Gaming Mobs Better
Quick Tips For Making Mobs More Interesting
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From: Johnn Four, http://www.roleplayingtips.com
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Contents:
--> A Brief Word From Johnn
--> This Week's Tips:
1. Make Individuals Interesting With On-The-Fly
Add-Ons
2. Craft A Leader For Each Unit
3. Use Hit Point Piles
4. Identify Minis With Stickers
5. Create Mob Challenges
--> Readers' Tips Of The Week:
1. Character Creation, or Assassination?
2. Structure Your Campaign And Adventures Like A
TV Series
3. Plan Your Group's Seating Arrangements
4. How To Get Your Players To Roleplay More:
Let Them GM
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A Brief Word From Johnn
Thanks For The Contest Entries
============================================================
The 5 Room Dungeon Contest is over - thanks to everyone who
entered. I'll be contacting winners in the next week. Once
entries are edited and formatted, you will be able to
download them all for use in your campaigns. No estimated
delivery date for this, but stay tuned to this section of
the e-zine for an announcement.
Have a game-full week.
Cheers,
Johnn Four
johnn@roleplayingtips.com
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Gaming Mobs Better
Quick Tips For Making Mobs More Interesting
By Johnn Four
One of the daunting things my group faces in the current
part of our campaign, now that they've entered the villain's
lair, is the vast hordes of underlings, also known as
minions, flunkies, rank and file, or mobs.
The biggest challenge of mobs is they grind things down:
you, the players, the characters, and the game. They tend to
be faceless, so not exciting to GM or fight against. If
fought, they often require long battles. When it's the GM's
turn in combat, the mob takes a long time to work through
their actions and results.
I like mobs. Villains should make good use of their ability
to organize, mobilize, and dominate groups to do their evil
bidding. Mobs pose cheap challenges for PCs as obstacles, if
not direct opposition. Mobs can spring up quickly as a
result of PC actions to give your world realism. "Hey,
strangers just burned up the bar. Let's get 'em!"
Unless you've put in a lot of preparation, you've cloned
most of the mob's members from one or more designs or
templates. This creates repetition that turns initially
exciting encounters into tedious gameplay.
Pondering solutions for my own campaign's needs formed the
idea for this article. I had posted a request thread at
ENWorld, but it didn't bear the fruit I wanted, which was my
fault for providing a poorly worded question.
I've given it more thought this week, and following are a
few tips to help you make mobs fun and interesting when
unleashed in your games and mine.
1. Make Individuals Interesting With On-The-Fly Add-Ons
============================================================
Crafting unique NPCs within a mob could take a lot of
preparation time - time better spent planning other aspects
of your campaign. The solution is to create a list or table
of ideas to pull from while GMing so you can customize mob
members on-the-fly.
You don't need to do a lot of customization. Chances are
each member is about to be bypassed or mowed down.
Therefore, the goal is to pick a few individuals out from
the crowd as you GM and give them a single feature that sets
them apart.
Giving several mob members an identical feature brings us
back to our initial problem: boredom through repetition. To
fix this, create a few charts that provide different types
of customization. Save these charts so you can reuse them
for future mobs and NPC groups.
Just prior to the encounter, or as you GM it, roll or pick
from your lists and assign features to select members. A
great method is to wait until NPCs naturally stand out from
the crowd in some way. You leap upon those opportunities and
give those NPCs a cool aspect, ability, or feature. This
saves you time customizing NPCs that just get fireballed,
hit with artillery, or avoided somehow before they reveal
their uniqueness.
With on-the-fly customization, you don't want to add
something that would have made a huge impact on the mob
before the confrontation began. For example, if you give a
member a tank half-way through a fight, it doesn't make
sense. Why didn't the mob lead with the tank and use it for
protection. Where was the tank hiding at the start of the
battle? And so on.
Defeated mobs also means piles of loot. You don't want to
upset campaign balance by giving mob members treasure that
you know will soon fall into the hands of the PCs. The
unique aspects you give to select mob members need to be
cheap and part of a balanced meal for victorious characters.
Here are a few on-the-fly customisation ideas:
* Name: Assign a name or nickname to any NPC who stands out
in a mob as gameplay progresses. Keep a list of random names
handy just for this purpose. Be sure to reveal the name in
play, because an unknown name is useless.
o Have fellow mob members call the NPC by name
o Have the mob leader instruct the NPC by name
o The NPC declares his own name, perhaps as part of a
battle yell
o The NPC's name is stitched into his clothes, tabard,
or armour
o The NPC's name is tattooed, perhaps on his forearm
or knuckles
* Potions. In fantasy games, these are awesome NPC
customisation devices. They are one-shot add-ons with a
large range of possible effects. Once the potion is in the
belly of an enemy, the PCs won't get it as treasure.
