To be ... or not to be ...

[Polanski]

To be ... or not to be ...

Greetings folks, this one is a little bit tricky. After last night session (an additional session that I like to ran from time to time, for character development only) I ended up discussing the vision of our characters with one of the players till something like 12.30 at night.

Now I was wondering about your opinions, I understand that to answer the below question one must think a lot about it, but I am hopeful to hear from some of you.

Who is your character and how do you make him/her do things? How do you decide what kind of moral code, skills, drive they have? What makes them tick?

Sounds tricky, so let me explain.

I currently have a GM character (a character who is closer to a PC than NPC as she is ran by the rules of the game, same rules that effect all players).

Now being a male, I found in quite interesting to play a female and am quite attached to the character, but it took me a while to summarize how exacly does she works.

Some people say that their character is the extension of them, an image of them as they would see themselves as Starfleet officer, others create a character for a role playing only and are quite capable of running a character that is completly different to whom they are in real life ... how do you go about it?

How do you answer all those difficult questions for your character?

Kind Regards

[Ineti]

You've got a lot to this post...it's almost like two questions, one related to your own character, and another related to the NPCs.

I can say that when I narrate, I try to make the NPCs interesting people, not just cookie cutter stock characters. If I have a captain, an XO, and a CMO all as PCs, the other department head NPCs and key NPCs are going to need to be every bit as strong and developed.

As for my own character, that's a different story.

The longest-running Trek series I was involved in was "The Athena Chronicles." I co-Narrated the game with a good friend of mine. I played the captain and he played the XO. We'd take turns running episodes, which gave us a 50-50 split playing and narrating. It worked out great.

Anyhow. I created my character, Captain Robert Delacourt, from the ground up using the Icon rules. I sketched out every key detail of his life, and as I built in skills and tours of duty and such, a personality developed based on his life experiences. By the time I got him to where the series would start, he was almost 100 percent fully realized in my head.

Initially, Delacourt was significantly different than me. But, as the years progressed and I continued to play him and watch him react to whatever the episodes threw at him, and developing him, pieces of me crept into him. I like to think that bits of him rubbed off on me too.

What made him tick, what drove him, was built into him during pre-series visualization and character generation. I worked out that he had had several tours of duty before assuming command of the Athena, and I made sure something interesting happened during each tour.

One tour, a battle with Cardassians killed off his fiancee, something he never fully got over over the course of the series. One tour he was infected with an incurable disease that he needs regular medicine for. And so on. All the events he experienced helped to shape who he was.

Anyway. I could ramble for hours. Hope this adds some insight.

[pesterfield]

Lt. Cmdr. Santiago is the ships chief science officer, I'd say he has his own personality.

Our ship allows families and his daughter was introduced as a spur of the moment idea in the second episode.

A romance, or at least flirtation, with the ships security chief appeared to have started on its own. So far it's a shoulder brushed here, telling glance there.

It's been four years of play and so far his first name is still a mystery.

[Polanski]

Anyone else?
Come on folks

[Owen E Oulton]

Little alarms always go off when I hear a GM say that a particular NPC is more like a PC than an NPC. Maybe I've played too much under GMs who have personal PCs in a campaign who basically are the stars of the game, relegating the players' PCs to supporting character status. I'm sure that's not really what you meant, but it's something I'm leary of.

I have four categories of NPC - they can be closely correlated to character types on the various series. They are as follows (may as well list PCs as well, to complete the comparison):

Player Characters - Series stars (Kirk, Picard, Data, Quark, Harry Kim, T'Pol)

Major NPCs - Series regulars and recurring villains (Saavik, Lwaxanna Troi, Q, Kor, Ro Laren, Nog, Dukat, Seska)
Recurring NPCs - Background characters (Kyle, Keiko O'Brien, Bariel, Brunt, "Moogie")
Occasional NPCs and Major One-shots - Named extras and guest stars (Kevin Riley, Vic Fontaine, Admiral Ross, Kahless)
Basic NPCs - NDEs non-dialogue extras (Crewman number 6)

The first two categories of NPCs get full stats, with the first type getting a full writeup as for a newly-rolled PC. Major events for these types of NPCs are tracked.

The third category gets full Attributes and major Skills and Traits. Major events which directly affect PCs are tracked.

NDEs get Attributes as required, defaulting on racial norms as modified by t6ype of character. Skills and Traits default to career requirements.

In my Relic campaign, the Runabout crews, Commander Samson and Gurrrps are Major PCs, as is Moebius. The rest of the Dyson Base and Duck Blind One crews are Recurring NPCs. K'Tahl and K'Vahl, a pair of TOS-style Klingons they rescued from captivity, are Occassional/Major One-shot NPCs. The H'ranna are all NDEs.

