How To Work a Plotline 2: Info you get from NPCs

[Traceroo]

This is a series of posts designed to help you "get into plot" and be as involved as you want to be (or better learn to avoid involvement once you know what it looks like). In this month's installment of How To Work a Plotline, your loving creative team covers a topic by request. We'd like to talk to you about the quality of information that your character receives from NPCs.

Sometimes, your character talks to a Non-Player Character (NPC) run by the Plot Team, and you don't quite get the information that you want. Possible explanations for this might include:

• The NPC wasn't designed for complex social interaction, such as a "crunchy" from a field battle. Thus the NPC received no briefing at all on the topic your character wants to discuss
  
• The NPC received an inadequate briefing, and the actor doesn't have all the information that your character wants to ask about
• The NPc may be portrayed by a new volunteer for our game, who may or may not have been given a lot of information in briefing, but the actor doesn't yet have context for the game world to make real sense of it in the retelling

These situations are familiar to everyone who LARPs, and they're a bummer. Team Prometheus feels your frustration. We try to avoid those situations, but they can't always be helped -- like when PCs spontaneously decide to kidnap field battle crunchies and try to pry information out of them with a crowbar.

In 2017, your Acarthia Plot Team has made tremendous strides to give detailed briefings to individual NPC characters, weave complex stories, and add the bias of factions into our NPC groups. So when you ask an NPC for information, we'd like you to keep the following elements in mind:

• Team Prometheus has laid-off Santa Claus, who knows when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake, and whether you've been bad or good! Not every Non-Player Character knows everything about every topic. If you don't get the information you're looking for, ask a different character! Maybe one from another faction.
  • The above is especially important when your character is consulting a known expert on a topic, such as a librarian. Different sources of information (such as people, libraries, organizations) have access to different information. If you tried the Three Spires, and they had nothing, try a different - and perhaps more specific - source. Don't go to the Mages Guild to ask about hammering a nail into a fence. Don't go to The Vigilant to ask about elementals. Ask more than one source of information, and you'll get more information.
• Non-Player Characters have bias. This is part of their personality.
  • If you ask a necromancer and a paladin what they each think of The Vigilant, you're going to get very different answers.
  • If you ask a shopkeeper from Watson's Ferry and a scarred veterean of the War of a Thousand Skirmishes what they each think of the ogre leader Dargok, you're going to get very different answers.
  • Remember this when an NPC presents information to you as if it's a fact, and maybe one that "everyone knows." That information may not be accurate... and yet, the NPC might not be lying. This is bias, how the character understands things, and is certain is true! Yet it can contradict what someone else presents as fact. This is especially important if you get this information through means of game skills such as Charm or mental powers. It can be "true" in that character's opinion, and yet find contradiction in the world. (WHOA! AM I BLOWING YOUR MIND??)
• NPCs can and do lie. Sometimes they do this because they're bad people. Sometimes they do this because they just plain don't like your character. Sometimes they do this because they have motivations that run contrary to those of your character.
• Prisoners generally do not wish to cooperate with you. If you are interrogating a character against their will, and you are NOT employing some forced means such as a Charm spell, mental powers, and so forth -- That character may not give you much information, good information, or accurate information. They might downright lie.

The burden here on Team Prometheus is that we must have our act together in briefing our NPCs. We accept this challenge!

If there is an NPC who lies to you, we must fairly present (somewhere) another source which has the accurate information that you need. Your part is this:

NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!

If at first you don't succeed, try a different source.
Do a BGA to a different library.
Ask a bunch of characters the same question.
Ask Team Blue, and Team Red on their perspective of an in-game situation.
Repeat the information the other guy gave you, see what this guy thinks of what she said!

If you don't know where to even start looking or asking: Read the Players Guide.
https://alliancelarp.com/forum/threads/alliance-denver-players-guide.29552/

Go ask a guild or one of its members where to start your search about like topics.
Ask a smart person where they would start looking.
Ask your own team for advice on the topic.

And going back to How To Work a Plotline part 1: Once you get any kind of information: Share it with someone. Tell the other PCs. That's how you inspire them to want to bring information to you in the future.

If this inspires specific questions about you personally can change your game style to become more involved, please reach out privately to plot@alliancedenver.com, or to any member of Team Prometheus with whom you're comfortable. We'd love to chat about your character goals, give you any tips we can, or help you get more involved however we can.

Trace Moriarty
Team Prometheus
2017 Acarthia Plot

 

[JeffL]

YOU ARE BLOWING MY MIND!

 

[Belswin]

Mind = BLOWN