Here's the list I created for my D&D campaign:
1. Acid Arrow
2. Acid Breath
3. Balor Nimbus
4. Belker Claws
5. Bite of the Wererat
6. Bite of the Werewolf
7. Blink
8. Blur
9. Body of the Sun
10. Bull's Strength
11. Burning Hands
12. Charge of the Triceratops
13. Chill Touch
14. Color Spray
15. Darkness
16. Death Armor
17. Deeper Darkness
18. Displacement
19. Enlarge Person
20. Entropic Shield
21. Expeditious Retreat
22. Fangs of the Vampire King
23. Fly
24. Fog Cloud
25. Frost Breath
26. Gaseous Form
27. Ghoul Touch
28. Girallon's Blessing
29. Hamatula Barbs
30. Haste
31. Heroism
32. Invisibility
33. Levitate
34. Meld Into Stone
35. Mirror Image
36. Nauseating Breath
37. Obscuring Mist
38. Primal Form
39. Quillfire
40. Rage
41. Ring of Blades
42. Shocking Grasp
43. Shadow Phase
44. Silence
45. Snakebite
46. Sound Burst
47. Spider Climb
48. Thunderous Roar
49. True Strike
50. Wraithstrike
In picking those potions, even though some are expensive, I
opted for ones that had any of the following options:
o Creates effects I can do cool descriptions for, to make
the mob, NPC, and encounter interesting.
o Uses touch attacks, as the PCs have high armor classes
and touch attacks, this make them easier to hit.
o Provides the NPC concealment, so that PCs always have a
miss chance despite their attack modifiers
o Allows potentially interesting encounter situations, such
as an NPC who can hide in stone and leap out to attack
from time to time, or an NPC who can flee fast
I avoid potions that just supply a bonus to hit or
improved armour class, as those benefits are largely
invisible and not nearly as interesting as, say, a farmer
flying around stabbing with his pitchfork from the air.
* Low-charge items. Magic items with charges that are nearly
depleted give NPCs a couple of shots, and they don't leave
loose canons for the PCs to pick up after the battle. I can
also see interesting story possibilities where NPCs have
inherited items depleted by ancestors, or commanders who've
passed down old items in favour of new, fully charged ones.
Not that I'm afraid story will break out during mob scenes. :)
* Equipment. Special equipment is possible in all game
genres. Grenades, nets, caltrops, acid, flame throwers, jet
packs, and so on.
* Temporary buff. Spellcaster or other type of buffer in the
background. Before the confrontation, or perhaps during, a
caster lurks behind the scenes to give certain mob members
special abilities.
Perhaps all members drank the Kool-Aid at the meeting hall
before confronting the PCs, and the beverage was dosed with
a psychotic agent that makes imbibers stronger and crazier.
Maybe the beverage contained nanobots that infused mob
members with speed and agility.
* Personality trait. Create a list of traits to slap onto
mob members that emerge as significant or individuals while
on the field.
Here are 50 traits from my NPC Essentials book:
1. amoral
2. anarchist
3. angry
4. annoyed
5. apologetic
6. apprehensive
7. bad-tempered
8. bashful
9. blissful
10. blustering
11. bold
12. bookish
13. calm
14. carefree
15. careless
16. cautious
17. chatty
18. cheerful
19. cranky
20. curious
21. depraved
22. disoriented
23. drunkard
24. enraged
25. enthusiastic
26. envious
27. excited
28. fearful
29. filthy
30. foolhardy
31. grateful
32. gullible
33. helpful
34. indecisive
35. inspired
36. lecherous
37. messy
38. mocking
39. opinionated
40. playful
41. polite
42. racist
43. over-confident
44. sexist
45. smelly
46. timid
47. uninformed
48. vengeful
49. warmhearted
50. well-mannered
2. Craft A Leader For Each Unit
============================================================
Build a leader for each mob, or mob sub-unit. This creates
a special target for the PCs to pick out, gives the PCs more
tactical goals, and perhaps gives the mob new abilities or
increases the difficulty of the encounter.
Even better, the leader might create a roleplaying
opportunity or two before or during combat. Perhaps the
leader presses for peace to avoid a fight, he goads the PCs
on, or he tries some trick, such as stalling for time while
hidden or invisible mob members get into flanking positions.
