Playing an NPC: The idiot

Aka, how to place your ego aside and entertain.

Imagine, your players are out on an adventure and they meet up with a stuck up NPC who gives them a hard time. The mood is a bit tense at the table and the players may struggle to get what they want from this NPC. (And according to some, unnecessarily so.) Not a few moments later, they meet up with another NPC with a similar, if not down right same, demeanor. They may have different traits, but the feel of the NPC remains the same and seems to be a reflection of the DM’s attitude towards the players. Statistically this is highly unlikely to happen in real life but oh so common while playing a pen and paper  RPG with other people. And naturally may lead to your players no longer having fun.

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Non-Combat Combat

Non-combat combat. A weird combination of words, I’m sure, which is exactly why I want to talk about it today. First, let’s break down what I mean by it in the context of roleplaying games.

Combat, in roleplaying games is a remarkably common affair. A group of goblins show up, the adventurers draw their swords and axes and a few minutes later, there’s bloody corpses everywhere.

“Beardman, your turn.”
“I use cunning rethoric!”

What it also is, is a very regimented affair. The goblins show up, everyone rolls for initiative. One by one, everyone takes their turn to perform whatever actions they’re allowed and when everyone’s been, the turn rolls around again. This has a noticable effect on players, who know that when Initiative has been rolled, shit just got real.  Initiative means there’s things on the line and people are going to die.

Which brings us to non-combat, which is generally safe, a little freeform and lower-takes than the life-or-death of combat.

So why not combine both?
That’s right, today we’re talking about introducing combat mechanics to ratchet up the tension in non-combat situations.

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Player Ability vs Player Challenge

A few weeks ago my sunday D&D group reached 7th level and with 7th level came a whole host of new spells and abilities that gave them several brand new ways of murdering their enemies and taking their things. This also meant that the standard way of providing them with a challenging encounter didn’t quite work anymore so I had to go looking for new ways of threatening their treasure, lives and friends (in that order).

Tarrasque
Appropriate challenge for a lvl 20 party? yes
Appropriate challenge for a lvl 5 party? probably not

This post, I’d like to take a moment to look at challenging players in the context of their abilities, especially at higher levels. I’ll be going over when to let players revel in their power and how to properly challenge their more powerful abilities.

So without furder ado, let’s get into it.

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Writing a strong Background

Aka, Let me tell you my tale…

When you see people on the street, at a glance, only a few will ever stand out from the crowd. Be it due to their mannerisms, the way they dress or just their overall feel when compared to the bland and common background.
In RPG’s, these usually turn out to be the quest givers, special contacts or even story hooks designed to stand out so that the party has a clear sense of direction.

Insert more arrow to the knee jokes.

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Getting on with it!

I’ll admit, I was working on another post when the idea for this one hit me. And I’ll even admit that part of the seed for this one comes from frustration in my own games. That said, there’s some interesting things to discuss with regards to this topic, so let’s dive in!

For next year’s Christmas, I want another hour in my day.

As you may have guessed from the title and the above picture, this post is about those sessions where a lot happens and nothing ever gets done. It’s about sessions where you spend hours chasing down a clue that leads absolutely no-where and sessions where you spend your hard-earned resources to open a door that leads, you guessed it, no-where.

So without wasting any more of your precious time, let’s dig in and talk about how to avoid wasting everyone’s precious RPG time.

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Creativity at the table

Aka, How to think outside of the box and get away with it.

Consider the following. The house Reyne of Castamere royally pissed off the Lannisters. They end up fighting and the last of the Reyne retreat into their main fortress known for its subterranean systems, defenses and living areas. The fort is an absolute pain to take and could sustain them for a long time. A siege could prolong the war for far too long, being costly and an assault would likely end up with high casualties and loss for the Lannister Army.  Tywin Lannister knew this and ended up deciding on a third option. Close off any and all entries/exits to the fort, leaving only a small opening for the massive amounts of water from a nearby river, which he had diverted into the fort. Flooding and killing every Reyne inside, ending the war and suffering no extra loss in the process.

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The Party as a Mirror for the world

I ran into an interesting phenomenon when running my bi-weekly Infinity: The Roleplaying Game. The game itself was a kickstarter and is currently shipping (check out the quickstart), though that’s not what this post is about.

By default, in the Infinity RPG, characters come from very different backgrounds, from the hyper-capitalist hyperpower PanOceania or the Neo-Anarchist megaships of the Nomad Nation to the rugged backwater nations of Ariadne or the cloning vats of Aleph, humanity’s sole AI. However, as per the standard design of the game, the characters will be working together in a supra-national team, usually dealing with crises that threaten the stability of humanity as a whole. This of course results in wildly different personalities and loyalties, something the game loves to play with. You see, there’s a layer placed on top of the normal special operations, diplomatic wrangling and rooting out alien infiltrators that the game usually deals with.

Get down john connor!
Just a normal day in the life of an Infinity character.

Every character has a handler (or more) that represents the interests of the nation state they ostensibly are loyal to. These handlers will provide side-missions to the character and that character alone. And that is where it gets interesting.

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Checks, Saves and Rolls: When?

No post on my homebrew system this week. That has been shelved for a few weeks until I can get a proper writeup of the system as it stands done.

Instead, this week, I’m going to try and answer a question that has plagued roleplaying games since the dawn of time: When to roll dice?

“Roll for initiative, suckaz!” – Tiny Tina, Borderlands 2

You might think this an easy question to answer.. After all, most systems spell out explicitly what to roll dice for and when. That is, until you start reading a little more into them and you find out that everything’s not quite so cut and dry.

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The Hands of Tenzin

This week, i’m trying something different. I’ll be doing a writeup of a class variant for my own D&D 5e game. One of the characters is (was) a member of an exclusive sect so it seems only fitting that they’d get a unique class variant.

And as an added bonus, I get to use these sweet powers for my adversaries, her former sisters in arms, when they inevitably come for her.

Images of a tree in four seasons.
Four seasons, Four hands, Four elemental domains. Man, this Tenzin guy sure likes his fours.

A bit of backstory on these ladies (and rarely men). The Hands of Tenzin are a group of spellcasters who serve the king of Aracea. They are responsible for keeping the magical energies of the world in check and as representatives of the god Tenzin, are expected to guide the seasons where neccesary.

Everything clear? Cool, let’s dig in.

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