My job, as a GM, isn't to preserve the life of the bad guy. It's to provide the players a fun gaming experience.
Take one of the classic plot elements: the party has run down a den of Evil Henchmen, destroying the operation and killing or otherwise neutralizing all of said henchmen. Huzzah, they take the clues and info they've gotten from the scene and have dashed off.
Flip that around: you're a PC. You've got some manner of base: either it's your home base, or it's some operation you have going, or it's the manor you were given when the Queen knighted you, or it's the business you bought with the proceeds from two adventures ago, hoping that it'd make some cash for you. And you drop in to check on it, and the place has been tossed and trashed. The staff you hired are all dead or vanished. The guards you hired are decaying piles of gore.
So what do you do? Shrug, murmur "That's life," and go on your merry way?
That's exactly what most PCs expect the Big Bad to do, in any event.
Hell with that. If I'm a PC, and my satellite operation was trashed and everyone killed, and I have no idea who did it, that's going to change real frigging fast. I'm going to hire a wizard to do divination magic/check security footage. I'm going to spread some coin around the neighborhood to see if anyone saw or heard anything. I'm going to do my level best to find out if there were any survivors, and I'm going to be very interested in speaking to any. I'm going to increase security on anything else I have going to the limit of my capability. I'm going to get some investigators on the pawnshops (or going through Craigslist ...) to see who might be selling my stolen valuables.
And I'm going to set the best ambush I can for those bastards, so that I can put their severed heads on the graves of my people, and prove to the survivors that no one screws with me or them with impunity. There won't be frontal assaults ... I have no problem with a crossbow/rifle in the back of the head at 50 yards as one of the bastards is walking down the street, or a spear coming up through the privy hole.
If I don't have the juice to do those things? Then I haul out my exit strategy. I hear Linalda's Pool is peaceful this time of year.
I like reaction rolls for a particular reason, and it's exacerbated by my combat LARP experience.
Sitting in the GM's chair, in a comfy position, with a mug of steaming tea at my hand, I'm far removed from actually being in a stress situation. I know everything that's going on, I know everything that's offstage, I have unparalleled knowledge of the situation in a fashion we couldn't possibly have in real life.
But the world doesn't work like that. The fog of war is real. People don't always see what's going on, people don't always know what's going on, and people often guess wrong even if they have all the information.
In that LARP, I was one of the chief national leaders, and my character was the most powerful wizard in the game. I had to make a lot of decisions:
* Based on information that people told me, colored by their own prejudices or flawed insights.
* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before.
* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep because the bastard, in my face and telling me I had to do something, was partying all night long two tents down the row.
* Based that I'd reinjured my chronically bad knee two hours before and it was hurting, a lot.
* Based on whether I trusted people or not, based on what I thought I could get away with politically or not.
* Based on my own prejudices, flawed insights, or whether or not I hated Soandso’s guts.
* Based on me just not knowing what I needed to know, and being forced to make a WAG.
Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I got it wrong. Sometimes I played the odds exactly as I should have, and the odds just fell the wrong way.
Those are all variables impossible to calculate for each and every NPC. I just figure that no matter how smart someone is (or isn't), how capable someone is (or isn't), how well informed someone is (or not) ... sometimes they have bad days. Or very good days.
Heck, the last run I GMed was heavily colored by a NPC making a terrible reaction roll and thus reacting badly to the situation, no matter how much my wife's character was trying to talk sweet reason into him. Sometimes it happens. Random rolls are a good way to emulate that.
Yeah, but what if the NPC’s interacted with the party a number of times before. So what? Surely many NPCs have good days and bad ones. Heck, I'm very much a good day-bad day person. Catch me on a good day, and I'll be all accommodating about your request or inquiry. Catch me on a pain-filled day after a night of short sleep? I'm likely to be snarky, and sometimes stubbornly so.
Come to that, my first wife was even more capricious, and in all too many of our fights, I'd pull up short, incredulous that we were fighting as hard as all of that over such a petty thing, and ask "Alright, what is this really about?" Invariably, she'd pull up short, and reveal the subject which was really preying on her mind, something usually having nothing to do with me but about which I could be supportive and help defuse things.
