TTRPG Design Drabbles - NPC Prompts

[stepnix]

I fully believe that you can't *really* know a mechanic's implications until you see it in the context of the total system, and then see that total system in play. But also I'm hoping that making a habit of sketching out little things will help me sketch out bigger things too


Every player fills out the following questions as they create their characters:

Name someone who hates you

Name what they're afraid you'll take from them

Name someone who loves you

Name what they're afraid you'll take from them

Name someone who's using you

Name what they hope to gain from you



This was inspired by my reading a few weeks ago where character creation prompted strong connection to the world, laying seeds for the greater campaign. This was also inspired by my starting to watch foundational shoujo drama Dear Brother, and seeing how the protagonist is a subject of extreme interest for several characters, but for totally contradictory reasons.

I can think of a couple variations on this concept. You could require every player to come up with their own independent supporting casts, or you could encourage them to reuse NPCs in a couple different slots on the PC sheets (so the NPC loves X but hates Y). You could also give each playbook its own set of questions, and highlight thematic concerns of the playbook that way... But I imagined these applying to every player character, laying the groundwork for a campaign where everyone is forced to confront the price of their ambitions.

Giving players NPCs to create like this makes it easier for a GM to run a campaign from scratch. Or maybe it gives them a dozen characters they now don't know what to deal with. I imagine it getting especially frustrating if you already had strong vision of the campaign you wanted to run. In which case, it becomes the designer's job to make it very clear that character creation, not the GM, will determine the campaign premise.

Comments

[yhlee]

This is extremely cool! Agreed that often strange and wondrous (or terrible!) things come when mechanics start interacting with each other in a larger system, but honestly I think this is great. :D Agreed that getting players to create NPCs can be helpful - ditto other world elements, and (potentially) it can get players more invested in parts of the world too. :)

[cyanmnemosyne]

This is reminding me of the PbtA suite of games, particularly Masks since it's the one I've played the most. The primary prompts that you fill out at session zero are more about how the PCs relate to each other, though I've found that in a similar way, giving each person at the table at least 1-2 other existing connections to build off of can really help kickstart building the organic connections that develop as you go. There are some other prompts that I believe are more intended at building out the characters' backstory and are thus intended to be primarily populated by NPCs, but in the campaign I run, the players and I ended up reusing a couple of the NPCs across several characters' backstories. Possibly worth looking into if you haven't already, to see what you think of it?

IIRC in my game, because there weren't specific prompts to get us to consider doing otherwise, most of the characters ended up having similar relationships to the NPCs -- I like the idea of using something like this questionnaire to encourage having an NPC who knows several characters, have a different relationship to each.

[stepnix]

I do remember people mentioning prompt questions when talking about Masks... I'll keep an eye out!