If possible, clearly identify the leader, and do this early
on. Once the PCs know there's a leader type around, the
encounter will become much more interesting, and mob members
can take on support roles for the leader (i.e. block access
to leader, aid another actions on leader, supply leader with
ammo) which makes actions and tactics within the encounter
more interesting, even if the rest of the mob has identical
stats and equipment.
In addition, have the leader do leader-type things, such as
directing from the rear, trying tricks, seeking parley,
getting intel, issuing challenges. Even if the leader has
the same stats as other mob members, his presence and
actions will spruce up any mob encounter.
3. Use Hit Point Piles
============================================================
Here's a great idea from the Ars Ludi blog. Use hit point
piles to simplify wound tracking for mob members:
"Track the total damage done to similar creatures as one big
pile. Ignore which particular creature was hit. Just keep
adding up the damage, and when the total is enough to kill
one, the one that just got hit dies. Set the pile to zero
and start over again (excess damage is lost)."
Here's the full article:
http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/75/d20-hit-point-piles/
4. Identifying Minis With Stickers
============================================================
A player in my group, Jeff, came up with this one last
session. I have pages of tiny stickers from the dollar
store. I've placed one sticker per miniature for a set that
I'll use for mob battles. You could use army men, beads,
cardboard tokens, or whatever. Each sticker is unique.
I've created an Excel sheet where each sticker is labelled
at the top of a column. As special effects (such as from
drinking a potion), special statuses (cursed, slowed,
whatever), and wounds are applied, I'll track them in the
spreadsheet. You could use paper just as easily.
This makes tracking each mob member much easier, especially
as miniatures move about the map and the scene gets chaotic.
5. Create Mob Challenges
============================================================
Not every mob encounter needs to be toe to toe dice mashing.
Try to come up with interesting encounter objectives that
require the PCs to think, strategise, or otherwise break out
of hack 'n slash mode.
Some examples:
* Capture the flag. The mob is just a barrier to the real
prize. While killing every member of the mob would result in
a victory, it's a slow and painful one, hopefully with a bit
of risk. With a specific objective, the PCs can focus just
on that and the encounter mercifully ends once the flag is
in the PCs' hands and they've escaped the howling horde.
* Warning. In my campaign, the PCs are crawling a dungeon
that's organized. As soon as a warning bell is sounded in an
area, tougher foes and reinforcements arrive or plan ahead
for ambushes and whatnot.
You might have members of a mob opt to flee (out of terror
or with purpose) to give warning to their allies and other
nearby PC foes. Try to make the PCs aware of this threat so
they have a new encounter complication to wrangle.
* Focus on one PC. Focusing firepower is a good tactic most
of the time anyway, but if a mob concentrates its frenetic
anger on one PC, the nature of the encounter changes. This
makes things a bit more interesting for the PCs, especially
the player of the targeted character.
* Mob needs to capture the PC's flag. Whatever or whoever
has whipped the mob into a frenzy, they've also managed
to direct the group to achieve a specific objective.
A villain will gladly discard the lives within a mob if but
a single member returns with an item that gave the PCs
power, for example. Maybe the mob has been convinced the
cleric is the source of all evil and their instruction is to
return with the cleric's holy symbol - and corpse, if
possible. With the holy symbol gone, the villain can then
unleash his zombie units or worry less about holy spells for
awhile.
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Readers' Tips Of The Week
Have some GM advice you'd like to share? E-mail it to
johnn@roleplayingtips.com - thanks!
1. Character Creation, or Assassination?
From: Ryan McHargue
============================================================
A lot has been written on character creation, but it all
seems to overlook one important part of a character...the
player.
I have found there are three parts to how a character is
played. First, you have the character sheet/traits and such
that has been developed pre-game. Second, you have the GM
and other players and how they imagine and react to the
player/character. Third is the player, and how they can
actually play the character out. There really are four
areas, but the energy of the initial introduction is not
something we as players and GMs have any control over.
In my experience, each player only has a certain range of
playable traits. For example, the guy in the group who can't
seem to not tell a joke. He is going to always have a form
of humor when playing his character, whereas the guy who
sits there pondering, plotting, planning, and generally not
talking until he lays out his master plan isn't going to be
able to play a fast-talking swindler.
We all drift towards a certain set of default traits, and
when gaming, these become our character. Some players have a
wider range than others, but all of us have a range. Think
back through all your characters, and pick out the common
traits. I am that guy who has trouble not telling a joke, or
beating up the stuttering NPC just for taking too much time
spitting it out. I tend to be more impulsive and don't fully
think out my plans. I'm just impatient. I also like to be in
charge and will end up bullying my way into a leadership
role, usually with some hilarious consequences. These are
the traits that I as a player will always play to some
degree.
