This is a post I'd written nearly two years ago, but have been thinking a lot about it recently and thought it would be of some interest. With my Creating an NPC blogs this is the philosophy I go by when creating them.
You've heard the old adage 'Don't quit your day job'. I'm here to talk
about those PCs who don't have the skill set to take down Roberto the
Ogre Magi or the latest necromancer to raise a rotting abomination. To
earn money they slosh beer into tankards, pound steel into a breastplate
or scribe an esoteric tome into another language. These guys and gals
are the blue collar branch of the adventuring class.
Day jobs can
serve to be a launching place for several great adventures. These
adventures do not have to be in dungeons or castles or swamps or some
dark god's temple on a mountain top. Nope, everything can be served up
in between the walls of the business. This is definitely a different
sort of campaign, but done correctly can become a favorite. It helps to
have a skillful GM. I am spoiled to have Rob and Dwayne as mine. And
you need the players willing to play a non-hero character.
With
the adventures being based in a business setting most the adventure is
going to be within the community. The different types of conflicts that
occur can vary from a rival shop, an unhappy customer, lack of supplies,
or personal problems. I'll give a few examples from past campaigns
where I have been the working class adventurer.
Devon, he was a
blacksmith. He had skill using a war hammer, but I can't remember one
fight with him. Most of his days were spent toiling over an anvil
improving his skill. His one big adventure was going into enemy
territory. I was hired to discover the enemy's secret weapon. The enemy
had developed a rudimentary form of gunpowder. I learned the formula for
the gunpowder, but the real asset was how to develop cannons. They had
some knowledge, but it was my character who figured out how to make it
work. My character returned with not only the knowledge of the
gunpowder, but a weapon of great destruction. During my time spying, not
once did I get into a fight. My character became a master within the
guild and Rob and I decided his storyline had ended. Now for a guy who
hardly lifted his war hammer he changed the face of the campaign.
There
was my acolyte priest, Allen Hess. He was a meek little man whose skill
set was more to the literary. He took care of a handful of children at
an orphanage. He had basic knowledge of how to use a staff, but just
enough to hurt himself. A vampire had been sneaking through the trapdoor
in the roof and sucking the blood from the children. I, and a group of
other very low ability characters, took on the vampire. There were no
holy swords or magic spells whizzing through the air. Nope. When the
vampire dropped through the door my character threw a pot of scolding
water at the vampire and the others threw a blanket over him soaked with
holy water. In this case Allen found his adventure protecting the
children. He did not need to leave his home.
The finally example
I'll give is one of twin brothers. I played one who had a job in a
tavern he liked while Dwayne played my trouble making brother. My
brother was always trying to get me involved into his schemes and most
of the time I didn't get involved because I didn't want to lose my job.
It was the only source of income the family had. Then my brother got an
offer from a baron to return a family heirloom. He wanted him to steal
it back from the Thieves Guild. He knew I wouldn't go for it so he
pretended to be one day and got me fired then managed to blame it on one
of the guild members. I was distraught he told me how we could make
money and get back at the thieving bastards. So my Chuck Bronson gene
kicked in and I found a low level footpad, beat him up so he would tell
me who was next in command. I did this with such brutality that it
shocked my brother. I was furious I had been fired. In the end the
Thieves Guild returned the heirloom to the baron plus a good amount of
gold so when we reported into him he would kill us, which he did. All
this was done in a city. We never left the confines of the walls.
Sometimes
it's good to get away from the high adventure aspects of gaming and get
dirty with an everyday person. It's good to get the perspective of
people your adventurers pass everyday without a thought. It was a lot of
fun developing that side of things. Doing this makes a GM flesh out his
world in more depth. One last example for this was when I ran a
campaign where all the players were city guards and they had to deal
with the rowdy adventurers in the taverns. They got a taste of their own
medicine. Try it sometime if you haven't already. You might find
running a potion shop is just as fun as breaking down the door of dark
god's temple on the mountain top.
I've found that at least some player's enjoy exploring the urban environment interacting without whatever eccentric (at least in my games ;)) townsfolk they encounter as much as the High Adventure stuff. This sort of thing would only facilitate that.
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