Burials of Teganshire Post 2 of 30

Yesterday we talked about Player Character investment in the game world, adding extra sauce to the Player Characters’ adventuring shenanigans. Detail about the immediate world adds verisimilitude. By keeping things local, PC actions have a significant impact on the game world until, after a while, it is their shaped gameworld.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about Localized Campaigning, the Map Post, but let’s dive into products that take Non-Player Character descriptions to the next level–Griffon Lore Game’s very own Curse of the Lost Memories and Lenard Lakofka’s The Secret of Bone Hill. In the trifecta of Plot, Setting, and Characters, it’s the NPCs that can make or break your adventure backdrop.

Welcome to Restenford, home of the crunchy NPCs

Lenard Lakofka’s The Secret of Bone Hill is an excellent example of cramming a metric RPG-ton of roleplaying goodness into a sandbox. Indeed, there is an entire blog dedicated to ruminations about the location.

There are town and surrounding area maps, but it’s the NPCs (along with a good DM) that makes adventuring there come alive. Lakofka went out of his way to present NPCs with motivations, flaws, and secrets. He also had a list of rumors, both false and true. And the factions presented therein could generate conflict and drama with the PCs merely visiting one before the other. Restenford is The Village of Hommlet on steroids.

As I recall:

• The Baron was a good man but had his flaws, such as greed.
• A wizard rents one of the castle’s towers, so he lives there but isn’t necessarily the Baron’s man
• The Baron’s wife is a priestess with her own life outside of her marriage
• His daughter wants his position
• Retired vets that watch over the town their way complete with vigilante justice
• The spies
• Some crazy dude with a split personality, one good, the other thoroughly evil
• Etc.

Crunchy. The NPCs of Restenford are crunchy. They seem to generate conflict just by existing, and conflict makes drama and drama makes for great D&D. Stuffing such into the small environment makes Bone Hill a perfect module to model a sandbox location for low-level PCs base of operations.

10/10, will Restenford again.

The Tiny Crossroads Village of NPC Motivations

Griffon Lore Game’s Curse of the Lost Memories has a small village at the crossroads of two Roman-like paved roads:

At the Crossroads (isn’t this a great map? Click here to purchase the hi-res and VTT version) we have three farms that supply the village inn, the lord’s manor, and the stable. There are stats for all of the village inhabitants and any noteworthy callouts. But more important to the DM are three key factors where each important PC has a:

1. List of Motivations 
2. “What they know” description
3. PC disposition list (what they do if they are Friendly, Neutral, Indifferent, Hostile, etc.)

Again: Conflict causes action. Action causes drama. Drama is a thing that turns the backdrop of your adventures from a two-dimensional picture to an engaging experience using dice.

When NPCs have their own motivations, they will cause conflict with other NPCs, the PCs, and even–on occasion–themselves. Motives don’t necessarily need to be listed in a neat paragraph, but certainly used throughout an adventure or setting.

Let’s use an example, the Viscount Marris Argona from the Viscounty of Kandra Gazetteer.

Viscount Marris Argona

Marris Argona is the current Viscount in Kandra. He was appointed by the King about eight years ago after the previous Viscount died. He is married to Lady Felren, a low-level, but valued priestess.

 Argona is a diplomatic man in his late forties and has a quiet intensity to him. He is friends with the King and has a reputation of careful thought in times of peace and decisive, strategic thinking in times of strife. It was a surprise that the King appointed Argona, whose family ruled the small town of Semelen, over more prominent and experienced horse-lords when the Viscounty title was in play. Argona still faces political tension and must continuously prove to his horse-lords that the King has made the right choice.

Motivations

• • • Keep Kandra safe. Maintain investment in the military to defend the northern borders from humanoids.
    • Control the witches, so they continue serving Kandra. Give them some of the lands they ask for while preventing them from branching off into a separate nation.
    • Maintain the proud and independent horse-lords’s loyalty to the crown.
    • Manage the influence of the neighboring, over-religious Duchy of Hardred. Hardred is frustrated at the low importance of the clergy in Kandra.

Perspectives:

• • • The witch Kavita is both my best advisor and my worst enemy. I am scared of her.
    • The dwarves are a potent and robust power in the Viscounty. I need to reinforce their role in Kandra’s politics and use them to balance the power of the witches.
    • I am worried that the druids do not have a counter-power in Kandra. They are currently friends and allies to the Viscounty. However, should that change for any reason, I’d be in a weak position to push against them.

You can find the description of the Viscount and more in the Viscounty of Kandra Gazetteer, free to backers of the Burials of Teganshire adventure on Indiegogo.

Another example is Sir Walshan, the Knight of the Crossroads:

Walshan has base and clichéd motivations, but they are legitimate, given the circumstances. However, the last paragraph in his motivational list is most telling–he gives PCs practical advice that, if followed, gives them an advantage in the Curse of the Lost Memories mega-module: establishing a base of operations is almost a necessity. PCs that do not do so usually wind up dead from attrition in the Lost Barony of Wailmoor.

Tying it all together

NPCs that have motivations, perspectives on their present circumstance, and listed dispositions seem to breathe independently. The DM can portray them as people that live their lives as the PC leave an area and come back.

It is a daunting task to outline an NPC (and in a module, bloat your page count). For Burials of Teganshire, we don’t list NPCs dispositions due to the fast and furious nature of the task at hand (save the bridge!). But in the follow-up module, we sure will, as if the PCS were mean to the bar owner of the Bouncing Mutt, she isn’t going to give them free beer for a job well done, or that the man in the corner keeps looking at them as if he was thinking about which PC to backstab first.

And that’s another reason to start small when starting a campaign. Fleshing out a ton of NPCs this way is an excellent way to fall asleep at your desk. A localized campaign will keep your players coming back for more, without a ton of prep work that may or may not become useful as the PCs engage the adventure.

Burials of Teganshire Adventure Module

The village of Teganshire is small, and we present a few NPCs of worth (with more to come in the next installment!). These NPCs present an aura of living there, rather than serving as a quest giver with an exclamation point over their heads. Right now, they are breathing. Soon they will be crunchy.

Purchase Burials of Teganshire by backing our Indiegogo campaign, both in PDF, softcover, or both.

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