john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) (01/13/86)
> > for multi-character PROPONENTS : ever think WHY most NPCs have little > personality and GMs tend to loath large encounters? Your mileage may vary. "most" NPCs probably have little personality for two reasons: (1) Every try inventing distinct personalities for each and every member of the orc swarm about to wipe a party? NPCs have a tendancy not to be used as opportunities for role-playing by the GM, but rather as obstacles to be placed in front of the players. The GM frequently role-plays only particular NPCs when it is important to the development of the "plot", or when it would be particularly fun. If you are throwing a group of 6 brigands at a party, you probably wouldn't worry about personality until it mattered; if you ARE a GM who has a unique personality for each of those 257 orcs, my hat's off to you, but you must be tired! (2) GMs tend to be drawn from the same population group as players. If a given fraction of players regard any role-playing at all to be merely a distraction from adding up columns of gold-pieces on a sheet of paper, why do you expect NO GMs to act the same way? On balance, when I GM, I generally role-play NPCs when I want to showcase something, or when I want to act like a complete loon. Most of the time I am (figuratively) drawing the puzzle for the players to solve. Some GMs regard that as their sole function; I generally consider GM role-playing (for role- playing's sake) to be useful for entertaining the players while the trapdoor opens under their (OOPS! I wasn't supposed to mention that!!! OOPS! ;-)... And, like I said, probably GM-munchkins exist in roughly the same proportion as Player-munchkins. > for multi-character OPPONENTS : ever tried to take over a goblin village > with one 2nd level mage and 2 1st level fighters?! > Well, if I were the player in such a situation, I think I'd blanch at the thought. On the other hand, why would I want to? Consider two scenarios: (1) Someone told us to. In which case, we would probably have tried to wheedle some powerful assistance out of that someone (magic items, perhaps, or maybe a couple of higher-level followers). (2) The goblins have something the partly desparately wants (they stole our +2 Back Scratcher, the beasts!). Then, perhaps we would go out and attempt to hire a couple of mercenaries. Or, perhaps we could be content with merely getting it back, rather than taking the town. After all, 2nd level is a little early for planning one's Baronial Estate, isn't it? On that topic, just to introduce something new: does *ANYONE* out there make use of hired followers? Long ago, when I was starting to set up my campaign, I went to some effort to attempt to make it easy for people to hire followers, establishing Guilds of various professions, making sure that I had that section of the rules well in mind, et cetera. To date, I think the players have hired exactly one hireling, if you want to be generous: they rented a sage when they were badly in need of one. (I had to drop a hint that they could do so) In various campaigns I have been in as a player, I've never seen other players hire anyone. Is this feature of [ The Generic Game* ] ever used, or is it just there in the manuals to round off a page? [ I play D&D (largely), and that is where my own impression of hirelings comes from. I assume that other games make provisions for such, but I don't know this for certain. It seems reasonable. ] -- John Woods, Charles River Data Systems, Framingham MA, (617) 626-1101 ...!decvax!frog!john, ...!mit-eddie!jfw, jfw%mit-ccc@MIT-XX.ARPA The Pentagon's Polygraphs: Witchcraft for witchhunts.