Granting players access to such NPCs is difficult without hours of prior gameplay or backstory work. Some games, like Shadowrun, allow the PCs to easily create a few contacts during character creation (if they wish!). This immediately hooks the character into the world, and gives both the GM and the player an NPC to use over the course of the game.
Mechanics can drive gameplay and encourage various behaviors, so having character contacts give mechanical bonuses incentivizes players to introduce them into the game. Heavy role players will take the opportunity to add in extra RP scenes, while more rules-focused players will still inject them into the story the same as most players use their physical equipment.
These contacts are unique to each character, reoccur in the story as they're used, and ground the characters in the world they find themselves in. The character contact idea is definitely something I'll be using in Hostargo.
One thing I've always done when starting a campaign is figure out 5-7 archetype NPCs:
ReplyDelete* A local leader - village mayor, captain of the guard, community socialite
* A peer - an NPC who wants the "adventurer's life." A level or two lower than the PCs, not in the party
* A relative or close friend - this is someone who has a PCs best interests at heart. This person can be used as a straight man or for reverse psychology. You can do one for each PC, but I find that gets to be a little too much - instead, have one for a pair of PCs to give them a shared connection.
* A commoner - a working person who's goal is to live a simple life. Nice to use as the rumor source - often a bar tender/barmaid, though I like to diverge to avoid too much tropeyness.
* A personal rival or 2 - not a villain, per se, but a person or small group who doesn't like the party members for some reason)
I try to establish these in the first couple games, it helps create the setting. The actual personalities fit the mood of the game, but i find the archetypes are very useful for planning, and every NPC after that will either have a connection to one of those initial 5, to a villian, or to the PCs as a result of an action they took. I find it engages the players immediately, and phase 2 of the campaign (game 10 or so), when the main villian tries to hit the PCs personally, it's those NPCs that the players actually care about. (Chances are good, other than travelling companions, those 5 NPCs are the only ones whose names the players will remember.)
These are great Chris! Not only is this a good idea for pretty much any campaign game, but these are fun general categories to get people thinking. Do you mind if I steal these pretty much verbatim?
DeleteFeel Free! If you think back to the game I ran for you guys a couple years ago, see if you can name a few of these archetype characters.
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