Sidekick
It has been many a long year since last we spoke of dependent NPCs. Like we said at the time, there’s a reason you see so many orphans joining adventuring parties. Loved ones are nothing but trouble. You might think you’re fleshing out your guy with an interesting backstory, but your GM sees only archery butts. It’s exactly the plot that Wizard just encountered with her sister, offering a ready-made hook for an adventure about wicked uncles and royal succession. It’s not hard to understand why a GM might want to use that.
Compelling games, after all, are made out of conflict. GMs target the important people in your character’s life because it guarantees drama. By inventing them, you’ve declared that your dependent NPCs are something you care about, and avenging / threatening / investigating the deaths of beloved NPCs is creating conflict 101. If you were lucky enough to run across u/jimbaby’s excellent Knife Theory post from a few years back, then you understand what I’m talking about:
When writing a character’s backstory, it’s important to include a certain number of “knives”. Knives are essentially anything that the DM can use to raise the stakes of a situation for your character. Anything that can make a conflict personal, like a threatened loved one or the appearance of a sudden enemy. They’re called “knives” because the players lovingly forge them and present them to the DM so that the DM can use them to stab the player over and over again.
Of course, there’s a reason that today’s comic features our vigilante Horsepower. Superheroes know how important it is to keep their loved ones safe, and they take the unusual step of adopting a secret identity precisely because they want to minimize their “knives.” In consequence, whenever a GM bends the rules of narrative plausibility in order to twist a knife (player precautions and secret identities be damned!), it’s possible to feel unfairly targeted. It’s all down to the individual player’s attitude, and figuring out the difference between engaging drama and needless character cruelty.
So for our question of the day, what do you say we talk about the differences at work here? Do you like when GMs use your “knives” against you? Or do you find that watching all the important things in your fictional life get turned against you gets old fast? As a GM, how do you know whether a player wants to experience a bit of dramatic masochism or just wants their sidekick left alive and unspoiled? Let’s hear all about your best (and worst) knife wounds down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
Well, the GM did kill off Irlana’s adopted Mama Boar just a few sessions after she was introduced.
And thus was the bacon of drama made.
Later, he created a ‘knife’ for Irlana himself. Apparently Irlana is descended from a noble family and has a title she can inherit. However, we never got to figure out if that was true and it’s unlikely we ever will. The campaign is ending this Monday and I’m playing an entirely different character in the new one. Although the new character will have a decent amount of knives.
That’s pretty much what you’ve got to do with orphans: “Gasp! I’m related to who!?”
I guess so. My new character has several knives. He’s the oldest of several siblings and is first in line to inherit his kingdom. He’s also a dragonborn and pretty much all of the rest of the continent is suspicious of dragonborns due to being harassed by chromatic dragons for a few centuries.
One instance in our 3 person game still doesn’t sit well with me: I had a lot of fun making my elven bards backstory: he comes from a somewhat disgraced but really minor noble house. Because this family was so proud of their long history, I made a top10/worst 10 of family events ofer the last millenia, then drew some family trees, most with their mental afflictions, standing in the family, and some relationship to my character.
Then, during a dungeon run to save the world from the awakening of a tarrasque, a short sending, from my bard’s sister came, tongue in check: “Yo. Keep getting glory for the family. Everyone here sick and dying. Bring your strange cleric friend. Even though we’d prefer an elven priest. Bye.”
So, I, as someone quite emotionally invested in the game and character, keep agonizing over the choice to either let the Tarrasque wake, or rush to the aid of the family. Finally, the wake-the-Tarrasque-murder-the-world!-cult is defeated, as fast as magic and horses allow the heroes to travel.
They arrive. The village is dying of mummyrot. After some hysterical break down (Bard), the heroes set their convulted plan in motion, to recruit clerics, heal as much as possible,summon celestials, bump up saving throws, call in favors, sing magic lullabys, and clean the kittchen for improved hygiene. Our GM is not amused, it is not quite heroic enough. So instead of a long winded quest to recruit some clerics, a High Priest of Desna with Mass Cure Disease rushes in without any need of diplomacy, while we are railroaded pretty heavenly to invest where the diseased water came from(poisoned well). After a short victorious fight against the poisoner, our GM declares the adventure over, forbids may bard from rolling up an eulogy on the grave of about 1/3 of his family- or even, god beware, from roleplaying this!- and the bards sister encourages them to go to the Adventuring Town to stock up equipment. The family is fine. Due to my indignanto my indignant response it is quickly retconned that no child below the age of 70 died, and the whole manically grinning village bids the party goodbye. Now.
