NPC Factions and NPC's

[Steve Kort]

Pirates
Bandits
Heretics

All of these would be generic enemies but as I mentioned before some of these would be of more concern to some factions than others.  Meaning certain factions would pay bounties for there capture or death.  These also make for great targets for players to practice their combat skills in the game.  They also could make a good way for clans to gain a reputation in the area and be looked open favorably by the locals.

Despite your thoughts on factions and players in each faction those things will vary through out the life of the game people will come and go from the game and they will drop and add clans.  You may have a huge number of Imperials at one time and virtually no Boda, then it may slowly change and become just the opposite.  Players may become bored with certain factions and completely move to another.   These are things no one in the game can control.   Your best bet is to make sure there are plenty of factions with lots of variety for people to play and stay around in the game.

Also for game balance at times you may need to place NPC factional clans around to help defend things or just for targets for enemy factions.  This may be greatly necessary if a faction ends up with a small number of clans for you to keep game balance, but again this will depend on numbers.  The key is that things must be done from time to time to add variables and new challenges in the game to keep players interested and give them new goals to be met.

[DreamWeaver]

Actually I believe this should be expanded upon...

I believe the following NPC Factions should be in the system as other factions that the players or factions can work against.

Barbarians - they are both land and sea (marines like)
Bandits - land based
Pirates - they are mostly naval, but pirates can raid inland as well too as well as attacking cities that are poorly defended
Heretics - Old Gods followers, gives the Religious factions some targets
Blood & Fire - they are a Moorlock follower and huge target for the Religious factions

I would place declared cities in all sections of Midgard for these NPC factions giving larger targets to pursue against.

[Davin]

I understand that the player's interests will morph, but my initial concern is spreading things too thinly.  IOW, it won't be an interesting faction to play if you're the only clan in it.  We need variety within the factions as well as in choice of factions.  If some move out to other factions, then some will likely move in, too.

I expect to use NPCs of multiple factions to help fill out the population, but it will be the PCs that actually do interesting things in the game.  As your clans play, I'd want you to run into other PCs as well as NPCs of various sorts.

As for the "bad guys", I think they should mostly be there (at least in the beginning) to provide NPC clans for players to work against, either passively or actively.

[DreamWeaver]

Speaking as a Long time D&D DM, I would use these factions as the games Bad Guys. I would have declared cities for each faction in different areas of the Midgard continent, and also set up declared clans for each of them as targets and etc within the game. Maybe set up some notes and plots about each declared city and those clans.

[Davin]

Sure, at least for now.  Knowing players, though, somebody's going to want to play as those "bad guys" themselves, so I'm leaving that concept open for the future if/when we get enough people playing.

For instance, I can see cities that survive primarily on the spoils of bandits fencing goods and coastal cities that are "safe havens" for pirates, that PCs may not like to have around.

[DreamWeaver]

Davin I feel you could have a lot of fun by also having both the Barbarians and the Blood & Fire as NPC factions. Use them as they have been 'Evil Raiders' that go after everyone. The Barbarians will attack everyone, and the B&F will go after the Religious factions (Banner, Gift, Ring). It would be a lot of fun to hunt them down and deal with them. It could help to drive some factions to deal with such threats.

It might also be worth while to create a Merc type faction that was a NPC as well , and run them as a pure NPC too.It gives you time to work out all the bugs and later opens up other factions for players to eventually expand into if they have the drive and desire.

[Steve Kort]

Davin personally I think you fail to realize the mentality of the younger gamer. If there is not lots of variety of things for them to do and accomplish they will get bored and move on. Older players will likely stick with the game much longer but even they will give up if they feel things are a hopeless cause for the faction they are playing in. If you don't have a lot of variety of clans with different styles and beliefs the game will get old and stagnant and people will have no other place to go. You need to consider that over the course of game time things can change and new enemies become more of an issue.

Say the Boda dwindle in numbers and the much larger group of Imperials have virtually wiped them out. Sure they may have a few cities and a few clans, but they are no real threat to the Imperials no more. Now you need someone else to be that major player enemy of the Imperials, you can not expect a group of people will just come in and join the game and play Boda when they are no match to their enemy.

In Midgard USA many factions dwindled in numbers after they faced their enemy and lost. Most of the time those players started up clans in totally seperate factions and if it were not for the variety of clans and different style of play of those factions most of them would have simply left the game. In fact a couple of my clans I played later on in the game were actually inactive clans of the faction that another player used to run and the Senior of the Faction gave it to me to play. That way I had a more experienced clan to play one with some training and better supplies. At that time I was one of the only Boda players left alive as the others had gotten killed in various ways. Needless to say I did not stay Boda.

[Davin]

Davin I feel you could have a lot of fun by also having both the Barbarians and the Blood & Fire as NPC factions.

I don't have a problem with having other NPC types out there.  That's more work for me but it's really just a matter of building the scenarios.  Getting humans to play in PC factions is much more difficult.  Thus I'm trying to focus on convincing people to play, and that means providing them a good time with a number of interesting varieties of PC factions.  But it's been as difficult to get participation on the factional redesign as I expect it to be getting players to play in them.  We need some more help here.

[Davin]

Davin personally I think you fail to realize the mentality of the younger gamer.  If there is not lots of variety of things for them to do and accomplish they will get bored and move on.

I certainly hear what you're saying, but I'm having trouble just getting to that stage.  If we get enough players we can start adding more factions for more interesting choices.  But I don't want them to start out bored.

Take your example with the Boda ... it wasn't very fun playing mostly by yourself, was it?  So what if we start up the Boda as one of many choices and only one or two players signs up with them?  Aren't they going to be at least as bored, and immediately upon starting?

My idea is if they have fewer choices to start with, then there will be more clans starting in each one.  As more players join in we can then add new factions for them to choose from, when the existing ones can afford to be thinner.  Hopefully we can maintain a balance as we grow, without bloating or starving any of the factions, and the variety can grow with the size of the player base.

[DreamWeaver]

Davin I would look at the NPC factions as the next ones on deck to develop and players might want to join later on. Here is the list that I think would work:

- Barbarians
- Bandits
- Pirates
- Blood & Fire Religion
- Cult of the Dark One
- Heretics
- Swashbucklers
- Merc Verk / SOA
- Cymru /Seekers


These are just a few and would add other elements to the game. Having a few NPC clans and maybe a city declared for each of them across the lands would add a lot of plot lines that you would control and add more in game play for all.