Sunday 18 April 2021

Scorched Earth NPC Relationship Table

Integrating player-written character backgrounds into your campaign is real work. Sometimes they just write so much, who can keep all those names straight?

Why struggle? Let the dice be your friend! Every time they bring someone up from that dog-eared sheaf they keep bringing to game night, just roll d6:


d6Whatever happened to so-and-so?
Moments after you last saw them, they joined up with the enemy. Life as an entry level hobgoblin is hard, but it also has a kind of simplicity. They don't really think about the past. Cudgel, rusty helmet, raawr, you know?
They died, pretty much right away. Their surviving relatives and friends remember the PC as a bit of a dick to them in their final years.
One day, their home just fell into the earth, and they haven't been seen since. Coincidentally, the hole is the entrance to that dungeon you were planning on using next!
It was never reciprocal, and the NPC is honestly having trouble remembering the PC's name. I mean, it's great you thought we we were close or whatever, but I think you read too much into it. Please don't make it awkward.
Nobody can remember the NPC. Who? Are you sure? There's no magic at work, just an overactive imagination.
After a brief, high fever, they erupted into a brightly colored fungal mat. Nobody's been able to clean it up, the stench is unbelievable.

5 comments:

  1. Brutal and lovely in it's own special way, like watching a fat house-cat hunt down a gerbil.

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  2. ..one can never have too many tables.

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  3. I like this... in fact I like it so much I'ma expand on it...

    We need three tables, The Bad, The Good, and The Ugly... err, Neutral. Why? Because I use GURPS, and GURPS has a nioce NPC Random Reaction Table which is split, conveniently, into Bad, Neutral, and Good Reactions. So pairing them means if I'm randomly checking a background NPC for a reaction I can get the general tone (Bad, Neutral, Good) and the intensity from the Reaction Table and then get the situation from a Good, Meh, Bad Relationship table. I'll try to remember to toss an update post here when I've worked out the Neutral and Good tables.

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    1. If you do, tweet me a link @fuseboy and I'll pass it along. :)

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