Lords and Ladies Game Design
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@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
in general, the top echelons of power should be NPCs who give tasks to the PC underlings.
When a plot is delivered to the IC-world via a ‘power gives tasks to underlings’ route, it doesn’t matter if the top PC power is the Galactic Emperor or the Assistant Manager.
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to Lord Mayor: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Get somebody to deal with it.
Lord Mayor, to City Watch Commander: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Go deal with it.
City Watch Commander, to Abelard, Bridget and Camille: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city. Let’s all go deal with it.
Okay, but how about:
GM, to Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia: You’re riding past the villages west of the city, singing ‘The Ballad of Brave Sir Robin’ and practicing the lute, when you spot some zombie coyotes.
Well shit. What will Manfred and Ophelia do? Tell the watch? Tell the mayor? Tell the king? Try to take out the coyotes themselves? If they tell the watch but not the mayor, does that reduce the mayor’s standing and power? If they tell the mayor and he deals with it without consulting the king, does that undermine the king’s power?
When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.
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In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions. It ends up as:
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to GM: I move my personal army to go take care of it, and my best friend Danielle can go bless the land.
Abelard, Bridget, and Camille: How can we get involved?
King: Fuck off, it’s handled.
Later, some political rival: Why didn’t the City Watch Commander do anything about those zombie coyotes? They’re inactive and lazy!
This is why I’m a fan of the bottom-up version where Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia get looped in. The scenario is more immediate and if they end up needing backup they can kick it up the chain of command. But the best way is for the GM to directly loop in as many people as possible because if you’re relying on players to involve other players… they fucking won’t.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions.
Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?
NPCs are for doing the boring stuff, like paying taxes and being poor, not the exciting stuff like fighting and feasting.
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@Pavel said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Is there some way to have the typical Lords and Ladies experience people desire whilst also removing the reliance on/availability of NPCs?
I guess it depends on the scope of your game and what kinds of characters are included. Like you said, NPCs are for the boring bits. If every character is nobility I think it’s probably fine to send your lackeys. If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
If your L&L game has a population of commoners and lower nobility, people really need to think about who’s missing out when they delegate to NPCs.
Agreed. I think, like in @Ominous’ original point, people like the King, the Duke of Westmorland, or the Grandpoobah de Doink should be NPCs, with the PCs being the lackeys. Either lower nobility or commoners.
In a WWII game, for instance, one would presumably want to be a Ranger or a Tanker or a Spitfire pilot, not King George VI or General Eisenhower.
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I agree with the idea that NPCs should just be for boring bits, or set dressing at the most. Plot stuff should be handled 100% by the PCs.
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@Gashlycrumb said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
When plot-stuff flows both ways, PC power is constrained by the powerful PC’s need for IC support from the less powerful. If it always flows top-down, well, not so much. Not at all if you let the mighty get away with taking no action/ineffective action/action only involving off-camera NPC minions.
My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways. I was arguing that factionheads should be NPCs so that the overall direction and policy-making of that faction can kept on a leash by administration, rather than risking a PC factionhead completely derailing or sinking an entire faction because their player decided the character needed to hold the idiot ball.
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor. However the mayor, assuming they are the head of the faction in the particular scenario where the factions in the setting are the various towns in a kingdom, would then issue a command to the commander of the town guard, a PC, who could handle it themself or delegate it down the chain. But somebody better do it or the mayor is going to be pissed. It may not even need to get to the mayor. Once it reaches the commander of the town guard’s ears, again a PC, they could make a decision and act how they feel would be appropriate. Bit, again, they better be right about the course of action, because, if they kill the zombies when the mayor has a pro-brain eating policy in place the mayor is going to be pissed.
Players get to play US cabinet positions but the President is an NPC. A PC isn’t going to be able to order that we nuke Russia because their player got fired from their real world job and they want to watch the world burn. The players can be representatives in the National Assembly, but the heads of their parties are NPCs. If the players deviate too far from the tenets and positions held by their party, the head of the party can kick them to the curb and they likely won’t be re-elected in the next election cycle without party support. So on and so forth.
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@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor.
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
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@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Alice, Bob, and Carol, a trio of town guards, could be the ones to come across the zombie horde and report it to their sergeant, the commander of the town guard, or the mayor.
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
They probably die trying to fight it, new mystery where did they go?
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@bear_necessities said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
But what happens when Alice, Bob & Carol, a trio of town guards, come across a zombie horde and horde that information to themselves because they want the plot? IDK there’s no real perfect way to ensure everyone gets a bite of the plot cake except to just put the information out there for everyone.
If they fail and die, then the town guards, David, Emily, and Frank will come across a zombie horde that’s three zombies larger and their friends and family curse their names. If they fail and don’t die, the mayor and the captain of the guard are going to be pissed and their friends and family may shun them. If they succeed, good for them. Celebrations and cheers to their names will be had. And the mayor and the captain of thr guard might still be pissed for them acting on their own. That’s the risk you take when you take on such responsibility.
