Games - NPC Decision Making - Basic Traits
As I started out I found, and recalled from years prior, that trying to fairly determine what any non-player character would do in any given situation that wasn’t straight up combat or a skill test to be the most difficult problem.
It's one thing to be a game master, as I almost always was, and making all the decisions for the NPCs so your players have a fun, exciting, interesting, and sometimes deadly, time. It's quite another to be directing your ersatz avatar in imaginary fantasy land while at the same time portraying all the other denizens.
That's playing solitaire while looking through the deck and pulling out the cards you want. I call that arranging cards on a table. That's not a game. Not to me anyway.
That's when I started reviewing solo roleplaying engines, supplements, and drivers.
First Principles - Motif Story Engine and Mythic GME
There are so many useful mechanics and tips in Motif Story Engine and the Mythic Game Master Emulator but the most powerful statements about SRP in both concern what I would call First Principles of solo roleplay.
Motif Story Engine puts forward the consideration of a story flow cycle. Each scene should be approached with a mind towards the Obvious, the Understood, the Invented, and the Questioned.
Mythic GME asks you to consider Logic, Interpretation, and Improvisation.
I won't explain in detail the authors rules but these princples, taken together, provide a powerful tool to surmount much hesitancy to engage with the potential action and drama.
In this case I decided if I immediately recognized a trope (the Obvious) then I would apply an oracle roll to the trope to decide if it was played true, subverted, inverted, played to its fullest extent, or supported with related tropes. That told me most of what I needed to know about all seven elements.
Sometimes I went to the TVTropes site to confirm or find what constituted inversion and subversion or what the obvious sub-tropes and related tropes were. Related reinforcing tropes would be applied for oracle results of TRUE+/TRUE++ and inverting the same for TRUE- or success with complications.
It helped a lot but didn’t cover everything and alone doesn’t provide quite what I’m looking for.
The rest of the dilema came down to what I already realized about NPCs but are summarized very nicely by these lines in Motif Story Engine.
“NPCs have their own lives, motives, and goals.”
“NPCs are dynamic creatures in a dynamic world. Let them do whatever they will…”
Identifying the trope tells me what’s happening in the scene or encounter. But it doesn’t always tell me how the NPCs react. Mooks usually play along. (I’ll detail in another post when and how to determine when that doesn’t happen.)
Character Traits – The Basics
For the most part, NPCs for your solo games should be generated on the fly. Only record only what is absolutely essential for interaction and only when they are immediately needed. With this just-in-time method you, the player, are:
- leaving as much mystery undiscovered as possible, and
- saving time.
But, in order to determine how NPCs will act in various situations, whether it’s a one-off reaction for a mook NPC or continued, logical, consistent behaviour for a player party NPC or recurring villain or background NPC you’ll have to do some record keeping.
The records we’re interested in are character traits. These are not the same as narrative first games where freely imagined descriptors are added to a character to provide both individualized flavour for the character at the same time as they tell players what the character can do. These are more like personality, ethos, morals, mores, and values. They’re going to tell us about who the character is, and how they would act. Over the course of play, as checks are made using these traits, the player learns more about the character. This isn't just about what or how they do something, but why they do it.
The first traits in most roleplaying games will be race, class, and alignment, or whatever descriptor your system uses, or your personal inclinations are towards. I’m going to use the most used conventional terminology.
There are of course game systems that eschew race and class. Usually some sort of background, heritage, culture, archetype, or similar exists. In which case use that.
Some players vehemently object to the use of a mechanism for simulating ethical/moral choices and beliefs. The concept of good and evil is inherently antithical to their own personal philosophy, or their contention is the concept is a social construct to allow control of society by an elite class.
I think that it’s particularly important that you implement an “alignment” system to create character consistency. How you define that alignment system is entirely up to you. Could be you define elitist is bad versus egalitarian is good. Maybe it's pinapple on pizza versus five meat and no veggies. It's your choice. The point is, have something that lets you decide quickly how the characters make ethical decisions.
It’s important to note at this juncture that a character’s religion, faith, and/or spirituality, might not align or be perfectly in sync with their ethos or alignment. And that itself is great opportunity for dramatic story telling.
Also, if you’re playing something that rolls race and profession into a single character class then they’re going to have the character class split into multiple traits.
Example - BECMI D&D
In later supplements, elves also belong to distinct nations and clans. The one-on-one adventure O2 Blade of Vengeance presents the player with the pregenerated 7th level elf Erystelle and places the adventure in the Emerlas Forest roughly located on the norther tip of the Great Canolbarth Forest.
Erystelle therefore has the following default traits.
- Trait, race, elf
- Trait, class, wizard
- Trait, class, fighter
- Trait, nationality, Alfheim
- Trait, clan, Feadial (I decided on this some time after playing O2, since the Feadial clan of Alfheim is central to the level 8 and higher module CM7 Tree of Life.)
- Trait, alignment, chaotic (I use the nine alignment system of AD&D rather than the three alignment system of BECMI.)
- Trait, alignment, good
The question is, how strong are those traits? Does he exemplify everything we think of when we think about elves? Is he very human or does he reject many elven cultural mores?
Now there are a couple ways you could go about this.
You could take your favourite oracle. Mine would be a d% with marginal values (yes, but/no, but) in the middle bands and exceptional values (yes/no and, yes/no and, furthermore) in the extreme bands.
For these default traits however I favour a 3d6 attribute score that results in a curve distribution for everything. If you want, you can change it around. 6+2d6, 12+1d6 if you already know they are going to be fairly or strongly true to stereotypes. Or you can just roll 1d6 or 2d6 if you know they aren’t like other characters of the same type.
