NPC families

[pcw27]

Hey a lot of ideas have been tossed around about ways to better reprisent noble families and houses. I've come up with another idea. Suppose players had NPC relatives, not just the ones you meet at the family home, but actual entities that can be part of the game. A relative could be a parent, brother, sister, cousin, nephew spouse or child. NPC relatives might generate children randomly giving you new nephews and children. The relatives would all be minor nobles unable to do the things a player can do, but there could be functions such as marrying off sons and daughters as part of a political agreement. An NPC can be married to a PC or another NPC. On a family page there could be a list of families related through marriage.

If the banquets/parties idea ever goes into effect there could be a random function to have a relative attend.

If a player decides one of their NPC relatives might make a good character they can have the option to "activate" them and play them as characters. When this is done the character would be subject to all the normal rules of character creation save they can count any events that happened to the NPC as previous roleplay events (IE they're still married to so and so).

I think this could be a pretty cool way to flesh out people's families.

[Indirik]

Game mechanics marriages are a Frequently Rejected request.

[Zakilevo]

Just RP it.

[JPierreD]

Many of us have built NPCs into our families. If you want to RP something let me know.

[fodder]

everyone has a npc aunt.
you get to see her bunging you some money during visits to family home.

[Duvaille]

I had a somewhat similar thought the other day. These NPC entities could be an interesting addition but without a need to focus on them at all if it is not interesting to the player.

Having a NPC noble at your estate could cost you something. Perhaps more for the "better" ones. They could have their own stats that would help the estate in which they reside - not much, but something that would be a small bonus. The NPC nobles would age naturally and have a chance of dying of old age. They could also be assassinated.

There could be a neat way of introducing marriage in a way that would actually work. You could prevent player marriages, but you could always have a NPC spouse. You would just need to get him/her from another family. Then you could have NPC children too. You could also start playing any of the nonmarried NPC nobles you have if you have room for a new character.

Or you could just create the NPC nobles as needed.

You could also make decisions about the education of the young nobles. Say you wanted to focus on swordfighting and bureaucracy for your son, so as the game years pass, he would grow stronger in those. When you at some point decide to make a player character of him, you would get bonuses to those stats (perhaps something like 25% to begin with). Then if you make another noble mad, and he in turn decides to assassinate your son, it would really hurt and more conflict would ensue.

Or if you had bred a really potent bride for your duke, but an infiltrator creates a scandal which makes her spoiled goods and unable to be married... much fun would ensue.

NPC family members could be an interesting way to create wars too. Infiltrators could murder NPC members at the estates.

[Valast]

Hmm... while I do like the idea of perhaps naming guild/temple guards... :) We have been able to do this for years by just writing down the NPC name and using them in the RP. 

Nothing can flesh out a NPC as well as our mind.  Just keep track of who you create.