DM a a campaign

>DM a a campaign
>Put effort into NPC backstories and motivations
>No one cares about them
>Introduce random NPC to move the plot along like a maid or a secretary, or random NPC villains as random encounters like a bandit or just silly nonsense like a talking sword that flies and dreams of being an artist but keeps ripping up the canvas by accident
>Everyone fawns over them and tries to get them to join the party
>Forced to improvise backstory and motivation for them every single time
I just don't understand.

Welcome to being a writer. Most popular characters were just written as jokes or placeholders.

Players are strange, fickle, and capricious creatures. I've given up on trying to understand what makes them tick, and I only put the barest amount of effort into NPCs anymore.

Ayup.
Most PCs tend to be selfish.
They're the center of the Universe, and why the hell would they care deeply about anything else?
Especially if it takes more than a minute, or doesn't give them a reward.

Most players just enjoy the experience. Build the story around the PCs, not the NPCs.
The NPCs exist as support and to lighten the mood, so silly quirks on NPCs are the best.

Getting a group that cares about your world, NPCs, or story is practically impossible.
Remember, this is their game, not yours.

Jokes are because people like the joke and want more jokes.
Especially when it's something that only works the once and can't be kept up.

"Important" characters have to be what the plot demands they be, and so they tend to follow predictable archetypes and don't really have a ton of room to be individuals.

Unimportant characters don't have a narrative obligation to be anything and thus can be whatever they want. This tends to be alot more interesting than a predictable archetype the players can probably guess at a first glance.

Furthermore plot-important NPCs sometimes tend to make the entire plot revolve around them, and sometimes players don't wana deal with all that "baggage", they just something nice and comfy and casual. A low-stakes personal story that still feels fulfilling when they resolve it.

>a talking sword that flies and dreams of being an artist but keeps ripping up the canvas by accident
that is seriously charming. I don't know how you would expect your players not to get invested with that. It's even pretty detailed.

Came here to say this. That's honestly a really cute and endearing idea. Clearly and concisely conveys the character's motivation and struggle, while painting them as somewhat clumsy. Also flying sword. 10/10 NPC, would ask to join party.

Stop writing characters and assuming your players will like them or care about them.

I did this and it improved my GMing massively. I have a vague idea for every NPC I introduce, those who aren't liked fade into the background, those who are like get more fleshed out and developed dependent on how much the PC's actually care about them.

There are exceptions, of course, but generally I've just stopped assuming a particular NPC is going to be important, and instead remained flexible and followed what my players showed interest in.

This is really how I handle a lot of GMing aspects. Have some vague ideas, flesh out and adapt as you go depending on what players do. People, places, monsters, quests, etc.

> craft entire new world
> legitimately tie everyone's back story into kickoff session.
> Literally you are going to X town for Y reason, with Y uniquely adapted to each character.
> spend hours on original content, local and world maps, custom tables, preparing first three sessions and planning rough campaign arc.
> get players to table
> one of them notice a small island in a sea in the far corner of the map totally irrelevant to anything I've done prepared or intended.
> they drop any and all pretense of motivation, backstory, story hooks and do nothing but blindly head straight for that location, get nothing but a few random 1st level encounters and continually studiously ignoring any and all plot hooks I can think to throw at them.
> afterwards they all drop out because it was not interesting.

What happened?

Well, in flushing out the map I named things randomly. Dragon mountains. Plains of Krullscoon. Kobald Island.

Kobald Island.

kobald.

They were first level and first level characters start by fighting kobalds. Naturally they were going to spend game months traveling across the entire continent because kobalds.

> and that's why I don't dm

Flying sentient painter sword, too clumsy to fulfill it's desires? Drop whatever you are doing and backstory that glorious bastardsword.

>"Important" characters have to be what the plot demands they be, and so they tend to follow predictable archetypes and don't really have a ton of room to be individuals.

Fucking THIS.

When she needs to be the leader of an army or country or save the world, nobody cares about some mage girl's trauma from having grown up as a slave who was shown off as a "party trick" novelty and her struggle to cope with normal life again. No, she needs to suck it up and help save the world!

Meanwhile, make her a shopkeeper who has no bearing on the fate of the world, and suddenly she tugs at your heartstrings and the players want to protect her from any harm that comes her way, even if it's just some rival shopkeepers trying to sabotage her business or thugs who are keeping her out of the part of the forest she uses for alchemy ingredients. Yeah, the fate of the world, country, or even town isn't at stake, but somehow it's still way more compelling and interesting than another generic "kill the big bad evil demon/necromancer/dragon" quest for the 9000th time.

