{"id":25958,"date":"2019-11-25T23:59:49","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T12:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=25958"},"modified":"2019-11-25T23:42:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T12:42:44","slug":"an-excess-of-character-faster-npcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/an-excess-of-character-faster-npcs\/","title":{"rendered":"An Excess Of Character: Faster NPCs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Image by artbaggage<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

I was watching a time-shifted repeat of “My Cousin Vinny” the other day.<\/p>\n

I’ve written of this movie before – some 3 1\/2 years ago, in Review Roundup: Three Products Of Interest<\/a> – and of the impact of the profanity used by several of the principle cast members in their roles.<\/p>\n

To quote from that review:<\/p>\n

\nQuite a long time ago, I was writing something for one of my campaigns, half-watching something on Television (probably Formula 1) at the same time.<\/p>\n

When whatever the program was ended, I was deep in a train of thought and so left the idiot box to babble in the background. What started playing was a comedy – most of which leave me stone cold – that I would never have watched under normal circumstances, “My Cousin Vinny”. Much to my surprise, it gradually wrenched my attention away from what I was doing and held me riveted – when I wasn’t laughing out loud.<\/p>\n

One of the first movies I bought on DVD was, consequently, “My Cousin Vinny”. I was a bit surprised that it had an R rating but not excessively so – there were a number of sexual innuendos and references, not to mention Marisa Tomei’s ‘biological clock’ that would have definitely earned it a PG-13 at the very least. It wouldn’t have taken much to nudge it over the line.<\/p>\n

When I watched it, however, I found that it was so saturated with blue language that had been cut out of the version aired on television that it was hard work trying to work out what the characters were talking about. The characters may have been more realistic (in terms of a New York lawyer and his girlfriend) but the story was being swamped by the delivery system.<\/p>\n

I gave away that DVD, and recorded the version that had been edited for television the next time it aired. I still have that videotape. And I leaned a valuable lesson about the value of swearing in media and fiction.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, I am now looking to replace that videotape copy with a DVD since my VCR died a year or so ago.<\/p>\n

Consequently, I have watched the televised version on at least three occasions, only to find that the version now being aired is the uncensored one (normally, something I would normally be all in favor of, but not in this particular case. But I keep watching, and hoping).<\/p>\n

This time, instead of immediately hitting the ‘delete’ button upon making this discovery, I let the movie play on, hoping that time had raised my tolerance levels – after all, I’ve known people in real life who used a lot more blue language even than the foul-mouthed characters in the movie, and had no trouble dealing with them.<\/p>\n

But no, it had not. And so my attention began to wane, and my thoughts to drift. I remembered writing a review of the movie and wondering if it was ever published (it hasn’t been), and trying to remember what I had written about it. I found myself thinking that the problem was that the blue language ended up being the “dominant color” of the characters concerned, masking all the nuance beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

That, in turn, led to the thought that this was a case of an excess of character, and a demonstration of why that was undesirable. And then, as I usually do, I thought about applying that insight to RPGs.<\/p>\n

In the past, I’ve looked at NPC Descriptions, and asked, How Much Is Enough?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve written multiple articles on getting into character quickly, two of which are dedicated to NPCs: Three Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes<\/a>,<\/em> and, Getting Into Character pt 1: NPCs<\/a><\/em> (pt 2 dealt with getting inside the heads of the PCs<\/a> for various purposes, especially plot construction).<\/p>\n

And, in the past, I’ve provided tools for generating NPCs more quickly – The Ubercharacter Wimp,<\/a><\/em> and The three minute (or less) NPC<\/a>,<\/em> and Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep<\/a><\/em> being three of the most important and useful (I’m keeping this post short so that there’s time for readers to check out some of the other articles).<\/p>\n

It was when my thoughts about an excess of character connected with memories of the last of those, that this article began to take shape.<\/p>\n

You see, the thrust of the Partial NPC is about game mechanics. This suggested that there was an equivalent process for characterization that can and should be explored.<\/p>\n

How Much NPC Do You Really Need?<\/h3>\n

Okay, so the first question has to be, How Much do you really need? Once we have a minimum, we can look at generation methods, and any shortcomings that might manifest, and how to minimize them.<\/p>\n

Here’s the list that I came up with:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Enough Personality to make the NPC an individual.<\/li>\n
  2. Depiction or Description<\/li>\n
  3. Speech patterns and\/or accents and\/or languages<\/li>\n
  4. Something for the NPC to talk about.<\/li>\n
  5. An opinion on something to share.<\/li>\n
  6. How competent they are to do whatever a PC is likely to want them to do.<\/li>\n
  7. An attitude toward the PCs.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    For any given NPC that is not to recur frequently\/regularly, that’s enough – per appearance.<\/p>\n

      \n
      1. Enough Personality<\/h5>\n

      Sometimes this might take a line, sometimes two. Write in bullet points but put several on a line – this makes the list quick to digest.<\/p>\n

