Hi there,
after a vivid RPG game last Sunday one of my players (who refers to himself as an adhering to detail fetishism proposed to take charge of some of our Ships NPCs, Given that he is an excellent Role player who gets in to the act in a pinch. And he regularly has been playing the redshirds under the command of his security officer, without me having to interfere. (He really plays the redshirts like persons who are not keen on getting wasted in suicide attacks, but with real conscience about their duties) So far he only has a List of names to work with.
On Sunday though he proposed that each player (evenly divided in all departments) should take on similar duties to give the NPCs more depth by "adopting" them. Aboard our Saber Class ship are about 40 more or less detailed NPCs. Each of my players would get to "adopt" about 8 NPC's. In the same instance my player asked to give them a least basic stats (most common skills and area of expertise) for each NPC to ease play.
While i can see the benefits, i abhor the amount of bookkeeping that tags along.
On the other hand the more detailed a NPC gets the less i am inclined to waste him. (I rarely inflict crew casualties at all, stressing the nonviolent part of star Trek as much as possible -so there is more brawling than phaser fire and fatalities occur mostly as in discriminating accidents)
Each player would administrate his adopted NPCs, but keeping an overall eye to it would lastly fall into my responsibility.
What do you think about that?