Well, it’s my GM’s first game.
I appreciate that your bard’s sister’s message had exactly 25 words.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/sending/
What I do not appreciate is being tied to a railroad. Sounds like you know the feeling. I hope your GM learned to be a little more flexible!
I would ditch the campaign and the GM after that.
Oh man, I’ll have to start using the term ‘knives’ for this, because BOY HOWDY am I prone to forging them!
I’ve mentioned my One Piece campaign in a few comments before, and my doofey knife-flinger, Lance Biers before. My GM was really excited that I’d written up several pages of backstory and made a few key characters to play around with, and this really was my first tip-off that something was going to happen. But I love feeling like the world has moving parts in it outside of what we do, so I was happy to goad it along.
See, Lance had shortened his last name so as not to be immediately associated with his family. That and ‘Lancel Dubiers’ was one of those names that only doting mothers can shout with a straight face. Taking inspiration from the RL Debeers fortune, they’d bought up the rights to all the near-worthless Pink Diamond mines and then steadily convinced more and more people that they were incredibly rare, valuable, and absolutely the ONLY gift for convincing someone you loved them! So, without a knack for business, Lance picked up his dad’s charm and knack for convincing people of what he wanted to believe, and set out into the world to set himself apart and make his own fame. Or at least get into and out of trouble for awhile.
…My GM held out for just barely one story arc (about six months in our several-year campaign) before getting word to Lance that the Marines were seizing his family fortune and that his parents were basically under-siege by local gangs, and that he should maybe hurry home. Worked out pretty well! We managed to put his father in touch with our not-quite-spy network and it turns out that wide-scale bullshittery and misdirection is a pretty useful talent in that field. Who knew!
…Lesson partially learned though, Lance 2.0 (Reboot of the series, lots of players changed characters but I had more to do with this guy) decided that maybe a mask was a good idea. I look forward to, as you put it, “player precautions and secret identities be(ing) damned!”
Nice! Are you going Vigilante?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/vigilante/
Or was this not a PF1e game?
Any dang way, you sound like exactly the sort of masochistic player that wants the bad stuff. Props to your GM for recognizing that and using it!
Homebrew system based very loosely on the d100 system used for a lot of Warhammer 40k games. The idea for it launched after we’d been playing Dark Heresy for awhile, and started life as a pallet-swap from grimdark to the bright and wonderful world of Raftel, but it’s continually being modified further and further away. Ostensibly our campaign is us play-testing this and our GM hoping to one day publish the system!
Last time I played a pathfinder game, our GM put a GMPC vigilante with the magical child archtype. She was kind of supposed to be a little bit of a safety net, and while I could shrug it off and see where the adventure goes, one of our players… was significantly less fond of the idea, so the character was basically shuffled off. Always feel that was a missed opportunity when I see Horsepower.
…Also, I don’t WANT bad things to happen! I… I think. I mean, my characters usually DO lack specific motivations and that IS a fast way to fix that. A-and I tend to write a little tragedy into the backstory already to be exploited and oh god I’m Wizard. o_o
It started off with Laurel calling me Cleric and me calling her Thief. We’ve both gradually shifted to become Wizard over time. 😛
Personally I feel that the threatened family plot is often a mistake, because it is often the first time said family is involved, which means that the actual player sitting at the table often don’t actually have any emotional investment in them, despite their purported importance to the character.
Other forms of media can get around this because the audience is fully separate from the main characters and therefore they can leverage the audiences investment in the established characters to connect them to the new ones, since we humans naturally care about those that are important to other people we care about.
Can’t really do that when the person we want to make care is the one portraying the person whose connection is being leveraged.
The result can often be that rather than raising the stakes it does the opposite, lowering engagement as the players follow the plot not because they want to but merely because they feel obligated to.
It’s almost as if you have to earn the emotional payoff.
I think this might have something to do with my preference for “discovering” character through play rather than “inventing” character via backstory or Wizard Quiz:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/wizard-quiz
Well said!
Using ‚knives‘ feels somewhat cheap.
Two DMs of mine have used the ‚bunch of children got kidnapped‘ plot hook and it was used (again or originally) in the Kobold King Pathfinder modules.
This stuff gets old quick.
