Lords and Ladies Game Design
-
@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.
-
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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@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?
-
@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.
-
@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.
