm increasingly unhappy about is the difficulty of the game, or lack thereof. All too often, it really seems that the PCs are being set laughably low Stakes to beat. This has three effects, two of which are distinctly negative: firstly, it means they pass almost every task handily (which is fine). Secondly, though, it means they're racking up huge numbers of Big Damn Hero dice, which makes later tasks in the game easier again, which can sometimes hamper the drama of the episode climax (though it actually worked fine last night, as the dice 'turned' at a key moment).

And thirdly it removes an Interesting Choice from the game - one of the good things about Firefly is that the Stakes are set first, the acting character then rolls, they take their best two dice automatically, and then they can spend Plot Points to add more dice to the total if they wish. Which means, in theory, they get to choose: is it worth spending those points to get the win, or is it better to accept the loss now but keep the points for later? But if the Stakes are too low, those "best two" dice probably beat them already, and so there's no choice to be made.

I think I'm going to have to give that some more thought. In the first instance, I think I'll need to make sure I'm rolling more dice in pools in general - make sure to keep the Complications widely applicable, be sure to add environmental dice generously, and try to ensure the PCs are mostly rolling against NPCs, rather than generic Difficulty Dice. But in the second instance, I think I may need to claim more Plot Points for my own pool at the start of the session, and then use those more generously. (This latter is much more controversial, though, so I'll need to consider that carefully.)

But that's an aside from what was otherwise another very satisfying session of what is quickly becoming a favourite game system.

Despite being the longest episode in the book, this was actually the shortest of the five sessions to date - everything was neatly wrapped up by 10:15. Which was nice. Due to excessive busy-ness, I've decided to take June and July off, so the next session is now scheduled for August, where the story picks up with "Strawberries" - my first homebrewed "Lost Episode".

The Four Civilisations

For the "Life Under the Wheel" setting, I want to focus on a relatively small area of land, something roughly the size of England. That being the case, I want a few nations of men but not too many. Specifically, four.

I want each of these four nations to have a couple of iconic motifs that make them unique, but each should also be a reflection of an underlying theme - which in this case is actually two-fold: firstly that power is an illusion, and secondly that all things decay.

And so...

Uthia, the Realm of Water: The core area of the campaign is Uthia, the realm of water. The northernmost of the four realms, Uthia is positioned on the east coast of the peninsula. To the north and west lie unclaimed lands dominated by orcs, while across the sea to the east lie the lands claimed by the hobgoblin empires.

Uthia is a land without a monarch or any central authority, where power is held by local rulers who can claim and hold land. It is also a land with a long history that was once the centre of a much more powerful nation. However, as water erodes all things, the land was gradually brought down, first into decadence and indolence, and then into outright ruin. Uthia is also the site of a localised apocalypse that has left much of the land ruined, as well as bringing the mysterious Wheel into the world.

Kayland, the Realm of Stone: The dual nation of East and West Kayland lies to the south of Uthia, and has always dwelt in the resentful shadow of that more ancient nation. Kayland is the most prosperous of the four realms, but also the most rigid, with sprawling noble families that control almost all aspects of life. However, Kayland has split into two halves, neither of which has the strength to expand alone, and neither of which is content to become subsumed within the other.

Kayland is also threatened on all sides - from the east by hobgoblin raiders, from the west by the incursions from Oestia, and from the north by orcish forces. It is also threatened from within, as the nation has reached the height of its powers and is already slipping into decadence.

Sosocar, the Realm of Air: Sosocar, the Shining Jewel, is a city state nestled in the lands controlled by Kayland. Positioned between the two halves of that dual nation, it is a hotbed of intrigue for the nobles of that land. Sosocar is also incredibly rich, but also incredibly decadent.

Sosocar is ruled by an absolute monarch called The Veiled Queen, who lives in a palace that none in the city are permitted to enter. Daily edicts emerge from the palace and are enforced sporadically amongst a populace who care little for the absurdity and contradictions imposed by their ruler. Instead, they spend their days engaged in pointless philosophy, drug use, and sexual experimentation.

Given its great wealth and seeming weakness, it seems odd that Sosocar remains both independent and indeed thriving. However, it is widely held that The Veiled Queen has significant influence in the courts of both East and West Kayland, and as such could end the conflict between those nations at a stroke. As such, by balancing the two forces she is able to ensure the survival and independence of her realm. Or, at least, so it is said...

Oestia, the Realm of Fire: The youngest of the four nations, but also the only one currently expanding, Oestia lies to the south-west of Uthia and to the west of West Kayland. It is a wild and untamed realm, but one populated with a hardworking and happy people filled with great notions of manifest destiny.

Oestia was until recently a region with no central authority governed by petty nobles who each fashioned himself a king. However, following a recent Great Moot, the land has become united under a council of nobles who hold themselves equals. Under this council, they now seek to expand and civilise their lands, uniting all the lands south of The Wheel into a single great kingdom. Of course, once that is done the council of lords will determine amongst themselves which shall be first amongst equals, and so Greater Oestia will break asunder immediately after being formed.

About the Nations

Each of the four nations represents an age of man: Oestia is dynamic and foolish youth; Kayland is man at the height of his powers but defeated by his own need for control; Sosocar is the dissolute waste of a life misspent; and Uthia is man once he has slipped beyond his prime and lost everything.