>NPC that makes the party laugh or is actually fucking useful vs. random jackass with long, boring, irrelevant backstory

Hm, I wonder why...

>Give players quest to rid orphanage of ghost
>Players enter orphanage and find the ghost has possessed one of the children's dolls
>Ghost was aiming for one of the children but missed and hit their doll instead
>Now wants nothing more than to be walked around inside a stroller, have its hair brushed and held close
>Players take possessed doll with them on their adventures as team mascot

I don't get this.
I mean, I've run a few games, and the NPCs I mark down as important are the ones that the players tend to end up focusing on.

How do you get into these issues?

Uhhhhh...huh...

Drizzt was supposed to be a weird edgy sidekick in one trilogy and then done, and was made up on the phone, on the spot.

Spike was supposed to be a disposable Villain.

Thats how shit goes.

The term really has lost all meaning.
You must also be magical realming, then, because some people find the faceless clone main character in your pic arousing.
Some people find letters arousing too.

I guess we must all secretly have been hideous deviants all along, cramming our sexual perversions into everything we ever wrote or thought because some thin-skinned, defensively virginal autist on the Internet shrilly burbles "magical realm" whenever he's forced to admit that a roleplaying game can be anything else than blocks of male human numbers running up to unequivocally evil blocks of numbers and hitting them with their numbers until someone's numbers reach zero.

I really, honestly have to wonder if you've ever had fun playing a roleplaying game, or even in your life. It's absurd how far some of you people go to be offended just for the sake of being able to excuse never trying.

Maybe, just maybe, you think it's an interesting idea, but because you're overwhelmed by the idea of having to try to implement and play it, you instinctively defend yourself by saying it's objectively bad - the fox and the grapes never gets old.
Or maybe you'd even like to continue cheating yourself of narrative, originality or even slight, careful brushing of your comfort zone. Take your pick.

wut

Just some weirdo trying to cover his oddly specific fetish as "normal" with a bunch of half-asses strawman arguments. Don't reply to the bait.

Not everyone thinks with their dicks. How paranoid do you have to be?

Nah, he's entirely right that the term 'Magical Realm' becomes meaningless if you use it that way.

'Magical Realm', very specifically, refers to the GM introducing adult content into a game expressedly against the wishes and interests of the game, making the experience worse for them as a result.

>Friend of mine had a great experience with an improv'd NPC
>Loved them so much he tried to import the NPC into the campaign he was hosting
>PCs fireball the NPC without a second thought
It was a minor villain so he really should have expected that.

How bald were they? It's important.

>'Magical Realm', very specifically, refers to the GM introducing adult content into a game expressedly against the wishes and interests of the game, making the experience worse for them as a result.

Correct.

>after a few months of travel you get to Kolbold Island.
>The Kolbolds have became sick for reason in thanks to the main plot
Problem solved.

>>No one cares about them
Why should I care?

...

>no one cares about backstory
this is why

you aren't writing game of thrones, you are an obstacle course. stop fleshing characters out completely

make a backstory that you really like, but don't attach it to any character until you are sure that the party will get into it

make a flurry of loose small character concepts based on tropes or funny voices, as soon as the party latches on to one add the deep backstory that you like

the definition of over preparing an rpg game is attaching backstory to a specific detail. as soon as you attach the backstory to a specific detail, you must assume that the characters will never ever see that person or thing, that's just the way it goes

you can write all the cool information and backstory, but keep it all in superposition as the where each backstory or writing flavor fits into everything until the characters make a choice or lay their eggs in a specific basket

this is the true trick to DMing, and if you can manage this type of shuffle people will always be in awe of how your sessions are always fun and engaging, it always seems like there is more no matter where they go, but the fact is that the detail and writing just moves around beneath the game board to sneak behind whatever the characters are looking at

in principle it can sound dumb or cheaty but in practice it always makes fun

Our GM draws some of the characters for his stories, but most notably bosses. The other guys I'm playing with seem to only care about these characters because of their artwork, but seem to go a bit too far. One of my friends married a female character, not because of her personality or history, but because of her artwork. Then, our GM introduced a young girl as a character, and my friends wanted to make her their daughter. Not because of her personality, but because of the art.

Honestly, that's really insightful and I never thought about that until now.

Of course players are gonna prefer characters chose to interact with over characters they're forced to interact with because of the story.

don't be an idiot

>Ghost is into age play
>Ghost is into being dressed up and treated like a doll
>Magical reem?

