NPC / Monster organization strategy

[Murrdox]

Hey folks,

I'm working on populating Realm Works for Infinity (2D20 sci-fi game) and I'm coming across some issues with how I should be including NPCs and "Monsters" in the game. Could use some assistance in the best way to organize this.

Infinity doesn't have "Monsters" per say, but there are various NPC types, like Pirates, Gang Members, Mercenaries, Troopers, etc. I have entered these basic NPCs into my Mechanics Reference under "Dangers" as Monsters / Enemy. No problem here.

What I'm having trouble with is the best way to build out my Scenes. In Shadowrun this was pretty easy to do. I would just have a Hero Lab Portfolio for the scene, and I would link it in the Hero Lab snippet. Done.

Obviously there is no Hero Lab support for Infinity 2D20, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to do it. If the scene just requires some vanilla bad guys, then this is pretty easy, I just list out all the enemies in the scene, and Realm Works turns them into clickable links to the list in the Mechanics Reference. No problem. But special NPCs are giving me trouble.

I needed a hacker for a scene. I don't really want to add this single hacker to the main Adversary section in the Mechanics. He's just going to show up in this scene alone. I created an Adversary Template to use for all my adversaries, but I can't easily duplicate the template for a Mechanics reference and put it in a topic for an Individual.

So far the best I've come up with is that I'm going to have to create another template in the "People" section for an individual, and make a template there. I feel like this is going to result in a lot of copy/pasting though when I'm generating NPCs.

Just curious how other people are organizing this, and if anyone has suggestions.

 

[daplunk]

I would just make the hacker in the dangers section. You never you, might be useful down the track. You can duplicate topics so that should speed it up of you can base it on something else.

 

[Vargr]

I would make a topic containing the hacker and place it under/in your scene.

He is - I assume - after all a "named NPC" and thus not a generic "Guard #2".

If you end up only using him for that scene you just leave him in that scene.

If you later have to use him elsewhere or he becomes a recurring villain or maybe even an ally of the party you can easily move him somewhere else where he fits better into the way you have organised your realm.

 

[Acenoid]

Exactly you can always move things around!

Except between world and mechanic almanachs for some reason :/

 

[kbs666]

Exactly you can always move things around!

Except between world and mechanic almanachs for some reason :/

You can move between the two sides it's just more difficult.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Except between world and mechanic almanachs for some reason :/

Rob's answer on how to do this.

 

[Murrdox]

Hmm thanks for the feedback. I'm going to take a closer look at Rob's suggestion.

I have this desire to keep my Mechanics section "clean"... consisting of generic NPCs or universally applicable NPC templates. Then named NPCs or special characters a part of the actual adventure quests and scenes. But it might not be realistic to do this.

I might just create an Adversary grouping for named characters... that way they can be in the Mechanics section, yet separated?

 

[kbs666]

I tend to put named NPC in the story side. But to each their own. do what works for you.

 

[Valyar]

I have "Monster Manual" created in the Mechanics section and there I put every monster - generic or adventure specific (as showed in the screen shots).

For each named NPC that has profile that exists in the mechanic section, I simply refer it in its Profile section in the World Almanac.

Attached are two screenshots.

 

[IronDog]

I've been populating Infinity RPG into Realmworks for some time now (Modiphius Kickstarter backer), the way I've done it is just creating a Monster/Enemy entry in the Mechanics Reference. I use the suffix in the name as "unit type" reference and a source reference for the prefix to keep entries unique. For example; 421b - ARMS DEALER (ELITE).

In the World/Story Almanac I create entries on who is in a particular scene and how they behave, for specific "Named" NPCs I create full entries as a child topic to this and "Generic" NPC entries just have a link to their corresponding Mechanics Reference.

 

[Murrdox]

Wow, awesome, Valyar and IronDog we have to compare notes! I'd love to see how you are choosing to organize your Realm, since I'm doing Infinity, Valyar is doing Conan and IronDog is doing Infinity as well!

IronDog are you on the Realm Works Facebook group? I'd love to "Friend" you so I could send you a chat and maybe bounce ideas off you occasionally.

IronDog, this is how I'm currently organizing my World Almanac. I just finished inputting chapter 1 of the Quantronic Heat adventure, which I'm getting ready to run.

You can see that it's a little messy. I've only actually RUN one session so I'm still sort of learning the best way to organize things in Realms Works for Infinity to make it easier to use at the game table. You'll note that I've got some NPCs that are sub-headings of the Scenes that they appear in. Then I've got lists of various NPCs in the People section. I've also got a handy "NPC Template" that I copy for every new NPC. You can see for this CEO, his profile links to the "Corp Exec", which is in my Mechanics Reference.

Here's my Mechanics Reference:

Here you can see I've got many of the stock NPCs from the Infinity Core Book in the Adversaries section. I've got the Suffix of the NPC displaying whether they are a Trooper, Elite, or Nemesis.

I have another "Adversary" template here which comes with blank copies of the tables that you see for the NPC.

It would be wonderful if Realm Works would let me have default values in some text fields in a Category. Then I could make the Adversary Topic have all my blank tables by default, and I wouldn't need to copy/paste from a template.

Anyways, that's how I'm doing it. One of the drawbacks of my system is that I cannot copy my Adversary template into an NPC template. So for the CEO that was in that example, it would be great if I could just right-click the Corp Exec topic, and duplicate it in my World Almanac. Then I could re-name it to the CEO NPC, and add any extra information that I need for that specific NPC. But Realm Works won't allow you to copy a Mechanics Reference Topic to the World Almanac.