Tracking NPCs on a Ship/Station

[Liz Not Beth]

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[C5]

I intend to do it someday for my PC's ship, but never got around doing it. So far I only have the CO and XO, plus some stats for the PC's subordinates.
At least I'd like to do it for the PC's whole departments. May do it once we've switched to CODA, where character generation is a bit faster IMHO.

But that's a lot of work. This must have taken you some time!

[Liz Not Beth]

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[qerlin]

I did up a list f major NPCs in the departments so that the characters had some names of people they might interact with regularly. I come up with their personalities on the fly, but don't heavily develop them unless they start getting a lot of screen time. Otherwise it's "yellowshirt 1" in the credits, so to speak.

There are a lot of the 'Snuffy' family aboard...

[J.T Edwards]

As Chief, I have a full list of every person in my department (Operations) with full stats and varying degrees of background depending on that character's importance or how much I want to include them in my interaction with others. I also have shift rosters and ranks drawn up so that when it's 2AM and the sensors go off-line I know who is going to be on the case and what kind of reception the other characters are likely to get. I play different characters at different times and it is refreshing to not have to play the Commander all of the time for every little problem.

Doesn't help when the GM kills them off, of course...

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

I am in the process of writing up a premade ship with crew as I told you Liz, I will probably include a full complement eventually. I just need to find a way to generate NPC's,

[Liz Not Beth]

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[pesterfield]

When we introduce a new NPC we write the name and any other information down to keep from having a different crewman pop up whenever we need an NPC to fill a position. Sometimes this can grow to more.

Once our science officer wasn't on the bridge so NPC Mike Kee took the station, then it happened again, and a few more times. So we made him XO of the science department.

He also turned out to have family connections that got a few crewmember out of hot water once.

[Phoenix]

Well in the USS Fleming game, we have a real short (4 per page) summery write-up on every NPC on the ship. Most every thing was rolled up compleatly random (we picked names...). There are 3 NPC's that have full write-ups, but they are just fun characters not major, and a few more (5-ish) that were PC's but the players moved away, we just kept the character active.

And like you said, we didn't try and do this at one time.

[Diamond]

I list every crewmember, but only have one line on each, so the ship is taken care of with a single front+back page. Of course, I have a full writeup for all the significant NPCs - but it's name, species, rank, and brief personality description/specialty for everyone else.

[Diamond]

I list every crewmember, but only have one line on each, so the ship is taken care of with a single front+back page. Of course, I have a full writeup for all the significant NPCs - but it's name, species, rank, and brief personality description/specialty for everyone else.

[Ineti]

I do that, but not to that extent. I create NPCs for the senior staff positions not occupied by a PC, then 2-3 NPCs for each PC's department. If the players want to fill out thier departments and make up names for their staff, I'm all for it and often award XP for that sort of initiative.

With the 2-3 NPCs I make up for each staff, they have a page write-up covering basic history, personality, and any role-playing notes my co-GM and I need to know to keep the character consistent whether I'm running or he's running. And each NPC has key stats--not a full-blown sheet.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

Posted by Liz not Beth:

We tend to do wacky names, like Ben Dover, Markus Expendable, Ivana Seamoor, Amanda Reckkonwit and so on...

I don't have a full crew roster, but certain guys do have names and personalities. There was Lt. Ben Dover who was a environmental ops officer on the bridge who kept complaining about back pains which the CMO PC had to treat.

There was Ensign Mustapha. An engineer who was deathly afraid of the PC's and said he knew about the "Red Shirt Kirk thing".

There was also Ensign Max Little, a lowly red shirt, who always volunteered to go with the captain on away missions or with the PC's no matter how dangerous it was. Got injured on every mission.

My PC's always get to meet the more eccentric members of their crew first.

[Captain Novaes]

I used to co-gm a post-DW campaign set in a Galaxy class ship. While we never had the time to establish every name of every crewmember on the ship, I did outline most *officers*.

There were dozens of them. Some got full-blown charachter sheets, others had only names in a callsheet. All were divided by branch and rank and some by position.

The only problem was, I did this alone. The other GM would use the name sheet sparingly and usually created officers on the fly. Worse yet, since he never did understand the concept of Enlisted Personell (at least not in terms of Star Trek drama), he would constantly swell the numbers of the officers onboard. After a time, I just tossed at him the list and said: "OK, you agreed this would be a good idea, so the least you could do is USE the darn thing !!"

Pity the campaing died soon afterwards, but that´s another matter entirely...