NPC's under PC Control

[Captain Otto]

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?

[Evan van Eyk]

Hmm, I am not so sure how this is supposed to work. What if one of the NPC underlings screws up and the PC is supposed to tell it to her straight, etc. Or in case of interactions the narrator still takes the role?
Additionally it could be difficult to play so many characters without getting into clishees and by that loosing the identity of the actual character.

What you really should do, though is give them faces. We tend to identify people by their visual appearance and therefore a character with a face is far more memorable than without.

[Pericles]

I guess it depends on how willing the other players are to accept this little extra duty. At a minimum if they come up with names and a couple discriptive traits, then that will give the NPCs a personality and make them individuals. The one player seems like he wants to go knee deep and I say let him, but I wouldn't expect all the other players to match his admitted detail fetish.

[Scorpion]

"Player-controlled NPCs" is kind of a contradiction in terms, isn't it?

Another thing to keep in mind is, this seems likely to slow the game down drastically.
You're talking about a lot of character creation, a lot more interaction, a lot more boardroom meetings between NPCs.

If I were Narrator and a player suggested this, I'd instead suggest: Have the players make backup characters in case their current ones got deeded, retired (player was bored with them), etc.

Maybe one or two characters for each department, maximum; department sub-chiefs would be a good choice (i.e. Engineering could have sub-chiefs for transporters, warp drive, impulse, etc.), and allow the player(s) to guest-star one of those characters from time to time, as plot required/allowed.

This reflects the series' "feel", allowing for a few Miles O'Briens (on TNG), Christine Chapels, and Janice Rands, without allowing _every_ character on the ship to be fully played!

[Captain Otto]

If I were Narrator and a player suggested this, I'd instead suggest: Have the players make backup characters in case their current ones got deeded, retired (player was bored with them), etc.

Each player has at least two characters already. But Once in a while we had diffculties to accomodate each player with a post where the ongoing action is, so to keep them commited i decided to give them NPCs to go along.
If they star to do something foolish,I put my narrators hat on and tell the Player that the NPC will not take unnecessary risks but instead most commonly report back for guidance and help. My players have so far adhered to this.

I guess it depends on how willing the other players are to accept this little extra duty. At a minimum if they come up with names and a couple discriptive traits, then that will give the NPCs a personality and make them individuals. The one player seems like he wants to go knee deep and I say let him, but I wouldn't expect all the other players to match his admitted detail fetish.

At least verbally i have two out of four players that are willing to try this out.
If it works out only half as good as i had experiences with it by now, i deem it certainly worth a try. They have been filling out the gaps of the crew rooster ever since i suggested to use them. Most of the NPC turned out to be designed after a clichè. So we actually had our first NPC in an Away team named after his position: James Seven. The players thought he would be dead by the end of the adventure, but instead he is still in good health, despited being performig Redshirt duties for more than 25 away team missions.

Another one made a memorable appearance showing up at his Duty station during an Emergency wearing a black SS-Uniform (It turned out to be the prelude to an Holodeck adventure a la Indiana Jones as the NPC admitted to be the author of a widely popular Holonovel series called "Pasadena Joe") -pun is really intended.

What if one of the NPC underlings screws up and the PC is supposed to tell it to her straight, etc. Or in case of interactions the narrator still takes the role?
Additionally it could be difficult to play so many characters without getting into clishees and by that loosing the identity of the actual character.

Well in that case i as the narrator would take over until the interaction is over.
But most of the time they enjoy interaction among themselves and sometimes all i have to do is to sit back and watch them conducting briefings and planning awayteam missions.
As for the clichees imho these cannot be avoided at all, i think there will always be clichee-style NPCs.

[Owen E Oulton]

Are you thinking of permanently assigning Ensign So-and-so and Lieutenant Such-and-Such to Player #2, so that they in effect become auxiliary semi-PCs, or would each player be assigned or draw an NPC or group of NPCs each session?

Would the NPCs in question be crew assigned to the PC (an engineering gang played by the Ship's Engineer) or NPCs from a different area of the ship (a redshirt played by the Ship's Medical Officer)?

I f I were to employ this option, I'd personally be inclined to allow them to run a PC with a consistent group of semi-PCs working under that officer.

As a secondary version, I'd look at each player having a set of consistent semi-PCs from various areas of the ship. In addition to his/her PC, each player would control a Security redshirt, an Engineering crewman, a Sciences tecjnician, et cetera...

Neither of these need be exclusive, of course. A player could have, say, the Chief Engineer as a PC, a few Engineering crewman, a Science tech and a redshirt.

In addition to the player's "regular" NPCs, there's no reason that you couldn't say "Hey, Bob, please run Security Ensign Fred on this Away team," but for the most part, I'd be inclined to have them run regular characters rather than random ones.

Dunno if this helps...

[Captain Otto]

Are you thinking of permanently assigning Ensign So-and-so and Lieutenant Such-and-Such to Player #2, so that they in effect become auxiliary semi-PCs, or would each player be assigned or draw an NPC or group of NPCs each session?

As a secondary version, I'd look at each player having a set of consistent semi-PCs from various areas of the ship. In addition to his/her PC, each player would control a Security redshirt, an Engineering crewman, a Sciences tecjnician, et cetera...

