Creating a Community
Reithan:
I think I may have created a topic a long time ago about this, but I going to avoid thread necromancy, and, in my mind at least, I know have a slightly different drive to the questions.
Here goes:
I want to create a real feel of 'community' in a game I'm running. So far I've statted out many NPCs, tried to give each NPC a distinct personality and goals and alliances and enemies...but my cast of characters, when playing the game with my players, still seem/play/feel like disconnected points of interest.
How do I tie this all together and make it feel more like the players are part of this community?
Charlie Gilb:
Is your community inter-connected at all? Does each NPC ever deal with other NPC's the players have met? Mostimportantly, are their individual alliances and enemies ever demonstrated to the characters?
In short, you can spend all the time you want statting out and devloping NPC's, but if the players never see them interact with each other then there will never really be a sense of community.
Could you provide an actual play example, or the material that you've been working on specifically? How exactly do your player's react?
Reithan:
Quote from: Charlie Gilb on January 17, 2008, 02:49:42 PM
Is your community inter-connected at all?
Yes. I've had NPCs working together on common goals, playing the characters off each other to thwart their rivals, having arguments against each other, etc. They are often seen in small groups, solo, and once or twice even in large groups, they are shown to have 'talked to each other' while the PCs were not there, as in shared information.
Quote from: Charlie Gilb on January 17, 2008, 02:49:42 PM
Does each NPC ever deal with other NPC's the players have met?
Yes, as above.
Quote from: Charlie Gilb on January 17, 2008, 02:49:42 PM
Most importantly, are their individual alliances and enemies ever demonstrated to the characters?
Yes, as above.
As for actual play examples, at one point the herald to the player cabal (NPC) was abducted during a raid on the player's enemies' sanctum (which most of the higher-ranked NPCs participated in) and the players tracked him down to a certain location. They had bigger fish to fry though, and simply reported the location to their higher-ups. Those NPCs staged a raid on that location while the players were taking care of another issue and found the heral dead, and were almost killed themselves, in an ambush. The players met back up with them as they had just returned and were tending to the wounds of one of theirs while he was complaining about his wounds, at length.
Previously to that, the players met with that NPC to discuss the absence of the herald with that NPC at that NPC's sanctum surrounded by the rest of his personal cabal.
I'm not sure how to characterize the player's reactions - could you possibly break that down into more specific questions?
Caldis:
A big question I'd ask is how are the player related to the community? Do they have family members, friends, lovers, occuptations, responsibilities, or are your characters mysterious strangers who've wandered into town? If they are strangers I think it becomes much harder to get a feeling of community. What you really want is something in the town that the players are invested in and that's harder to get if this isnt their town just a town.
Filip Luszczyk:
How prolonged is a typical instance of social interaction between the PCs and your NPCs?
There is this shared information thing going on, but does it happens often that the PCs interact with more than one NPC at the same time? If so, are your NPCs generally acting as a group, or do they have conflicted opinions or the like?
Does it often happen that an NPC casually approaches one or more of the PCs in order to talk about another NPC? Not necessarily in terms of allies/enemies and personal goals, but rather to talk about him or her as a person? I mean, even stuff like "Man, I'm so tired. I hardly slept last night. Bob was snoring so loud, and the walls are so thin..." or "Yuck, I so hate cooked gelatinous cube. I have no idea how Bob can munch it all the time!" or whatever?
I'd say, if you want to have *a sense* of community, it doesn't really matter who the NPCs are and how much is going on between them, if their personal relations don't come up regularly.
Finally, an important thing - you say it feels like disconnected points, but what is the opinions of your players on this matter? Also, are they interested, as a group, in there being a sense of community in the game in the first place and ready to work actively to build it?
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