sunshine_ooc | NPC Account Bruhaha

the person playing the NPC in battle (or the player, up to the pair) RNG's for a status.

'You're at half chakra'
'The wound is bleeding more than it should be'
'You pulled a muscle'
'You turned an ankle'
etc etc put all of those sorts of things under this comment.

RNG listing for 'level' or type of villains perhaps?

'random civilian/prisoner'
'S-CLASS MONSTER'
'mooks of low level'
'mooks of low level and high intelligence'

ECT, things like that you'd like listed.

Bandit class should be available! Three of them could be taken down by one genin, for example, except bandit bosses or expert bandits - different classes of them with varying intel and abilities, like combat training or street knowledge (for outside of combat scenarios)!

Maybe you just want someone to RNG you out a mission?

'you have an encounter!'
'The wildlife is sparse'
'you lose all your rations in a sandstorm, run into bandits trying to replace them'
'you help a traveler! You get a reward'

What other kinds of things of this nature might you like?

Edited 2015-04-27 19:11 (UTC)

Morality decisions based on refugees, missions, and just people in general people might run into! A character's alignment (aside from village loyalties) could potentially change if they do certain things long enough, like helping enough people or murdering enough innocents for the hell of it.

Would you like a specific type of NPCs posted out with brief summaries?

Do you want an assortment of vague 'these guys work this way' to choose from, complete with attitude?

Do you want specially crafted big boss types to play with who you can't kill or who take teams?

Give us an idea of those that you want under this comment.

Would love NPC types of villagers, where/what regions they can be found in, more information on the daimyo/nobility that aren't player characters already in game and the like. Characters of importance and various types of NPCs to help/hinder on missions or even to request them in the first place!

Is there some post that is needed that isn't listed here?

What needs to be in it? Throw that here!

Also because getting tea gave me words. Currently as it stands there a lot of characters who are specced or have points in skills that would have them acquiring and hoarding/selling information around. However OOCly that is a bit stalled, especially in regards to wartime rumblings as we the players have no central location in which to know legitimately what such characters are allowed to ICLY know compared to what a player knows, short of pinging a mod every five minutes and asking if such and such info can be known by Character A and can they learn such via scenario z.

A lot of this can be fixed or at least give a basis for such characters to work from by having a post or notes in npc entries about what sort of information said npcs may give depending on how they are asked.

Even a little blurb would be helpful like:

"In Suna there is a young maid of a very rich merchant who is known to gain loose lips if flirted with by a handsome fellow and bought a nice dinner. If wooed successfully the young maid will let slip that her employer has been making underhanded deals with some shady people that wear the symbol of Clan X.

Is this a plot by a specific clan or the country they hail from? Or is it a frame job in order to cause tension between Suna and an ally nation?"

That not only gives info that can be learned but it also gives a set up for a small post/log/event for characters to do and then snowball into a plot that could lead to a game plot the mods are working on. Especially nice if the mod team still wants to keep some things underwraps but leave breadcrumbs for the players to follow with their IC actions.

Original plurk about this idea here

We had the idea of setting up an option for NPC exchanges to work as they would in an RPG setting. This would mean that instead of coming up with mission and battle plots by yourself, there would be a system in place to enable you to enter into a random exchange with NPCs, guiding you through each action and consequence... In this setting your character will be able to sustain damage, face chakra depletion, and go up against enemies who actually respond!

It would almost be like a "choose your own adventure" set up. In typical RPG settings, a situation is described to the player who then must choose their action, and the situation responds to that decision.
Hypothetically, for example, if you are on a mission to Suna and enter into a random NPC encounter, you will get a post from the NPC account with details of the setting and given the opportunity to respond. However your character chooses to respond - if they approach, attack, ignore or evade - the situation will react to your characters decision; typical DnD storytelling.

We could also include certain plot points that the player would like to see, on request.
For example, if you are going on a mission to Bears and want your character to get injured but aren't sure how that might come about, you can inform the NPC account and they can make sure that happens during your plot. The NPC account can roll to determine how badly your character is injured, where your character is injured, or even if your character is injured at all! They might even roll so poorly that they end up injuring themselves instead of you!
This eliminates the vagueness of conflict/NPC interaction, and adds an element of excitement as the plot doesn't have to be determined beforehand. It will be an organised way to determine outcomes; missions, kidnappings, conflict, intel-gathering... all of these exchanges turn into something visceral that we as RPers can actually engage in rather than brushing over it!