      2. Depiction or Description<\/h5>\n

      If you’re lucky, you have an image to represent the NPCs appearance. If not, you have to provide a description. The shorter and more succinct you make this, the more easily-digested it will be by the players. “Hawaiian Shirt, Shorts, Sandals, Cane Hat, and Sunglasses. 70 years old but still spry. Okay looks for age.” What more do you need? This example creates an image that reeks of tourist. You might add a camera around his neck.<\/p>\n

      Take the same description, minus the sunglasses, and add the word “faded” to the shirt and shorts, and ‘Deeply tanned’ after ‘spry’ and you have a fisherman from the tropics.<\/p>\n

      In truth, the shorts can probably be presumed; they aren’t adding anything much to the description. Or replace them with something more specific – “Cut-off jeans”.<\/p>\n

      3. Mode Of Communication<\/h5>\n

      Once the players have digested the description and any job title \/ function, the primary way that they are going to interface with the character is through speech. That makes this important enough to rate a line containing a word or two. Make them descriptive, but make sure that you can deliver on them – these are as much instructions to the GM as they are descriptive.<\/p>\n

      “Meek English, flatterer” is quite enough. “Passionate, Seductive, Italian” is equally vibrant. Note that this is a guide to behavior as much as to speech.<\/p>\n

      4. Something To Talk About<\/h5>\n

      The subject might not come up, but it can be alluded to, and small talk is a common way to pass any waiting time. So give them an interest or a hobby.<\/p>\n

      5. An Opinion<\/h5>\n

      Similarly, everyone should have a ‘hot button’ that provokes a response, positive or negative or neutral. That button might not get pushed, but the NPC is looking for an excuse to push it themselves – opinions love to be shared!<\/p>\n

      “Stupid weatherman on Channel 4 thinks it’s going to rain tonight, I’ve never heard such idiocy. Some pencil-pusher from out-of-town, that’s clear – any local would know that it won’t be until the morning sea-breezes push the cloud cover overhead, tomorrow morning.”<\/p>\n

      “Twickenspur for Congress! He’ll sort them out, good and proper!”<\/p>\n

      “Nixon followed the old adage, ‘it’s better to be thought a criminal than to be convicted and prove the point’.”<\/p>\n

      “Beige goes with anything.”<\/p>\n

      “The Daffodils are coming! The Daffodils are coming! Tickets go on sale next week! I’m so excited, I could just scream!!!”<\/p>\n

      6. How Competent They Are<\/h5>\n

      Presumably, the PC(s) will want the NPC to do something – it might be as simple as “Tell Mr Deerborne that I’m here” to “Let’s discuss your vote in Congress” to “Guilty or Not Guilty?”.<\/p>\n

      7. An Attitude<\/h5>\n

      Is the NPC inclined to be helpful, to be coldly professional, to be bureaucratic, to be mercenary, or to block or stifle the PC? Is it because the PC has dark hair, needs a shave, or has a large sword on their back? Are Elves the lowest form of Pond Scum, or the epitome of culture and civilization?\n<\/ul>\n

      #4-#6 essentially give the NPC something to convey, #3 gives a way to convey it, #7 gives a direction to the encounter, and #1 and #2 are about who the NPC is.<\/p>\n

      Depending on the actual outcome in play, opinions and attitudes may change. If not, they are likely to be consistent over several encounters with the individual in question. If the nature of what is required of the NPC changes, so may their competence to satisfy the request. Appearance tends to change day-to-day, at least in some respects – but perhaps not if the NPC is wearing a uniform. But dropping in some minor change is a great way to hand-wave at the passage of time – the NPC has had a haircut since the PC was here last, for example.<\/p>\n

      Problems<\/h3>\n

      So far as I can see, there are two potential problems with this approach that our generation technique will have to solve.<\/p>\n

      The first is Consistency. You can’t have someone be a Frenchman one week and from Quebec the next time they appear. Additional complications of this type can also occur with names that are not obvious in gender – someone named Jean, for example. Is that “Jeen” or “Zhawn”?<\/p>\n

      The second is also Consistency. Because there has been no attempt to get under the character’s skin and understand \/ define why<\/em> they feel the way they do, or like the things they do, it’s easy to adopt (sequentially) two incompatible pieces of characterization.<\/p>\n

      The most obvious way of solving this problem is to base one appearance on the previous one, but that means that character details can’t be stored where they are the most useful in play –<\/em> within the adventure, at the point of contact.<\/p>\n

      No, they need to be in a relational database, or a text file, or an indexed<\/em> ledger, or something, so that you don’t have to go searching for them when the next time comes around.<\/p>\n

      In theory, the database is the ideal solution, because it permits organization by all sorts of different criteria – “show me all policemen”, for example. But there are practical problems – trust me when I state that minor structural changes to a database can have a HUGE impact on the functionality and storage space required.<\/p>\n

