How much NPC detail do you run with?

iamtim

Mongoose
Here's a generic RQ question that applies to ALL versions, not just MRQ. When you are creating NPCs for the games you run, how much detail do you give said NPCs?

Do you fully stat out your NPCs?

Do you roll characteristics and figure out primary skills?

Do you just roll characteristics?

Something else?
 
I really liked WFRP 1ed. the modules often had lots of ordinary npc's. just needed to change some details and i had a "fully" fleshed npc ready to run.
 
It depends on the NPC. The vast majority of minor NPCs (including most foes of the PCs) are just some verbage describing them: a sentence to a paragraph. I wing the numbers during play if I need them...don't tell my players though! :)

For completeness, I generally attempt to stat out major NPCs if their abilities come into play, such as if they're going to help the PCs longterm (as another party memeber) or if they're a major foe. I don't actually mind winging that either, but I feel a little guilty if I don't write the major foe NPC up.

However, if you're looking for publication ideas, I actually like detailed NPC writeups with culture and cult backgrounds, motives, supporting cast, etc. I find that a good full page writeup or two is generally better than a prewritten adventure for good gaming. Give me an interesting broo gang and an interesting hideout, give them some interesting motivations, infighting, politicing, and I'll find a place to put them when I need a broo gang. Same thing with mercenary groups, a village, etc. I got more play out of the Lunar exporation group (name slips my mind) from the RQIII Shadows on the Borderland supplement than all the rest of the module put together...and I did run all three excellent adventures out of it.
 
I dont do any rolls.....I decide what the values will be based on how dificult I want the scenario to be....For important NPCs integral to the main plot I will work out the whole character.....for less important NPCs I usually just do the features important to their role in the specific scenario.
 
In the beginning (which is a long time ago), I followed true RQ tradition and created fully statted NPCs whenever possible.

After discovering the "standard" NPCs in the GM's chapter of the Elric! RPG, I've been using these (or something similar) for a long time. I think it's a shame that the Mongoose RQ is missing anything similar, since it's really a vital GM's aid.

Now, I usually don't bother creating NPC stats at all. I just decide on skill levels, hit points and the like on the fly. Makes fudging a lot easier, too.
 
iamtim said:
Here's a generic RQ question that applies to ALL versions, not just MRQ. When you are creating NPCs for the games you run, how much detail do you give said NPCs?

Do you fully stat out your NPCs?

Do you roll characteristics and figure out primary skills?

Do you just roll characteristics?

Something else?

For NPCs, I don't roll unless there's a good reason to I usually stat them the way I need them. I don't fully stat anyone, usually just main characteristics and whatever their important skills are.

For D20 I had a nice deck of pregenerated characters ready to go (often reusing generic ones), now I have to start again for RQ (although I'm wondering whether to add a "book" of generic NPCs to the collaborative campaign thing)
 
I used the old tried and true BRP/Pendragon method of leaders & followers. THe important NPC leaders get a fairly decent writup, while the folowers tend to get generic stats and skills.

I once made a bunch of foolowers "distinctive" by giving each one a differenert weapon that did the same damage. So I Hat hatchet guy, shortsword guy, Javelin guy, and a guy with a flail (he had bludegon 1 up, but was 5% lower in skill).
 
For NPCs I use the following

-first I determine how important the NPC is. For important and nasty villains for example I scavenge sometimes the Gurps book "villains" for ideas. For warriors I use the Gurps warriors book too :) Then I do detailed stats as for PCs.
-For not so important NPCs I use just generic templates. Eg. an average clan-warrior has 50% weapon skills, sometimes d4 damage bonus, DEX11 and 11 HP, armor fur or leather, eg. an elite warrior from the cult of the red snake has 65%, always +d4 damage bonus, DEX13 and 13 HP. armor up to mail,

Sometimes I vary the stats +-3 points to generate more different types the players encounter.

Also for variation I give them certain easy to remember key words for
-clothing (blue hat with feathers, nice ornamented boots...)
-appearance (wart on his nose, different eye colours, dark skinned, bad teeth....)
-behaviour (giggling, studdering, waving alot with hands - like italians, never look in the eyes of others, arrogant, VERY friendly, helpful, aggressive...)
 
In EQ, I let the PC's flesh out the tribe somewhat by generating two characters, and playing one; the other is an NPC for me.

Most others were "Typical ___" stats, unless I needed something special.

