NPCs and the art of attention-grabbing

Community Larp discussion
#1

There has been some discussion recently around NPCs and plot carried by NPCs which I thought could be productive to have a general discussion on. I’m interested in this as both a GM/sometime NPC and a player.

On the one hand, it sounds like some NPCs feel like they go out trying to get players involved but players aren’t interested. On the other, some players feel like they aren’t really seeing the NPCs and finding it hard to get into plot.

For the sake of constructive conversation, let’s start this from the charitable position of “the vast majority of people are in this for mutual fun and are honest about their experiences of feeling like they miss out on plot or feeling like their plot just isn’t getting attention despite making genuine effort.”

NPCs- when have you found that plot hasn’t gotten picked up on? What were you doing? Could you identify any reason you think people weren’t interested? When has your plot been snapped up and what were you doing then?

Players - What sort of things tend to grab your attention? What’s made you reluctant to pick up on plot or talk to NPCs? What sort of things really make you care about the plight of NPCs or the plot involved?

GMs/senior crew have you noticed any trends in what’s successful or not?

Obviously some people fit into more than one category. Generally: What works, what doesn’t, what constructive strategies could games, NPCs, and players employ to get plot out there or get people into plot?

#2

Purely from player experiences,

I like having interesting NPCs to riff off, and for those NPCs to be interesting, they need to present a bit of theatre - some need to be loud, have presence and impact by being in a scene (Take Rathmorn or Garm for good examples most of the time). The key for me though is that they should be reinforcing their presence through interaction with the players. When two NPCs face off and players have very little say in it, that’s when it gets boring. I’ve sat through scenes where NPCs banter back and forth, challenge each other and solve their problems, all without really seeming to require the players at all. Worse are the NPCs who show up with godlike powers to save the day. That’s not really fun, because we’re not here to watch pantomime or be rescued. We’re here to interact and be pro-active. That’s the strength of LARP, the ability to get involved.

#3

Speaking more as crew:

Normally the crew come back from the scene you have just described and frustratedly say something like “The players just ignored us, so eventually we just wrapped up the scene and came back.”

This type of scene is normally either to seed something, or, more commonly to start an interaction, and give the players something to interact with, and often the goal is to raise moral and/or social issues for PC’s to interact with.

With this in mind, are there any suggestions as to what crew should be doing differently to invoke PC interaction?

#4

[quote=“Taz”]With this in mind, are there any suggestions as to what crew should be doing differently to invoke PC interaction?
[/quote]

Addressing players directly seems to work in many cases, I’ve noticed when crewing that if I turn my attention to one particular person who seems vaguely open to interaction, and start playing out my plot to them, they are often likely to listen and start interacting back. If I make it obvious enough that we are interacting and something is happening, I would usually get a few more people joining in, and then can direct the plot in a way for them to do something as a group, or at least to have a conversation.

I did notice though that groups of players seriously busy doing their own “current thing” tend to be ignoring NPCs (and that was one of the reasons I dropped out of one of the campaigns - constantly feeling like players don’t need me there). From the player perspective I’d think it’s because PCs may not see the value of plot coming their way while they are busy same way as when they have nothing else to do. Which is why I think it’s good for players to remember of plots being out there and keeping eyes open (can’t tell how well this would work though, as I only came to this idea recently).

Also, players seem to interact better when they think that plot is something that matters for the bigger plot rather than just “for fun”, i.e. it matters rather than it’s just being there.Not sure if it’s good thing or bad thing, because obviously all plots cannot be super-important in big game, there will be many little ones as well.