Non-Player Characters

Non-player characters (or NPCs for short) are every character in the game world not controlled by a player. For the majority of these, they don’t need mechanics to represent them - the GM simply arbitrates their actions and responses to player input.

However, if you want to make an NPC more complex (or dangerous), you can use the following rules to measure their abilities in the game world:

DIFFICULTY: As mentioned in the Core Mechanic section above, some NPCs have a difficulty rating - this is a general measure of skill and power on their part, and is applied to all rolls a player makes when acting against them. Some NPCs might have different difficulties in certain situations, for example: Witch: Difficulty 2 when in her lair, Difficulty 0 if you can lure her out.

RESISTANCE: Unlike player characters, NPCs don’t have a broad variety of resistances - and they don’t roll for fallout. Instead, they have one resistance - called resistance - and when they take cumulative stress equal to or greater than that value, they’re at the mercy of the player characters.

EQUIPMENT: This includes things such as weapons (and their attached stress values and tags), the armour they’re wearing (if any), and also general items with no mechanical effect on the game (clothing, trinkets, jewellery, etc). If they have items that make them better at a certain task other than combat (for example, climbing gear) then you can represent this by increasing the difficulty of actions made against them where that equipment is used.

Example Npcs

Goblin

Difficulty: 0, 1 if it’s trying to hide or run away

Resistance: 3

Equipment: Suspiciously dirty knife (D3)

Police Officer

Difficulty: 0

Resistance: 6

Equipment: Taser (D3, Stunning, One-Shot), Truncheon (D3), Stab vest (Armour 1).

Werewolf

Difficulty: 2 during the full moon, 0 otherwise.

Resistance: 14 during the full moon, 6 otherwise.

Equipment: Raking claws and vicious teeth (D6, brutal) during the full moon, 9mm pistol for self-defence (D6, ranged) otherwise

License

CC BY 4.0
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