22 - Ally
NPC allies, including my best trick for making players accept them.
Helpful and reliable NPCs can make a setting feel a lot less lonely.
Unless you get a player who will not trust any NPC, and the only thing you can do is reassure them out of character and then let them see how it goes.
(And if you promise out of character that an NPC isn’t going to betray the party, keep that promise. Of course if the PCs betray or mistreat the NPC point that out to the players.)
If nothing else, an NPC who can join in with the players’ regular banter is a nice thing to have.
They can be party members filling a niche or occasional allies, good friends or comrades or friendly rivals or frenemies or shady contacts, strangers or foes turned to friends by the PCs’ words and deeds - they shouldn’t be GMPCs but can certainly have a decent space in the game.
I’ve always wanted an ally-finding sequence in a big enough game to get the cavalry arriving, perhaps literally like the Rohirrim.
And the most reliable way I’ve found to get players on side with an NPC: give the NPC a dog.
22a - 5, 10, 6
Why, Excited, Art
A gig! The PCs should get to go to gigs more often! They can’t all end in a bar brawl! Right?
Well, at least you’re on the guest list.
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