A RNG system run by another player who knows what you want or who your player is could be very beneficial as we can work in plot points specific to the CR you want, or specific to the character in general. Instead of "my character obviously stabs you in the chest", the system would make it that you attempt to stab the bad guy in the chest and roll to see if you are successful. The system would also enable the NPC account to issue players with notifiers as to their chakra/energy levels, with status updates such as "you start to feel dizzy, your chakra is low."

This option would be a solution to the "I want something to happen but idk what" plotting stumbles. It will require a lot of set up, but we believe that once it's in place, it could make things a lot easier.

The great thing about this idea is that it doesn't have to be all combat, for those of us who don't enjoy writing combat. It can be conversation too, such as intel gathering, asking for directions, anything that you might need someone to bounce off of someone for! It will solve the issue of "what intel is actually available" on missions where characters need to find out plot points. This system would be interactive, and the outcomes will be reliant on the numbers those running the NPC accounts roll, so no-one is god-modding or struggling to generate plot, we're letting the dice do it for us.

Also, relevant to the war plot: this system would give you something to actually fight against where we can make special exceptions like kidnapping, being MiA, experiencing various mind-altering states, even death in some cases should you want to go that far!

Given the go ahead, this would be an opportunity to inject a little more ADVENTURE into this game, and also for any current players to join the NPC squad and bounce off of others. Having a seperate team for this also takes stress off the mods feeling like everyone expects them to give the NPC content, and makes the game truly player driven, just with a little more direction.

SUGGESTIONS:

- A list of NPCs in a journal post on the account that players can choose from should they need/want them for plots/encounters. They would be defined with varying levels of power.

This means that, much like in RPG format where you have a character sheet detailing your characters abilities and stats, we as players will get the opportunity to consider our character's skills and utilize them in responsive situations against reactive problems, with effective outcomes!

- Ranking enemy/potential enemy NPC's in either the letter ranking that Naruto canon uses (D-S rank), or in number rank (example: Genin 1-4, Chuunin 5-9, Jounin 10+). A lvl2 enemy could be defeated by one genin, a lvl5 might need a team of genin, etc.
Perhaps if the rolls aren't high enough in your favour, you get captured or receive an injury/other negative status condition with a lasting effect?
- Depending on where a player is captured, they could be subject to attempts to mould them to the enemy philosophy, torture, threats of public execution, etc? That way players might not have to rely on the NPC account so heavily during their capture. It could be a matter of "if captured by [group x], after 3 days your character will be subject to [x], after five days [x]" so the player can decide when they want a rescue or escape set up. (And you would need to keep tabs on your allies, because if no-one is available to rescue you, then you'd better be real careful about your missions!)

- The opportunity for players to submit profiles for NPCs they wish to have played. Say if a character has a fated enemy, a profile could be submitted and an NPC for that character could be requested. This also goes for anyone who wants to play the NPC themselves!

- Random "boss characters" being unlocked? Perhaps via certain hidden points of interest around the map. We could have a permissions post on the profile of the account itself where the players could comment to let us know if they're okay with random NPC encounters and how far they might want the action to go, including any triggers or things they don't want to/would like to see.

- Regarding WAR SHENANIGANS... During the war, perhaps an increased encounter rate for refugees, displaced civilians, displaced ninja, crying genin who've lost their jounin sensei... And opportunities for your character to be posed with choices to make regarding them. Little mini plots! With potentially big consequences!
eg: "You find an injured child in the road, what do you do?"
If you end up bringing them back to the village, they might turn out to be a master thief and steal your villages previsions or wreak havoc in some other manner. Prepare to be ICly shamed by your peers.

In terms of how to present ranking/level information, I would suggest separate posts either in the NPC comm or in another easily-accessible part of the game, possibly as follows:

1) WAR PLOT ENEMIES: includes members of the small village alliance, "bosses" within the alliance, locations where there are high encounter rates, &c

1.5) GENERAL UNFRIENDLY NINJA: could include if people want to encounter other big 5-allied ninja (this would be more straightforward, since we could just go with genin, chuunin, jounin, &c ranking)

2) RANDOM ENEMIES: includes bears, scorpions, and other non-overarching-plot related enemies, as well as civilian/non-allied human enemies like bandits (which might increase in encounter frequency as the war goes on and the world gets more chaotic), &c