We so far have not agreed upon a consistent course so far. I wont see my players up until our next gaming session, taking place on Oct. 20th. But as far as I understood them, they were planning that each player adopts those NPC´s that strike their particular fancy. Their primary concern is to create a more familiar crew environment to interact with aka "adding some color and creating some inter crew relationships. They as well seem to be genuinely interested in having introspective adventures that will not revolve around external threats or exploration, they are apparently tired of espionage themes as well.

As of now the players proposed to make to versions of the NPCs one intended for the players, with stats, Personality, Hobby's etc. and another one containing a narrator version, that includes possible fears, unknown dislikes, and other small gems that are worth noting.
My only fear is that this gets out of hand and dissolves under its own weight....

[Tobian]

In a game I'm going to run shortly, I am going to give the players the option of making backup characters who will trail behind the main PC's and mean if they do die, they can jump right in (situation depending) with a new PC, which has a base percentage of XP,of their current PC: If they want they can even swap out their PC's for their backup characters, if they think they would be more appropriate for the new story. Since the game is modern horror, it's likelly someone will be killed; This means they don't have to suddenly justify a new character in the game, he's someone they all know and can even interact with if he specialises in something they need to know!

At the end of the day the way I see it is the experience is for the players not the PC's, so if they need to create perfunctory characters to plug the holes in their troupe (which is more common because of falling numbers of players!) it is however open to abuse if you let them get away with too much, and unless they are actual secondary characters, I think you need to make sure they only serve as autonomous beings. Sure, a ranking officer PC can order his staff around, and have them work collectivelly as a group under close situations, like combat, but under day-to-day duties he'd be the most hated officer if he micromanaged their evey movement!

The danger is players can abuse their 'team'. For one there's the dreaded 'telepathy', where all of the players's characters operate in a synchronised fashion, where they never disagree with their 'queen bee' and can synchonise perfectly in combat, without communicating verbally (and PC's can be guilty of this too, collectivelly - too much OOC!) Some of my players are often guilty of 'going solo' where they get bored, so they decide to wander off on their own and seek out the adventure themselves (which can be disasterous for them!) but if they have a self contained group, who all operate under their queen bee, then the other players are going to get annoyed as the player has a nice game all on his own with his team, and cutting the other players out of the action! I've seen players abuse as little as 2 PC's so I am wary of allowing them to run more than 2, and come to reply on the other players, so they enjoy a troupe style session, which everyone gets the most out of!

I think it's great that your players want to generate a microcosm life within the ship, creating a number of NPC's to fill it and making the ship more than just Ensign no-name # 27, and yes, if they are ranking officers they can of course manage their department, and hand out duties, and yes, every now and again, it's fun to break out of your skin, and try being someone else, while your main PC is off doing something else, but it could be dangerous to let them run all the NPC's themselves, or you could find yourself rapidly outnumbered!

[The Tatterdemalion King]

What if they adopted characters in different departments?

[Tobian]

True, but that could be even worse, if they decide to go it solo, because then they have a multidisciplined team, and can bypass the need for the other PC's Maybe this is a unique phenomena of my playing group: I suspect not!

[Jem'hadar]

I usually only have one or two PCs in my Star Trek campaign so I use NPC crewmen to flesh out the team & give the PCs some extra help.

I don't let the PCs control the actions or decision of the NPCs . That's under my control.

However, to make my job a little easier, I ask the PCs to roll on behalf of the NPCs. I do the rolls for all "opponents" of the team. I do let the PCs see the stat of the NPCs so that they have an understanding of their skills & abilities. My in-game explanation for this is that this team has worked closely for a some time & has learned each other's strengths & weaknesses.

I don't think I would ever let PCs control as many as 8 NPCs. That's just a logistical nightmare & will dramatically slow down the game.

Even in the Star Trek series, we rarely ever see large teams. Usually, it's the senior officers doing most of the work & getting all the screen time too. Sure, we know the ship has over 400 crew but most of the drama is with the 7-8 bridge officers.

Practically, of course, that makes no sense. Why have a crew of over 400 if only 8 people are going to do all the work? Don't they believe in delegating work?

So just like the TV show you'll have to suspend disbelief in a Star Trek RPG session. There may be hundreds of officers & crew members on the PCs' ship but make the PCs do all or most of the work. It will make for a more enjoyable game, which is the point anyway.

[Captain Otto]

As i said before the whole thing is only in its early stages.
And so far i only had them take on NPCs if none of their PC's was available on the scene to keep the players involved (which upuntil now was very rarly done since almost all the Players run two PCs preferably in different departments.)
I assign XP mostly due to PC involvment during the gaming session and Roleplaying in general. I also try to involve each PC into the missions, sometimes even going so far to have some episodes to center around PCs that got only little coverage.

As for the absing concerns so far i think i have been lucky as the players have taken it upon themselves to allways ask the captain for permission if they are about to use crew resources. Most of the time their discussion before hand leads them to create balanced Away teams, with an eye twoards PC involvement.

They always talk about wasting redshirts and stupid NPCs-Crewmembers who screw up, but so far they never put the NPCs in any danger their PCs would not equally face.

Another thing i can only admire about my players is that most of the time they are aware that there is no such thing like telepathy between PCs.
This results in a lot of radioing back and forth o keep everyone up to date. Only in some instances i have to remind them that the Crewmember in question has no knowledge about certain facts.

I guess so far i was really lucky