Recruiting More NPCs

[The_Mothman]

I want my players to get traits that fit their tricks better and the way to do that is through NPCs.

So, I am interested in knowing when other GMs added new NPCs to the circus. I know that there are certain encounters that allow the PCs to recruit people as part of the plot, but the inside covers have NPC acts that don't appear in the actual adventure. I was wondering how you incorporated them into your campaigns, or whether you just replaced them with NPCs of your own creation. And if you used them, how did you incorporate them, bonus encounters? People just looking for circus work and approaching? A job fair?

Any advice would be appreciated, the last thing I want is to mess up the adventure balance by adding too many traits/NPCs too early.

[profounddark]

The_Mothman wrote:

I want my players to get traits that fit their tricks better and the way to do that is through NPCs.

So, I am interested in knowing when other GMs added new NPCs to the circus. I know that there are certain encounters that allow the PCs to recruit people as part of the plot, but the inside covers have NPC acts that don't appear in the actual adventure. I was wondering how you incorporated them into your campaigns, or whether you just replaced them with NPCs of your own creation. And if you used them, how did you incorporate them, bonus encounters? People just looking for circus work and approaching? A job fair?

Any advice would be appreciated, the last thing I want is to mess up the adventure balance by adding too many traits/NPCs too early.

Because there was a certain "Professional Wrestling" aspect to the circus, my PCs basically asked Pruana Two-Punch if she wanted to participate in a match, so she's part of the "promotion" as The Two-Punch Princess. Not sure if she'll stick around after they leave Abberton; that's up to them.

I'm also working in a little "side quest" that will involve making Bardolph his own act; the adventure already went to great lengths to talk about how Bardolph is basically an independent performer, so whipping up a Performer Card just made sense. [Note: I make my own "Performer Cards" because I've deviated heavily from the established rules.]

That being said, I've taken a very Suikoden "108 stars of destiny" approach to this AP, where the PCs are recruiting all sorts of people to the circus (not just performers) and that this will tie into the end goal of Book 6.

[Zapp]

The_Mothman wrote:

I know that there are certain encounters that allow the PCs to recruit people as part of the plot, but the inside covers have NPC acts that don't appear in the actual adventure.

There are no NPC artists depicted that doesn't appear in the actual adventure. All of them are mentioned somewhere, somehow (at least up til installment 4#, haven't yet checked out the remaining two in any detail).

However, an NPC performer might both have a common name and an artist name. My suggestion on how to most easily find them is to simply do a text search in the PDF, on your computer.

Search for a word in the listed name (inside covers depiction) and you will find the paragraph that discusses how and where they join (or fail to join) the circus.

Feel free to ask for any particular artist, and we can give you page numbers.

Cheers!

[Zapp]

The_Mothman wrote:

Any advice would be appreciated, the last thing I want is to mess up the adventure balance by adding too many traits/NPCs too early.

Since all six NPC performers of any goven adventure have the potential to join up, I don't think you can go much wrong here.

Even if all six artists join up from all six installments, that's clearly one intended result and won't break anything.

Spoiler:

Actually there are a couple of instances where two artists go "I hate her so if she joins, I won't" and "You'll have to choose between me and him".

So I wouldn't actually expect many groups at all to result in a "perfect" score of 36 recruitments...

[The_Mothman]

Zapp wrote:

There are no NPC artists depicted that doesn't appear in the actual adventure. All of them are mentioned somewhere, somehow (at least up til installment 4#, haven't yet checked out the remaining two in any detail).

However, an NPC performer might both have a common name and an artist name. My suggestion on how to most easily find them is to simply do a text search in the PDF, on your computer.

Search for a word in the listed name (inside covers depiction) and you will find the paragraph that discusses how and where they join (or fail to join) the circus.

Feel free to ask for any particular artist, and we can give you page numbers.

This was actually why I made the post, because I couldn't find the aquakineticist when termsearching "gillman" and "aquakineticist" and combined with the vagueness of the card on the inner cover I thought it was just supposed to be an example NPC rather than an actual one. Turns out gillmen are renamed in 2e and searching the word "water" eventually helped me find it.

Thanks for the information!

[Zapp]

You're welcome!