Diary of A Sane Man

I’ve only just begun to realize what sort of GM I am. I’ve been playing tabletop RPGs since 1984 (I’m getting old) and it took this long to discover something: I kill NPCs at the whim of the dice. Lemme explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. I never pull punches in my games. Most people that claim as such mean this in regard to PCs only; they’ll drop a player character if the dice says that the reaper’s come-a-knockin’.

Me? Fuck NPCs too.

There’s no such thing as an NPC critical to my plots. Just like real life, an NPC can die at any given time, and when such an event transpires I keep going. I guess it helps that I can GM on the fly. But really, I make NPCs make the same dice rolls the PCs have to make in whatever circumstances they find themselves in and if the fuckers fail then they fail. Like real life, the day doesn’t end when the World’s Greatest NPC Thief can’t pick the All-Important Lock. The world keeps turning. People think of other things. Or they wait. Or whatever it is they do. But the world doesn’t grind to a halt and neither does my plot. I’m pretty sure I’m the only GM in the world that does this. The plots I write out are vague enough that life goes on if anyone fails. I kill kings, baby.

I started thinking about this while GMing my current Warhammer FRP game. The PCs were traveling with an NPC named Simon who, through roleplaying and sheer awesomeness, endeared himself to the party and the players in general. Even I loved the motherfucker. I contemplated bearing his children but I couldn’t figure out how to breed with an idea. I remain heartbroken to this day. Regardless, we all loved this Roadwarden named Simon. He was a cool cat. The party of adventurers, which included Simon, had stumbled across a plague-infected cabin in the woods (those of you familiar with the setting, think “Nurgle shrine” and you got it) and were explosed to a particularly nasty plague. Like any GM I had the PCs roll their dice to resist the effects of said plague. Unlike many GMs, I had the NPCs present roll as well. Simon got infected. He was particularly unlucky in that he also failed a further test to resist a mutating effect of the disease and he wound up growing a baby face where his kneecap used to be. As the adventure continued Simon started noticing this bump on his knee growing bigger and nastier. The day it sprouted an eye I rolled a Sanity check for him: he failed. My beloved NPC was going insane in addition to having the Gerber Baby sprouting out of his leg.

Lovely.

Simon’s time with the party came to an end in the middle of an expedition into the sewers of a city while trying to save said city and the Empire from the ravages of some pretty nasty shit. The baby head had grown a mouth and started crying as all babies do. Keep in mind, I friggin’ loved this NPC and had a good plot idea revolving around the sumbitch when the PCs were done in these sewers. But nooooooo, he had to go and fail his dice rolls like a sissy. Anyway, this thing starts crying in the middle of the sewers. The PCs find him in a drain-off room of some kind, ankle deep in human shit and losing his mind- I roll one last Willpower check for the guy. He failed. I sighed. Simon blows his brains out with his flintlock pistol. Everybody loved Simon, but the luck of the dice had this hero meet his end in a fuckin’ sewer with the Gerber Baby growing out of his knee by his own hand. Needless to say, it screwed up my players too. Har har.

This is just one example and perhaps not even the best one. Simon was a tag-along NPC that became part of the party. I’ve done the same for plot-reliant NPCs. When an NPC goes into battle there is a chance they will die. There is a chance they will live. It depends not on my whim but on their skill, environmental factors, and the luck of the dice. The same goes for important dialogue-reliant dice rolling and other times when dice and skill are a variable. I really think I’m the only GM/ST/DM to do this. Everyone other GM I know kills NPCs when it’s their time in the plot and no other time. When the king rides out into glorious battle they only kill the bastard when the plot demands it. Me? That pompous ass might live, he might die. I roll for it. Who knows if a peasant might get lucky and take out the kind? A lucky arrow? Some piss-ant minor NPCs I might not bother rolling, but serious NPCs? I roll.

There’s one thing my players can always count on. I am not arbitrary and I never cheat, fudge or deny them a true-blue victory. Any death that occurs in my games isn’t just my desire and some plot device. It was a real death. I hate safety-padded, hand-holding GMing.

In the immortal words of David S. Kenzer:
“Darwinism, fight-for-all-you’re-worth, ass-kicking competition that challenges players to the limits VERSUS a masterbatory story-telling, play-acting, let’s all play make-believe, insecure ego boosting “look at me I’m heroic” because the GM has our story-with-a-happy-ending all set out at the beginning of his “campaign”. That other style/diceless play is not a GAME. In a game, there’s a chance to lose. I didn’t come to this industry to be a frickin’ amateur thespian.”

That quote sums up more than how I treat my players. It sums up how I treat my gameworld. Life sucks. It can end in an instant. NPCs aren’t immune to this.

I really think I may be the only one though…

-=Grim=-

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Tabletop Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.