I've kept this in mind when having a NPC snark-out, and a few times the more empathetic PCs have asked, by way of being supportive of their friend and helping to defuse things, "Hey, Nath, you seem like something's got you well off your feed. Anything it'd do you good to get off your chest?" Nice hook for a sideplot ...
I ran a Firefly campaign for a bit – and would love to run one again. The campaign was based out of Twilight Station, in the middle of the Black, floating above a pastoral planet of religious fanatics. It was something of an interstellar truck stop, with a bunch of businesses, and run by unregenerate Browncoats who were seeking to jump start the Lost Cause.
The group was stranded there, but won a decommissioned war surplus gunboat in a poker game, which became their new ship – Nightwind. Unfortunately, Nightwind came with an extra: a fellow who claimed to be the ship’s medic. They tried to run him off, but he waved what he said was an ironclad contract for him to be ship’s crew for three years or until he got tired of it, with a guaranteed rate of pay. Not much they could do about it, so onboard he stayed.
Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O’Higgins is a bit of a whack job. He’s swarthy, with piercing black eyes, and long post-Civil War era hair and mustache ... the hair which he dyes mauve. Go figure. He’s keeps a shortsword scabbarded to his side, heaven knows why. Don’t get between him or anyone he feels like beating down, either, because he fights like a wounded weasel and doesn’t really know when to stop.
He’s also a bit of a pain in the ass aboard ship. He’s a devotee of Feng Shui (whatever the heck that is) and has a habit of rearranging the wardroom furniture and cargo pallets to suit notions of “positioning” ... and if you ask him to explain, the answer is so laden with jargon you never understand. He also claims to be seeking “satori” (whatever the heck that is), and frequently is doing yoga routines, which he insists on following through no matter the emergency.
Still, he’s a good doc, nothing much ever fazes him, he’s a middling shot, he’s fast as hell, and he’ll always throw in to whatever scheme the crew proposes ... including smuggling, which he’s altogether good at doing ...
One thing not readily apparent (and which he’ll conceal from the crew) is that he took permanent damage from chemical agents in the War. As a result, he doesn’t eat much (and will throw up if he tries), he’s unusually susceptible to toxins, his senses are dulled, he can easily tolerate very cold temperatures, and he’s just not as physically capable about a third of the time.
ST: 11 DX: 14 IQ: 13 HT: 11 Per: 10 Will: 14 Speed: 6
Advantages: Cultural Familiarity/Black, Reduced Consumption / 2/3rds food, Temperature Tolerance+1, Unfazeable
Disadvantages: Berserk (12); Compulsive Behavior / Wanderlust; Disciplines of Faith / "Satori;" Odious Personal Habit / “Feng Shui;” Susceptibility to Poison; Sense of Duty / Crew; War Wounds / -2 everything, on a 9- or less, for two hours
Skills: Area Knowledge/Black-13; Boxing-14; Calligraphy-12; Crew/Spacer-13; Diagnosis-13; Fast-Draw/sword-14; First Aid-16; Free Fall-13; Gardening-13; Guns/pistol-14; Housekeeping-13; Meditation-13; Philosophy-11; Physician-14; Pressure Points-14; Shortsword-15; Smuggling-13; Surgery-14
Quirks: Bombastic around women; Constantly snacking (but only nibbles); Eats tapioca pearls in drink; Twirls his mustache compulsively
Cultural Familiarity is knowing the customs and suchlike of an area to which you're not native. Odious Personal Habit, in GURPS terms, is a reaction roll penalty for something about you which is obnoxious enough to bug people.
For further explanation of system numbers, check this link.
I've participated in a number of collaborative gaming lists on various sites. The Small Town Horror post I put up a while back was one. This is another. As part and parcel of any rational setting, you're going to have couples as NPCs. Sometimes those romances are more out there and turbulent than others; here are my parts of a collaboration for lovers. I don't give stats or details -- for a change, plug them in where you'd want them!
The punch line is that, in every case, these are from prominent characters from my own campaign ... or that I've played one side myself as a PC in either tabletop, a MMORPG or a LARP.
My Chemical Romance: Whether business partners, next door neighbors, rivals, forced allies or arranged spouses, this couple can’t stand each other. They agree on practically nothing, always trying to score points off of one another, and lose few opportunities to backbite (or even backstab) the other. Periodically the hostility breaks into a vicious fight ... which inevitably ends in screaming, clawing, prolonged sex, until the parties are sore and exhausted. He hotly denies they’re actual lovers, she coolly denies it, and they show no signs of any rapport whatsoever the moment the clothes go back on.
