|
The tip I'd add is don't lock yourself in to your own opinion of an NPC. If you have one you love but the players clearly aren't into, don't keep shoving that NPC into things. It will just make the players annoyed. On the plus side this sort of thing can be a bellwether - if the players keep rejecting NPCs who represent a particular aspect of your game, it's probably best to de-emphasize that part of your plan as well. Conversely, if the players latch onto an NPC, that's a hint too. If it's an NPC you're not terribly excited about, do something to make them fun, but don't undo what the players like about them. Especially don't do bad things to them for cheap reactions. That doesn't mean they're immune but use them for effect. And try to play up the game aspects associated with the NPCs they gravitate to. Also, if the players hate a particular NPC, you can still use them. Some of the best characters are the ones we love to hate. Just pay attention to whether they hate how the game goes when that NPC is around - whether they make the game in-fun - or if it gets a rise out of them and raises the energy level. That being said, if the party reacts in a way you really didn't expect to an NPC, don't be afraid to talk them about it. Maybe you mischaracterized something, giving them the wrong impression, or forgot to say something important about the NPC that was meant to be obvious, or maybe the players have a different perspective on the NPC that would be more interesting to explore than your original plan. Or, very occasionally, you may unearth that one of the players has a terrible opinion about something, which is useful to know, in regards to whether you want to keep playing with them, or if it's a topic to just avoid in the future.
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2014 04:48
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 03:58 |
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:The problem is that playing entirely fair and transparent and still winning is hard. Is there a secret to this kind of success, or are my GMs just really good at cheating just enough to create fair-but-diabolical boss encounters or evil plans or what have you? In my experience there are two answers to this. The first is that you expand on the NPCs who survive and that the player's respond to. More than once I've kept a random bandit around as a recurring opponent and expanded his role in the story because he managed a daring escape and the players kept talking about it. In this case, you can pretty reliably get that-one-guy in every campaign by backing your way into the position. In fact, once an NPC survives two or three encounters and turns up like a bad penny, you can pull much more absurd escapes with that character, since the players start expecting it. Then it's not you, the DM (even though it is), it's that one rear end in a top hat. The second is that if you know the rules well enough, its easy to fudge in that one contingency that would get someone out of a mess on the fly. If you've got enough knowledge of the game and its rules, you can pull this out of your rear end without - dare I say it? - breaking verisimilitude. There's a cheat I've used on genius or hyper-prepared villains, but only sparingly - basically, giving them one or two uses of "they would have thought of that" and then using it to pull their asses out of a fire. Its workable if you can limit yourself to things that you really would have thought of with more prep time, or a clearer understanding of the party's capabilities, and if you ruthlessly follow the rules of the thing you're using. That's hard to do properly, and I personally don't use it much anymore - in part because I pretty much exclusively run games with built in narrative ways out, like PbtA and FATE games. One of the reasons I don't play D&D much anymore is that more than once I've used this system mastery approach and it felt like cheating, because so many of them are frankly broken "push button to win" options that suck the fun out of a session. In fact, I've found the much more bald, narrative approach of "this guy gets to escape because he has plot immunity, but I will shower you in game tokens to make up for it" actually frustrates players less than having a legitimate, "see it's on his character sheet" escape clause from older style RPGs. Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Apr 16, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2014 00:57
|
|
|
Atlatl posted:I agree with this, but I think it's important to allow the anticlimatic solution occur occasionally. It can still be fun and memorable if the players roll their Rube Goldberg combo in from offstage and completely crush their opponent in one fell swoop. Letting every big fight drag on dramatically can get repetitive and predictable. Absolutely. I'm a big believer in letting the PCs trounce the opposition now and then. It lets them feel awesome - because they are awesome. I hate it when GMs can't let a party have a clear, pure win now and then.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 16, 2014 02:42
|
|