The closest any of these come to being "GM PCs" are Commander Samson, simply because she is the character who will be interacting most colsely with the PCs, as their immediate superior; and Moebius, being the major antagonist. Gurrrps is the comic relief, my chance to let go and have some fun, and a bit of a travelling deus ex machina. They're still NPCs, but because of their roles in relation to the PCs, I have to get more into their skins and actively role-play them as opposed to other NPCs who generally operate withing a set paradigm.

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
Little alarms always go off when I hear a GM say that a particular NPC is more like a PC than an NPC. Maybe I've played too much under GMs who have personal PCs in a campaign who basically are the stars of the game, relegating the players' PCs to supporting character status. I'm sure that's not really what you meant, but it's something I'm leary of.

Oh come on---Not all GM's PC's are bad Owen, I'm the primary GM in my group and I do have a PC (two actually but one is just a crunchy for fun ). When I'm running the game my character rarely comes into play execpt as "Recurring NPC" sometimes even as a "NDE" as you called them. However, as I said 'I'm the primary GM' I'm not the only one (sometimes I like to just play), beleve it or not this has worked quite well with my group. Every thing that introduced in to the game is noted in the ongoing...umm...log for lack of a better word.

To defend your comment I have also incountered DM/GM/Whatever's that have a NPC that is sooooo spot-light-ish the game really sucked - "The Chris and Ryan Show" Chris = GM, Ryan = He who got ALL the talk time (Chris basiclly had a bad and misplaced case of hero worship).

[Dan Gurden]

I am much like Owen with My NPCs... There are several Layers, from fully developed characters as Important NPCs in the characters lives, down to the bare bones of a walk-on...

The Major NPCs will receive a full on charactre generation, history, personality, and as a GM will be used against the PCs (for the major Bad Guys), or help them as friends, mentors, contacts. These are the regular fixtures in the characters lives or the plot.

Minor NPC's and Mooks will be bare bones. A Basic template/overlay, maybe a little bit of personality, and a skill tweaked here and there. These will be the pre-prepared NPCs that I know should turn up in the course of the plot.

Walk ons are simply that, the redshirts, goons or whatever who are encountered but unplanned. These will have a species template and overlay and a default personality (Hostile for Goons and Obediant for Redshirts). While I may issue a default personality, I do not however let them be stupid. While looking behind that rock over there is fine during a planetary survey, they will not however form a human wall to protect the Playres from hostile fire... Just as the Goons may retreat rather than fight to the death if it is an option...

Between adventures I tend to allow surviving NPCs to increase a skill/stat/etc. Just the single increase, nowhere near as major as a charactre, but over time it helps to develop them, and can even turn a Minor NPC into a Major NPC, depending on player focus, just as a lack of focus by player characters may result in the relegation of others...

Of course sometimes NPC's can simply be too forceful and created just right. Right now on the Venture, I have a situation where an NPC personality is making things... Interesting.

The situatoin is that a Tal Shiar agent is working alongside the Starfleet crew, now as a Patriot he is following his orders to help, but as a Disciple of D'era he is rather disdainful of the perceived weakness of the fedreation, and holds a downright hostile (almost combatative) attitude. So far he has offered his help and advice, and offered non-starfleet alternatives... Things he could do, but they couldn't... But things have escalated. Whenever this NPC is about play focuses on him, rather than the real danger of a saboteur that he had been sent to aprehend. And I feel that while an intreesting charactre meant to expand beyond the norm of white hat/black hat... He has worked too well.

The important thing to remember is that the NPC is simply a tool. A means of aiding the storytelling. Sometimes this will mean that NPCs are on hand to pick out the clues a player missed, or simply show how the monster works. Once they become more impotant than the central cast its time they got taken on by a player or moved on to their own corner of the universe...

[Silverthorne]

Usually the only way I get to play is to play/run. I am the only gm in my area that runs anything other than D&D or d20 Star Wars. So I have gotten into the habit of making a character with the other players. It gives the DM an out, when players get stuck and turn to the DM the character can look back and flat state, "What are you looking at me for, I was not there."

[el queso]

I agree about 'layering' NPC's.
I have one NPC who I rolled up as a test when I first got the book who will be my character when one of the players is a 'guest-writer' for the episode. He's a bajoran-betazoid who is overenthusiastic and loves his job commanding the saber-class ship that is used on the colony that the characters are in.

My group is running two games, one as Upper-Decks personnel and one as Lower-Decks crewmen. These are the characters:

Upper Decks:
- Captain Tina Williams - The head of the colony, she is the only member of the crew to meet with the 'ancients' that live under the ruins. She was altered by them to act as a 'trigger' in the ruins allowing her to control orbital weapons in the planet's three moons that have the potential to destroy a whole planet. Tina is an avid tennis player and has a hatred of Romulans (the reason the Romulans requested her for the job).
- Security Chief Zack Scarlet - As the name shows, he is a lot more gung ho. Nearly courtmarshalled by Starfleet during his career with them, Zack was hired by the Romulans to become part of their 'collaboration' with the Federation which ended up as the colony. He has a Ktarian wife who owns a cafe in the marketplace.
- Chief Engineer Kyle Hawkins - An overly-stressed engineer who runs the place like a dictatorship. He loves the station, but the technology is barely holding together and he's spending every waking moment fixing the station. He's definitely fixed life support and one of the lifts, but everything else needs work. He specialises in Klingon culture and builds model ships.