Class Ringwearers: Gosh, they’re so in love! Why they just celebrated their three-month “anniversary” and his class ring hangs around her neck! By the standards of their culture, they’re underage and/or immature. The grownups around them are patronizingly dismissive of their “crushes,” and they’re about ready to scream the next time anyone uses the term “puppy love” around them. Increasingly angry, they’re on the verge of doing something their culture would consider drastic: having sex, getting pregnant, running off to get married, publicly disavowing any arranged future marriage ... whatever it takes to get people to take their love seriously and recognize that it’s for real and forever!
Pre-Raphaelites: She’s a celebrated artist. He’s her model. His face and body have been immortalized in a half-dozen well-known compositions, and his own poetry -- though somewhat amateurish -- shows the illumination of her soul. But to touch one another would mar the artistic purity of their collaboration (and age, class and possibly marital barriers intrude) ... so for years now they’ve suffered in silence, unable to consummate their relationship, unwilling to part and so lose each other’s muse.
Bennifer: They were Yesterday’s Supercouple ... rich, celebrated, the hit of their social circle and so totally wrapped up in one another. But that was then, and events have pulled them apart. Their lives are going in different directions (well, in truth, they always did) and the spark is gone, however much they’re not particularly willing to admit it. ‘Tis a pity that everyone still expects to see them together, harmonious and dazzling as ever, and the act is wearing thin.
Mutt & Jeff: They don’t have a thing in common ... everyone knows it, they freely admit it. He’s neat and she’s sloppy, she’s athletic and he’s intellectual, he’s dynamic and she’s live-and-let-live, she’s a gourmet and he’s steak-and-potatoes. Yet when their orbits intersect, they live and love in tender harmony. No one knows how they do it, and well-meaning people keep trying to pry them apart in favor of “more compatible” partners ... to no avail.
Bonnie & Clyde: Yep, they’re in love, since the moment they met. She loves the exciting times he shows her, and he loves the ebullience and intensity of her spirit. They’re also complete sociopaths, perfectly eager to rape, kill, pillage and torture their way around the landscape. The wind’s at their backs, their luck is in, and their hands are dripping red. If they’re doomed to a bad end, they don’t know it (and might not even care): their focus is only on the next jaunt, the next meal, the next kill.
Putting On The Ritz: See them on the dance floor (or on the concert stage, or performing as a duo at the local Ren Faire, or the ice dancing Nationals ...) and they’re silken smooth. They’re just arresting to watch, and the aura about them is tangible – their eyes follow one another like magnets. But this activity and their athleticism are all that really links them, and they’re awkward and uneasy with one another away from the spotlight. You could scarcely recognize them, with that vast luminosity of theirs shuttered, and two plain, ordinary people left behind.
Hunk-A-Hunk-A-Burnin-Love: They can’t keep their hands off of one another. Ever. At every conceivable opportunity they’re stealing off for sex of any sort, and in a night camp they don’t bother much with sleep. Whether wild and clawing, or completely vanilla, they’re screaming with passion at all manner of inconvenient times. They’re constantly sore and exhausted, but they not only don’t give a damn, they always have those obnoxiously smug, creamy smiles on their faces after.
Double Blind: She’s the city’s -- and maybe the realm's -- most powerful wizard, and a gifted enchanter and scholar. He’s an elven prince of a dynasty older than Time, and one of the world’s great swordmakers. But they both wanted to live simple lives (and find someone who loved them for themselves, not their fame), and both have been slumming with the gypsies: he works as a blacksmith, and she keeps a very discreet magical watch over the encampment. She’s now pregnant and happily keeping his wagon for him, and neither of them have any idea of one another’s true identity, a difficulty which preys on them both.
Á la lanterne!: He’s a key player in the revolutionary government. She’s an actress devoted to smuggling out of the city the “traitorous class” the newly-ensconced rebels are seeking to execute, for their “crimes.” Honestly, she was only pretending to seduce him just to get him out of the way for a few hours while the rest of the party did the mission ... and things got far, far out of hand. He knows who she is, now, and neither of them are comfortable with how far they’re compromising their genuine beliefs with one another. If his comrades knew, he’d be executed; her comrades do know, and while they take advantage of the access, they don’t care for the relationship. Nonetheless, the lovers are devoted to one another and can’t bear to separate.
