Mentors, Masters, Villains and Sidekicks

[TickTockMan]

Just a quick Question- When you are creating important NPC's for your games, do you use the Lifepath and character development systems, or do you just assign the stats, traits and attributes you want them to have?
What about for monsters you burn?

Thanks in advance!

[Michael S. Miller]

Hi, TickTock.

You knew someone was going to say this, right? I mean, it's the answer to Life the Universe and Everything Burning Wheel these days, right?

WAIT FOR THE REVISION

Honestly, I asked Luke this exact same question six months ago, and he says "There's no trick to it. You don't have to burn every NPC from square one. Just do X, Y, and Z"

So I say "That's a neat trick. Write it down and you have yourself an NPC generation system."

And he did. It's in the revision. It, of course, rocks.

Until then, just take deep breaths and wait patiently.

[Kublai]

As a now-experienced GM, I never burn up NPCs except for the uber-most important NPCs. The rest of them are just given templates in my head. These templates get the following exponents in whatever skill or stat they are strong in: normal people get 3s, trained people get 4s, veterans get 5s, and badasses get 6s. For instance, a trained soldier gets 4s in his weapon skills and Physical Stats. A badass Doctor would get 6s in his Mental Stats and 6s in his healing skills. I've pretty muched memorized the PTGS for these numbers, too, but that was the hardest part.

[rafial]

As a grossly inexperienced GM, I must say that burning NPCs has so far been one of the best things that happened to my scenario planning process. Once you see how your NPC got to where s/he is today, suddenly their motivations become way more clear.

That said, I wouldn't give that treatment to cannon fodder, so I'm glad to hear that the all singing all dancing revision will have some guidelines for the quick and dirty.

[TickTockMan]

I am definitely excited for the revision, but we are already playing with the pre-05/05/05 system. I am sure the revision will be great, and I do have it on pre-order, but I was interested in the ways other people set up their games.

[Viper]

I tend to flesh out the important NPCs, and just assign a certain number of dice that I am going to roll for the thugs and cannon fodder. For example, street thugs might have 3D, soldiers 4, and elite soldiers 5. I roll that many dice for evrything, and keep a general idea of what skills they should have in my mind. It's easier than remembering a bunch of stats, and any npc of substance I make as if he were a PC.