Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?

saosmash

A lot of the times PCs try to bone the npc either because they have a story goal that relates to it or they think the npc is hot. I usually ftb when npc fucking because who even has the time, but I often ftb when PC fucking for the same reason. No more TS for me, I'm old and I go to bed early.

I'm not going to shut down players from the sexy avenue because I'm scared of what people will think, tho.

HONESTLY the puritans have so much to answer for.

krmbm

@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

The? No. It shows that it is A way to get story.

That's your opinion as a person that thinks inter-personal RP via staff NPCs is fine.

Mine (as someone who does not think it's fine) is that I just saw Sue get a cool new weapon because she went 18-holes with StafferBob, and I did not get anything because I don't enjoy that particular flavor of RP and didn't jump on StafferBob's putter.

I may be completely wrong and pettily jealous, but now I'm completely wrong and jealous over here, on a game where I'm more comfortable with how staff uses their NPCs.

Wizz

@faraday said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Sparks said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

I'd also say the other defining trait is that the NPC does not get to be the protagonist. The story you're telling is not their story; they're not the hero who saves the day...the NPC doesn't get to be Luke Skywalker. They could be Obi-Wan Kenobi, however.

I agree with you in theory, but I think on a MUSH it gets murky because the traditional protagonist/antagonist breakdown doesn't really fit.

Even in TTRPGs, having NPCs with major roles helping the PCs can be problematic.
For instance, I could see Ben Kenobi or Gandalf being a super-irritating "GM's Pet PC Masquerading as a NPC" type of character in a TTRPG. They're more powerful, they step in and save the PCs from conflicts at times, etc.

People talk a lot about how MU*ing has changed the way we play these games, so I mean, why not just make playing powerful NPCs a different tier of the game and administration itself? This obviously works best on a game with a lot of coded things like goals, an economy, etc because then you can transparently display a ceiling and requirements for what NPCs want to accomplish IC and what their GMs can plot for OOC that the playerbase can learn and understand.

Make a GM position itself sort of its own kind of NPC, with certain RP tags or whatever, that umbrellas over a certain set of related lesser NPCs that GM also plays? These tags would probably need to be very abstract, but they could also be fairly specific? "This GM is about JUSTICE!!!" Or "this GM handles the Old Gods and stories about the insanity of discovering the unknown" for example.

GMs have a clear responsibility to their part of the game IC and OOC, to run plots for PCs and develop their stories, but in doing so they get to still play in some sense by trying to forward the stories that fall under their GM sphere, which itself could be an abstract system if you wanted it to be, really -- think like Imperial Mysteries from Mage, very high level goals that are not at all "this incredibly powerful NPC just gallops on down and solves this problem," but "this NPC is restricted in the way it can interact with the world directly but still wants things, so it tries to influence the PCs who can possibly accomplish that change."

That could be interpreted in a lot of ways for a lot of different kinds of games, and seems pretty fun to me!

Derp

@saosmash said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

HONESTLY the puritans have so much to answer for.

To be fair, the Puritans had pretty active sex lives and were fairly open about it.

Speaking of ceilings, though, since @Wizz brought it up (although in a different context):

One of my main uses of NPCs is to keep some degree of control over the governance and theme of a game. This isn't a popular stance for many, who think that PCs should be able to hold all the keys to the kingdom.

But honestly, I've seen so many games go off the rails or just idle into oblivion once you stick PCs in the top spots that I'm not a fan of that approach.

The big-league spots will always be held by NPCs, because frankly I know how they'll react to certain things, and I know that they won't overlook various types of breaches of law/decorum because they want to avoid interpersonal conflicts. In this way, they are a ceiling, and a tool that I can use to maintain some semblance of sanity in the game I want to run.

There are many, many uses for staff NPCs, but ultimately, they are just tools for staff to use to tell the story they want to tell. Nothing more.

Thenomain

@Auspice said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

(actually I've never multi-scened when we RP)

I once (mistakenly, honest) let a TS pose slip through a firelizard puppet.

There is so much packed in that statement that I'm just going to leave it there and walk slowly away, around the corner, and break into a flat-out run.

Sparks

@bear_necessities said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Counterpoint: why would you use NPCs in the last situation? This could be easily accomplished and provide a better story for PCs to have the "master assassin" charge a lower level PC assassin to do this in order to prove themselves or move up in assassin society? Now you are providing story for multiple PCs and not making your npc a pivotal part of the story.

On some games, that's absolutely the right choice! It depends on game culture and circumstance. And I can come up with other examples than the assassin one, as well, for different game settings/cultures. There's no absolute example that works in every setting and every game circumstance; even your counterpoint to this specific example doesn't work for every game setting and culture.

Maybe the game has player secrets; there's a PC assassin, sure, but if they target another PC, even if the PC dies the player maybe tells people afterwards. Now people OOCly know that character is an assassin and find things to "notice" ICly and become suspicious. ("Gosh, Jane wears a lot of dark clothing and has a bunch of large rings. You know who else I've heard rumors likes that style? Assassins.")