Miss me?: He was rich, powerful, handsome, brilliant. She was sixteen years old and a fresh, unplucked flower. He moved on, with his cronies, as he always had ... until six years later, when she returned with his only known heir. He won’t marry her and she wouldn’t have him, and they’re both at the opposite ends of a vast gulf of class, wealth and bitterness, but they’re forced into cooperation for the sake of the child. And she remains beautiful and incandescent, and he remains handsome and debonair, and they both hate themselves for the simmering desire for one another they still find they feel.
Ever After: The duke’s daughter and the princess’ son were content enough to marry; they were of the right age, betrothed as children, and had no objections to one another. A pair of unique wedding bands were wrought, out of living crystal, by the King’s Enchantress ... and, in a spirit of fun, the duke’s daughter put on hers two days before the wedding, while the young prince’s best friend put the matching band on his finger. They turned gazes towards one another ... and were enraptured. Now they’re fleeing for the border, with household troops in hot pursuit, completely unaware that the rings were enchanted to cause love between the wearers, as a kindness by the wizard towards an arranged couple.
Soulmates: They finish one another’s sentences. They seem to read one another’s thoughts. They absolutely anticipate one another’s needs. They apparently have the same skill set. They’re always together (and seem badly out of sorts and dissonant if forced to be apart for too terribly long), and seem to savor the same activities and hobbies. They were even raised in the same small neighborhood/estate/village, and share the same background and memories. (Alright, it's a pity that they're brother and sister, and even in their tolerant culture going that last step is out of bounds, even if they weren't high nobility and destined for arranged marriages.)
Days of Wine and Roses: She’s all of sixteen years old, and one of her agemates raised by the Wise and Patient Teacher – plucked from the deeps of Time itself to be their tutor – to be one of the prophesied group who would stand against the Darkness. She’s diligently learned all his martial arts skills, and already is a formidable fighter. But now, coming to the Big City, they’ve realized that the time and place from which “Teacher” was plucked are here and now. They've met him, and he's decades younger, at the height of his powers. She realizes she’s a woman after all, and she wants to be his ... and be damned to the risk to the timestream.
There’ve been a couple recent forum threads – and many others over the years – where some posters not only stated that their games don’t involve romance, relationships or any manner of sexuality, not only stated that they’re disinterested in such elements, but went on to express their incredulity that anyone else was and their dismay that any references to the same appeared in published adventure scenarios.
I don't understand this. For my part, I've been involved in romantic plotlines from the beginning; my very first character, back in 1978, wound up in a politically advantageous marriage with the daughter of a high government official. I've had four PCs married to the characters of other players. (We won't mention the number of marriages and relationships I've had in LARPs and MMORPGs. I can't count that high.)
From the other side of the dice, a great deal of plot has stemmed from romantic entanglements. In my most recent groups, the only PC in one who wasn't romantically involved was a priest of a faith that preaches rigid monogamy. In the second, two PC aristocrats married each other to preempt their families from dynastic shenanigans. A key element in my wife's one-on-one sessions is the need to keep her young daughter relatively free of the risk of assassination.
A “distraction to the plot,” as many of the antis claim? Heck, any kind of roleplaying is. Characterization involves ties, bonds, limitations, phobias ... all that can get in the way of a mission. Why, people might be moved by a NPC's pleadings and act other than coldly or logically!
Damn, that leaves out likes, dislikes and character quirks, too. That moron who always insists on wearing red screws up the pattern-disruptive outfit. The fellow who likes cheap tobacco always smells of it, and that can tip off guard dogs. So you want to fight "honorably," blah blah blah ... screw that, just go and do the guy from behind, less risky that way. Every last little quirk is someone demanding some distracting center-stage time – even if it's but moments – to light up her pipe, recite a prayer over the bodies of the fallen, scritch his cat, grab her favorite pizza or read a few pages from a trashy novel during a lull on the stakeout. Ego stroking drama queens, the lot of them. Right?