Here is a corridor full of rooms what room do you enter?
>The third door on the left.
>mark what door on my notes and read room#1 out.

Gives the players a feeling of being right and finding the hidden stuff before, the story making building up correctly.

No one likes entering the boss room by mistake.

>a ghost acting silly and playing a doll is fetish fuel
>i am literally so obsessed with sex I project it onto everything

>

I would kill myself but then user would make me come back as a little girls fucking doll

Everyone here already said it in one way or another but I'll say it again: save the backstories for a novel. D&D is an RPG. A game. People only care about NPC's if they're amusing or funny. My current party currently has a goblin that follows them around that will eat virtually anything. They love him so I threw together some simple motivations on the spot and now they're all buds.

Theres like some formula hidden in the background that states the more work you put into an NPC the less important they become in the eyes of players. I even intentionally crafted NPC's that would appeal to the players tastes just so they'd play along with and they still forgot about them the moment the quests were over.

Of course the retard is a namefag.

Rule number 1 as a GM is the players will always put 100% of their effort into ignoring everything you've worked and/or planned on.

Man I am that user and I thought the doll ghost was a good idea at the time and my players thought it was cute and funny. I suppose having them tackle giants, sneaking through sewers and almost having one player eaten alive by a dragon was just magic realming my supposed giant, scat and vore fetishes too, right?

GMing is 40% mental and 10% physical.

Congratulations, you just learned one of the first lessons of competent storytelling: Don't focus on irrelevant bullshit. If something isn't important to the story, then just come up with the basic framework you need for it to exist. Only iris in on things that actually matter.

"But my NPCs matter!" No, they really don't. Not until your players decide to make them a part of their story. Unless and until that happens, they're part of the scenery.

>I guess we must all secretly have been hideous deviants all along, cramming our sexual perversions into everything we ever wrote or thought
Yes. Welcome to humanity.

You know, user, the joy of anonymity is that it allows us to be honest. Not only with one another, but with ourselves. Nobody can hurt you here.

Yeah, because it feels like narrative/emotional railroading instead of naturally making an endearing character.

> as the current gently flows around your legs you feel tiny bumps and caresses from the solid sewage
> you titter internally, knowing that the water is getting slowly deeper and more fecund with the effluent of an entire city
> the flow slows as the sewage deepens, you're now bumping into the logs instead of them bumping into you
> pushing deeper ahead of the party you realize the sewage with is lovely bouquet well soon brush and then envelop your dirty dirty parts
> mother would be so irate with us the voice in your head quietly whispers but it only serves to drive you deeper into the morass of filth
> like a warm drooling mouth the sewage envelops you above your waist, at this point the flow is stagnant and the fecal matter is divided into foam on top and a thick fulfilling mud on the bottom
> for a second you envy the halfling in their perpetual barefootedness, just imagine how gratifying having years of warm muddy waste squishing between your toes at every step is amazing

NOOOOOOOOO

what's the other 50%? sexual?

>not adapting your interesting plot points and characters to work with the PCs chosen path

>wasting your work because its not where you wanted them to go

>blaming the PCs for your incompetance as a GM

its in the name, Game Master. If you can't run a fun game then maybe you shouldnt GM

Do you feel better now?

Take note, novice GMs. When people talk about railroading or trying to force people to play through their novel, this is exactly what they're referring to

seems like a fair critique to me? maybe a little smug but fair

This to the max

Open d6 is garbage.

No, yeah, they totally kept it to fuck it.

>Barmaid NPC fucks the Fighter one (1) time
>Eventually becomes his wife and the Lady of the Unseelie Court
Gentlemen, this is the one and final warning. Never for the love of all that is good and holy stick your dick in crazy. I'll storytime the details if you're interested, give me some time to write it all up.

From the perspective of a GM, I think the reason that some players get along with NPCs who are "unimportant" like a house on fire is because they are more relatable than the bigshots.

Let me explain: the bigshot may have problems that are too big for the players to handle... like a prince who has to deal with a rebellion and also has his father betrothing him to a princess far away whom he doesn't know. The prince's problems are so big that the players can't really put themselves in his shoes. Using the image of this saying, they could be too 'small' for the 'big' shoes of the prince.

Whereas a mayor's son who they meet drunk at the tavern and bawls his eyes out in front of them, confiding in them that his father is being coerced by the nobleman's thugs and that his fiancé ran off with a loaded ne'er do well will probably be something that the players could have encountered before, either them or an acquaintance of them who told them all about these kinds of problems..

