Best way to handle NPC's?

[osarusan]

Hey, I was wondering how you guys handle NPC's in the program.

I don't mean the ordinary chumps who say a few lines and run, but very major NPC's who stay with the characters for a long time.

I run a small game with only 2 PC's, so I have a handful of NPC's who help the PC's out a lot, and many times one of them will adventure with them to provide support or healing. At first I used the NPC dialogue in FG, but it's really not so good for this kind of situation. It's great for unimportant, static NPC's who won't change, but for adventuring NPC's who level up and have inventory it doesn't cut the cake.

So recently I've been using character sheets to keep track of their info. The only problem is I can really minimize the sheets or use them with tokens in the same way that I can use the PC's sheets, because the NPC's are not connected to anyone who is logged in.

Does anyone else run a game like this? Is there a better way I can manage this?

[Griogre]

If you don't care if the PCs know about the NPC have a player open the character sheet for you. That puts it up on the top left like the other characters and makes it easier to use. If you need to talk as the NPC just use /id NPCName.

[Foen]

I do the same as Griogre. If there are 'secrets' about the NPCs that you don't want the PCs to know, just don't put that info on the character sheets.

[longarms]

"but for adventuring NPC's who level up and have inventory it doesn't cut the cake."

I handle this by typically not tracking the NPC's "level" or inventory. The NPC simply has whatever skills make sense for the storyline. The NPC has whatever inventory makes sense. If I am not sure whether he would have the inventory, I roll a dice and decide based on the result.

If an NPC does need to have his "level" and inventory tracked because he is a henchmen or something, then the player corresponding to that NPC tracks this info. The player can track this information in the notes section or on an unused area of their PC's sheet.

If you haven't tried savage worlds, I'd highly recommend you check it out. It works really well with the virtual table.

PS - Griogre's suggestion is good, but if you try it be mindful of how much overhead this ends up creating. If managing the NPC character sheet slows the game down significantly, chances are you are spending time doing something that isn't actually making the game more enjoyable for the players. I've been in a few games where the GM tried to manage the NPC this way and it dramatically slowed down the pace of the game... other GMs have handled it smoothly though.

mike

[Spyke]

The latest version of the program allows (Foundation & rulesets extending it) allows the GM to open full character sheets and drag them from the selection screen to the toolbar and the combat tracker.

You can prevent the players having access to the character sheets by logging in as a player before the game and setting the ownership for the sheet (e.g. to a player called 'NPC').

You can create an alias ID to speak as the character, and add tokens as required, so I think the issue's just about solved, except... there are still some bugs with the combat tracker, and we need to mirror this functionality in custom rulesets that aren't extensions of Foundation.

Spyke

[Moon Wizard]

The d20_JPG and 4E_JPG rulesets also support dragging of characters from the selection screen to the toolbar and combat tracker, allowing you to do the same thing.

Cheers,
JPG

[PneumaPilot]

Wait, can't we just create another button that opens up something that looks and works EXACTLY like the players' character sheets (using the same XML code, etc.), but the data to which is stored in a separate location so that players cannot see them at all? I NEED this!

[Spyke]

Wait, can't we just create another button that opens up something that looks and works EXACTLY like the players' character sheets (using the same XML code, etc.), but the data to which is stored in a separate location so that players cannot see them at all? I NEED this!This is essentially what we have with the new functionality. It really is very easy to hide the sheets from the players, as I say. Simply log in in a second session and claim the characters with a separate player. You don't need to stay logged in. Once claimed, the sheets are owned by that log in (call it NPC) and can't be viewed by the players.

With this method there is no need to set up a third set of window classes to create a set of 'full' NPC sheets. (Which wouldn't use 'exactly' the same code as the player and NPC sheets are held in the database and interacted with slightly differently.)

What would make life even easier would be if we could add another radial option to the character sheets allowing the GM to 'claim as NPC' (i.e. set the owner) directly from the host session.

Spyke

[PneumaPilot]

Yeah, I know it's not THAT much trouble, but it's still trouble. I sometimes have to create characters on the fly while we're playing, and I would MUCH rather use the normal character sheets rather than the NPC window. It would be awesome to have a list of characters just like with the NPC window, but with the full character sheet coming up when you clicked on the name.

[Bidmaron]

I think Spyke's solution is not so bad, but what is missing is the ability to take an NPC sheet and convert it to a PC sheet so you can use it from the GM's client program instance. Such a tool would be, of course, heavily ruleset-dependent.

[PneumaPilot]

My nWoD sheets have SO many controls, I would love to simply be able to use my already painstakingly crafted character sheets instead of the NPC sheet.

[Foen]

The CoC ruleset allows you to drag an NPC to the PC character selection window and create a PC from it. It is used for pre-gen characters etc.

[PneumaPilot]

That's pretty cool...I must think more on this. I know it can be done.

[Sigurd]

PneumaPilot - if you log into your session as a separate instance (I have a client log in from my DM machine called "client") you can have it claim pcs like any other player. The normal players cant see the sheets and you, as dm or client, can access the sheets etc...

Once you have a client instance you can happily ignore it except for opening (non) player characters.

Its a work around bur it doesn't have too many downsides beyond some extra system resources.

sigurd

I wish there were better party controls so that the DM could call up one sheet with all the pertinent data for the whole party. The encounter table is good but it could be improved on.

[PneumaPilot]

Yeah, I get it, it's not too bad, but I still want a button. I mean, it shouldn't be hard right? Couldn't you just change the class that the NPC list references to the main character sheet class?

[Spyke]

Yeah, I know it's not THAT much trouble, but it's still trouble. I sometimes have to create characters on the fly while we're playing, and I would MUCH rather use the normal character sheets rather than the NPC window. It would be awesome to have a list of characters just like with the NPC window, but with the full character sheet coming up when you clicked on the name.Again, you can already do this during a session from the character selection button.

All we need is the ability to set the owner from within a host session (or simply to mark a character as unavailable to the players), but if you can trust your players not to peek then you're already good to go.

Spyke

[Spyke]

Yeah, I get it, it's not too bad, but I still want a button. I mean, it shouldn't be hard right? Couldn't you just change the class that the NPC list references to the main character sheet class?Sadly, no, as the player characters and the NPCs store their data in slightly different structures in the database, so (I think) the same classes can't be used. (I'd be happy to be corrected here!)

There's nothing to stop you taking the PC classes as a starting point and creating your NPC sheets to work the same way as your PC sheets, but I thought about this long and hard with my GURPS ruleset and decided that the number of times a GM would need the full functionality was not big enough to outweigh the disadvantage of the loss of screen real estate if the NPC sheets were the same size as the PC sheets.

Spyke

[Sigurd]

There is also too much data in most of the player character sheets. It could be much more streamlined for DMs. I find the personality sheets awkward and very slow though.

Some of the innovations in the d20-rpg are great. I love the icon place holder.

Anyone know why its so slow? Or am I imagining this?


Sigurd

[Bidmaron]

Sigurd, what is it you find slow? I run d20_jpg exclusively, and I have no performance issues. It is a great ruleset, and Moon_wizard is working on making it even better.

[Sigurd]

I love d20_RPG. Dont get me wrong.

I find the personalities book unintuitive. The tabs seem small and whatever I want is inevitably hidden somewhere and cut and paste enabled.


Sigurd


I'd like to see the DM support revamped in general. I have nothing but praise for d20_RPG and Moon_wizard in particular.