In gaming groups mature enough to handle the subject (which I agree many aren't), romance is another aspect of the human condition, just as valid for PCs to explore and roleplay as any other. Strange though this might seem to some, not all campaigns are about nothing but the tactical resolution of problems set before the team.
You might ask, "What's the point of having a PC belong to a guild, if it'll only result in trouble - they want help, your status is imperiled, the chapterhouse burns down and they want money from you?" Why bother with the PC having a family, when family members only drag you down in like fashion? Why belong to a church, which only restricts your actions and movements, except in so far as your setting requires it to get clerical aid? Why be a military veteran, because the only time your ex-mates will ever show up is when they're in trouble? Why have neighborhood ties, because getting to know the kindly old priestess at St. Taria's or the tomato seller on the corner just means you're getting sucked into their problems?
And why is it that these questions generally aren't asked, not with one tenth the frequency of angry questions about "Why bother with SOs?" Why is it that ties and plothooks involving PCs are so much more tolerated when the dreaded "R" word isn't a factor?
Simple.
We have a hobby with deeply misogynistic roots: one that stretched back to a day where rooms full of men and boys played wargames with lead miniatures. The games that stemmed from those were overwhelmingly based around tactical, statistical combat and nothing but. The problems set before the group to solve were dungeons, involving nothing beyond problem solving, tactical acumen, outguessing the Dungeon Master and dice luck. Players who could tell you in great detail that they "were" 8th level Lawful Good clerics with Wisdom 17, 36 hit points, Bracers of Wondrous Awesomeness and +3 Maces of Big Bad Smiting gave you blank looks when asked to name their hometowns, describe the clothing they wore or to expound on the doctrine of their deities ... when they'd bothered to name their deities at all, not always the case. The notion that roleplaying = acting wasn't common; third person "My character tells the NPC to back off" modes of speech were.
Quite aside from women not being welcome in that world – what stereotype of female players dominated the first decade of the hobby as heavily as the GM's Girlfriend, generally bored, mocked as incompetent and always marginalized? – romance and sexuality weren't either. Oh, sure, a lot of groups regularly patronized the local brothel ... along with locker room grunts and grins, and the dropping of a requisite few gold pieces. All suitably off-stage, with the (inevitably Frazettaesque-female) courtesans never seen or described, let alone named, extant only as part of some peculiar backslapping ritual affirming its participants as Manly Men.
And to a bunch of 14-year-old boys sitting around the table, clutching their dice, each concerned that they've never been laid and worried that they never will be, I'm willing to give a pass. But for everyone else?
Leaving aside those for whom gaming isn't roleplaying, and is solely about tactics, is there any more reason for sniggering than with any other type of plot, if you have a group not comprised of adolescent boys? Alright, let's get the 800 lb elephant out in the open and admit the secret fear lurking in the hearts of many gamers: that the (invariably male) PC having a serious relationship with the NPC (run by the invariably male GM) will carry a whiff of homosexuality.
(I'm quite serene with my stereotyping, because the number of these complaints coming from female players, with the exception of the I'm Freaking Tired Of His PC/NPC Trying To Get Into My Bodice riff, is about 1/100th those from male players.)
How to get past this, that's a question for which I don't have answers beyond an admittedly pompous and patronizing hope that more gamers just plain grow up.
How long have I been talking about gaming? Over thirty years, at this point. I was part of the Alarums & Excursions APA from 1979 for a few years. The first online gaming forum in which I indulged was on the UMass computer system in 1983. I've been in other APAs and many an online forum.
In all those places, what we expect from our fellow gamers is a matter of constant debate. What classes they play, whether they buy into PvP or not, whether one can play evil in a good party or good in an evil party, whether people should conform their expectations or proudly dissent. "Murderhoboing," niche protection, how "paladins" or priests ought to behave, we're vitally concerned with how the other character acts, and we drone on at startling length and persistence on the subject.
We're far less concerned with how the player acts, oddly enough. But that's as much of a make-and-break as anything else, wouldn't you think? What I want from my players is ...
* Regular attendance. Someone who misses as many as a quarter of my sessions is teetering on the edge. I do not run one of those drop-in games where it's okay to blow us all off if there's a baseball game you'd rather watch on TV or you just don't feel like shaving.
