NPC competence in roleplays.

[Quilboarian]

Mostly talking about NPC antagonists that are controlled by the GM/thread creator.


How competent do you find NPCs in roleplays? Are they just "mooks" that are easily defeated by the player(s)? Or, are NPCs able to pose a decent threat to the player(s) if they are not careful? How do you make them, if you are the GM?


I'm not really talking about the player(s) starting off with better technology, special skills, powers, etc. Because in those situations, they have a reason why they are superior to the NPCs. (ex: players in mechsuits vs. poorly-armed rebels)


I'm talking about if the player(s) have that inherent advantage of simply being "the chosen one". Are they able to defeat their enemies even if, realistically, they would evenly matched, or actually disadvantaged when fighting them? Do they win just because they are important characters, and the NPCs are not? (ex: players gunning down soldiers in a firefight that are probably better trained than they are.) Just curious.

 

[Inquisitor]

It may just be me (and this is particularly relevant when it comes to Fantasy over most other genres from my experience, for whatever reason) but I feel it's in poor taste when the enemy is portrayed as an overarching and competent-enough force to conquer X vast amount of territory, but then can't deal with the hero dilemma that's bound to follow. It's poor writing to represent it in such a way, and it's also not particularly fair to the players to throw garbage at them constantly. While certainly it's not always going to be miserably hard for the players to handle X Y Z enemy, there always needs to be a representative level of force that can be given out that won't just be like, well, apparently poorly-trained (even though they aren't and the background lore tells us this) Stormtroopers in Star Wars.


But it's kind of a balance overall. Take, for example, a system like D&D (because I know systems well enough to use them for examples. You take what you can get with me, I suppose.). Player level plays a huge role in the dynamic of a fight, as does the effective combat rating of the enemies you're sending at them. And it comes down to a healthy balance of crap flung their way as compared to the people who actually challenge your players. There's no way that any enemy would reasonably continue to send the same mook-ish units at you again and again. It's unrealistic and stupid, especially as they begin to notice that the players get more powerful. With that in mind, it's useful to keep a balance. As players get more powerful via whatever means they try, so too should the enemies that the Big Bad is willing to throw their way. You can't always throw level 3 Goblins at your party when they're level 12, but nor can you always feed them consistent fights that're 2-3 levels above their effective combat rating.


A quick explanation. ECL (effective combat level, rating, what-have-you) is a measurement of the difficulty of a fight in D&D. To put it in simple terms, it's what, within reason, a well-composed party of four individuals can kill at a certain level. So say you have 4 players, a Cleric, a Sorcerer, a Rogue and a Bard, and they're all level 7. Generally speaking (without getting into effectively gamist crap that leaves you scratching your head if you can't do basic calculus), the ECL of any fight they go into should be level 7. This means that any combination of enemies you give them should be able to be fought and killed by said team of 4 level 7 characters. Some character set-ups can handle higher-ECL fights than others, but that's neither here nor there. Back to the point!


You can't be constantly feeding your players fights that are extremely challenging, for similar reasons to why you can't keep throwing them extremely basic and frankly time-wasting fights. Both are unfair, but for slightly different reasons. The former becomes unfair when combat is a painful drudge of an experience that nobody truly likes to engage in. People will quit playing if they feel that the fighting is unfair and just not worth even going through. It devalues the fun of it by forcing the players to suffer through a rather uncomfortable experience that's too challenging and frequent to let them really enjoy the play. Conversely, with the latter, you hit an issue where the players start to feel like there's no point to what they're doing anymore (and, to a point, that's the case; with an experience-based system like D&D, constantly butchering Goblins for dozens of fights in a row feeds minimal experience after a certain point, functionally making it useless) and that they might as well not try. What's the point of playing if there's no challenge to it all?


... To maybe conclude and help address your concerns, I think that DMing is reaching a happy medium. It's a process of addressing challenges and overcoming them, as well as breezing through fights that might have been fatal for the players some time before. It's a sort of synthesis of the two extremes; presenting a challenge to the players with difficult fights, while also not reaching a point where there's no fun and easy fights to engage in.


What I'm really getting at is that you shouldn't keep going on with mook-ish enemies for the entire game, because it kills the fun. But the opposite extreme isn't very fair to the players, either. Food for thought!

 

[Quilboarian]

Well, for me, I usually have free roam-oriented roleplays which lack quite a few D&D elements, such as stats and levels. It's home-brewed, I think. Anyway, tends to not be fantasy- it's often modern, post-apocalyptic or dystopian.


Based off a couple zombie-themed roleplays I did a few years ago, a lot of people seemed to die (when it wasn't outright stupidity) from underestimating NPCs. Quite a few players met their doom by believing that they could just go ahead and pick a fight with military personnel and be fine. I always portrayed armed government groups as being something that should be avoided entirely, because you were simply no match for them.


I haven't done any real roleplays on forums in awhile though, aside from a few short ones. Although, since I'm sort-of starting up again, I've been trying to make it so NPCs have their difficulty based on how hard they would probably be to fight in real life. Sometimes, they would be very hard to fight. But that's why you don't try to slaughter everyone in your path all the time.

