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100% GMing
Treasure Tables is dedicated to game masters, offering GMing advice and ideas and a community of GMs helping each other run great games since 2005. I'm Martin Ralya, and I've been GMing since 1989 and writing for the RPG industry since 2004.
Creating and Running Guide NPCs
Sat. March 17, 2007
Issue #349 of Roleplaying Tips has some great advice on building and managing NPC guides — NPCs that accompany the party as long-term companions.
The author bases their advice on two concrete examples of successful guide NPCs from their own game, which is an excellent approach: “Bordon’s success was unusual because he was not only twice as powerful as the rest of the party members, he was also the PCs’ employer.”
Highlights include giving your NPC a specialized skillset (so they don’t trample on the whole party) and little in the way of leadership abilities (so the players can take the lead). We’ve got a permanent NPC ally (not strictly a guide NPC, but not that far off) in my group’s Stargate SG-4 campaign, and those two traits are part of what make her work so well in the game.
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