Follow the NPC
And I don’t just mean following where some non-player character that I’ve cooked up goes. While I do use NPCs as maps and quest-givers in my games, they have an even more valuable use, and that’s modeling behavior and reactions.
Let me pull an example out of my ass. Say my player characters have learned that they need to travel to the… um… Swamp of Darkness. Role-players are used to places with evil and over-dramatic names, so why should they flinch at the Swamp of Darkness? Well, because the NPC does. The has-been wizard that got dragged into the PCs quest two chapters ago has slowly been warming to the party, and I’ve made sure that the group has come to care about him, too.
If I’ve played my cards right, then I probably have half the group trying to help my crusty old wizard beat his alcoholism and rejoin the Order of Magic. (Again, I’m pulling all of this out of my ass, but it’s honestly pretty representative of how I structure my stories and NPCs.)
So when the PCs are ordered into the Swamp of Darkness, but Hazbin the old wizard shudders and refuses to go, then reaches for the bottle just to drown the sound of that name, the PCs know that this swamp is serious business.
True, I could just tell my players that the Swamp of Darkness is the most feared stretch of land between the kingdom and the sea, and that the realm’s greatest heroes emerge from the swamp haunted by their memories. But how much impact will just telling them have? They’re players, after all, and aren’t actually in any danger. They’re comfortably situated on my couch with dice and Cheetos.
So instead, I role-play the scene through my once-great sorcerer. The swamp of darkness is what ruined Hazbin. What happened there is why he drinks. The players have an emotional investment in my NPC, and so they have an emotional response to whatever he says or does.
Here’s a more concrete example, one not from my ass. Erica is running a game of Wraith: The Oblivion for our group. We’re all playing ghosts and we’re part of the ghost-government, known as the Hierarchy. Now, as in all White Wolf games, the Powers That Be are never paragons of purity. The Hierarchy fights all the ghostly bad guys, but they also do some seriously shitty stuff. For instance, they take wraiths that have given up the will to exist and they heat them in forges and pound their ectoplasm into soulsteel. That’s creepy AF.
But our characters are supposed to be members of the Hierarchy and Erica needs to make sure that the first time we learn our swords are made of dead ghosts — yeah, not as redundant as you’d think — we don’t quit our jobs and run away from the whole damn plot. Erica asked for my advice on how the hell to do that.
And this is what I told her to do: We have two main NPCs who are responsible for being our guides and showing us the ropes in Wraith. I think Erica can make us trust them. And they can teach our characters how to feel about swords made out of ghosts.
One NPC might feel that the exhausted wraiths don’t exist as people anymore. Their soul is worn out, broken down, and has given up. It’s just empty ectoplasm anyways, at best an echo of the vibrant soul that used to inhabit it.
Okay, that doesn’t sound quite so bad. That’s a bit more like having a sword made out of bone. Made of a person, but one who’s long gone. It’s a little on the creepy side — and everything in Wraith is creepy — but not heinous.
The other major NPC can be of the opinion that the wraiths who don’t make it, the ones who give up and let go, are swallowed by Oblivion. Since that’s the byline of the game, you would be right to assume that Oblivion is big and important.
And bad. When Oblivion feeds, it grows. Oblivion growing is a bad thing. So now our swords made of dead people — who are extra dead because their souls wasted away — also keeps them from being eaten by Oblivion. Do I feel like my character can swing a sword made of this stuff around and not be an asshole now? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that I do. Erica’s NPCs can explain how it’s made and why — and because I like and trust them, then my PC can be okay with it, too.
An NPC isn’t just a quest-giver, or some extra stats/bonuses in combat — they can also be a weather vane, showing the group what reactions are appropriate to the game world. After all, they were made as a part of the world, while your players are just visitors there.