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@Juniper said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
In my experience the PC with the most power, or the first player to hear about it handles it using their NPC minions. It ends up as:
GM, to King: There are reports of zombie coyotes around the villages west of the city.
King, to GM: I move my personal army to go take care of it, and my best friend Danielle can go bless the land.
Abelard, Bridget, and Camille: How can we get involved?
King: Fuck off, it’s handled.
Later, some political rival: Why didn’t the City Watch Commander do anything about those zombie coyotes? They’re inactive and lazy!
This is why I’m a fan of the bottom-up version where Squire Manfred and Lady Ophelia get looped in. The scenario is more immediate and if they end up needing backup they can kick it up the chain of command. But the best way is for the GM to directly loop in as many people as possible because if you’re relying on players to involve other players… they fucking won’t.
Just fucking so. Perhaps even followed by:
bbpost or IC event announcing that there were zombie coyotes in the Western Wood, but the King’s men have gloriously destroyed them and burned the wood where they were hiding, Huzzah!
Ophelia pages Manfred: Everybody knows we go hawking or lute-playing there three times a week, but we didn’t see a thing, ffs, GM. is such a dick.
Sir Wacko, Landed Knight of the Western Wood: I realise my keep doesn’t have windows, but WTF, I ragequit.
@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
My post was not meant to imply that plot stuff can’t flow both ways.
Didn’t mean to sound as if it did. I’m just saying, trickle-down-plot-economics has this peril. It works best in settings where the chain-of-command is almost invariably played by the book, like in a Star Trek or military game. (And still needs some shaking up in those.)
If you’re doing politics and intrique where players who are ostensibly lower on the chain of command are nevertheless trying to command, it just can’t work.
The question about NPC lackeys is something I’d strongly advise having a plan about. Lords and Ladies have lackeys, but how much can you do with them? If I was building an L&L game again I’d have clear rules about it, and a caveat that your NPCs are always kinda gonna suck against PCs, because. GoB had a couple of McGuffins that people used NPCs to steal and it was so boring and dissapointing to whoever lost it to just find it gone because NPCs rolled okay.
GoB’s set up had all the top (King, heads of major houses and almost all minor ones) as not only NPCs but not in the city. It was pretty much a bunch of non-heirs sent to the kingdom’s premier-but-not-the-capital city.
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What about plots with invisible timers for this particular conundrum?
Example:
A horde of zombie llamas is coming down from the mountain pass and threatens the noble kingdom of Kinwoodie because they are attracted to the location of the legendary Golden Interspace Toothbrush. Lord Hampsterplanet and Lady Puremanse discover the horde and become the first players to interface with the plot. The staff keeps an eye on their activity to check for a few things, namely whether they are spreading the news among the players, and also what activities they are taking to thwart the raving hordes. If they immediately offer some solution to the staff that would effectively thwart the horde, well, alright. That can happen. It doesn’t mean they didn’t want to share the plot necessarily, just that they, as their characters decided immediate action was necessary. Can’t hold that against them. If they shuffle off and tell the other PCs about the horde, that’s great! Then the PCs can work together to discover that llamas of the zombie variety can be particularly thwarted by a healthy application of Whizzo Butter. Plot gets to the majority of players that want to see plots, and everyone is happy. If they do the naughty thing and conceal the plot from other players on purpose and don’t go with the “immediate danger needs immediate responses” option, staff waits a specific amount of time and then has NPCs inject the plot as random serfs and peasants come screaming into Kinwoodie yelling about llamas and potentially also the blancmange that ate their children after challenging them to a table tennis match.
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@MisterBoring That’s how I run my D&D campaigns. The BBEG/Apocalypse isn’t going to sit around and wait for the PCs to quit dicking around to finally find the MacGuffins, prove their worth, and rally the allies they made along the way. I am very much a fuck around and find out DM. I keep strict time records as Gary Gygax admonished in the 1e AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide
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I think that there are several interconnected issues at play here in how PCs interact with plot:
- Plot Hoarders who don’t like to share because they want to do all of the things.
- Making sure that NPCs aren’t being used when there are PCs to get the spotlight.
- Making sure that plot doesn’t get hung up due to inactivity and just linger.
- People who “should” have been involved in the plot not hearing about it.
At their core, it feels like where this becomes particularly applicable to L&L games is where you have a feudal basis, so the Lord of Crakehall really should be brought in to deal with things happening around Crakehall, but if the player is idle or not in the right crowd, someone else might come in and fix the issue, even if that would “never happen” ICly. A good Staff team with good players can rationalize this away well enough, but one bad apple will spoil the whole rationalization and turn it into a morass of blame and disgruntlement.
I think that an effective way to deal with this is what was referenced above but not quite laid out directly: a chain of impact.
