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NPCs: Free for All or Staff Duty?


CovertSphinx
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Back when I first started RPing, members would utilize NPC characters for just about everything. Fighting opponents in a thread starter; filling in members of that fearsome bandit band your character leads; family members; quest  givers and plot McGuffins; you name it. If an NPC (or 10) were needed in the thread, the members themselves would attend to this by, well, controlling the NPCs themselves in their posts. 

 

Then, somewhere, I don't know if it was because of games where staff controlled all aspects of the story progression or too many arguments over control of the NPCs per thread, things changed. I noticed that people just....stopped playing NPCs. Anything that wasn't a player character ceased to exist. On an old site, I once found myself as a staff member pulling "double duty" when it came to posts because not only did I have to keep up with my actual characters, but I also had to do 100% of the NPC legwork for the rest of the memberbase. 


So, my question is, what are your feelings on utilizing NPCs on a site? And whose "job" is it to manage the RPing of said non-characters? Are staff supposed to treat them like running a tabletop story and control 100% of the encounters? Or should members be pulling a little bit more of their own weight in controlling what happens in their character's stories?

 

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I am in favour of NPCs being free for all. Actually, they are shared custody characters that anyone can write for one thread (or more) how they have time. 

 

The reasons why it's better to have free-for-all NPCs are listed here:

 

 

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On my games, NPCs are a free-for-all and always have been. And people have always just taken it and run with it, utilizing them when they need them. Of course, there are some NPCs that are player-specific. Like, in one of my threads I play a dancer, and NPC the owner of the establishment. That NPC is named, has a defined personality and role in the plot that I've come up with, and I use her to push things around and serve as a foil. It's generally just understood that although she's not a joined character, she's my NPC to manipulate and different from generic shopkeepers and townspeople and guardsmen.

 

So, most of our NPCs are free-for-alls! And some are the property of specific players. But it's just up to the individual players to use NPCs however they see fit. I don't moderate it or monitor it, and I don't write NPCs for threads I'm not actively involved in because I don't have the time or interest for that.

 

Go forth, be  the gods of your own stories!

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How I learned it was npcs, are just characters made to fill random roles as a player needs them, often made on the spot in a thread and only played once or twice. Most don't get names or backstories or anything, and they're just as easily made as they are killed off. 

 

I make named npcs for various things, and prefer to own those like I would characters. I don't take well to community owned characters who anyone can play for whatever they like in most cases, cause to me, once the character has a name it can't be played just however.  I don't mind players 'borrowing' some my characters for some kinds of npc roles or as having been mentioned as doing a service outside of play, but I can get picky in how they are mentioned.

The only place I see for community owned or staff owned npcs that stay the same over time is for major plots where the npc is a final boss, informant, or leader type that needs to be steady across all related stories.

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I have always preferred, and used, free for all NPCs. Most threads don't really have a call for them, or they're only for one post, like a character placing an order at a cafe and then walking away. That's not enough to justify having a staff member or whoever come in and write a post, it's just a few lines. Besides, if I'm writing a fight scene, I prefer that my partner also controls NPCs so that we can still surprise each other a bit. I only really tend to ask for staff NPC in a ground level thread if someone's dropped a character that was in it. 

 

But if I'm on a game where characters have a lot of power (gods, Charles Xavier, Superman, etc) I prefer ultra-powerful types to be staff NPC only, or for members who have been around a while, because there's a lot of room for player abuse. I've played high-level characters before and enjoyed it, but never without speaking to staff first to address any concerns they had about powerplaying and the like. My experience is that there's always someone who wants to jump in with a board-breaker as their first character, and something tends to go wrong. 

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I think a mix is best! Generic NPCs that everyone can control, mini bosses or shopkeepers or townspeople, etc. And then more powerful NPCs like big bosses, gods, major leaders, etc. either controlled by staff or under staff supervision. 

 

When all NPCs have to be played by staff, it can get super exhausting and I'm not about that. But having an easy NPC system in place that allows everyone to help each other and can be used as needed is more my speed.

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I believe in a mix.

