Do you make timetables for NPC routines in your games? I feel like that's the most effective kind of prep in a densely populated scenario. Don't make NPCs super intricate, just give them times and places to be.
One of my first campaigns was essentially just that, a bunch of NPC time tables. The kicker was that it was a groundhog day scenario in a besieged city where the players had to learn those timetables to piece together a solution.
>>93928284thats actually very creative
>>93927661I've never felt the need. NPCs are always just where ever makes sense and/or serves the convenience of the game.
>>93928337Thanks. Really I just mashed Majora's Mask and some Gothic 1 & 2 together, but it was really fun to design this stuff since a lot of it flowed so naturally. Just gotta design quests around information. For example, there was a small treasure chest hidden in a certain location that took about half a day to find, but once the party knew where it was they could pick it up whenever in any future cycle while solving other quests. In the final cycle where the party won, they spent the day running through the city seemingly randomly to always be in the right place at the right time.I'd really like to play this kind of game again with my group, but I'd have to find another in-world excuse for the timeloop to happen, and that might get silly rather quickly.
>>93928618I take it your games are more combat focused?
>>93928652I'd say about 60-40 in favor of combat. Timing gets more gritty when there's a focus around going about social affairs, but I've never needed to plan out NPC timetables to account for the party wanting to bother a noble during church or a shopkeeper at 3am on Walpurgisnacht.
>>93927661The one time I tried to make NPCs not available 24/7 it got some PCs killed and two players rage-quitting.
>>93927661Yeah. Usually it is reduced to a few simple habits within a time frame, like what guards are doing tonight, but often I spread it out over an entire day. Characters having schedules makes the world feel real, and makes the players think complexly about solutions. The first time my players burst into a barracks to find that half the cultists were asleep, was the time they started waiting until night time to raid locations.
>>93928675Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying games need them. Neither do sessions need background music or PCs need portraits. It's just something to spice up the game, maybe get players to think about some situations differently.
>>93927661Been using variations on apocalypse world clocks for over a decade. Doesn't even have to be location and time specific, just goal and stage based you filter through player activity and extrapolate. Gives you more flexibility than requiring specific things to happen at specific places at specific times when players go and do player things that will fuck that up.
>>93928714That sounds like something worth a storytime anon.
>>93929258I always keep a mental countdown from when something occurred until the effects will be seen by the PCs.
>>93930544Party needed to get ferried down river but arrived at boarding station late at night when ferryman was not available, so they stole the boat and set out on their own. In the middle of the night, into unknown water, in full armor, ignored approaching noise, ran down the rapids, sunk the boat and drowned half the party, the started out of character argument whose fault it was.
>>93927661No, because who cares what the NPCs are doing? The only times that matter are when merchants are available and even then that can be super vague with no consequences.The game is about the PCs, not the NPCs, and if that is not the case at your table go write a book.
>>93931949>Want to assassinate a local politician>Ask GM if we can find a way to get a look at the politician's schedule for the week to see if there's a time where they're in an open area>"If this interests you so much: go write a book, fag."
>>93931533lmao fucking retards>>93931949Do you never give your players problems where time is any factor at all? Making the world feel "lived in" doesn't mean it focuses on the NPCs, it just means you as a GM have to do more work to do this stuff while having the PCs in focus. But it gives the PCs more opportunities to think ahead and make plans, which can make some players more engaged than "okay we move on to the next thing". I'm not saying this is objectively superior or some such nonsense, my point is that different GMs will have different styles, which some players may prefer and some may not.
>>93927661>I feel like that's the most effective kind of prep in a densely populated scenario.Sounds extremely ineffective since most of the timetables will never get used. I can only see it for a few scenarios like the mentioned Groundhog Day scenario and only for a small number of important characters.If there are any important events, like most of a village attending religious service on Sunday at 10, I would prep these. Otherwise an NPC is either at home, at work or hanging out depending on what makes sense in the moment and whether the PCs have business with them.
