Editing Unwritten: System Reference Document/Running the Game (section)

==Antagonists==

One of your most important jobs as a GM is creating the NPCs who will oppose the PCs and try to keep them from their goals during your chapters. The real story comes from what the PCs do when worthy adversaries stand between them and their objectives—how far they’re willing to go, what price they’re willing to pay, and how they change as a result of the experience.

===Take Only What You Need to Survive===

First of all, keep in mind that you’re never obligated to give any NPC a full sheet like the ones the PCs have. Most of the time, you’re not going to need to know that much information, because the NPCs aren’t going to be the center of attention like the PCs are. It’s better to focus on writing down exactly what you need for that NPC’s encounter with the PCs, and then fill in the blanks on the fly (just like PCs can) if that NPC ends up becoming more important in the campaign.

===The NPC Types===

NPCs come in three different flavors: nameless NPCs, supporting NPCs, and main NPCs.

====Nameless NPCs====

The majority of the NPCs in your campaign world are nameless—people who are so insignificant to the story that the PC’s interactions with them don’t even require them to learn a name. The random explorer they pass in the Cavern, the archivist at the library, the DRC minions running around. Their role in the story is temporary and fleeting—the PCs will probably encounter them once and never see them again. In fact, most of the time, you’ll them simply out of reflex when you describe an environment.

On their own, nameless NPCs usually aren’t meant to provide much of a challenge to the PCs. You use them like you use a low-difficulty skill roll, mainly as an opportunity to showcase the PCs’ competence. In conflicts, they serve as a distraction or a delay, forcing the PCs to work a little harder to get what they want.

For a nameless NPC, all you really need is two or three skills based on their role in the scene. Your average security guard might have Athletics and Notice, while your average clerk might only have Research. They never get more than one or two aspects, because they just aren’t important enough.

=====Nameless NPCs as Obstacles=====

The easiest way to handle nameless NPCs is simply to treat them as obstacles: Give a difficulty for the PC to overcome whatever threat the NPC presents, and just do it in one roll. You don’t even have to write anything down, just set a difficulty according to the guidelines in this chapter, and assume that the PC gets past on a successful roll.

If the situation is more complicated than that, make it a challenge instead. This trick is useful when you want a group of nameless NPCs more as a feature of the scene than as individuals.

=====NPC First, Name Later=====

Nameless NPCs don’t have to remain nameless. If the players decide to get to know that explorer or Restoration Engineer or whatever, go ahead and make a real person out of them—but that doesn’t mean that you need to make them any more mechanically complex. If you want to, of course, go ahead and promote them to a supporting NPC. But otherwise, simply giving that courtier a name and a motivation doesn’t mean he can’t go down in one punch.

====Supporting NPCs====

Supporting NPCs have proper names and are a little more detailed than nameless NPCs, playing a supporting role in your scenarios (hence the name). They often display some kind of strong distinguishing trait that sets them apart from the crowd: their relationship to a PC or NPC, a particular competence or unique ability, or simply the fact that they tend to appear in the game a great deal. Any faces that you assign to the locations or factions you make during game creation are supporting NPCs, as are any characters who are named in one of the PCs’ aspects.

Supporting NPCs are a great source of interpersonal drama, because they’re usually the people that the PCs have a relationship with, such as friends, sidekicks, family, contacts, and noteworthy opponents. While they may never be central to resolving the main dilemma of a scenario, they’re a significant part of the journey, either because they provide aid, present a problem, or figure into a subplot.

Supporting NPCs are made much like nameless NPCs, except they get to have a few more of the standard character elements. These include a high concept, one or more additional aspects, one stunt, and a handful of skills (say four or five). They have one mild consequence and, if you want them to be especially tough, one moderate consequence.

Skills for a supporting NPC should follow a column distribution. Because you’re only going to define four or five skills, just treat it as one column. If your NPC has a skill at Great, fill in one skill at each positive step below it—so one Good, one Fair, and one Adequate skill.

* Skill Levels: A supporting NPC’s top skill can exceed your best PC’s by one or two levels, but only if their role in the game is to provide serious opposition—supporting NPCs who are allied with the PCs should be their rough peers in skill level.
* Concessions: Supporting NPCs should not fight to the bitter end, given the option. Instead, have them concede conflicts often, especially early in a story, and especially if the concession is something like “They get away.” Conceding like this serves a few purposes. For one, it foreshadows a future, more significant encounter with the NPC. Because conceding comes with a reward of one or more fate points, it also makes them more of a threat the next time they show up. What’s more, it’s virtually guaranteed to pay off for the players in a satisfying way the next time the NPC makes an appearance.