3) NON-COMBATANT NPCS: includes info centres, ~~brothels~~, refugees, crying babby genin, &c

4) DEFEAT CONSEQUENCES: since success consequences would most frequently be "mission continues as planned", defeat consequences more likely needs its own post -- this would be like Miro posted above in terms of what happens if captured, if it differs depending on who did the capturing, length of capture and severity of consequences, &c

5) NPC REQUEST POST: general request, as well as any canon-specific requests; alternatively, within this post players willing to volunteer as NPCs can list what canons they are familiar with to help with requesting -- this could also be where a volunteer NPC team could be divided by region or subject matter expertise

6) GENERAL PERMISSIONS POST: self-explanatory; alternatively, have people put separate permissions in each request perhaps

Just adding some feedback, although levels are a great way to give an idea of what a base rank for a character is, it's also not something that should be entirely accurate; there are some chuunin who could have promoted at a lower level than typical for example, or some genin who are over-levelled but simply didn't pass the exams or didn't want to take them.

ah yes, that's a really valid point. perhaps the canon ranking system would be better then?

that also takes care of any issues with special conditions (kekkei genkai, kiri being terrifying to its students.......) as the npcs would be ranked in terms of D-S and applied in that fashion like missions would be? /chinscratch

I'd say that as long as the player and the person NPCing is aware of the "actual level" of the PC, sticking to the levels should be fine? So for example if a character is technically a chuunin but is acknowledged as having jounin-level abilities and encounters a jounin-level enemy, as long as both PC and NPC know and acknowledge, it should be fine?

canon D-S-rank might be easier to keep track of in terms of keeping things matched to mission parametres and such, though. :|a So either way could work, provided we have a system set up to clarify things like "S-rank enemies will tend to overpower chuunin or lower".

Following the vein of this catch all in regards to how NPC creation could help give not only more creativity for everyone, it also has a great way to set up boundaries and such for those of us who do not fully feel comfortable npcing random mook #3 for someone because we're afraid of god/info modding. It also means that players can pick up npcing a lot easier if there are set templates or profiles they can pick from and just have to add some flavor to the character. Especially a good thing for those of us who would not mind or like to npc but are not as knowledgeable not only about Naruto canon, but also in exactly how everything is set up and/or changed due to the AU nature of the game.

I am not certain how it would fly but I think that maybe having posts of NPCs that can be played out either for random battles or for event/plot/personal plots that are like this in some way could help that greatly. As it describes the npc and what they do, and what sort of general interactions a character may end up facing when they interact with the npc. It also gives a standard for future npcs that people can submit and add to the npc pool.

TL;DR let's make npcing easier so that more players can jump headfirst into such and thus hopefully take some of the npc load off the mods shoulders.

EDIT: I made the document where one can leave comments in case people want to leave notes or suggestions on the template set up. Because this is just a suggestion and maybe can spring board a better template for everyone to use via people prodding it.

Edited 2015-04-27 23:55 (UTC)

i love this template!!!! rubs my face on it

it's a really splendid idea to explain the rolls too, as that's often what trips me up and is what i assume would trip up anyone who hasn't played in an RPG setting before. ;v;!

What I suggest in place of an NPC profile for NARUTO series CANON Character NPCs (pre-existing character like Minato, etc, who therefore do not have to change much at all or need much extra information...potentially also other series' canonmates), so as not to conflict with future applications:

Tag the NPC with the character's tag so a potential future applicant can find what the character has done/been involved in

Additionally, wherever these other NPC profiles are perhaps listed, keep a list of links to NPC interactions of the characters... Like an ongoing AC... One post. Top level comment says character name (Minato, example) and sub comments are where people paste the link and a short "Minato and Kushina do it in Hokage Office. Kakashi sees. O_O" so in the future a Minato apper can go "ok, this was what my character has done"

Keep use of canon characters to a minimum for the sake of potential applicants, but in case they must be used.

Likewise if an OC NPC has an important enough or frequent enough usage, perhaps create a tag to track them.

Edited 2015-05-19 03:20 (UTC)

NPC Account Bruhaha

Player Status

Villains?

Re: Villains?

Technical Difficulties

Re: Technical Difficulties

General NPCs

Re: General NPCs

Other Posts?

Intel

this is pretty much a catch-all, so... top level.

organization possibilities

no subject

no subject

no subject

In regards to NPC making

no subject

Naruto Canon NPCS