Let’s take the plain 3d6 example and compare to the average of 10.5.
- Trait, race, elf (3,4,4 = 11)
- Trait, class, wizard (4,5,6 = 15)
- Trait, class, fighter (3,5,6 = 14)
- Trait, nationality, Alfheim (1,4,4 = 9)
- Trait, clan, Feadial (1,4,6 = 11)
- Trait, alignment, chaotic (2,3,3 = 8)
- Trait, alignment, good (3,5,5 = 13)
We have an average appearing elf that identifies as much with his elvish people as the next elf but less so with the nation of Alfheim. Perhaps he doesn’t see elven identity tied inextricably to the nation.
He is more strongly connected to being a fighter and a wizard. He’s not very mercurial but believes in being good.
If you want to add more personality, then consider the rolls in detail. Some suggestions and examples follow. I have arbitrarily chosen things for Erystelle because he is a player character. You can select for your NPCs or roll randomly.
- Each 1 indicates a negative aspect. Choose a subtrope that counters the trait or detracts from it, or characteristic that is particularly weak.
- Trait, nationality, Alfheim (1,4,4 = 9) – He’s not particularly invested in Alfheim being synonymous with elves as a people because he knows of many elven communities around the world and (1) pities the Shadow Elves even though they are Alfheim’s mortal enemies.
- Trait, race, elf (3,4,4 = 11) – He’s an average elf and (4,4) so much in that respect his love of the forest is very strong.
- Each 6 indicates a positive aspect. Choose a subtrope, or characteristic that is particularly strong.
- A six in both fighter and wizard indicates he identifies with and strongly embodies one significant aspect of both.
- Doubles or triples indicate twists, subversions, inversions.
- Trait, alignment, chaotic (2,3,3 = 8) He’s not very mercurial but maybe sometimes he just breaks out, snaps, or does something completely out of character or unexpected.
- Trait, alignment, good, (3,5,5 = 13) He’s pretty good most of the time but sometimes he does something exceptionally selfless.
- Trait, nationality, Alfheim (1,4,4 = 9) – He’s not particularly invested in Alfheim being synonymous with elves as a people but (4,4) he’s prepared to fight for it as the elven home.
- 3-In-A-Row – The trait is a particularly troubling part of himself (if low numbers) or something he takes pride in identifying with and fulfilling or pursuing.
- Trait, class, wizard (4,5,6 = 15) This is his highest score and the straight indicates he considers his destiny or calling to be magic. Or maybe he's obsessed with magic. At higher level he would probably pursue wizard class options for elves.
- If on the other hand it was 2,3,4 = 9 his identity as a wizard might be a little disappointing to him. We don’t know why. Later, at higher level, maybe he would pursue the fighter options instead.
- If it was 1,2,3 = 6 he probably actively resents his wizard abilities. He might go with the strongest armour and weapons, eschew spells as much as possible, and always pass on magical loot that wasn’t a weapon or armour.
Use Case In Play
Let’s take a hypothetical BECMI NPC dwarf that Erystelle might encounter. The stereotype is dwarves (1) love gold, precious metals, and gemstones, (2) hate elves, (3) hate goblins more, (4) hold grudges, (5) drink a lot, (6) either love to fight or prone to starting fights, (7) are very dour and grim, seem rude and standoffish, and (8) all of them have beards. That’s eight things. If we have a dwarf character with an 18 score in dwarf trait then that’s three sixes. Roll a d8 three times and those three things are true about your dwarf NPC in spades.
Hailing from Rockhome, the nearby kingdom of dwarves, Kuri Ledgerunner of clan Torkrest, our hypothetical dwarf, is as dwarfy as you can find. Additionally, she drinks ale, mead, and genivar to unusual excess, loves to fight almost more than drinking, and holds grudges for her entire life over the smallest things.
So suppose Erystelle (your avatar player charater) and Kuri (your non-avatar character) are adventuring together and they come upon a huge party of goblins. A lot more than you think two characters can survive battle against. Yet practically nothing Erystelle says or does short of casting sleep on the dwarf will prevent her from attacking the goblins. She hates them and she'll hate Erystelle for trying to stop her.
This is a roleplaying opportunity for the solo roleplayer. You're presented with a problem.
You can try to talk to Kuri. Reason with her. Use intelligence and charisma. Appeal to what she wants - to kill goblins. Figure out a plan and maybe you can demonstrate that elves are at least useful.
In this case I'd recommend opposing d20 rolls. The higher of Erystelle's bonus for Intelligence or Charisma versus whatever bonus an 18 attribute score for Kuri's trait value of dwarf provides. If Kuri has a high enough Wisdom or Intelligence score that she has a bonus then add that to Erystelle's roll. Reason being Kuri should have enough common sense that she wouldn't want to get killed before she's spent a long life killing her hated enemy.
Using 5th edition D&D if Erystelle has Int 14, Cha 12, and Kuri has Wis 8, but her dwarf trait is 18 then Erystelle rolls d20+2 versus Kuri's d20+4.
I rolled 3+2 and 10+4 so Kuri snarls something vile in dwarvish, spits at the elf's feet, then turns screaming straight at the goblins.
Now I'm presented with another conundrum. What is Erystelle going to do? Fortunately the elf is my character. I don't have to roll dice to make a decision. I just have to decide.
Maybe rolling dice would be easier.
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This article, in slightly edited form, was posted to r/solo_roleplaying on October 23, 2021.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Solo_Roleplaying/comments/qdu21j/npc_decision_making_basic_traits/
This article, and all others, are subject to the editorial whimsy of the author whenever he thinks, for whatever reason he thinks.