Finally, it implicitly demonstrates to the players that, when things are desperate, conceding a conflict is a viable course of action. A PC concession here and there can raise the stakes and introduce new complications organically, both of which make for a more dramatic, engaging story.

====Main NPCs====

Main NPCs are the closest you’re ever going to get to playing a PC yourself. They have full character sheets just like a PC does, with five aspects, a full distribution of skills, and a selection of stunts. They are the most significant characters in your PCs’ lives, because they represent pivotal forces of opposition or allies of crucial importance. Because they have a full spread of aspects, they also offer the most nuanced options for interaction, and they have the most options to invoke and be compelled. Your primary antagonists in a scenario or arc should always be main NPCs, as should any NPCs who are the most vital pieces of your stories.

Because they have all the same things on their sheet as PCs do, main NPCs will require a lot more of your time and attention than other characters. How you one really depends on how much time you have—if you want, you can go through the whole character creation process and work out their whole backstory through phases, leaving only those slots for “Crossing Paths” open.

Of course, if you want, you can also upgrade one of your current supporting NPCs to a main using this method. This is great for when a supporting NPC has suddenly or gradually become a major fixture in the story. Players may fixate on a specific NPC, regardless of your original plans for them.

You could also do things more on the fly if you need to, creating a partial sheet of the aspects you know for sure, those skills you definitely need them to have, and any stunts you want. Then fill in the rest as you go. This is almost like making a supporting NPC, except you can add to the sheet during play.

Main NPCs will resist to the bitter end if need be, making the PCs work for every step.

Regarding skill levels, your main NPCs will come in one of two flavors—exact peers of the PCs who grow with them as the campaign progresses, or superiors to the PCs who remain static while the PCs grow to sufficient strength to oppose them. If it’s the former, just give them the exact same skill distribution the PCs currently have. If it’s the latter, give them enough skills to go at least two higher than whatever the current skill cap is for the game.

===Playing the Opposition===

Remember, you want a balancing act between stonewalling the PCs and letting them walk all over your opposition (unless they are nameless NPCs, in which case that’s pretty much what they’re there for). It’s important to keep in mind not just the skill levels of the NPCs in your scenes, but their number and importance.

Right-sizing the opposition is more of an art than a science, but here are some strategies to help.

* Don’t outnumber the PCs unless your NPCs have comparatively lower skills.
* If they’re going to team up against one big opponent, make sure that opponent has a peak skill two levels higher than whatever the best PC can bring in that conflict.
* Limit yourself to one main NPC per scene, unless it’s a big climactic conflict at the end of an arc. Remember, supporting NPCs can have skills as high as you want.
* Most of the opposition the PCs encounter in a session should be nameless NPCs, with one or two supporting NPCs and main NPCs along the way.
* Nameless and supporting NPCs means shorter conflicts because they give up or lose sooner; main NPCs mean longer conflicts.

It’s easy to fall into the default mode of using the opposition as a direct means to get in the PCs’ way, drawing them into a series of conflict scenes until someone is defeated.

However, keep in mind that the NPCs can advantages just like the PCs can. Feel free to use opposition characters to scenes that aren’t necessarily about stopping the PCs from achieving a goal, but scouting out information about them and stacking up free invocations. Let your antagonists and the PCs have tea together and then bring out the Empathy rolls. Or instead of having that fight scene take place in the dark alley, let your NPCs show up, gauge the PCs’ abilities, and then flee.

Likewise, keep in mind that your NPCs have a home turf advantage in conflicts if the PCs go to them in order to resolve something. So, when you’re setting up situation aspects, you can pre-load the NPC with some free invocations if it’s reasonable that they’ve had time to place those aspects. Use this trick in good faith, though—two or three such aspects is probably pushing the limit.

Your opposition will be way more interesting if they try to get at the PCs in multiple venues of conflict, rather than just going for the most direct route. Remember that there are a lot of ways to get at someone, and that mental conflict is just as valid as physical conflict as a means of doing so. If the opposition has a vastly different skill set than one or more of your PCs, leverage their strengths and choose a conflict strategy that gives them the best advantage.