Character Whims and Reactions
How does one determine how an NPC reacts in solo play? There are a few systems out there already; but I felt they were all a bit clunky, random, or required some mental gymnastics just to determine if an NPC was happy to meet you or not. Ultimately everyone will have their own style of solo play and how deep they want to dig into the details. I'm adding my own method to the stack for anyone else that it might suit.
Abstracting a the intricacies of relationships, personalities and human nature; I've boiled down the input/output factors as follows.
Inputs:
- Character Desire/Whim
- Disposition
- Skill Check Result (if any)
Output:
- Reaction
- Mood/Emotion
Desire/Whim
This is mainly for context/inspiration. I don't modify my roll results based on this but it gives some insight on why a character may be reacting a certain way. Depending on the scenario it may be very clear what an NPC might want, even if you determine a characters motivation using something like UNE, they may not be acting on that motivation all the time. If in doubt, roll on a table, typically ill roll twice and either try combine them or just pick the most relevant to the context.
As part of character/NPC creation I roll a random vice & virtue. In some systems (Chronicles of Darkness) they have a mechanical use, but you can roll up regardless system you're using, it just adds some depth to each character.
I shouldn't have to tell you you can tweak the table as would suit your game. If you don't want Lust, vice and virtues thats fine, you might consider to add "motive" to round it off to a d6.
Disposition
Basically the characters attitude towards stimuli. This could take into consideration, status, reputation, preexisting relationship and other such factors. I just decide if the disposition is positive, negative or neutral.
Skill Check
Most RPG systems will include some skill check for persuading/compelling/seducing/etc. Figure our a way to determine if a skill check is positive, negative or neutral. With a system like Ironsworn and its strong/weak hit and miss its pretty straightforward. In my CofD-esque game +3 successes is a positive result, 1-2 successes is neutral, 0 successes is negative.
Reaction
Now we get to roll on the reaction table.
Roll a d12, with an additional d12 if their disposition was positive, and an additional d12 if their skill check result was positive, keep only the highest result. Inversely roll additional dice if the disposition and/or skill test was negative, keeping only the lowest.
If you had mixed results, i.e. positive disposition with negative skill check, or visa versa. you can just roll a d12 for more erratic results, or 3d12 dropping the highest and lowest if you want more middling results. (I just roll 1d12)
If you had mixed results, i.e. positive disposition with negative skill check, or visa versa. you can just roll a d12 for more erratic results, or 3d12 dropping the highest and lowest if you want more middling results. (I just roll 1d12)
If the skill check was expecting a simple yes/no outcome, maybe don't use this table. Though it doesn't hurt to roll on it just for inspiration.
Moods
A characters mood can often be unpredictable. I typically roll a couple moods and pick one that fits the context. Alternatively you might roll a mood and ask the oracle more questions about what caused the NPC to be in that mood.
Similar to how each of my characters have vice/virtues, I also roll up 3 random personality traits (ideonomy.mit.edu/essays/traits.html is a pretty good list). so when determining a characters mood, their personality may also play a part.
Tune in to part 2 of my game report to check out this system in play.
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