Noisms of Monsters and Manuals posted some interesting roleplaying related questions that are relevant to our hobby but that role playing bloggers tend not to write about. Check out his post for the original questions, plus lots of responses in the comments (some people did it right there, some people linked to blog posts, like this). Following are my answers to these questions, as the GM of my group that include my wife and three long term friends. EDIT: After writing this post stream-of-conciousness-style I realise that my Nanowrimo brain is still on. Sorry for the word count.

No Plot? No Problem! is a great little book that describes itself as ‘a low-stress, high-velocity guide to writing a novel in 30 days’. It’s written by Chris Baty, the guy behind Nanowrimo, which I’m participating in this month for the fifth year running. Writing a novel in 30 days requires at least some improvisation. GMing often requires a lot. I’ve read this book each year but I figured looking at it from a different angle it may have some hidden insights into gamemastery. And I think I’ve found some.

The book talks about, among many other things, making two lists: one with all the things you like in novels and one with all the things you don’t. It’s not quite a pros and cons list, but close. It’s sort of a list of cues or reminders for yourself. I realised that doing the same thing for RPGs could keep us GMs on track, especially for on-the-fly or improv-heavy GMing.

It was my birthday recently and my awesome wife made me some NPC Description Tables! <3

They’re some handy tables for generating various physical characteristics and behavioural traits of NPCs on the fly or during prep all contained on a single page. Choose results or roll once for each column. She didn’t design it to make coherent NPCs by reading across the rows, but I think you can get some pretty interesting ones by doing that too.

When rolling, for the large table roll a d6 twice and check the results in order, or roll two different coloured d6s. For the d8 tables, if you happen to have only a d6 handy you can just use that, as the results that a 7 or 8 would bring can easily be ignored as they are the least common.

Also, some results have a few choices, sometimes as opposites or alternatives (hairy/hairless) and sometimes to just give a little more choice (bandaged/stitched). When you get a result like this, choose whichever you like best or whatever seems most appropriate.

If you don’t like a result or it doesn’t make sense with something else you’ve already rolled, simply re-roll or choose something else.

I hope you enjoy this gift as much as I have.

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• IAYC: Fantasy Newspaper (Free Download)
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• Monsterhearts: ‘Ask Questions’ Reference Card
• Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About
• GMing Cues: Impressions, Aims & Pitfalls

Here’s a simple table for coming up with quick and dirty NPC motivations. It requires a little bit of thought on the part of the GM, but gives a good starting point. Simply roll a d4 and a d6 and compare the results to the table: d4 for the column and d6 for the row.

Some of the results overlap somewhat (like desire for freedom could be a desire for change) but it gets the job done fairly well. I’m hoping this will give me, and others, a good starting point for NPCs.

If you roll and realise that this guard the PCs are talking to has a Fear of Truth, then maybe that gives you the idea that he’s taking bribes and is afraid of that getting out, or maybe he has some evidence that one of his fellow guards is a murderer but is afraid to believe it.

The goal here is not to generate fully fleshed out motivations, but to give the GM a spring board for their creativity. Usually something going on in the plot or the PCs stories and hooks will give you an idea of where to go with the motivations.

NPC Motivations

You might also be interested in reading...

• Things Role Playing Bloggers Tend Not To Write About
• NPC Description Tables
• GMing Cues: Impressions, Aims & Pitfalls
• IAYC: Fantasy Newspaper (Free Download)
• Frame Narrative in Roleplaying

I just finished playing the demo for Dragon Age II and I found it had an interesting take on storytelling. Gameplay was sometimes cut with scenes of a character, in the future, talking about the hero. It was interesting because a) the storyteller was alluding to events that had yet to unfold, and b) the storyteller sometimes lied. What was cool, though, was that you played those lies and then played the truth. This technique is a kind of frame narrative (a story within a story), and twists on storytelling like this can be interesting in pen and paper roleplaying games too.

When the PCs eventually encounter a monologue-spewing villain or a weighty Tome of Exposition, instead of them sitting there listening to you – the all-knowing GM – reading it, why not have them play out the events through flashbacks? It’s not something you want to be doing all the time, but every once in a while it can really make an impact, highlight the importance of the information, and even give players a chance to play a different character. It gives a different perspective and allows for unusual outcomes and situations.

Sometimes your regular game falls through. When this happens, it pays to have a backup game ready to play at a moment’s notice. In this article I’ll discuss different types of one-shots and how to make it easy on yourself so that whenever you need a backup, it’s ready.