Hello guys, I did something very interesting with Jade Regent and I want to share my experience with you.
Some background information first. I’m Brazilian and I have a RPG Streaming Channel in Twitch/YouTube. Although we occasionally play something else, most of our games are Pathfinder. I’m currently running Jade Regent, Hell’s Rebels and Hell’s Vengeance.
Jade Regent has a bunch of NPCs. It starts with Koya, Shalelu, Ameiko and Sandru, and other joins the caravan on the go, such as Spivey and Ulf. My group consists of 4 players, since there is room for more characters on the party, and to give more importance to NPC’s presence, I usually allowed the players to bring up to two NPCs with them when exploring. It was something like a leadership feat, but with multiple cohorts which the players should choose and it worked kinda well for the two first books.
However, since we were streaming our game sessions over the internet, a lot of people ask to join our group and I had the disgusting task of refusing them all. But I have this idea of, instead of controlling these NPCs by myself; why not let this people willing to play do?
So I created this recruitment announcement and a Google Forms, and divulgated them into Brazilians Pathfinder/D&D related communities. The idea was to create a queue of interested people and when we schedule a game, I would contact the next two on the queue, ask if they will be available on the scheduled date and which NPC they wish to play with – they won’t create characters, I will provide the chosen NPC sheet in pair with the regular players current level (like this one from Ameiko).
So far, We’ve got about 40 responses and 8 different people played with us.
This had been a great experience. Some NPCs that were somewhat secondary, like Sandru, gained a new life when a guy picked him. Ameiko, probably the most important NPC in this game, is now in almost every game session and her interactions with a PC from a regular player (which secretly loves her) are really fun. We started it in the beginning of the third book, so It was basically when Ulf joined the caravan. So a player who chose to play Ulf had a clean stale and he did a gorgeous work, now he is the Ulf for us.
There are a lot of sessions to play, new people to contact, and some NPCs are still untouched. But it went way better than I expected.
Have you guys done something similar and want to share?