In some game cultures, open PvP where another PC opposes (or kills) your character leads to all kinds of OOC drama; maybe everyone OOCly knows Jane is an assassin and that's fine, but you don't want Jane dealing with OOC shit on channels over this. Whereas if this thing was done to you by an NPC during plot, it can feel more like "story" and less like "Jane, who I still see sitting on channel and chatting happily, did this to me, the bitch. My next alt will be written with intent to destroy her."

Maybe you just don't have any PC assassins played, and there just isn't a PC to task with that. Maybe you have only one PC assassin, and they say they're OOCly not comfortable with the task because they're afraid of that possible OOC blowback from the target PC's player and friends. It doesn't even matter if that fear is justified; the target could be the nicest player ever OOCly, but the assassin player is carrying around trauma from a previous game where their life was made OOCly miserable after they did something IC to derail another's plans. (And I'd argue that if you force a player to play out something they are actively OOCly uncomfortable with even after being told of that discomfort, you're now doing GMing wrong.)

My point here wasn't "this specific example always justifies an NPC sleeping with a PC, and therefore NPCs sleeping with PCs is okay", which would be a tough argument to make with any example, but rather "I think saying an NPC sleeping with a PC can never serve story is not accurate; I can see places where it can serve story, so I'm not comfortable making such a blanket statement".

Thenomain

Double post for reasons of actual content.

@mietze said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Thenomain No, I don't consider someone throwing a bottle and another person getting hit by it in game purposeful in-game direction of the game, sorry.

Actually I wanted to ~~harp on~~ respond to this a bit, too.

Someone poses that it's a windy day and someone else poses an NPC losing their hat.

It's certainly not a purposeful in-game direction of the game, but it's flavor that goes toward making the game alive for me. The more that I feel my character is part of a world and not just a scene, the more I enjoy a game. I like immersion, and I like a story that is not just plot.

krmbm

@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

There is so much packed in that statement that I'm just going to leave it there and walk slowly away, around the corner, and break into a flat-out run.

Well, now you have to fail weyrlinghood and do the entire 12 weeks over again.

Auspice

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

There is so much packed in that statement that I'm just going to leave it there and walk slowly away, around the corner, and break into a flat-out run.

Well, now you have to fail weyrlinghood and do the entire 12 weeks over again.

Poor weyrlinghood experiences are, I swear, why a great many people idle out before they graduate.

krmbm

@Auspice said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

Poor weyrlinghood experiences are, I swear, why a great many people idle out before they graduate.

Almost like watching the Weyrlingmaster spend 12 weeks TSing with the newest goldie instead of running story for weyrlings isn't fun! <.<

silverfox

@Auspice

Weyrlinghood is flat out the absolute worst time to play a dragon rider imo. You are limited in what you can rp thematically and by rule, everyone is still judging you despite search being over, etc. It's the worst.

scar

@silverfox said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Auspice

Weyrlinghood is flat out the absolute worst time to play a dragon rider imo. You are limited in what you can rp thematically and by rule, everyone is still judging you despite search being over, etc. It's the worst.

Some of us have never gotten to play a dragon rider at all
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

Snackness

@scar I'd say we should fix that but...we can't.

scar

@Snackness I think we all know what I would do with a dragon, anyway. #GoTspoilers

Auspice

After a couple decades I finally got my dream gold and the game died during weyrlinghood so.

Fun times.

I'd transfer her somewhere if there were somewhere to go. I liked being SearchCo during the days I did that on StS and HT. Designing dragons for people was hella fun.

Snackness

@Auspice yeah there just aren’t (m)any Pern games left worth playing.

Ngl i’d play one if there were.

Thenomain

@Auspice said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

There is so much packed in that statement that I'm just going to leave it there and walk slowly away, around the corner, and break into a flat-out run.

Well, now you have to fail weyrlinghood and do the entire 12 weeks over again.

Poor weyrlinghood experiences are, I swear, why a great many people idle out before they graduate.

I was one of those assholes who got picked out of the crowd. By a bronze. I'm more embarrassed about that fact than the firelizard bit.

Ghost

@Thenomain said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

firelizard

I know a guy who got that once in Thailand.

BA-DUMP...

...MURDERED.

Sunny

@krmbm said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

@Sunny said in Difference between an NPC and a Staff PC?:

The? No. It shows that it is A way to get story.

That's your opinion as a person that thinks inter-personal RP via staff NPCs is fine.

Mine (as someone who does not think it's fine) is that I just saw Sue get a cool new weapon because she went 18-holes with StafferBob, and I did not get anything because I don't enjoy that particular flavor of RP and didn't jump on StafferBob's putter.

I may be completely wrong and pettily jealous, but now I'm completely wrong and jealous over here, on a game where I'm more comfortable with how staff uses their NPCs.

Why is this being presented as if it's a problem? If someone is going to be completely wrong and pettily jealous -- and behave in accordance with those feelings -- I don't want them on my game anyway, so it sounds to ME like in this scenario, literally everyone is winning.

silverfox

@scar

I still have a dragon just for you.