to describe role-players who aren’t PCs or GMs at games…
- NPC
- Crew
0 voters
for pure curiosities sake, if you could only use one…
I always feel NPC is a hang up from table top RPGs.
NPC: Big bad named character
Crew: Unnamed (or generically named) small role
IMO of course
[quote=“Viperion”]NPC: Big bad named character
Crew: Unnamed (or generically named) small role
IMO of course[/quote]
This is more or less how I think of it too - I think of an npc as a character controlled by the gms, and crew as a non-character (as in, no name, no personality - zombies and stuff) controlled by the gms.
Actually, if I think about it, maybe npcs are non-players who deliver primarily plot and crew are non-players who deliver primarily combat. (This is placeholder for further explanation and examples of this - I’m just too tired.)
I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.
[quote=“Riordan”][quote=“Viperion”]NPC: Big bad named character
Crew: Unnamed (or generically named) small role
IMO of course[/quote]
(This is placeholder for further explanation and examples of this - I’m just too tired.)[/quote]
Lich King - NPC, his Zombies - crew.
[quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]
I agree. Since crewing can involve being an NPC or running logistics…
[quote=“Jared”][quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]
I agree. Since crewing can involve being an NPC or running logistics…[/quote]
Exactly how I see it.
[quote=“Viperion”]NPC: Big bad named character
Crew: Unnamed (or generically named) small role
IMO of course[/quote]
i love my tiny little roles 
never made the distinction before, didn’t realise others were.
for me ‘crew’ is people in middle of the ‘crew room’, if your running the kitchen or lighting your likely in your own room.
The tiny little roles are super important! Without them the world loses all its little charms and becomes much less real. Without villagers, bandits, slaves, foodsellers and so on the setting would be much emptier 
Truth!
[quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]That’s my perspective as well. But I figure so long as we can communicate with each other reasonably easily, it doesn’t really matter what name we use (so long as it isn’t mean, derogatory or offensive of course).
Truth![/quote]I concur also. Personally, I think its a really good thing that Teonn tries to match the player numbers with crew, because more crew means that there can be more random people who make it look like a real world, rather than something which revolves around the players - which of course it kinda still does, but I think a more well-populated world must be more immersive, everything else being equal (or ceteris paribus for the economists among us).
[quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]
I like this.
[quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]
That’s the way I’ve always seen it, too.
Heh, I had a problem with this while I was writing Galaxia 20.
Being a sci-fi larp, the people who worked aboard the ship were the “Crew of the Galaxia” and the non players were the crew as well. Had to mess around with sentences to make it sound right lol
As for my differenciation, I too see crew as the non players and the roles they play are NPCs. Its the same difference as PCs and Players.
Yep, this is the way it was intended when I introduced the term “crew” at Mordavia.
Players play PCs.
Crew play NPCs. NPC is a term for any role that isn’t a PC, from little greebly monsters to villagers to recurring cackling villains to powerful allies.
The different terms exist to differentiate the person playing a role from the role itself.
More generally, the primary purpose of crew is to improve the game experience for players, typically while taking more direction from the GMs than the players do. Naturally, crew usually have heaps of fun in the process themselves too, but the reason they pay less is that the larp isn’t primarily designed for their entertainment, it’s for the players’.
I also use crew for anyone who helps out but doesn’t play a character, like cooks and such. It’s a catch-all term for anyone who isn’t a player or a GM (although the boundary between GM and crew is often fuzzy).
[quote=“Anastriel”]I think of them as two different things. Crew are the people, and NPC’s are the role. So just as players come to a game to play their character, crew come to a game to play many different NPC’s.
Just how I have always seen it, YMMV of course.[/quote]
This is how I see it too.
[quote=“Ryan Paddy”]
Players play PCs.
Crew play NPCs.[/quote]
sum1 chuck it on http://www.whatislarp.co.nz <3 chur