Confession time: I am not overly enamored of “rules-lite” RPG systems. As long as the system is coherent and well-thought out, I prefer it when the system has rules for all sorts of things - from tactical combat to running chases to social encounters to falling damage and so forth. I like GURPS, I like D&D5E, I like Pathfinder 2E (although I haven’t gotten a chance to try it as much as I’d like).
However, one thing that I want to be as simple as possible: NPC/monster creation. When I am the game master, I want to churn out the stats for enemies that the PCs can overcome as quickly as possible. Any time I spend on building NPC stat blocks is time I can’t spend on working out fiendish adventure plots.
Here are a few examples of NPC creation in different systems:
Horribad: D&D 3.X, Pathfinder 1E. Too damn many derived values, templates, and so forth. Far too much math for far too little to show for it.
Bad: Exalted 1E/2E. NPCs have all the same stats as PCs, of which there are lots. Plus lots of charms with overly long texts, in the case of Exalted NPCs.
Decent: GURPS, D&D5E. The math isn’t too complicated, and you can easily recycle and modify existing stat blocks - though you have to be careful so that these NPCs are balanced in a fight. Exalted 3E edges into this territory with their “Quick Character” concept - but they spoil it with insisting that “significant NPCs” should be built with all the same rules as player characters.
Good: Storypath System, Exalted Essence. I love how they boil down all skills to: “This dice pool is for what the character is good at, this is what the character is okay at, and this dice pool is when they have to do something they have no real competence at” - and the GM can define these however they like, and even improvise this. Then you have a very few other stats like Health and Defense, and you are set apart from a few special qualities! I’ve started running Scion very recently, and I am very impressed with this.
So, what other examples do you have of RPG systems that do NPC creation well - and which do it badly?
I’m not a huge fan of complicated rules-based NPC generation. Mostly this is because 90% of my NPCs don’t end up in combat with players. So most of the time spent generating stats is wasted. To me, 5e is too complicated in terms of generating NPCs. I tend to focus on an NPCs personality, their voice, their background, generally speaking their stats are irrelevant to me. But I will also admit that I prefer streamlined rules (not so much rules-lite, but systems that are efficient and where I don’t need to reference a section for every situation that arises). Rules-lite games can certainly also be fun.
So, in any case, I guess I’m saying I prefer the story side of NPC generation to the crunchiness.
I completely agree on having deep player character options while still keeping things as simple as possible for GMs. From a GM perspective, I love the way some rules-lite games (my preference is for the OSR/NSR style) make it so easy to run a game in that system. But my players, and me when I am a player, aren’t very interested in the bare-bones player character options that those systems usually have.
In the system I’m creating, player characters have a skill-point system that they can use to build out their character by purchasing the equivalent of feats to build whatever sort of character they like. It is straightforward, but can get really complex for those players who like to explore those systems.
Meanwhile, NPCs can be represented with 2 stats (Hit Dice and Will Dice), which can be used for HP, morale, skill checks, and saving throws. For combat encounters, you only need to add an attack, and for social encounters or significant NPCs, you can add personality traits and motivations, to facilitate GMing the NPC.
The goal of the system is to marry the player character mechanical diversity that you see in systems like Pathfinder or GURPS with the ease of GMing that you see in the OSR. There’s also a sort of “playbook” equivalent which give starting character builds for those players who are more interested in the roleplaying than mechanics, and just want to take something and run with it.
13th Age - monster creation is so easy once you get a feel for it that I rarely even bother with the bestiary any more, and when I do it’s more as inspiration for things like what sort of features should a zombie have, or whatever. The game also features a multitude of PC facing options, and a semi-tactical combat system (I say semi-tsctical because it doesn’t care about specific movement, just whether things are engaged, nearby or far away). It has its flaws but it has a lot of good too. It and pf2e are my favourite versions of dnd
The GM Screen for PF2e on Archives of Nethys has a Creature Numbers table, under Gamemastering, which facilitates nearly instant npc creation.
Mutants & Masterminds 3e (d20hero) can do anything; it’s all the power of GURPS with a drop in the bucket as much math.
It also has NPC “minion” options where you basically don’t have to worry about what their stats are beyond the very bare-bones because anything that successfully affects them takes them out of combat. They can be at any power level – you could have something that is a world-boss-level threat to anybody who can’t beat its basic defenses, but crumples like paper in the face of anybody with real power. I’m not sure why you ever would do that, but you could. AND you can even build them with merits like “Jack of All Trades” that give them that “they roll at basically this same modifier for everything” effect.
And if some NPC does eventually ascend to matter, you can generate them the same way you would a PC and it’ll still take you an hour or less.
@juergen_hubert I like a good rules *framework* with a small, consistent, easily-extensible set of core mechanisms that can be used for everything else.
If the rules then show how to use it for everything else (like C&S 3.0+) that’s icing on the cake.
What I don’t like is games with incoherent, inconsistent rules for everything that don’t interact well with each other (like AD&D’s entire combat system from surprise through initiative through actual combat, including unarmed combat).
For all of its faults, D&D 3E was a step forward because it introduced an universal task resolution system
@juergen_hubert Well “introduced” if you ignore practically every game made for almost 15 years before it. 🤣 (I know what you mean. I just think it’s funny wording!)
Well, some games still haven’t learned that lesson (remember the German “Midgard” RPG?).
@juergen_hubert No, I don’t. I’ve only ever seen one German RPG, and that wasn’t it.
Let’s just say that all the advances in TTRPG design of the last few decades completely passed it by.
Cypher System is good. Assign a level, decide if they are good or bad at certain things and give +/- a level or more for those. Determine what special abilities, if any, they have. As a GM I don’t want to juggle a ton of stats, I just want to bring the setting alive. Cypher gets out of the way and lets me do that very quickly with impromptu NPCs.
After playing a ton of different games over the decades I’m kinda done with super heavy and intricate systems.
@juergen_hubert I hear you, but I would only add https://youtu.be/_szmwfkvqRk
Good video, thanks for linking! The art says Cy_Borg, but the mechanics say Shadowrun lol
