Traceroo
Rogue
Team Prometheus wants Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to be three-dimensional, believable, and interesting, even the monsters.
We’d like to reshape interactions with denizens of the Howling Woods, make those monster tribes fearsome, engaging adversaries, with motivations that PCs can understand and influence.
Monster encounters serve an important role in entertainment with field battles and chance meetings. Wouldn’t it be so much more enriching if those adversaries had understandable goals of their own, a reason to be there? What if you could follow which tribe of monsters was which, and you knew their particular motivations, could play them off each other? Make deals with some, and have others rise as enemies worthy of your attention? What if the individual NPCs had character names, with their own drives and personalities? Wouldn’t that open the door to interactions beyond just, “smash it with a hammer?”
This is the dream that Team Prometheus has for all our stories this year: factions with opinions beyond merely, “This is the Acarthian Way -- and that other way is WRONG.” Two sides can each be right and yet disagree! We hope to create believable, realistic NPCs to make stories come alive.
Where you come in is from the Howling Woods. We’d like to invite PCs to join with friends to create NPC teams of monsters. You will form your own tribe. You’ll have a tribe name, and a visual symbol for identification. Your individual NPCs will have character names. Your group will have unique motivations in town, and your characters will, too. You’ll be a real team. When you volunteer to NPC at later events, you’ll play these same monster characters - we’ll track your progress, your victories, and how you plan to handle your defeats.
Team Prometheus will work with your group as a team of co-writers; we’ll create together. We want you to be invested in these characters, to own them, to plan their next moves. We’ll work with you to sculpt those motivations into encounters that support the stage we’re setting for the whole game. We’ll collaborate to design monster tribes and confrontations that are fun, further the story, and serve the purpose that monsters in a game ultimately must fulfill -- but we want them to be damn fun to play, and awesome for everybody involved!
The best part is: Your participation as an occasional NPC will not hinder your ability to interact with this storyline as your PC. Your team of volunteers will know only what’s going on with your own PNPC tribe, but no one else’s. All the PC volunteers will work toward a larger story, a little something like this:
New Acarthia is the proving ground for the Howling Woods to find a new general, a role called the “Vysen.” That leader may sit at the right hand of Dargok the Unkillable… or perhaps replace Dargok if it comes to it. Competitors for the role of Vysen seek to win glory to impress the others in the Howling Woods, prove their worth. You and your team of friends will play tribes competing for that glory. Each group has a different plan of their own for how to win it.
I’ve talked enough for one sitting. I’ll share more details soon. For now, I’ll leave it at that, and let the wheels start turning….
Enthusiastically,
Trace Moriarty
Team Prometheus
2017 Acarthia Plot
We’d like to reshape interactions with denizens of the Howling Woods, make those monster tribes fearsome, engaging adversaries, with motivations that PCs can understand and influence.
Monster encounters serve an important role in entertainment with field battles and chance meetings. Wouldn’t it be so much more enriching if those adversaries had understandable goals of their own, a reason to be there? What if you could follow which tribe of monsters was which, and you knew their particular motivations, could play them off each other? Make deals with some, and have others rise as enemies worthy of your attention? What if the individual NPCs had character names, with their own drives and personalities? Wouldn’t that open the door to interactions beyond just, “smash it with a hammer?”
This is the dream that Team Prometheus has for all our stories this year: factions with opinions beyond merely, “This is the Acarthian Way -- and that other way is WRONG.” Two sides can each be right and yet disagree! We hope to create believable, realistic NPCs to make stories come alive.
Where you come in is from the Howling Woods. We’d like to invite PCs to join with friends to create NPC teams of monsters. You will form your own tribe. You’ll have a tribe name, and a visual symbol for identification. Your individual NPCs will have character names. Your group will have unique motivations in town, and your characters will, too. You’ll be a real team. When you volunteer to NPC at later events, you’ll play these same monster characters - we’ll track your progress, your victories, and how you plan to handle your defeats.
Team Prometheus will work with your group as a team of co-writers; we’ll create together. We want you to be invested in these characters, to own them, to plan their next moves. We’ll work with you to sculpt those motivations into encounters that support the stage we’re setting for the whole game. We’ll collaborate to design monster tribes and confrontations that are fun, further the story, and serve the purpose that monsters in a game ultimately must fulfill -- but we want them to be damn fun to play, and awesome for everybody involved!
The best part is: Your participation as an occasional NPC will not hinder your ability to interact with this storyline as your PC. Your team of volunteers will know only what’s going on with your own PNPC tribe, but no one else’s. All the PC volunteers will work toward a larger story, a little something like this:
New Acarthia is the proving ground for the Howling Woods to find a new general, a role called the “Vysen.” That leader may sit at the right hand of Dargok the Unkillable… or perhaps replace Dargok if it comes to it. Competitors for the role of Vysen seek to win glory to impress the others in the Howling Woods, prove their worth. You and your team of friends will play tribes competing for that glory. Each group has a different plan of their own for how to win it.
I’ve talked enough for one sitting. I’ll share more details soon. For now, I’ll leave it at that, and let the wheels start turning….
Enthusiastically,
Trace Moriarty
Team Prometheus
2017 Acarthia Plot
Thanks Trace. This should be really cool.