Once you have listed your common traits you will want to
incorporate them into your new character. If you are like me
and play an impulsive bully that tells jokes, then you would
want use these traits to work best for the character type
you are playing. You don't have to play a prideful rogue
every time; you can also play an intelligent guy who has
a hard time in social situations and uses humor to cope
with his nervousness. The impulsiveness and bullying could
be that he is impatient and a perfectionist, so he tends to
take projects over because he thinks he can do them better.
You can use any reasons to explain your traits, and no
matter what the reason for the trait, you will play it. So,
it is best to plan for it rather than hating your new dark
assassin who has a hatred of the human race, when you just
want to laugh and tell jokes.
I also mentioned the group you play with has a part in how
your character turns out. As one of my fellow players has
found out, this has a large impact on the character. He has
had two or three characters with above average intelligence
but, because of some group jokes about his character being
stupid, the character became thought of as stupid, and this
didn't just effect that character, it also influenced the
next couple characters after until the joke dissipated. The
group will have a reaction partially based on you as a
player and on what they know of your character.
A note on backgrounds, it is best to keep your shared
background down to a small summary or interesting paragraph
that gives the other players a good idea of how you want the
character thought of. I like to put down a single sentence
that describes my character. I have found my group is more
interested in how you play the character then the huge back
story you spent days writing.
In summary, you can only play what you know how to play, so
craft your character within your range of playability. Game
On!
2. Structure Your Campaign And Adventures Like A TV Series
From: Isengart The Fiendish
============================================================
I once ran a Star-Trek, The Next Generation type campaign
where I based single adventures on the structure of the TV
shows so the group could play them in just one evening.
This worked out pretty well, and the players were astonished
and pleased that a single adventure had not been broken
apart by having to play it over two evenings (where there's
always the risk it would have never been completed or that
some of the players couldn't show up and would never have
the chance to complete the adventure).
They also said it did work out rather nicely, but only with
a setting like this with the players being part of the same
organisation, where there was somebody in the position of
telling them what to do. Otherwise, the players would have
been arguing why and if they would go for the adventure
hook, making it impossible to finish the one adventure on
one single evening.
To give it a time-fitting structure, I looked carefully at a
few of the TV shows, analysing carefully and then
structuring an adventure that was following the TV shows'
schemes.
I also made up the structure of the characters' organisation
in advance, and gave players handouts of what they should
know before the game-evening, so they would already know how
this organisation would work (as we normally would learn
that from watching the series episodes).
3. Plan Your Group's Seating Arrangements
From: Stephanie Justice
============================================================
Sometimes our group cannot stay focused: the people who
bother each other yet sit next to each other all the time,
the person who talks constantly to their partner, the person
who is not involved as often.
My tip is to assign seating arrangements. People who are
partners, separate them away from each other. People who do
not get involved often, put them to the right or left of the
GM. People who bother each other, or talk, are separated.
Seating assignments work very well, and have worked in all
the groups that have had a hard time focusing. I just did
this in my last group and I was amazed how well it works.
Going Right from the GM:
Seat 1: Guy who doesn't get involved
Seat 2: Responsible Guy
Seat 3: Partner Dude
Seat 4: Guy who likes to get into it with another guy
Seat 5: Focused Guy
Seat 6: Partner Gal - yet is focused too
Seat 7: Guy who likes to bother "Guy who likes to get into
it with another guy"
Now we get at least 2 more hours out of gaming. With seating
arrangements, we actually got Guy who doesn't get involved
to actually come out of his shell and give up some great
ideas that really helped the group.
4. How To Get Your Players To Roleplay More: Let Them GM
From: Crazy Nedri
============================================================
This is a common topic that has plagued GMs ages. When my
campaign got a little ragged, one of my players (one who
wasn't roleplaying) stumbled along a very good way all on
his own.
The method is simple: don't be the GM. I know what you're
thinking: "That's what I'm here for." and "That's all I want
to do!"
Let me explain. Most of us think it is pretty boring to GM a
group that only hacks and slashes everything they see. Well,
let them see that too. My one PC went camping and I wasn't
there to run the game, so he took matters into his own hands
and ran the game himself. He came back realizing that,
without an interesting party, he wasn't enjoying himself.
So, now he has become a roleplayer and an active member of
the party.
On a side note, if you are in the game that your player
runs, take one of your NPCs to roleplay to help show your
players how to roleplay a character. Also, when you take
over GMing again, the players will get more of the NPC's
personality.
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_______________________________________________________
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That's it for this week's issue.
Have more fun at every game!
Johnn Four
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