Hi everyone,
My impressions of the first adventure was that it had too few NPCs. I wanted to give the feeling to the players that the Stolen Lands were populated by various people. So I introduce a few NPCs here and there.
For examples, the players captured a random bandit and he repented. He became an henchman for the players. The players also befriended one of guard under Kesten's command. I picked up the idea of introducing a tax collecter from a campaign journal (Expeditionary Band33). He wasn't that popular. :)
So when the players will choose who takes what leadership position, they have over 10 people to choose from. It's all fun and nice, but I want more opportunities for these NPCs and future one.
So I thought about adding the role of Mayor to each cities. Each city can have a maximum of 1 Mayor. What bonus can they give?
I was thinking that each Mayor could give a local boost of +2 to one of these attributes : Defense, Economy, Loyalty, Stability. Once the bonus type is choosen, it stays until a new Mayor takes over. These bonuses only apply on events related to an event that applies to their city.
What do you guys think? Is it fun enough to use and balanced enough?
Just use the assassination event when necessary. Have some of these NPCs die in various path events, especially once the 3rd module comes around.
I'd say the best use for them is as advisors to the king's court. Say the Corneal of the armed forces or the magister's assistant. Keeps them in regular circulation and the players get someone to interact with on a regular basis. And this way if you feel the players are going to make a bad decision, their advisor can help them out. But that's what I'd do.
Seems fine, balance-wise. The only problem is that it will likely take quite some time to build that many cities. Since the barony starts with a single hex, and grows at most one hex per month, and needs to be contiguous, it could easily be a couple of game years before they're ready to found a third or fourth city, meaning those potential Mayor NPCs still aren't doing much around the kingdom. They could be advising members of the twelve leadership positions as "Junior Minister for ______" from day one.
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I've done a similar thing initially - that is that I introduced many NPCs. For the most part they were a way to create lasting memorable NPCs for the players to interact with since unlike most campaigns, the PCs stay pretty much in one locale.
I used the NPCs initially to provide a myriad of side trek quests sandbox style a la the Neverwinter Nights fashion.
I created a brother for Vekkel (Bekkel) - instead of a massive boar, this time it was a massive thylacine. - his reward: darkwood.
A dwarven prince who's looking for a lost stronghold of his people - his reward: Mithril
An elven prince looking for his old keep (see RRR): His reward - an elven army unit allied to the PCs.
A cleric of Abadar who was interested in finding a mine: his reward, building a shrine in their kingdom
A druid who wanted Elven Cat's whiskers to make a brew.
A gnome Tinkerer - brother to Turkot - wanting a family heirloom that he took from the gnomes.
A brother to Happs Bydon - a bandit they liberated from the Stagg Lord - who wanted some help clearing his brothers name - he thought the Stagg Lord blackmailed him into robbing for him.
I've added at least 2 dozen additional side quests to the mix, and then created a lot more by having NPC leaders require some sort of prerequisite service, and/or have a specific building created before they willingly joined the civilization. (Such as Bokken wanting an alchemists shop. Madame "whatsherwitch" wanted a herbalist shop
etc etc etc.
Eventually, these NPCs began to fill various anciallary roles within the kingdom.
The previous poster is correct that it could be years before you needed several mayors.
Instead there were many other roles I found useful to the civilization/kingdom that had a more immediate albeit situational effect.
I think have a mayors give a +2 bonus to one of the stats would unbalance things - especially if you have 5 mayors per se.
This is what I've done with the various NPC:
Cleric of Abadar become judge
Jubilost became a city planner/foreman
Dwarven prince became advisor to mining operations
Elven prince will eventually become military advisor
Keston Garess became sheriff
etc etc
The benefit to these roles is a +2 bonus to the checks of specific events.
For instance, when the event occured with lycanthrope in RRR, had the party had a sheriff, it would have helped them. Shortly after the event, they hired a sheriff. Now when there's a crime problem event in that city, there's a +2 bonus. Later they had a "disaster event" and would have benefitted w/ a city planner. Afterwards they thought to hire a city planner to help give advice etc. This now would provide a +2 bonus in that city in that type of event.
Etc etc.
Like someone else said - they use the NPCs to interract with and give advice. They've asked Jubilost a number of times what he thinks of placing certain buildings in certain areas, or suggesting: "we need to bolster our people's loyalty - is there something small you can reccommend to help us...?"
(Note - they used him in this way sometimes because as I've said in previous threads, I did not divulge all the city- building specifics and stats etc for all the buildings. They are learninig as they go. But they're enjoying it. The NPCs are good for advice; of course some of the fun is when they disagree - Oleg always wanting higer Taxes, and their Councilor always wanting more loyalty by reducing them, and Jubilost trying to be more pragmatic with stability and defense for the city.)
In short, for my money, I would reccommend using NPCs in various official positions to be like buffers for various events (I've had some of the buildings do the same thing too); just use your imagination as to what official positions/roles could be used and what events could they benefit.
Robert