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Showing results for tags 'NPC'.
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Membership Posing an actual combat challenge without mechanics
posted a topic in Roleplay Management
So, this may be a bit specific but something that I'm still trying to figure out is how to make battles against NPCs an actual challenge. Yeah, you can talk with the participants and plan out who wins and stuff but that is not what I'm talking about. This is about PvE and cases like a "boss"-NPC. Or, to give an example, I want to have a hit list feature where bounty hunters and similar people can take on specific tasks and hunt unique enemies, no matter if creature or humanoid. I thought that I could combine this with a member shop and clearing these hits grants you hunter points or something which you can spend on something (I didn't figure out on what yet). The thing is - if it's predetermined that the players win, I can just give these points out for free and they lose their purpose. So my question is how can you make battles against NPCs actually challenging and even pose the threat that a player loses (especially against super-tough enemies)? (Without dying, of course, otherwise almost nobody would take the hits on) -
One of the things we recently did on Blue Windows is allow members to RP with NPCs. There are a certain number of "non-player characters" that were thrown into the mix for the sake of reality (so that we could have some characters that weren't 'main' characters, for example, or who could get seriously injured beyond what the members were comfortable with for their personal characters). Members are allowed to 'rent' these NPCs and RP with them for awhile. Technically the NPCs aren't allowed to survive, so members can really do whatever they want with the NPCs. I've been having a blast. In my latest thread, I had an NPC teenage girl ally with my character, and then she went nuts due to lack of sleep (prolonged periods of sleeplessness over extended periods of time + stress), attacked herself, and then had a seizure due to organ failure and blood loss, and died. Okay, it sounds a little dramatic when I give you the summary. But the cool thing was that I was able to take this at my own pace and allow the storyline to unfold. I had certain elements that I had to work with (I had to include a shack with words carved on every wall as part of a challenge), and the story ran away from me. What was supposed to be a quick thread turned into a giant 7-page thread between my character account and the NPC account, and it was awesome. My personal character received such great development from it, and I know that on my own, I never would have achieved it. Hell, even if I had been RPing against another person's character, I still wouldn't have achieved it. Anyway, this thread is to encourage people to look beyond the bland and see the benefit of using NPC characters as functional individuals. Instead of just being the man who sells oranges on the side of the road, explore opportunities to flesh out the character enough so that it can have meaningful interactions with your personal characters.
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It seems that people have interest in writing only certain characters, or only certain aspects of the characters' lives, while a story implies writing several character types in several circumstances which make sense for their lives. E.g. a Navy officer has in the story not only the role to charm ladies at a party, but mainly to take part in battles or to lead work scenes as well... to show only a few aspects. He should interact also with his superiors, with allied officers, he can lead an exploring team, enforce the law under his competence, etc. And among the Navy officers, if they were chosen for example, there can be (and should be) a diversity of personalities as well: the ambitious perfectionist, the drunkard/ gambler who can be blackmailed or can blackmail others into betrayal or extorsion, the womanizer (or soft lover, because he can be sincere too) who spills a secret to his lover by mistake, the one wh o isn't professionally good but he has the right upbringing and patronnage and power thirst in order to advance stepping on corpses.... So if the story needs these aspects/ scenes/ characters and nobody else is willing to write them... somebody has to. We are all here, first and foremost, to write an interesting story together, immersing ourselves in the right setting through this. it seems I will always be this 'someone', because I could never say/ think 'I have no interest in writing this character/ scene.' if it is a part of the story i love and it makes sense in our setting, then I should clearly do all research and everything possible to make the story happen. ...And this is how some people get with more temporary characters than others, and with writing for more NPCs than others who don't have interest in them or who see them less of a character because they have less writing time. They aren't less. There had been a while when I was regretting everything others didn't do, just because I was convinced that, since i am writing with others, everything should be shared. Now I don't care anymore about this, neither about other people's rants that people shouldn't have so many characters or NPCs. They are there because they are needed in the story and nobody else was willing to write them. That's all, folks. Somebody has to do it in order to have a well-rounded story, a well-rounded portrayal of the world we are writing about.