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Minimum requirements of NPC-use submission

OsakanOne

Retired Member
Hey all,

I've seen a lot of Mishhu articles are very bare-bones and rely primarily on flavor text and an image than a full blown article. When creating something that's just an object in storytelling as a set-piece rather than something to be used by players at the disposal of player-characters, it makes an enormous amount of sense and allows new enemies and targets and environments to be created quickly.

Based on this, what's the bare minimum one can get away with simply to have the thing exist as a foe for players or a setting object/location?

It seems silly to do an enormous write-up for a mining vessel, for example and would make more sense to describe it with four or five paragraphs and detail any specifics -- rather than do a deck for deck system for system description of literally everything about it. The same goes for things like inter-stellar gates or unmanned drone style weapons.

A good example of this was the Eagle-class carrier. If I remember, DocTomoe spent literally months detailing every intricate detail of its construction. When you start looking at super-massive permanent fixtures like colonies, mining ships or peanuts-simple automated drones/mechanical units or vehicles that aren't really special or for military use, that kind of attention to detail stops making sense -- especially if they're things like infrastructure or civilian objects (things the setting I've been told is in deep need of; particularly transport ships, mining vessels and other types of infrastructure).

I think it might be worth having an "NPC" class of object, something that isn't really comprehensive enough to be used by players but is more than enough ready to be used by NPCs and GMs -- something that can then be graduated into a full blown player-usable level depth article if its further developed and written up into something more comprehensive.
 
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It really depends on the object, and if it is going to be used again. Using your mining vessel. If it were a derelict that a crew is going to come upon in a plot and it is the GM's plan for it be destroyed. Then describing it in the prose would be sufficient. If however, the ship is going to be salvaged and kept by a company or a person and used in more roleplay. Then it should be written up after the initial plot, but before it gets used again.
 
It seems a bit stupid to have to detail every part of a large structure. To imply what different parts could be and let players and GMs do it themselves makes a lot more sense, like we do with things like cities.
 
That can and has been done, but you have to give players enough of a skeleton to fill in while adding enough muscle to stand on its own in case players don't do it for you.

Tricky act.
 
That can and has been done, but you have to give players enough of a skeleton to fill in while adding enough muscle to stand on its own in case players don't do it for you.

Tricky act.
Yeah, it's like: "This is the thing." which will describe everything at a glance, but it won't do anything on its own - just kinda there like a tie you got for Christmas. Then you have "This is the thing in action." which gives it player interaction and context - which is what makes it live - what makes that tie go well with a good suit made of players.

I may have gone somewhere weird with this metaphor.
 
Tricky act? I think I can do it. Include stats and flavor text but skip out on big systems listings headings and keep it all tucked in the flavor for NPC gear.
 
Could I take a shot at a minimum ship article template?

Not so much template, as that would imply that its required; but perhaps instead just a guide - which would imply that its not really required but that the information is recommended.
 
Did this ever get resolved, @OsakanOne? Meaning, do you have examples of your bare bones NPC's and their tech/ ships or did you not end up doing it? I would love to see the results.
 
Basically, time was an issue and we needed enemy ships basically right away when the Second Mishhuvurthyar War started. The main thing people needed to visualize the ships was to know what they looked like. Any additional info we had, which wasn't much, was also added to the pages. Even though the NMX ship pages were never fully detailed, they managed to do the job and keep us entertained for the war.

I think that we may do the same thing with some of the Kuvexian stuff at first, just to have -something- commonly available for GMs to use.
 
I think that "Doesn't give a soft 404" is a good place to put the minimum. I just have no idea how much that is.
 
Me neither, but it probably looks something like 2+ meaty paragraphs and an image.
 
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