Equally, each of the nations is ruled in a different manner: local tyrants backed with the threat of force in Uthia; in Kayland great noble houses and laws that constantly undermine one another; utter neglect and madness in Sosocar; and dynamic leadership but with inherent instability in Oestia.

Hopefully, this should give enough to distinguish the four nations and allow the PCs plenty of scope for investigation!

The Role of Monsters

D&D has a lot of monstrous humanoid races. Indeed, I'd go so far as to say D&D has too many monstrous humanoid races - do we really need Orcs and Goblins and Hobgoblins and Bugbears and Lizardfolk and Gnolls and Kobolds and...? Especially when each of these takes up a page or more of the Monster Manual that could instead be given to other, more distinct, creatures?

But that's an academic debate now. D&D has all these monstrous humanoids, so a better question is: what shall we do with them all?

I'm a big fan of Paizo's decision to recast a lot of the classic humanoids, giving each of them a new identity. (Incidentally, Eberron does much the same thing - it's not exactly a unique idea.) However, I'm also inclined not to simply reuse Paizo's redefinitions. In at least some cases, I want to have my own take.

So...

Kobolds: Kobolds are diminutive cavern dwellers. They thrive in large cavern complexes near the surface of the world, and clash extensively with dwarves. Kobolds are small, cunning, and cowardly.

Goblins: Goblins come into being in dark places where the Shadowfell comes close to the Prime Material Plane and where strong emotions are gathered. Sages are divided as to whether such a convergence gives rise to these creatures, or if it merely allows corrupted fey spirits to break into the world. Either way, goblins are monstrous little creatures that want to eat you. They are cruel, and sadistic, and utterly insane.

Orcs: Orcs represent the rejection of civilisation. They live in large semi-nomadic tribes that plague the borders of the civilised world. Orcs war on the nations of man, and also on each other.

Hobgoblins: Conversely, hobgoblins represent civilisation gone wrong. They have dark and complex nations built on cruel laws and slavery. Hobgoblin mercenaries are amongst the best in the world, but they are never entirely trustworthy.

Bugbears: Bugbears are solitary, lurking terrors. They're the monster that lives in the wardrobe or under the bed, the unknown threat that comes seemingly from nowhere and ends you. Bugbears may well be nothing more than particularly large, particularly dangerous goblins. (And yes, this is essentially the same as Paizo's interpretation.)

Lizardfolk: Lizardfolk are the unknown and the alien. Their behaviours and their morality is utterly inhuman and therefore unpredictable. And yet lizardfolk aren't evil; they're just different.

Gnolls: Gnolls are the servants of decay and entropy. They dwell in the shadows of civilisation and gnaw on it as it collapses. In that way, they're much like the Skaven, only hyenas rather than rats.

And that's it, or the short version at least.

The Future of War

Having praised Battlestar in my previous post, I'm now going to tear it down in this one. And Firefly, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Terminator... and indeed pretty much any setting that posits humans fighting in wars in the distant future.

The big problem, as we're already finding, is that the weakest part of an aircraft is the pilot. That squishy human part imposes a painful limit on the sorts of maneuvers that the vehicle can perform - change direction too fast and the G-forces will cause your pilot to black out.

Now, too be fair, a lot of settings posit inertial dampeners, or some other technobabble explanation to get around this limitation. But the big problem with that solution is that it's a hard and expensive way to avoid using a far easier solution: drones. And, later, AI-piloted craft. Indeed, the AI solution is particularly good because then it's a matter of software - you can have 50 copies of your 'pilot' all operating independently of one another for more or less the same cost as 1. Better to get rid of Luke, Wedge, et al, and just have Artoo pilot all the X-Wings.

Now, in fairness, Battlestar Galactica does explain why this is not done. And it also tackles a second problem associated with this situation, in that the fleet does indeed face the problem of running short of pilots to throw into battle.

But what Battlestar doesn't get around, and where Terminator also runs into problems, is that if the goal of the machines is to wipe out humanity, then they keep picking the wrong target. Rather than attacking the human populations, the point of weakness is our food source. They're large, they're immobile, and they take significant time to produce a crop. So a few well-placed strafing runs (or a few bombs planted by infiltrators on Galactica), and we're all starving to death.

And, alas, this means that the Rebel Alliance and Firefly's Independents just never had a chance. Because in the time it takes them to churn out a squadron of X-Wings, the Empire has produced hundreds of shiny TIE-AI craft that just swarm over their enemies. Only, actually, it doesn't even get that far, because actually the Clone Wars had the wrong result - it should be the heavily industrial Confederacy of Independent Systems that should have won with their AI-based robot armies, rather than the Republic and their slowly-grown clone armies. Yeah, the Kaminoans can produce a few million units for you in a decade... but in that time the CIS have not only built billions of droids, they've also implemented Moore's Law to improve the processing capabilities of those droids by a factor of 64 or more!

(Of course, that's part of the conceit - both Firefly and Star Wars, or at least the original trilogy, have roots in the American Civil War, where it does indeed appear that the South never actually had a chance, largely due to lacking the industrial base required to stay in the fight.)

All of which does leave me bubbling away with a good few ideas... After all, we don't actually see any evidence that Firefly's Alliance warships weren't largely automated, that much of their armed forces weren't actually based on AI or drone technology, and that therefore there were some vulnerabilities. And, indeed there are people who would know that secret, and thus represent a weakness in the Alliance's defences...