In Pendragon, I tend towards using the default NPCs most of the time; since I find that I don't mind my players knowing/meeting the Major NPC's, I use the Big-Names.

Best gaming purchase I've made recently (tho it's system specific) was "A Cast of Thousands" for Arrowflight.... 30 detailed NPC's, 40 templates with "Generic NPC Templates", and modifiers for race.

Another couple "Paid for themselves in saved time" products were Classic Traveller supplements 1 & 4 (1001 Characters and Citizens of the Imperium)... the pile of instant NPC's was a well paid price.

Sounds like a cool project for a developer... Doesn't it?
 
atgxtg said:
Did anyone else buy Foes?

I did, and used it quite a lot back then when I was first playing. It's still useful if you need to grab some goons in a hurry, as is the Borderlands creatures book, but it's just as easy to wing it tbh.
 
Apprentices Guild produced foes for RQ2/3 in their products Children of Entropy (Chaos creatures) and Children of the Red Goddess (followers of seven mothers - Lunars) which had some limited success until we had a cease and desist letter from Jackson Dott of Avalon Hill.

Also worth looking for on ebay are Cults of Light and Death ( a cults pack) and Behind the Masque ( a nice Pavis based scenario)

One of the values of the new RQ material will be that monster stats will be pretty similair to RQ2/3 , even if the underlying systems are different. Makes it easier to run some stuff up.
 
For generic bad guys I wrote an Excell spreadsheet that will generate stats and figured values in any of 10 collumns with a button click and based on a pulldown list of a dozen or so common races that my players will often run into (basically, if I've run them a few times, I'll toss them into the table).

It works pretty well. Not so great for creatures with non-human hit-locations, but I can often extrapolate even those (just have to scribble some notes). I've got areas for skills (but I typically only list combat skills, and maybe one or two other skills that might end up being relevant to the encounter). I also have a spot at the bottom for notes for each NPC, so I can list spells and such.

Oh. I also created a sheet that will generate random chaos features as well. It's got three setting (chaos, reverse chaos, and random). It'll do everything that's on the table and print it out. I tied that into my NPC generator with another button, so I can click in a Cell, hit the button and it'll paste in the result of the chaos feature roll. Very handy for quickly generating a squad of Ralzakark's best!

Of course, any of the fields are editable, if you want to manually bump your bad guys (and who doesn't?).

I created a full RQ3 character sheet in Excell as well. Generates figured stats and base skills by race. Tracks both skill bonus and skill increase values. Has a tool for training/experience increases, allowing you to pick a method, input a number of hours if needed (or you just use it a set number of times for experience), and apply it to any skill you've put in the sheet. It'll automatically update the skill in the main printable sheet based on those changes. Stat increase will also automatically update the bonuses and any skills affected by those bonuses. It's got an ageing roller, and a power increase roller as well.

Yeah. You didn't ask about the second bit, but I was on a roll... ;)
 
Interesting generator, Gnarsh!

I tend to run with two different sets: a basic set of stats for NPCs likely to be briefly encountered (see Rune of Chaos, for example) then a more complete set for the complex, more interesting PCs who are either leaders, "sticky" NPCs or who are likely to survive several encounters.

Every NPC I generate I keep in a "NPC file" - it used to be a card file with basic stats and interesting bits on the flip side, but nowadays I tend to keep it on a A5-folded booklet. They come in handy as I can just drop into previously-generated NPCs when the PCs run into something I hadn;'t; thought of (the peril of PCs!).

Like Gnarsh, I tend to write quick-generators in Excel for the simpler PCs, but the more complex I tend to hand-craft.

And yes, I had Foes bought for me and used bits and bobs in it for the occasional encounter: there were just so many stats in it!
 
One thing I did find very useful was the section of NPCs from the centre of the Games Workshop edition of RQIII 'Monsters'. I believe it was reprinted from the 'Monster Coliseum' AH box set No.1.

I used it a lot and then wrote up my own NPCs in the same vein to be as versatile as possible.

I also have got recently off ebay the stat books from very early Chaosium, written by Ray Turney there were 'Militia & Mercenaries', 'Trolls & Trollkin' and 'Scorpion Men & Broos'. They look like they have been printed off on a very old dot matrix printer! :shock:

That kinda thing would have been very useful to me if I had it when I first started playing RQ back in 1981 but it still looks usable now though I would prefer more 'character' and description to each stat block myself.

