(Note: I’ve kept this post spoiler free, for those of you still playing or who have not yet played)
Something I’ve always wanted to do was run an entire game located in one city. Everything, from level 1 until the level cap would take place in some sort of steampunkish fantasy version of New York. The heroic journey a lot of games assume is all fine and epic, but that just means ‘adventurer’ is another term for ‘homeless vagabond(s) who can kick level appropriate monster ass’.
A one city game implies some sort of foundation the character has to a place. A home, a family perhaps, friends, a routine, maybe even a day job. These routines common to our real lives, but twisted into the fantasy realm, is something that fascinates me to no end, and is something I don’t yet have the skill nor the group willing to try this out.
But my current groups are getting a small taste of it, in their airships. Both my groups have their own personal airship that whisks them from area to area in the world, reacting to what the bad guys are doing, or refreshing supplies as needed. There are flavorful and useful NPCs on board; a mage who was working against her will for the enemies who now acts as a magical adviser and weapon enchanter for the PCs, some deck hands that the barbarian likes to drink and tell stories with, the gamblers the tiefling earns some extra coin from, the cooks in the kitchen the daughter of the ranger (perma-shifted into a wolf) likes to play with and sneak scraps from. This is their home, surrounded by NPCs they are involved in. And it’s me trying to mimic the Normandy 2 from Mass Effect 2.
In the video game, Normandy is the stealth frigate that you and your crew live on. Press a button, you zoom out to a view of the galaxy and can travel from planet to planet, trying to achieve the various missions set before you. Press another button, and you can walk around the four decks. You can move to where your crew members have taken up and strike up conversations with them, revealing this backgrounds and motivations for joining up. This is a game mechanic, as talking to people will unlock various missions to help earn their trust, which in turn opens up more combat abilities.
How ever, as you move through the lower 3 decks, you can overhear conversations the rank and file crew have with one another. People in the mess giving the cook grief over his meal, worry that one’s family is in potential danger, the very danger you’re out to stop, a playful-if-leecherous engineer flirting with his female coworker as they comment on each of the new crew you bring on board (Especially if the new crew is female. Or an engineer.)
These random conversations bring life what would otherwise be background filler. Rather then try to trick you in believing the Normandy has a full crew, you actually are shown and believe the crew exists. Every time you stop by the crew quarters and hear the next part of the conversation Crewman Rolston is having with Crewman Patel, you start to empathize with Rolston. Completing your mission is the only way to prevent more Rolstons from having conversations with more Patels.
These conversations have no in game effect, you don’t get experience for listening to them or upgrades for talking, rather, the player begins to feel the weight of the mission on their shoulders. You’re told in game time and time again that Shepard is the only one who can do this mission. These conversations show, not tell, what is at stake.
It also helps create attachment to these otherwise unneeded polygons. The group giving the cook crap for their food is exactly the type of mocking bullshit you’d expect. They kid because they love. Flirting engineers working in the bowels of the ship present a “If they make it through this, those two should hook up” vibe. Even your personal captain’s cabin, the top deck, tries to create emotion ties. Throughout the galaxy, in shops, you can pick up fish for your fish tank, a pet space hamster, and model ships to display. If you don’t stop to feed your fish after every mission, they die. And it’s devastating to you, the player, when your in game fish die. At first, your space hamster is shy, he only comes out for a few seconds. The more and more you play with him, the longer he stays out.
The game tries and tries again, in subtle and unsubtle ways, to preset the crew and the ship as your safe haven, your home from the battles of space. With just a bit of personalization in just a few areas, I can easily imagine my crewmen working away, doing repairs, sneaking off for a little snog, pretty much existing when I’m not around.
This is the feeling I want to give to my players in their table top games. Sure, their airships can fly them from delve to delve, but when they’re not around, Nil is dicing in the mess hall, trying to figure out how to bean Malech (A PC) when next they gamble, or Tobias is secretly working on incantations at Jayce taught him. All of this set up may or may not provide tangible benefits to the player (Who knows, one day a yellow exclamation mark may appear over their head and give them a mission…), but I don’t need help in providing tangible benefits to the PCs, there’s books and books of that out there already. This little extra bit of depth simply provides the PCs with a base of people they can interact with, makes the fantasy of the airship look and feel a bit more real, and gives the PC and the player something to care about that doesn’t have pluses to it. And if you do that, those of you who express difficulty setting up role playing, the stories and the arcs just write themselves.
On that note, curious to know what NPC or location you have found in your games that ties you the player to that world?
So, how does this interaction with the crew of the airships work? Is it something you play out at the table, or does it happen in between sessions? Do the players come up with their own crew, or did you tell them who the crew is on their ship?
@Brain The airship recruited the PCs in an odd way. The PCs were part of a caravan that was ambushed. After the first encounter, the PCs went through a skill challenge to train the members of the caravan to help with the next attack. If they passed the challenge, they each got control of a ‘swarm’ of crewmen that could do something as a minor action during the next siege combat. (Example the warlord-lock Jayce found the 4 most magically adapt members of the caravan, and taught them a quick incantation that allowed them to do Eldritch Bolt once a turn.) (Also, thanks to @Ryvencedrylle for inspiring that skill challenge)
I rped these out, just a quick, “Uh, gee gosh Ms. Jayce, I’d like to learn some of your magic, my pa said I had the devil’s own luck with these type of things” sort of thing.
Each of the PCs had certain crew members set up like this. The caravan were the crew members resupplying, and the PCs joined up. So the initial part was at the table.
After that it’s been between sessions and at the table “Oh, I think this is a trick I can have Jayce teach Tobias” when out adventuring. Tobias actually getting his name by the Jayce’s player and a bit more detail out of session.
The NPCs don’t have to be omnipresent and visible every session. It’s more then enough of your PCs and your players are thinking of them as more then the disposable meat shields or quest givers that are 95% of other NPCs.