In a previous post about briefing NPCs, a commenter brought up the following thing as a key part of successful NPC briefing:
"Background info - Most NPcs are better at their roles the more they know. Keep background info available in monster camp for them to read when curious. Have maps, have writeups, have ways for them to grow their world knowledge that enables them to better handle the unexpected."
I feel like this is a really good point. It's an awkward experience when your merchant NPC who, allegedly, "has been living here for her entire life," doesn't know the political climate of the capital, the state of the roads through the eastern forest, or the activity of a mercenary band in the north. Although, as Berta the Merchant, you may quite well understand your mission, your stats, and the items your carrying, it's uncomfortable to be unable to answer PC questions like, "So what do you think of the civil war in the west?" Cool PCs, realizing a new NPC might not have the background knowledge that they do, will generally try to help you with gentle hints-- but it shatters game immersion for everybody. Especially in a game that has been running for multiple years, this is a tricky situation. Moreover, even if you brief NPCs well and provide them with all the pertinent information for an event, newer ones (and even more experienced ones) can't get everything from a write-up or a conversation with a staff person.
Considering all this, I am a huge fan of "background information." That stuff available in Monster Camp that involves histories, timelines, current events, maps, pictures, lists of key NPCs-- anything. Many games, such as Aralis, Lost Eidolons, Endgame, and the upcoming Invictus, also have websites available providing world info that both new PCs and NPCs can access.
With all of that being said, different games have different ways of providing background information. I wrote this post mainly to source ideas from readers. How does your game provide background information to PCs and/or NPCs (if at all)? What are the benefits and risks of a providing background info to NPCs? As a PC, what sort of background information would you like prior to starting a game? As an NPC, what information do you appreciate having available?
As a PC, I can say, we are pros are drawing connections between two things that really have no relation. All the merchant has to do is say they came from up North, and suddenly they are marked as a font on information about any plot line that has any connection to North of where the merchant is standing, and we will as them every question we can come up with. It is easy to spot an NPC that hasn't been briefed, and at that point, most decent PCs stop questioning the NPC and just get to buying what they need. I've also noticed that it's easy to spot a Staffer who is out as a simple merchant who really is just out to pull in some coin or get some resources into game, and isn't the best person to ask a ton of probing questions.
ReplyDeleteAs to what kind of background I like to get as a PC, anything that will prevent me from looking like the village idiot. Here's an example of what I mean.
My first event LARPing, the chapter I was PCing had a plot line that resulted in two time lines merging (I'm fairly certain it's much more in depth that that, but as far as the information I have, two time lines had diverged a couple of years prior and had snapped back together an event or two before I started playing). PCs were given some choice as to which time line they were from, basically as a role play thing, there weren't an mechanics involved. This was a big deal, there were two dukes both claiming they were the legitimate ruler of the Duchy, it was a big thing, and wasn't a secret.
The problem was, no one told me anything about this. Within a couple of hours of my first event starting, PCs were asking me what timeline I was from. All I could do was stare at them like they were speaking a foreign language, which I guess they were in a sense. This was made especially bad as I was playing a wizard type so this should have been right up my alley. I eventually figured the issue out, basically by meta-gaming, and figuring out that most of the PCs were from Timeline A, so I just decided that I was too.
I got over that snag, and had a great event and have been playing for a decade now, so it didn't ruin it for me, but it was a frustrating moment where having someone from plot hand me a two paragraph write up with enough information to pick a time line, or just telling me I was from one time line or another, would have been very useful.
~Patrick
That's a really good example. Also, I've found, PCs may enter a game as a race that has a long political history IG (my friend, for example, picked up a heavily stigmatized player race, not knowing of the consequences associated with that race/how he should behave when asked certain questions about his race). While, IG, he could ultimately claim memory loss, I think he may have had a better time if he had had at least a little background info on the political history of the character. Same thing for religions-- if a game has an in-depth IG religious system, and if I, for instance, claim to be a "priest of XYZ," it's nice to know at least a little bit of the surrounding history/geography of a faith.
DeleteI will never forget my first time playing an RP intensive NPC role. I was 17, and had been sent out as a farmer who was looking for a particular PC. The farming community I was from thought that this player-character was the king-to-be (even though he didn't know that), and I had to find him and essentially signal to him that his character background was more interesting than he knew.
ReplyDeleteBut I wasn't given a ton of info. I ended up doing a little bit of adlibbing, and a lot of backpedaling. Apparently my character was pretty ignorant of all current events and history except for the 3 or 4 topics I was briefed on! That's farm life for you!
It would have helped if somebody had explained the whole plotline, not just the role I was playing. In doing that, it would let me know what topics are okay to ad-lib about and what things I should avoid. For example, is this group of farmers I'm from supposed to be a resource the PC can access? or do they remain off-stage? I felt like I might screw something up or contradict somebody's writing if I established too many details.
Perhaps the trick is in suggesting to NPCs how their character would respond to those kinds of questions. As an absent-minded wizard NPC I used to play, if somebody blindsided me with a question I couldn't answer, I'd pretend like I knew the answer, then I'd mumble and trail off and get distracted. As that farmer I mentioned, maybe I should have given a line about how my family is very private, and I was told not to gossip about them.
Yeah, if anyone has brilliant ideas on this, I would love to hear them. I ran into something similar where I did research on what was available about the world from numerous online sources (and man, is there a lot of information about the world if you poke around), and despite that, found no information that would have told me that the country I picked at random to be my character's homeland had been overrun by horrible horrible monsters a few years earlier and was entirely uninhabitable... that wasn't awkward at all. It worked out in the end, but I had a fantastic WTF moment when I mentioned it to an older player, who got a horrified look on his face and told me how sorry he was.
ReplyDelete