 

"Big" NPCs, like the main villain or the King, being run by staff;

Minor NPCs, like the lady who sells bread or the little pickpocket who are staff-created but can be used by anyone;

Personal NPCs, like Jane's character's elderly grandma, who belong to the player who created them and they can decide on which ones are fair game and which ones they're fine with sharing.

 

This way nobody needs to sit twiddling their thumbs if they don't have a PC to interact with right then, and people can write development threads for their characters without it getting too boring.

Shady McShaderson

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I believe the NPCs can save sometimes the silence in a writing group. They are essential part of your community and I would make use of them as much as I can 🙂

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Keeper RaWolfe

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My answer is "yes". I think that a good story, NPCs etc can be controlled by everyone. I create random NPCs on the fly all the time to add to story, to give a little depth, to make characters uncomfortable to push envelopes and sometimes to add that "flair" back to a thread that is getting a little monotonous.

 

For me, it really depends on the situation. For the most part users should be able to create and control NPCs as they see fit. However if it's like a story plot item I'm going to expect the staff to do it.

 

In my GM World site (or whatever it is going to be called) only the GM will be able to control NPCs but that is because they will be directing the story.

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1 hour ago, Morrigan said:

However if it's like a story plot item I'm going to expect the staff to do it. In my GM World site (or whatever it is going to be called) only the GM will be able to control NPCs but that is because they will be directing the story.

 

Even if they are directing the story, I encourage my members to write as many NPCs as they can. Even directing the story can be shared. If I wrote all the NPCs in the battle just because they are directing the story, I would burn out. If some are taken by other people (who also know the main points of the story to go towards, so they are directing the story too), it is all right and nobody burns out.

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There is a difference in what I'm talking about and what you're talking about @Elena. What I'm talking about is what most people consider DMing. NPCs are the property of the person controlling the game. In a game that is basically "DMed" or "GMed" the NPCs fall in the lap of the person controlling it primarily because that is their sole responsibility. They don't play with the other players, they are there to direct the story.

 

It's not the same thing as standard collaborative storytelling. It's considered directed storytelling.

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I got agree with @Morrigan on that, there are also NPCs that are controlled by myself and no one else due the impact they can have on the story the writing group is going towards. But I do encourage my team to make their own NPCs as part of character development. And hey...I need a red shirt sometimes 😉

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Keeper RaWolfe

Owner of the Exonia Realm

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NPCs can fall into three categories - canon npcs (canon characters that you'd like someone to take up but haven't for whatever reason, but you need them for a plot or interaction.) I think only admin and staff should do these, to make sure that things are consistent, but when they are taken up as a playable character, the npcing of them should stop.

 

NPCs that are created by a member to fill in a character's background, flesh out their family, etc. They should only be controlled by the person who created them, unless it's agreed that other people can use them. There could also be the option of them being taken up as a playable character by someone - if that happens, then they can no longer be an npc.

 

Finally, there's the generic npcs that are just created to have a role in a certain plot, they can be a filler character like you get in shows and movies that are needed for a scene or two and then you are unlikely to see them again, or those that are needed as generic canon fodder in a fight, for example.

 

It's a bit much to ask for admin to take on the npc roles of all characters. In DnD, for instance, the DM doesn't have their own personal character because they're coming up with scenarios to throw at their players and so can take on the role of all the npcs in the game. On a forum, if the admin wants to write their own playable character(s), then they can't take on all the npcs themselves because it's too much to keep up with.

 

You can't really get anywhere in rp if there aren't npcs, though. When I first started rping on twitter, there were quite a number of things which I wanted to do, but there were no characters around which had the role I needed and constantly coming up against that barrier was frustrating - it took a while for me to learn that writing for npcs was acceptable because when I first started, I thought that I could only write for my playable character. The opposite end of this though, is that you could end up with having too many npcs and have no need for other people's characters, so it needs to be balanced.

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I just need to say, that I love ALL of you for your responses, and for reminding me that I am indeed NOT going crazy. It makes me feel a lot better to learn that there's a number of people out there with the same general feeling as me, and the time I ended up as both DM and Player was just a weird offchance scenario. 

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Generally, when we make NPCs on my board, the person who made them controls them. Probably because we have a board culture of creating accounts for the NPCs later on when they start interesting us beyond just "NPC." 

Reality is an illusion. 


 
 

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