It seems like bringing in backstory is a good thing. It also seems like bringing in backstory exclusively to antagonize PCs is not.
Providing an interesting character background is something players should be rewarded for, not punished (antagonised) with.
Ah, but then we’ve got to define “rewarded” and “punished.” If you’re anything like Wizard, the punishments are the rewards!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
Isn’t Gunslinger Fighter a little old to be a teen sidekick? He’s an adult Halfling right?
Also, no superhero is gonna want a guy whose whole schtick is “Shoots things” as their sidekick unless this is early-90s Image.
Horsepower is brooding with gargoyles. How much more 90’s can you get?
https://external-preview.redd.it/d4c_q8OxIAAZihIK7IIBW6lEMTIkNMnKe8NiUHHFKSQ.jpg?width=718&auto=webp&s=ec39d976d766f04702aba055c1baabd1382eb1a1
With the exception of Spawn, the pictured characters aren’t early-90s Image, and Spawn was the exception to that being the only Image character who didn’t use guns.
The gargoyles thing reminds me of a tiny bit of the backstory of the game Batman: Arkham Asylum, where when Bruce Wayne donated a bunch of money to Arkham Asylum, he earmarked some of it to stick gargoyles everywhere, not only to augment the Gothic aesthetic but to provide Batman with places to stand before he jumps on people.
A gun-wielding sidekick would actually be perfect for Horsepower, because Gunslinger could ride around on HP’s back and shoot at things, giving them both mobility and range. To paraphrase a YouTube video, the best weapon a centaur could use is a person on its back using more weapons. Same principle applies here. If HP’s not sold on it, emphasize that Gunslinger isn’t riding Horsepower, Horsepower is wielding Gunslinger!
Is that quote from Shadiversity? He has fun videos.
It is, actually. I appreciate that he both cares about medieval realism and also wants fantasy things to be awesome, so he’s willing to let a lot of things slide if they are cool and not TOO impractical.
Heh. Just got in a conversation with a dude in a coffee shop about silly fantasy weapons. Recommended Shad.
My take is much the same. I’m not sure to what extent he’s a proper medieval scholar, but I appreciate the “reasonable fantasy approach.”
Honestly, as a player, I am prone to not respond “reasonably” to knives. I don’t mean that I get upset, but rather that the gm and the rest of the party get to see just how dark I can push my characters. As a player, my first thought isn’t to rescue the hostage or exact revenge, but to send a message so brutal and clear that No-one will ever consider messing with me or those under my wing. See familicide: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0639.html
https://i.imgur.com/Xd227ji.png
I’d say if you’ve gotta turn the things I find interesting in the world against me for some sense of drama, at least let me enjoy them first. Don’t go zombifiying my sickly mother before I meet her in game, don’t break my heirloom sword before I’ve swung it, that sort of thing. I had one DM burn down a tavern I had bought in town the same session I got it, and lemme tell ya, I was more than a little indignant.
Were you at least insured? And on a related note: What are some good names for a fantasy insurance company? Asking for a Witch who needs pet insurance.
Steer well clear of Asmodeus Actuaries.
I just remembered; my Guardinal friend swears by Mutual of Arborea.
Look out for my entries in an upcoming comic.
Otherwise, I will say that I’ve always liked pirate themed insurance: https://vimeo.com/111458975
Funnily enough, I love presenting “knives” to my GMs, but few thus far have taken advantage of them, partially due to some campaigns petering out before they’ve had the chance. (Also, I love that term and am going to have to start using it.)
The most used one was actually my Witch’s faerie dragon familiar, which was also my first introduction to Pathfinder/tRPGs. I basically told the GM that my Witch had a Trickery patron, did not know the patron’s identity/motives, and that my faerie dragon knew more about my patron than I did – but wasn’t saying anything. Also that both my Witch and her familiar thought of themselves as the smarter one in control of their relationship. In the end, the faerie dragon mostly just ended up disappearing at random times and pulling pranks – so it didn’t end up having as much impact as I thought it might.
The one I’m really sad never got used was my “innocent monster” magical girl. Basically brainwashed by daemons and her cacodaemon familiar to have an exceptionally warped set of values, turning her into a rather happy/naive evil character. She loved her friends unconditionally and was always enthusiastic, but saw absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of murdering random “background characters,” killing people who weren’t her friends, and/or ripping out intelligent souls to sell on the daemon’s soul trade or use to craft into items. Unfortunately, that campaign petered out before there was really a chance for her to commit her worst acts and/or have the GM really start to use her connections to blatantly evil sources for anything.
