For those of you who don't know, NPC stands for Non-Player Character. The funtion of an NPC in an RPG is to provide background color and be the ground upon which the PC's tread. If you don't know, PC stands for Player Character. The point of this entire bit of wording here is to illuminate you all! God-damnit! Get some spine and goof around as an NPC. It's a lot more fun than you think. You people are so wrapped up in being this or that and whos the most bad-ass person on the block and all sorts of other silly shit that I don't see how any RP ever gets done on Yahoo. In a table-top RPG, one person plays out all of the NPC's, online however, the game contains many many more players than one gamemaster can deal with effectively.

My challenge to all of you is to be better role-players and step up take some of the burden, make a monster, or group of monsters and run around and attack people, get killed and then ask if the players had fun and if they didn't ask for suggestions on how to improve your performance. I don't know how often I hear people bitching and moaning about how bored they are, and a little judicious NPCing always gets them out of their funk. The difference in fighting a player and an NPC is that the NPC is supposed to be killed, they player's are the winners, but that doesn't mean the NPC goes quietly. However no NPC should ever "win" a given situation unless the situation has been scripted. NPC's can also be used for more mundane tasks.

Take for example a standard tavern. In this example, we will forego the Inn aspect and look just at the bar aspect. A successful tavern should have at least 7 employees. 2 bartenders, 3 waitresses and 2 bouncers. In this fashion you have two people constantly serving behind the bar and three people moving around the common room serving drinks at tables and taking orders. The bouncer count can be larger in case it is needed, but at least two should give at least some protection when a fight breaks out. In this case, the NPC's shouldn't really have names, or at least if they have a name they should also be identified as an NPC, and their name should also allude to their occupation. Notable NPC's happen, and these are the ones that should happen in small groups of players. The more powerful an NPC is, the less often you run into them. Reoccuring NPC's will show up time and time again to thwart certain player's goals.

Imagine for a moment, the bigger picture...If everyone made a profile for an NPC, then we would be able to support a set grouping of rooms, stabilize the enviroment some, and all it would take is little bit of maturity. Enough people already show that level of maturity to make this a quick realization. Can you even imagine having an actual town to roam through, complete with NPC's to deal with? You could then play out moving from the "Tavern" to the "Smithy", walk down the "Main Street" duck into an "Alleyway" and end up in the "Thieves Guild", visit a "Temple To Some God" or hit the "Brothel" or the "Magic Shop", even pick up the rumors about the hidden underground labryinth beneath the town, and enter "Dungeon Level 1" where you can fight monster after monster that never bitches about dying before proceeding on to deeper levels or other hostile regions that test your combat abilities. All it takes is a little mutual cooperation.

If we can form Clans, we can just as easily do this. No problem, not even difficult. It wouldn't need to lower the creativity of the people who open a room. You can still create a specific Tavern, but with a look at rooms already present, you can then make a room that fits in with the rest. rather than showing up in a room and going through an explanation of this great distance we have travelled to get there, and then leaving and going to some other remote place that ends up usually being another Tavern in the remote wastelands of who knows where that took you a year to get to and you somehow never ran out of food or water and finally, wow!, looks at all the people. It doesn't help the shared view of the realm. If we could just set up a basic foundation, or grouping of buildings in a town that should always be up.

The benefit of being an NPC is that in most situations, you don't have to do much, except in notable situations, so if your not really wanting to pay attention to whats going on, but still want to be in a room, you could play a gate guard at the town gate or something, oooh, stand there and "look" awake, make sure you don't drop your spear, lean against the wall if you can get away with it, nothing much to it all, unless a group of monsters or something attacks...but how often can that happen?...heh heh heh...The results of such a simple effort are clearly visible to anyone of even a simple intelligence, much less those of us that actually possess a decent amount of brains. I'll let you figure out which group you fall into, but remember there's always that elusive third group, the one that says, "your a fucking idiot" that you fall into if you aren't a part of the other two groupings. Anyhow, I doubt that most of you will ever let go of your egos for long enough to try this concept out, but if perchance hell freezes over and dozens of other cliches happen and most of you pull your heads out of your asses, then we might see a bit of really fucking good RP that everyone not only participates equally in, but also enjoys equally as well.

Who knows...It could happen, right?