* Buying in. By virtue of showing up, you're telling me you're willing to play the system I play, in the milieu and genre I'm using, in my homebrew setting, and that you intend to conform to the group you're joining.
* Good behavior. We're all adults here. If you're going to be terribly late, you call. If you can't make it, you call or e-mail. You pay attention to my game, not to your Words With Friends app on your cellphone. You leave your cigarettes and alcohol at home, and you don't jeer at my cats, kick people in the head or spit in the snacks. (These last three were not cited at random.)
* Good neighbors. Everyone brings some kind of light snack, and everyone takes turns buying/cooking a meal, since we do eight hour sessions and that's a long time to go without a bite. Chronically arriving a half hour late so you don't have to deal with the pre-game socializing is unfriendly. (That isn't cited at random either.)
* Knowledge. After a certain point, I don't want to have to keep teaching you the rules. Learn enough of them to pull your weight, or else reconcile yourself to the fact that your tactical options are going to be limited to "I attack him with my weapon." I want people invested enough in my gameworld to learn about it, and while I don't quiz people on the handouts, I see no reason why more interested players have to keep coaching the slackers on the basics. As in any other field of human endeavor, you get out of it when you put into it.
* Trust. I am not an adversarial GM. I am here to provide the setting with which you interact, not to provide an omniscient, omnipotent, malevolent force Out To Screw You. If you can't trust me to do that, to be fair, judicious and reasonable, we ought not be playing together. Whoever did you dirt in the past, I'm not that guy.
* Motivation. Shouldn't you be here to play the game, not simply be a passive spectator for my storytelling? That being said, adventures are -- usually -- about conflict. Accept this. Your backstory isn’t immune to being mined for plotlines, the people you know and meet aren’t immune to being mined for plotlines. Someone who deliberately refuses to give me any handles concedes that adventures will never be about you; only about someone else. I’m not terribly interested in that kind of player.
* Honesty. If you've got a problem or an issue, I'd like to know it. If you can't hack any of the rules above, I'd like to know that too. Passive-aggressive sullenness does not impress me; I believe that mature adults should be able to have open, honest and civil discussion of their grievances like, well, mature adults ought to do. Problems never go away on their own. And if any of the above is too much for you -- or isn’t the game you want to play -- I hope you're honest enough to give my campaign a miss and not waste anyone's time, your own included. (Don’t worry. I won’t be offended. Should I be offended if you’re not into any of the other things I’m into, from hockey to singing classical music to walking in forests to writing nautical folk songs?)
So ... I've been having private runs for my wife's powerful wizard-princess for a few years now. One of the customs of the elven empire in which she now lives is "errantry" -- in your youth, you get together with your best buds and go wandering about for a season or two, all under assumed names like "Snowviolet" or "Morningstar" or "Nightflame," and Do Worthy And Good Things, only traveling with what they can carry and accepting no pay for their deeds. While the tales have it that people on errantry are fighting dragons and battling for the rights of the downtrodden, the elven empire has secure internal borders and good government, and the authorities aren't crazed about young folk wandering across into the truly scary lands beyond them. So, for the most part, those on errantry wind up teaching schools, helping farmers bring in the crops, building barns and the like ... which is rather the true lesson behind it all.
Some folk make errantry their life, and indeed go out to take on monsters and warring against the over-mighty. As far as the rest goes ... well, sometimes the teenagers get uppity and want to go out too. So Princess Elaina, with some restless teens on her own estate, decided to do the local landowners a favor and announce that she was leading a pack of teenagers out on errantry for two summer months: who was in? Well, damn near everyone, but in the end, she set out with thirteen. And, much to their dismay, led them to the task she'd already arranged in advance -- helping a village heavily damaged by the spring flood to rebuild.
I did this cheat sheet for the pack, which is far preferable to doing up individual NPC sheets for what is, after all, a group of relatively nondescript teenagers. It summarizes their race, age, manor of residence, parental background, a couple key skills, and (teenagers being teenagers) whether they particularly Like! or Dislike! those cute kids of the opposite gender, that being in terms of GURPS Reaction Rolls (high is good, low is bad).
The three for which there's scarcely any info are from Elaina's own manor, so I didn't particularly need cheats for them. But for a pack of NPCs, for which nonetheless you need to RP them and come up with a personality trait or two, this is a good approach and doesn't take all that much work.