As a sidenote, this magical girl also had one of my favorite RP conversations with the party.
Paladin: -talks about revenge backstory and the cultists he needs to kill to save his family-
Magical Girl: -enthusiastic to help her new friend kill bad guys-
Magical Girl: “Yay! A toast to murdering people~!”
Investigator: “I don’t think you are supposed to toast to that.”
Magical Girl: “Why not? It’s basically what they really really really seem to want to do.”
Investigator: “…I suppose you are technically correct.” (makes a note to keep an eye on the magical girl)
I imagine that the paladin wasn’t terribly comfortable with her point of view.
My ratfolk wizard just last session introduced the party to what might be a knife – his ratfolk mom, who lives in squalor in a dump near Riddleport, a crime-filled pirate city.
And our party visited his mom and the aformentioned crime-ridden city to visit a crimelord, who has some very powerful rez scrolls that we can’t allow to fall into the hands of a cult that plans to nick said scrolls.
As such, we have the option to help the crimelord defend himself from the oncoming invasion… Or we can nick the scrolls first. Because none of us particularly approve of said crime lord.
Of course, since my character’s mother is within walking distance of said crimeboss’s HQ… That might bring about complications. We’ll see what happens next session when we vote on our next plan of action…
Redemption arc that crime boss! Get in there and become a positive force in the community. Earn that protection money!
You know, as much of a comic relief ‘load’ we’ve seen Gunslinger be… He is still a gunslinger with access to some of the most devestating crits and nigh-impossible-to-miss chains of attacks as a DEX-to-DMG class. One who happens to have good synergy with a mount for mobility to his ranged-attack domination of the battlefield… Hmm, that’s actually a tragic thing about lil’ G: We’ve yet to see him ‘kick ass’ in any fashion, unlike the other mighty shorties of the comic.
Also, that particular brooding perch seems familiar. What kind of temple is brave enough to have gargoyles in a world where gargoyles are monsters that will try to wreck your face?
Those aren’t stone carvings. Those are actual gargoyles that the god’s followers killed, stuffed and then put on their temple roof to show how badass they are.
lol. you stuff taxidermied gargoyles with gravel
Have you seen The Usual Suspects? There is a scene when the story of Keyser Söze is told in which this nice character gets is wife and children taken as hostages by some mobsters. What Keyser Söze does about this? He kills his own family.
Some time is good to play with the DM, create some NPC for him to endanger and then kill them in cold blood while your DM looks helplessly as his plans are bleeding on the floor. The first time i did that was just priceless. Since then, even when my DM has picked the bait some other times, the NPC around my characters have been a little safer, at least from the DM, not so much from me 🙂
Why stop at the NPCs? Threaten yourself and never worry about violence again!
https://i.imgur.com/RwMNQIT.gif
I am gonna show your comment to my DM so he knows who to blame 🙂
On a unrelated topic. How is Gunslinger sanity score? As low as it appears? 🙂
Hmmm I’m kinda 50/50 on this. Sometimes I make NPCs in character backstories because I just want to establish something about the character (like who their parents were) or want them to maybe show up as cameos. When designing “knives” I tend make it a bit more obvious that something interests me as far as its dramatic potential goes. And sometimes I include those things and other times I don’t. It pretty much entirely depends on how I’m feeling about the character I’m creating.
I find that, “Hey GM! I was hoping we could develop this,” works a treat. No reason to hint and nudge when you can outright ask.
There’s another difference in our experience of playing irl vs pbp. In pbp (on a forum at least) you’re typically sort of auditioning for a spot in a game. So you have to write up your backstory and such without any guarantee of getting in the game. So anything compelling you want to have in there needs to be in there before you’re at the stage of conversations like that.
(I mean yeah you’ll still ask the GM questions about stuff, but saying you want to develop something before it’s guaranteed you’re getting to play in the game is pretty meaningless.)
I’m imagining an ongoing conversation. Campaigns morph and change as they’re played, and in my mind it ought to be possible to drop a PM saying “I was hoping to focus on this aspect in the coming arc.” Is that not done in pbp?
No, that totally happens. But I wouldn’t consider something you days days or weeks after the fact as “writing the backstory”.
