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The situation with my current group is that I am pretty certain that I can get two players anything more is a bonus

I agree that a player for Tiana would be great but unfortunately there are no female gamers in my group at the moment. I have thought about it a bit and a wife of one of the players used to play RPGs. Unfortunately (for games) she is pretty certainly not available but I could ask them.

But as my group is currently all male, PCs will be male, too.

Here's a loose outline what will happen in my game if players don't wreck havoc on these plans (like they wouldn't).

Stephano Manordo will approach Augustino Lorano about the marriage proposal between Tiana and Augustino's son Gino. I will let PCs handle the negotiations as much as possible (depending on what characters they play). The initial reaction will of course depend how they approach it but the bottomline is that Augustino won't go with the plan unless Gino's current engagement can be unmade without Augustino loosing face.

Next phase will be when Joakino Tramora will approach Stephano about marrying Tiana. This idea is from Maureta. Maureta will provide insider information to Joakino as much as possible. She will be his willing mole in the matters of House Manordo.

Actually Joakino's involvement plays to Stephano's pocket as there is rivalry between Houses Lorano and Tramora, so Augustino is now much more willing to get the marriage deal done than initially. There is still the problem about undoing the prior engagement. This engagement will probably be where the meat of the conflict will be as House Manordo and House Tramora try to outplay each other in that.

The end game is of course even more difficult to see. It will probably end when Tiana marries either Gino or Joakino as no-one else will do. Stephano needs money, desperately and he won't settle for less than heir of a major House.

Well, rather than laying up your plans any further, I think now would be the time to engage your players and see where they land in this scheme of things.

...if only you had a system to present to them, I know, I know. *hides under the carpet*

I've been ridiculously busy lately (what time I haven't been working on actual for-money-to-live-on work has been spent getting certain documents prepared), and frankly I have nothing I can contribute to this thread. I just thought I would state that this is exactly the kind of awesome stuff we wanted to see out of the game, and it hasn't even come out yet.

Just the kind of motivational kick in the rear I needed.

higgins wrote:...if only you had a system to present to them, I know, I know. *hides under the carpet*

Uh. .. er. No comment.

Thursday™

higgins wrote:Well, rather than laying up your plans any further, I think now would be the time to engage your players and see where they land in this scheme of things.

...if only you had a system to present to them, I know, I know. *hides under the carpet*

That's true. I can't plan any further without at least character concepts and even then it would be just to lay down the base for first session.

I think I will still further define the city and factions, maybe give more personality to the main Players and then begin to recruit the players.

No need to hide, it is at least couple of hours on the ship before I can even get to your shores I have had fun to at least plan so far. When I get my hands on the rules, comes the really hard part.

Agamemnon wrote: Uh. .. er. No comment.

Thursday™

No worries, take your time. There are still some things to do before I really need the rules.

Marras wrote:When I get my hands on the rules, comes the really hard part.

I sure hope not. That should be the easy part.

I really hope so I have noticed that creating NPC stats is usually one of the biggest jobs when designing an adventure. I am lazy that way, too.

Marras wrote:I really hope so I have noticed that creating NPC stats is usually one of the biggest jobs when designing an adventure. I am lazy that way, too.

I personally hate designing NPC stats. Unless I have something very specific in mind from the word go ("this man is a ridiculously good swordsman") I tend to want to hand-wave as much as possible.

Amusingly, in OD&D / AD&D / whatever, this was blissfully easy. 95% of the population are level 0 characters with more or less identical stats that never come up.

Savage World lets you do this some as well, between mook rules and "Mr. D6" as a template.

'Bastards is taking something of a similar outlook, giving the option to make most NPCs be relatively easy to create and notate mostly because I'm incredibly lazy as a GM.

Since you bring it up though, are there any games that handle NPCs in a way any games were particularly elegant or interesting?

I'm glad that NPC design will be less than complex.

I know this won't help you much but a Finnish fantasy RPG Praedor has a nice list of premade NPCs. It has very condensed stat blocks for them as you don't really need to know those. There are only two skill levels present, one for professional skills and one for related skills. GM is free to decide which skills might fit to which group and can do it on a fly.

RQ6 has a bit similar list for nameless NPCs in some supplements.

For a one shot (which I intend to do for the sake of introducing this system to some people I know), a band of thieves and scoundrels in need of money get hired to murder a duke at a party hosted by a local count. Most of them have either worked with each other or against each other in the past, but they all need the money.

The cast?

The retired alcoholic conman, the ageing brawler, the count's servant who's up to his ears in debt, the young guild rat looking to make a name for himself, the runaway serf (debating making him be from the duke's lands) and the beggar knight (debating giving him some history with the duke).

Very cool. Are you pre-genning these for your players, or are the players making these characters themselves?

If the former, have you thought about what SAs they will have?

Pre-genning - while having the players gen their own characters would be more in the spirit of the game, it would probably take too long to both gen characters and run the adventure in the same session.

Each should probably have an SA related to at least one other character, and I'm tempted to have each have at least one related to the duke, but I'm going to decide on SAs once I've got all the other stats sorted out; that way I can work out what the relations between the characters might be. That being said, I'm tempted to leave two SAs blank, and have the players come up with one related to another PC and another related to the duke.

Based on what I have read on the char gen you can easily start with 3 SAs like you wrote. I like having one SA connected to other PC(s) and another connected to the duke. But how about leaving the last one for players to decide? Just say that it should reflect the reason for taking the job. Keep the money as a viable backup if players have difficulties coming up with reasons. Even then the last SA should say what they need the money for.

I believe that even this one decision helps players to adopt the pre-gen better and actually commit to it.

Good point - hadn't considered that one.