Game WISH 71: Unwritten NPCs

Game WISH 71: Unwritten NPCs asks:

For GMs : when you plan or play your NPCs, do you intentionally leave out some of the story for each? Do you hold something back and let the Players imagine the rest or do you present NPCs from the core of who they are? Is time a factor; a short game or one-shot not allowing much character depth? Does NPC expertise shine through? Or are there character foibles that cloud the better qualities of the NPC? Are there short-cuts to get this across?

I've very develop-in-play when it comes to NPCs. In pre-game planning I'll often come up with large numbers of NPCs, all of which are defined by little more than name, race, profession and a couple of adjectives. As the game develops those that become more important get fleshed out; nobody starts out with either a detailed back-story or a full-blown character sheet. I tend to add details to individual NPCs as and when they start becoming important to the story. I probably have two many NPCs in the game, which results in many of them becoming little more than cyphers. If you need a database to keep track of them all, them perhaps there are too many!

Saying that, there are a few NPCs in Kalyr with extensive back story who have never actually come up in play; sometimes writing NPC back-stories becomes a form of solitaire play. I don't think I've ever used the story of Lendor Tyr, former heir to the Tharn (City Lord) of Calbeyn, who had vanished into exile, accused of murdering his father. Neither have I made any use of the eight hierarchs of the Academy of the Mind. Maybe their time will come.

Let's look at the active NPCs in the game at the moment. In one thread a party from the Technology Guild, consisting of two PCs, Karogeth and Luanu, plus an NPC, Vovir, have encountered a group of four street toughs, blocking their exist from the bad part of town. I made up the gang of toughs more or less on the fly, except for their leader, 'Ug', who had appeared in the arena as a gladiator much earlier in the game. A combination of a conciliatory approach by the PCs and some good reaction rolls have turned what were going to be opponents in a fight scene to potential sources of information, so instead of defining their combat statistics I'm now giving them some more knowledge and personality. They may well reappear as street contacts in the future.

The PCs are looking for a missing guild member, Batendal. Although he's yet to appear in person, I've had to flesh him out quite considerably to explain why he's disappeared, and why the PCs are looking for him I cannot reveal any more because the players might be reading this!

One of the PCs, Luanu, started life as an NPC. When the game went down to three active players, I put out a call for recruits, and suggested some NPCs that could become PCs, and Harald volunteered to take on Luanu. I sent him my GM's notes and he came back with an extensive back-story which also happened to flesh out another NPC, Luanu's street contact, Kal.

Vovir, the final NPC present, started out as the father of a now defunct PC, Narluis. He's got something of a backstory as a man who's alcoholism has destroyed both his once-promising career and his marriage, but who's now given up drink and is trying to rebuild his life. I developed him during the period Narluis was a PC, and dropped him into the present thread because he was hanging about with nothing better to do at the time. It's always better to reuse existing NPCs rather than continually creating new ones.