      In practice, a website with hyperlinks on one or more lists is equally functional – give each NPC their own page, make a page on which all NPCs who share an important characteristic are listed (“Policemen”), link the names to the individual pages. But this is a LOT of work for anyone who has to do it manually, or who doesn’t know how to code a web page.<\/p>\n

      Almost as good is a loose-leaf binder in which pages can be added or removed to keep them in alphabetical sequence, and a page (digital is best) which indexes the contents various ways – a trivially simple spreadsheet, for example. Why? Because the spreadsheet can be sorted<\/em>, so you can combine all your lists into one.<\/p>\n

      There are other solutions, too, each with their own advantages and limitations.<\/p>\n

      What all these have in common are three traits: they are extensible,<\/em> meaning that you can add and remove information from an entry; they are extendable,<\/em> meaning that it’s easy to add more entries; and they are searchable,<\/em> meaning that it’s easy to find the one entry that you want when you have a hundred or more.<\/p>\n

      So, let’s assume that you have that sorted, and move on to the question of consistency from depth vs superficiality.<\/p>\n

      Anarchic Depth<\/h3>\n

      Anarchic depth simply means basing the next appearance of the NPC on the last one, and substituting new items as necessary – if they got used last time. So, if an interest was on display somehow in their previous appearance, you should have the NPC doing something different-but-related next time they are encountered. On the other hand, if the subject didn’t come up, you can simply repeat the characterization content the next time around.<\/p>\n

      This has an important function: it groups all the “interests” together, it groups all the “opinions” together, it builds up a wardrobe, all simply by listing each item sequentially. That’s hard to do with a manual document (you have to intentionally leave room) but easy to do with an electronic format.<\/p>\n

      Which means that you have two sources of inspiration available for a third appearance, three for a fourth, and so on.<\/p>\n

      This is THE fastest way to prepare an NPC for an encounter. But it represents only a minimal protection against inconsistency.<\/p>\n

      To a certain extent, that’s all right; humans are<\/em> inconsistent, and complex, and sometimes contradictory. But there are limits, and every contradiction makes it that much harder to extract rational foundations from the character.<\/p>\n

      For that reason, I would only employ this approach for an NPC making three or four appearances, maximum. Thereafter, I would turn to the solution below.<\/p>\n

      Organization<\/h3>\n

      Items 4-7, and maybe 3, all have the virtue of inspiring the question of “why is the character this way?” The more you dig into the psychology of the character, the more you can use the results to generate more entries within the ‘direct interface’ items with maximum consistency.<\/p>\n

      On top of that, there are other items that you can use as starting points – Education, Marital Status, and Occupation all come to mind.<\/p>\n

      If you are looking for them, you can often eventually find common answers to the “why” questions.<\/p>\n

      If you were to draw a diagram connecting these “why” answers, it would resemble a tree.<\/p>\n

      The problem is that it can take a good hour or more to create enough character history to resolve all those why? questions in a rational and coherent manner – and 99% of the time, 99% of that work is wasted effort, in terms of the PCs (or the players) becoming aware of it. Only if the character keeps<\/em> recurring can little bits and pieces build up into a larger picture.<\/p>\n

      So the real problem is one of matching degree of effort with needs. That becomes easy when you realize that you don’t have to do it all at once.<\/em> So long as you documented where you were up to, last time you worked on the character, it’s relatively easy to pick up where you left off.<\/p>\n

      I work on a 1:5:1 ratio, per appearance after the first.<\/p>\n

      That’s 1 minute of assimilating “where I was up to”, 5 minutes of digging deeper, and 1 minute of documenting. I might not need all that time, but if I make that amount of room in my schedule of game prep, I can be confident of having enough time to do all I need to.<\/p>\n

      In order to squeeze all the results from the 5 minutes of deep thought into just 1 minute of documentation, it’s necessary to summarize and synopsize extensively, and even to generalize a little bit.<\/p>\n

      That’s useful in this context because the next time you approach this character, the odds of you following the exact line of thought that you had running at the time you last worked on it are remote-to-nonexistent. The compression necessary to pack 5 minutes thought into one minute of documentation means that a merely similar line of thought is deemed acceptable.<\/p>\n

      The system works because by the time you have enough material synopsized that it takes you more than a minute to comprehend it, you should really be spending more than 5 minutes extending the character. It keeps your efforts proportionate with your needs.<\/p>\n

      The two minutes of lost time are a small price to pay for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      I was watching a time-shifted repeat of “My Cousin Vinny” the other day. I’ve written of this movie before – some 3 1\/2 years ago, in Review Roundup: Three Products Of Interest – and of the impact of the profanity used by several of the principle cast members in their roles. To quote from that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[67,288,74,89,91,95,96],"tags":[100,155,172,218,165,232],"series":[],"class_list":["post-25958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dnd","category-metagame","category-mike","category-npcs-etc","category-plans-and-prep","category-tools","category-write","tag-adventure-prep","tag-dd","tag-npcs","tag-pathfinder","tag-tools-techniques","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1toiD-6KG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25962,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958\/revisions\/25962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25958"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=25958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}