Lower Decks:
- Abbey Fortune - A security ensign who was assimilated by a borg probe trapped in the ruins. She has been 'fixed' by Starfleet and rejoined active service as part of the crew. Ensign Fortune is silent, a bit shy but with her new friends is growing a lot more as a person (she was only a borg for a few months, not as long as Seven of Nine). Her friends don't know she's an ex-borg, except for an NPC described later).
- (I've forgotten the name) - A Brikar security ensign. One of the races that have been used in Peter David's New Frontier books. At the moment he is pretty much a carbon-copy of Zak Kebron, but I'm bringing him out of his shell whether he likes it or not. At the moment he mostly serves as a shield for the rest of the group.
- (I've forgotten the name) - A Denobulan (I can't remember how to pronounce the species), the same race as the irritating doctor from Enterprise, but a female one. She's got a daughter from one of her marriages (they marry in threes) who is far too smart for her age and has tried selling her classmates. She used to be a merchant before joining Starfleet.
- Alex Nevvin - A Centuran science ensign, he's the only one who hasn't been converted to CODA yet as the player hasn't been in a CODA game yet. He's a trickster and likes playing jokes on the group and their vulcan room-mate. He helps play up the "saved by the bell - in space" feeling that the players like in Lower Decks.


My 'core' NPCS are:
- Q - A young female Q who went rogue, terrorised my players and was made mortal. She's now being punished by the Continuum to live as one of the crew for the rest of her life. She's used in my lower-decks campaign.
- Ensign Peterson - The colony's lifts barely work so Peterson and the other flight officers have to ferry people around. He drinks at the local bar and gambles far too much. He's in both games.
- Omal'tohon - Time for a little leap of faith. A Jem'Hadar ex-borg. No longer dependent on Ketracel White, quiet, contemplative but discriminated against by the crew (it's set in the Dominion War), Abbey's only friend that knows her secret. Another Lower Decks campaign.
- Remalak - I think this is his name. The first officer. The station is from a Human/Romulan Alliance in the Dominion War, he's a partial antagonist in the Upper Decks game as he is one of the commanding officers but the most suspicious person there.
- (a vulcan roomie) - Can't remember his name either, he's the poor victim of the gang's pranks, although he is a good medic and they really shouldn't forget that.

A lot to take in, one day I'll make a website about this campaign as it would make a brilliant and full setting, with these characters all as NPC's.

Charlie E/N

[Owen E Oulton]

" Oh come on---Not all GM's PC's are bad Owen, I'm the primary GM in my group and I do have a PC (two actually but one is just a crunchy for fun ). When I'm running the game my character rarely comes into play execpt as "Recurring NPC" sometimes even as a "NDE" as you called them. However, as I said 'I'm the primary GM' I'm not the only one (sometimes I like to just play), beleve it or not this has worked quite well with my group. Every thing that introduced in to the game is noted in the ongoing...umm...log for lack of a better word."

Ah, info you didn't include in your post - the character is your PC when someone else is GMing. That's a whole different kettle of fish. I've never been in a shared campaign, where two or more GMs run the game alternately. I've heard various accounts from people who've done this, but I'm not certain how well it works. Care to expand on this aspect of gaming?

As I said, I was pretty sure you weren't espousing the type of GM PC I've encountered - the two GMs I've met who were given to this are exceptions to the general run of things. One was so insecure that he absolutely had to make sure his character was the most powerful around, whether he was a player or a GM, and I'm sure he thought that everyone worked this way. I played once in each campaign and never played under either GM again.

[selek]

Perhaps it is because I am a control-freak and like to play God (ask my ex-wife ) or because I secretly want to be a writer one day, I am very careful of how and when I craft PCs and NPCs.
Like several others have previously posted, I layer my PCs based on how important they are to the series. I am careful, however, to make sure that the supporting cast are as fully fleshed out as possible, and allowing for future development. I am careful to craft the characters with realistic wants and desires, and realized (not just listed) flaws and quirks. Generally, I do my best to make the NPCs interesting- people I'd want to hang out with: love, hate, or despise.

[Polanski]

Interesting replies ...

However I would like to point out that some of them are out of subject. I was not asking for GMing advice (for which I am thankful regardless). I have a group of 5 players who have been with me for a very long time and keep coming back because of a style and type of games I ran...

I was wondering and I was interested in the way you impersonated your PCs (if you have them) and NPCs. What part of them is you and are you able to leave you mindset and create someting so much different than you yourself are.

Thank you for your posts...

Kind Regards
Daniel