 

[Alexandra]

Well, with the "chosen one" archetype, then yeah; I'd say they win because of manifest destiny. I like to try and move beyond that kind of archetype, and encourage my players to think creatively when encountering a problem. Scaling encounters and antagonists correctly is important, and sometimes players have to get their characters killed a few times before they learn to recognise they're biting off more than they can chew. It's a learning curve.


There are many kinds of power, and you generally have quite a few options to mix and match from. I personally love the Wikipedia article for Social and Political Power for helping me pin down how all NPCs in general run things, not just the antagonistic ones, because someone neutral to the party can become an antagonist if pushed too far. Villains with proper motivations are one of my turn-ons.


For the big encounters, I always encourage my players to do some recon or research to find out what they're dealing with; then they can do some risk assessment. Does he have access to unusual technology? And a personal army? In a secret mountain base? On an island shaped like a skull? Then my players shall have to plan accordingly. I like to run the planning in a mix of in and out of character; I'm very much of the "we're all in this together" school of GMing. I make sure my players know whatever resources (if any) are available to them, and try to get them to think creatively. For instance, before storming Skull Island, they'll have to know what the geography looks like, and how many men Baron Von Todt has at his disposal. What about his death ray?


For the smaller encounters, often with NPCs broadly classed as mooks, I tend to ask for some rolls that might help the characters notice whether or not the other group is better armed, has backup waiting nearby, or if the entire combat can be avoided by offering a bribe.


If all else fails and your players are hell-bent on their own destruction, there is usually some kind of stat in-game that can help it not end quite so badly - the Common Sense merit in WoD, an Idea check in Call of Cthulhu - and so, as GM you can tell a player that their character is getting the feeling they may be moving towards certain doom.....

 

[Quilboarian]

Yeah, I like to do stuff like figure out how NPCs interact with each other. They can have different levels of structure depending on if they belong to a real faction, or if they're just a small grouping of individuals. It could range from figuring out how well a tiny group of bandits get along with each other and who leads them, to figuring out how an entire military functions, with each squad perhaps being slightly different.


And despite me really disliking the outright "chosen ones", I understand that it's good to keep the players from being dominated by NPCs, as well as giving them advantages here and there. Though, I always make sure there is a plausible explanation included, even if it's just a coincidence that I made happen. Zombies could conveniently start fighting the bandits that are after you, or the soldiers you encounter might not have some of their equipment on hand because they were slacking off.

 

[AkuTheWolfOkami]

Ah. Now this is a curious question, and I'm guessing it refers to PvE, or Player vs. Game, or whatever you may classify it as.


For me, considering I run most free form roleplays, it depends on the level of the roleplay. Touching on what inq said, the leveling should be about what they can handle. Which, because I am a competent writer, I can write up an NPC or two, that can engage in combat with the player and be about equal. In a casual roleplay I may make it obvious that your character will have no chance against an NPC much like D&D and many MMO's (even Destiny does it..stupid game..) .


Yet, in a detailed roleplay, outside of skills, abilities, training etc. listed in an NPC character sheet, I may not give you the slightest hint that this NPC may be a little too much for your character. You aren't afforded that opportunity in an actual situation, and I expected as detailed roleplayers for them to be smart enough to discern that a Veteran Marine Officer might be a little too much for an Enlisted Private or Cadet.


I suppose, the skill of your NPC's depends on what you want from your roleplay. If you want to kidnap the players, it'd make more sense to have extremely skilled NPC's to increase the chances of success (in a realistic capacity).

 

[NoviceOfRoleplay]

Well for my roleplay I thought of a genius mechanic-though waiting for approval from admins to do it. A yugioh roleplay were you actually duel when your characters duel.


A guaranteed strength growth because a player will learn other role players strategies and try to figure out to beat them in a different encounter. Bosses are always equal to a players strength, amazing. Of course having to use a third party website has to go through admins.

 

[AkuTheWolfOkami]

Novice. I did that in an role play using dueling network as the medium


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[NoviceOfRoleplay]

Ehh, knew it had to have been done before. How did your role play go?

 

[AkuTheWolfOkami]

It went fine. However it actually takes away from the role play especially when duels are often and especially when playing in the advanced format.


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[NoviceOfRoleplay]

Well I was thinking of having scheduled time openings when you could duel each other. I think since I was planning on using duel portal so we could use custom cards. Of course I would approve what cards are created and players would have the choice to instead pick of 1200 pre approved cards. Entirely custom cards so players are equal(sorta). Though that 1200 looks scary to dig through and worried players aren't in it to make custom cards.

 

[AkuTheWolfOkami]

If you're going to do the custom card things, let me know. I'm not familiar with duel portal, but if it's similar to dueling network i would also like to judge (not roleplay). I am really good with understanding and balancing YGO decks and rules. I also qualified for regional judging in the YCS circuit (didn't make it had stuff to do) so besides a few rules i need to check up on, I'd be a perfect judge :3

 

[NoviceOfRoleplay]

That would be great, I just got approval to use DP with my role play. Now gonna hunt down some serious role players.