I find it’s important to distinguish between knives and baubles. One of my players came with her own gang of lovably incompetent bandits. When one of the bandits inevitably fell ill and the quest was on to cure her, the players rejoiced! When that same player’s adopted daughter fell ill, though, she was genuinely upset. Some things cross the line from knives that the player is willing to part with to precious baubles that they won’t let go of under any circumstances.
We’ve got an animal lover in one of my groups. She loves collecting pets and stuffing them into the coach/pirate ship/bag of holding. They are precious and not to be touched!
This is an art comment rather than on the Knives topic, but you shouldn’t be able to see stars in the area of shadow over the moon that creates the crescent. Unless the moon is a literal crescent shape, or there are well lit cities on the moon in the area of the Earth/In-Setting-Planet’s shadow.
Goddammit Neil Degrasse Tyson, I told you to stop commenting. You already ruined Interstellar for me. Can’t I have this?
Not to be pedantic, but I don’t think Dr. Tyson would refer to the unlit portion of the moon as a planetary shadow. (Unless you had the rare privilege of watching a blood moon with him.)
Knowing all of the goings-ons of Handbook world, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone had actually managed to blow a hole in the moon in some magic ritual and the authorities just haven’t gotten around to fixing it yet.
Heh. I imagine Kineticist managed a totally-not-kamehameha-wave once upon a time.
Was she fighting a giant monkey at the time?
What? Don’t be absurd. It was a colossal alien ape. Totally different simian!
Oof, those colossal apes are even worse than the colossal monkeys — no tails to cut off. Kineticist sure had her work cut out for her there.
Why do you think she blew up the moon?
This seems relevant.
https://xkcd.com/1738/
I’ve never had a GM use one of my ‘knives’ in my backstory.
I HAVE had a GM turn one of the other players into a knife during a dream sequence that was meant to test my cleric’s faith by making him choose to kill or not kill one of the other party members because she showed signs of POSSIBLY being undead.
Donovan (my Cleric) “All because she reacts poorly to silver doesn’t make her undead.”
Lathander “You must destroy the undead whenever they are encountered. Strike her down so that she may be redeemed.”
Donovan “Uh, no? I’m not convinced that she-”
The sound of all my Cleric powers going away
Unfortunately, I never got to resolve that situation completely because my GM for that game died. It was an online game, and we found out a few weeks after that last session she was losing her battle with cancer. I wish we could’ve gotten through that last arc, but y’know… I’m glad that she wanted to spend some of her last days with us, playing DnD, and that I got to be part of that.
Found a pic of your character: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fw0CXGOZKdg/maxresdefault.jpg
While barovia does a good job of isolating people from their knives, we did learn something important: Leaving your backstory vague does not protect you from knives. It just ensures that they will be constructed later.
In this case, after our rogue died, his player’s next character was the (possibly bastard, it’s unclear) half-elven son of our late drow cleric. This was possible because basically all of our first characters were intended as throwaways who would die after a couple levels, and thus didn’t have real backstories unless we retconned it later when they survived for an inexplicably long time.
Well said. You’re going to have character growth in D&D whether you plan for it or not. That’s kind of the point.
I feel like the key to a mutually acceptable use of these knives is, as always, communication. The GM should have a very clear idea of which hooks the player is willing to be tugged by, and which ones are only going to enrage him.
Also, I think backstory-based rewards work a lot better than backstory-based threats. Players will be a lot more willing to put friendship with princesses in their backstory if this sometimes comes up in the game as “Because you were friends with the princess she has picked you as her first choice for this exciting and possibly rewarding mission”, rather than always “The Princess has been kidnapped and you need to rescue her”. The games where I felt the GM did the best job of integrating my backstory into the campaign have always been the ones where I felt like my backstory was unlocking options I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten, not the ones where it felt like I was just adding challenges.
That’s going to vary by the player. Case in point:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
Too many GMs forget that once you kill off a knife, you don’t have that knife anymore. Those same GMs also typically forget to hone their knives before thrusting them at a player, which just ends up being too dull to cut. No one cares about your dad dying if they’ve only heard that he was a guy who existed.
If you want to raise the stakes, first you must introduce your players TO those stakes. Let the Dependant NPCs have a functional life. Let them ask for help with non-life-threatening situations. Let them BE the friends/family they were created to be.
THEN you hang them over a pit of lava.
A dependent NPC that is saved is a dependent NPC that can be used again.
I will be following your suggestion
@rocket soccer derby