Its that kind of supplement that could come out as a cheap priced PDF. Print off what you need to use for that session's adventure [with the names changed to protect the guilty], changed the equipment and some of the stats.
 
Darran said:
I also have got recently off ebay the stat books from very early Chaosium, written by Ray Turney there were 'Militia & Mercenaries', 'Trolls & Trollkin' and 'Scorpion Men & Broos'. They look like they have been printed off on a very old dot matrix printer! :shock:

Yes, I managed to get hold of them and was very disappointed with them. They were worse than Fangs (remember that in the RQ2 Boxed Set? Foes-lite)

Darran said:
That kinda thing would have been very useful to me if I had it when I first started playing RQ back in 1981 but it still looks usable now though I would prefer more 'character' and description to each stat block myself.

It is useful for the "you are attacked by 5 scorpionmen" encounter. But, yes, I prefer major-ish NPCs to be written up a bit. Not as detailed as Runemasters perhaps, but sketched out more.

Darran said:
Its that kind of supplement that could come out as a cheap priced PDF. Print off what you need to use for that session's adventure [with the names changed to protect the guilty], changed the equipment and some of the stats.

Maybe. I'm not sure I'd pay for that kind of thing, though, but at a couple of pounds it might be worthwhile.
 
soltakss said:
Darran said:
I also have got recently off ebay the stat books from very early Chaosium, written by Ray Turney there were 'Militia & Mercenaries', 'Trolls & Trollkin' and 'Scorpion Men & Broos'. They look like they have been printed off on a very old dot matrix printer! :shock:

Yes, I managed to get hold of them and was very disappointed with them. They were worse than Fangs (remember that in the RQ2 Boxed Set? Foes-lite)

Darran said:
That kinda thing would have been very useful to me if I had it when I first started playing RQ back in 1981 but it still looks usable now though I would prefer more 'character' and description to each stat block myself.

It is useful for the "you are attacked by 5 scorpionmen" encounter. But, yes, I prefer major-ish NPCs to be written up a bit. Not as detailed as Runemasters perhaps, but sketched out more.

Darran said:
Its that kind of supplement that could come out as a cheap priced PDF. Print off what you need to use for that session's adventure [with the names changed to protect the guilty], changed the equipment and some of the stats.

Maybe. I'm not sure I'd pay for that kind of thing, though, but at a couple of pounds it might be worthwhile.

Yeah, I remember 'Fangs'. :roll:

I was thinking of having something more useful to GMs. NPCs written up with descriptions, motivations and adventure hooks and seeds. Something that takes the prep time down a bit.

With it in a PDF with some production values [though not too much that the price goes up!] parts of it can be 'copied & Pasted' into M$ Word or similar so that the GM can change names a details and tweek the stats to fit the GM's adventure. 80 pages for $5 or there abouts?

Would anyone be interested in that? :?:
 
Darran said:
With it in a PDF with some production values [though not too much that the price goes up!] parts of it can be 'copied & Pasted' into M$ Word or similar so that the GM can change names a details and tweek the stats to fit the GM's adventure. 80 pages for $5 or there abouts?

Would anyone be interested in that? :?:

I've seen it work for d20, I reckon it would work for this. Good luck if you decide to go through with it :)
 
what I can see are supplements like the GURPS books villains or warriors.
It should have the following

-1 full A4 page description of each character including stats, appearance, friends, enemies, motivation, clothing and a nice picture.
-for more than 1 single setting. MRQ should be ideal for this. Eg. You have several characters for Glorantha 2nd age, Novaquest, Diomin, Forgotten Kingdoms and Lankhmar. (maybe 10 different persons for each setting)
-its pdf only
-its not expensive (maybe 6.50$) for 60p.
-it should be published as joint work of different MRQ publishers to avoid licence issues.

Possible books could be villains, warriors, sorcerers/psi-ops, rogues

With such a book you can serve every fan of MRQ, because you dont exclude a specific group which is fan of just one single setting. Such a book is interesting for Glorantha fans as well as for Novaquest fans which dont have the time or interest to develope well researched NPCs on their own.

Additionally a player will read through the characters of other settings too, and you give to him the "feeling" that he is not bound only to "his" setting. He should feel that his setting is just part of the "greater MRQ family". This could be an incentive to try other out other MRQ settings.
 
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