Never become a teacher. Your idiocy might be contagius.

Basically what and were saying, yeah.

You might wana learn how to spell "contagious" there first, buddy.

Also, given that the shitposter hasn't replied to anyone bashing him so far, he's probably long gone from the thread.

I'm not your buddy, mate

Why not? I'm a pretty cool guy. Honest.

What you like isn't what other players will like.

That compelling guy you introduced you were hoping the party would like? They think he's an obnoxious tosser who got what he deserved and should have more hell coming his way.

You know what your players like because they'll express it.

Your deep NPC plot? Don't care for it. They think the random background NPCs you come up with are more interesting. Save those NPCs you clearly care about for the book or novella you want to make. Make a game with characters the PCs like, even if you don't.

If they're not enjoying the game because you're forcing those NPCs on them, then it's not fun. If it's not fun, why bother?

Because you didn't reply correctly.

Instead of putting 90% effort into 1 NPC, put 10% effort into 6 NPCs and reserve 40% to add to the NPCs that attract PC attention.

I had a shopkeeper that the PCs loved simply because she talked fast while serving multiple people. She got fleshed out fast by having a family of eight and needed to learn to deal with a whole load of kids. By the way, one of them is missing, would you look into that...?

Easy way to lead the players into the whole cultists kidnapping plot.

You give each NPC a pair of quirks, and then if the PCs ask for more detail you flesh out the NPC. That's how you get the most bang for your buck, and your players will be predisposed to help because of their own like for that NPC.

Or dislike!

The little NPCs have the biggest influence, OP.

Ah, Quantum Barmaids. How many things the GMs can do with what the players are not aware of!

This is absolutely brilliant.

What about the remaining 50%?

Doing nothing, letting the players talk things out.

Actually making a number of flexible plots that you can link your NPCs to. You gotta have some memorable villains, and what better way to do that by spending 20% on the plot, 10% on evil lieutenants (and making the ones the players love/hate big) then 30% on encounters and set pieces.

You can juggle these numbers around, but never go more than 10% either way, or-

That's true though. I remember back in the day when a GM ran the Witchfire Trilogy book of adventures, and midway through the first one I realized that we were playing second fiddle to Alexia. I tried to get her killed but the GM kept rule 0'ing it away.

Spite

Well, I was just taking the piss about how strongly that user responded.
>Some people find letter arousing

Then I was making jokes about comment I dont think ghost dolls that strange, but it would really depend on who the ghost was before s/he died. Like if it was a little kid, animal or the like it would be ok.
If it was Brukus the half orc warlord then it would be a like reemy

And again if
> The giant puts its naked feet on the PC and rubs them between their toes
> The dragon starts to talk about how good they taste in their belly, calling them its naughty boi
>somthing somthing scat porn
>I don't know how these fetishs work

Being eaten by some large monsters and sewers are just normal D&D flair

That sounds like a fucking mad tale.

One of the most popular NPCs in my last game was literally just a scenery character thrown in to make the patronage of a tavern during a festival more varied. The PCs recruited him and he travelled with them with weeks before going to help escorts a kinsman back home.

NPCs have one and one trait only, regarding narrative: what is their impulse or motivation as it relates to the PCs.

This grizzly has an impulse to eat them. Okay then, they'll probably pay attention to that.

That leader of those sketch fucks outside the town wall thinks of nothing else but raping and pillaging the town that the heroes use as their base. If they don't find that interesting because they have other things to do, maybe they will find it more interesting when they return, tired and bruised, to find no shops, no resting place, and a bunch of drunk sociopaths standing around the burning rubble.

>What happened?
The call of the unknown. Catnip for any PC.

I did something like this once. Players ignored any and all plothooks and decided to fuck arround. As the story revolved around places in the map couldn't really fo anything other than let the main plot rot.

Point is that I actually wanted them to ignore important events and every time they did, something chaged in the world. In the end everything became a wasteland and when they got all bitchy on to why an NPC told them it was mainly their fault for using relics of the past for personal gain.

They couldn't say anything. A little reverse psychology goes a long way when dealing with PCs.

Mmmmmh nope. Don't project your mental issues on Humanity as a whole.

Eh... saving the world gets old after the first time you do it.

Now I feel like playing a more street-level game where the group is a bunch of likeable misfits in a city meeting people and helping the people they like with their problems, achieving their own goals and the like.

If this is the post I'm thinking of, I deleted it because I remembered with shame that I already storytimed it. is the story.