On Writing Styles ...

Last post I remarked that when I began running D&D, about 20 years ago (Crom!!) - I often sat around and wrote up NPCs that were never used.

This led me to thinking about the various writing styles I have tried and rejected as I have gone along.

When I began, of course I had no idea what the heck I was doing. Thus, the PCs surfing through dungeons on magic ax heads with flails made of magic pearls, etc. I had no life outside my room, so I sat around rolling up characters just for the fun of it. Yes, I was a boring little geek who should have been learning something that would be useful later in life - like how to talk to a girl! Or how to play drums!

By the time high school came along, I still had no life. So, I spent many hours writing exhaustive notes. I'd start off with a yellow legal pad and fill in story lines and NPC stats for pages and pages. I used a .05 mechanical pencil and wrote four lines of text to every one college ruled line (try it - it's hard to read. I was an idiot.) And, of course, any night that I showed up with tons of notes and everything I wanted to do planned out - the group would decide to go off on a tangent and I was required to think on my feet.

This thinking on my feet thing seemed to happen more and more often. In certain groups, when I did have notes, I was accused of "strong arming" the group to follow what I had written. I'm sure the accusations were not far from wrong.

In college, I went the other way. Since I had a job and homework and classes that I sometimes attended (I even sometimes talked to girls!) I didn't have excessive time to write up game material. Instead of pages of notes, I'd have half a page of notes and winged the rest. Flying by the seat of one's pants can be fun. There are no restrictions for tangents and very little chance to "strong arm" a group. However, when I do fly without notes, I tend to give more stuff to the players. They walk away with bags of money and high powered items that later come back to haunt me. In one game I ran, I got around this by constantly dropping the players into a new game world every week, naked, JOB style. As you might imagine, the players hated this!

Since college, as my life has become busier and busier, I have had to refine what I do. Half of the enjoyment I get out of running and playing an RPG is writing up background material. A few of my games could easily have been expanded into novels and someday, a few might! I just don't have time to write entire legal pads full of material. My older, more sophisticated players know when I'm off my notes and exploit those moments to get more cool junk or quickly solve riddles or get rich.

There has to be a compromise. I do still write long histories of particular characters or events. Then, I take those histories and use them to make sketches of the main NPCs and add some stats. I don't waste time building full characters - my players will never care what the gardening skill of a given PC might be. They will want to know who they know? How rich they are? What information they might have access to? Super Powers? Et cetera. If during play it is required to know exactly what an NPC can or cannot do in a given area, I quickly decide and add that information to the NPC's sheet later.

I also commonly make NPC webs. Thus, we have NPC A - The Mentor. Almost every game I have ever run, I have used an NPC to mentor the PCs. He can be a teacher or a patron or a boss or what have you. NPC A has allies and enemies. I usually like to map out six to ten secondary NPCs. These NPCs also have allies and enemies, but I try not to map too far out - the players won't care unless I write a story line that makes them care.

Good players, IMHO, come to me with a background of their own. This is excellent fodder for NPC webbing. Certainly one of their friends or enemies knows or has crossed someone in my web. It doesn't take long to have a rich supporting cast, each with only a few notes on what they are best at.

Random NPCs that don't end up dead become reoccurring contacts for the PCs. That shop owner on planet Forgettable might become a connection to a local crime lord who has a connection to suppliers and pirates and mercenaries and scary cults that worship the inherit evil of the walnut! I think you can see my point: I allow the material I have already written to write material that will be used later on. With minor characters becoming contacts and sometimes major contacts, this adds a sense of continuity that I have found no other way to provide.

And, in the end, when I show up to a game with little or no notes, I am pretty good at the pants-flying routine. Those sessions are usually the best time to let the PCs have a shopping/gambling/bar room brawl trip while I sit back and sketch notes of the NPCs they meet/offend/assault for later use!

Mix up your writing style - you might find a useful tool!