So if there are zombie coyotes in the Westwood, then Staff first has some folks at the lowest tier of PCs run into them (squires, unlanded knights, nobles out of direct succession, etc). If those PCs report it up the chain, then everything is good and Staff doesn’t have to intervene further except to run scenes for folks as the problem gets passed up (and hopefully back down) the chain. The Captain of the Guard is warned, assigns several PC guards to deal with it, reports up to the Head of House who adds a noble leader to the group and a few NPCs who will serve as off-screen beaters to bring the zombie coyotes to the PCs. Excellent. When the Captain of the Guard is warned, a bbpost goes up, so if some nobles are often in the Westwood for other reasons, they can reach out to you to see how they could be involved. If there’s a Bandit King of the Westwood… well, hopefully you reached out to him and his people at the same time as the squires, but if not, he can get involved now too. You have some social scenes and some hunting scenes, and your plot is off to the races.
If, on the other hand, the squires never report the zombie coyotes (they’re idle or hogging plot or whatever), then the Captain of the Guard gets an official report from a hunter that there are zombie coyotes in the Westwood attacking hunting parties (slight escalation from the first incident), and now hopefully the rest of the plot works as above (and the squires get chastised ICly for not saying anything if it was a choice they made). If the Captain of the Guard doesn’t do anything either, then there’s a bbpost about an attack on an outlying village, or maybe random nobles are pulled in for a picnic that goes horribly wrong. Either way, the Head of House is now involved (whether they’re a PC or an NPC), with bigger consequences because two levels of folks haven’t handled the problem, and your plot can continue. And if the bbposts go out when it’s still a problem, not a solved one, then your Westwood-frequenting PCs can either ask to get involved at that stage, or can integrate the incidents into their RP and stay uninvolved otherwise.
As for the tangential problem of having NPCs do the work of PCs, I think that this can be addressed directly and OOCly by Staff to the PCs who control those NPCs. If your Captain of the Guards puts in a request to have a group of NPC guards go out and hunt down the zombie coyotes, a note that they have PC guards who might like to be involved, and that the plot can hold for a few days while they reach out to those other PCs, should handle that. Of course, if a couple of the PC guards were the first ones to encounter the zombie coyotes, they’re already involved, and are likely to want to stay involved – hopefully they’ll be working with the Captain of the Guards to pursue the plotline.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@Roadspike said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
People who “should” have been involved in the plot not hearing about it.
There’s a subgroup of these people that are another interconnected issue:
- People who “should” have been involved in the plot, but choose to avoid the plot like the plague and end up complaining when the plot changes the world in a way that disturbs their roleplay.
Using the previous example, if a group of PCs find out about the zombie coyotes and are informed they will endanger the tavern that they prefer for all of their RP, but they still take no actions, then when the zombie coyotes overrun and destroy the tavern they do the majority of your RP at, they’re not allowed to complain that the results aren’t agreeable.
Other than that, I totally agree with everything you said.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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@Roadspike My only thing here, and it may be addressed and I just didn’t see it, is something like a ‘you have until X day/time to reply, or this is escalating.’ If they need more time because vacation or OOC events, that’s fine it can be delayed for a short time, but this is another way to (hopefully) prevent folks from doing the ‘we never got a chance to be involved’.
This also may or may not address @MisterBoring’s followup, a big flashing sign about how the RP is going to be affected if they don’t do anything, I dunno. People still probably going to complain, but now you have a sign to yeet at them when they do.
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@Jennkryst I would probably let it sit organically for a little while (whether that’s a few days or a week), and then put up a time limit warning (about the same length of time) after that. Mostly that’s just because I would rather teach people to react on their own, rather than wait for a prompt, but I recognize that sometimes the prompt is necessary.
I always want to keep in mind that I want to reward the behavior that I want to see, so giving those who respond on their own a little bonus (and letting them know it) would be reasonable.
Agree with @MisterBoring’s note that some people will complain even if you reach out and ask them directly to intervene… and you’re never going to please those people. And there is value to @Jennkryst’s yeetable sign.
Formerly known as Seraphim73 (he/him)
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@MisterBoring said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Using the previous example, if a group of PCs find out about the zombie coyotes and are informed they will endanger the tavern that they prefer for all of their RP, but they still take no actions, then when the zombie coyotes overrun and destroy the tavern they do the majority of your RP at, they’re not allowed to complain that the results aren’t agreeable.
Without being able to dive into the nuance of a real situation, in this instance I can understand the reaction of the PCs here – sensible or not. If they’re not interested in your plot, mayhap you should have your plot impact something/someone else.
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@Roadspike said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:
Agree with @MisterBoring’s note that some people will complain even if you reach out and ask them directly to intervene… and you’re never going to please those people.
Those people are probably my second biggest pet peeve in the entire MU hobby after the multitude of sex pests and other creepers.
