Tracking Those Pesky NPCs

Tracking NPCs in an adventure can be painful, especially if there are long periods of time between their appearances.  Reality Refracted has a good write-up on some methods for NPC tracking.In my opinion, there is just no module that has a bigger problem of this than The Wormwood Mutiny, the first book in the Skull and Shackles adventure path. (SPOILER ALERT)  In the Wormwood Mutiny, the PCs are shanghaied and put aboard a ship with no less than 23 NPCs.  As the title suggests, the story leads to a mutiny.  NPCs have to decide whether to support or fight against the PCs at the time of the mutiny.  This is determined through the history of the PC's interactions with the crew.

Having a large number of NPCs in a scenario like this has a lot of challenges:

• Each NPC has a specific relationship to be tracked against each NPC.  With 23 NPCs and a party of 4, that is 92 relationships.
  
• Each NPC has different duties giving them different places to be on this ship.
  
• Each NPC needs to be memorable that the PCs can remember them.  If they can't remember them, they can't try to interact with them.
  
• Eventually all of these NPCs end up in battles, so the GM or player that ends up playing them needs a quick and easy to understand stat block.

In this case, I made NPC cards.  I print NPC cards out on card stock and fold them in half.  The front is a picture of them with their name.  The back is a full stat block.  During interactions, I hang the NPC's card on my monitor, laptop screen, or GM screen.  The players get a memorable picture.  I can take notes on the back.  To "go through" the NPCs to figure out who is doing what, I literally just have to go through a deck of NPCs.  Need a random NPC?  Have a player draw one from the deck.

To track relationships, I put a letter or two as initials for each PC on the card as they interact with them.  Then to record how the interaction went, I do a range from ++ to 0 to --.  I total these up over time, so they may become numbers +5 or -12.  In the next interaction, that gives me a feeling for how they are going to react to the PC.  And when the mutiny comes around, all I have to do is look at the attitude numbers versus each PC.  If they have positive connections to the PCs, they side with them.  If they have negative connections, then they don't.  It can get complicated, of course, if they react negatively to one and positively to another, but in these cases, the GM gets to make the call for the NPC.  As a GM, you do that a lot -- get in the NPC's head and figure out what they would do.

Now, during normal intervals in the game where only an NPC or two is interacting with the NPCs, I keep a full character sheet for them.  I can take notes and essentially play them like a PC.  This is good, if the NPC is going to be in regular fights with the PCs.  It also satisfies that urge the GM gets sometimes to play a character.

For lightly interacting NPCs, I use a different approach.  For example, Corrail has a cousin that pops in now and then with information.  For her, I have one image in my mind that defines her.  When I see Ahkra, I see a dark haired woman dressed in dark leather pants, a white poofy dress shirt, and high black boots propped up on a table, drinking an ale.  That one image defines her.  She is social, relaxed, but protected, and slightly dark.  From there, the rest of character follows.  I know how she will interact.  She just seems like a rogue in that picture and that is enough to remind me how to play her.

For armies, I summarize the troops into groups that all have the same stat block (which I usually pull from standard NPCs tables or NPC codex).  For tracking, I have a page with a stat block for each group type and I record notes directly onto the sheet.  I use group damage, which means I use a dice to keep track the number of them left.  Damage is done against one at a time, with the extra flowing to the next one.  So let's say 120 damage is done against a group that has 50 hp each.  I decrement the dice counter by two, since two are killed and I right down 30hp on the character sheet, which is the HP of the one injured member of the group.  Now if another attack does 40 hp, I decrement the dice counter by 1 and right down 40hp.  The damage killed the injured NPC and overflowed into the next one.  To separate groups of the same stat block type, I use different colors of dice for counter so each group has a color.  If the battle has to carry over to the next session, a quick picture with my cell phone records the dice counters and the sheets have the HP states.

All of the methods I mention here are tried and true.  I've been using them for a long time, and though they don't reflect what I started with, they represent the ultimately lazy methods I settled on.  I figure if you can follow the methods even on your most tired burnt-out week, you've got a methods that you can always follow.  And that's not bad.