Blog – Page 26 – The Designer Monologues

August 5, 2018

#RPGaDay2018, Day 5: Favorite Recurring NPC

Today’s question: Favorite Recurring NPC?

I was wondering how I was going to answer this one without repeating the NPC from yesterday’s question, and suddenly I remembered an NPC from an old Star Frontiers game that I played in 1982-1983 with my friend Brian Quigley.

I lifted him entirely from a short story (and TRAVELLER write-up) that appeared in Dragon Magazine Issue 59 (thanks to the kind soul who uploaded that PDF — a real blast to see it again). His name was Gent Jackson, and, as the picture at right demonstrates, they were kinda going for a “Captain Dallas from ALIEN” kinda vibe.

That is not how I played him.

I made him a rival to Brian’s character, and I played him as the most annoying guy you could imagine: Basically the sort of “Midwestern Insurance Salesman of the 1950s” archetype. Glad-handing, enthusiastic, everybody is “buddy” or “pal” or “friend”, and OH SO HELPFUL. So damn cheerful, in fact, you just want to kill him.

Which Brian tried to do. Repeatedly.

Good times.

August 4, 2018August 4, 2018

#RPGaDay18, Day 4 – Most Memorable NPC

Today is the first of the weekend, sub-thematically-organzied questions: Most Memorable NPC.

I would go with Sebastian, an NPC from my first-ever VAMPIRE:THE MASQUERADE game, back when it was first released.

Sebastian was the player-characters’ Prince. And the opening line of the campaign was: “Sebastian is dead.”

I set up a campaign set in my college town (of course), with the PCs being the only vampires there, squeezed in between two cities (Topeka to the West, Kansas City to the East), with a powerful Prince who protected them from being absorbed by one or the other.

In the opening session, I announced that the Prince, Sebastian had been murdered. Each of the players had secrets they were keeping from the others, some of which involving their relationship to Sebastian, or their knowledge of how he died. I prepared nothing else.

I sat back, and mostly just watched for the entirety of that first session, as the players dealt with the news, and interacted with each other. I’d never had a game session like that before. I don’t think any of us had.

Sebastian would appear as an NPC, more than just a shadow cast on the events of the game — but he would appear in flashbacks, which is another thing I’d never attempted in a game before, but which just seemed to fit this new style of story-telling play.

For me, Sebastian is memorable mostly for what he made me realize was possible in an RPG, a lesson that I carried over into other games.

August 3, 2018

#RPGaDay2018, Day Three: What Gives A Game “Staying Power?”

Today’s question: What Gives A Game “Staying Power?”

Honestly, it has very little to do with the game, and everything to do with the players. With the right group, even the most bare-bones game can become a beloved, extended campaign, with stories that you still remember years later.

In college, I ran a game using the old TSR BOOT HILL Western RPG. Not the third edition redesign, which actually was an RPG, but the earlier, late-70s boxed second edition, which was actually a skirmish-level shoot-out miniatures game that barely nodded at being an RPG. And yet, because of the group of players I had, it remains one of my favorite gaming memories to this day.

“Gather ’round, pardners, and I’ll sing you the Ballad of “Gatling Bob” Roberts…”