The Kitchen Sink
It was the exciting conclusion of a hard-fought Exalted campaign. Much like the NPCs in today’s comic, our plucky pack of Lunar heroes had gone to literal Hell and back. In preparing for the end game they’d forged an alliance with pirates in the far West, befriended a tribe of Dragon King ninjas, shanghaied an office full of celestial bureaucrats, and marshalled the Silver Pact itself for war. Assorted love interests, minor deities, and a kaiju-sized mandrill rounded out the heroes’ forces. Arrayed against them were all the powers of Malfeas, ready and eager to pour through infernal gates and into Creation.
It was, in a word, a lot to fit into one battle.
This is the opportunity and the peril presented by climactic mass combat. As that campaign’s ST, I wanted to pay off the many minor characters that had accrued around the party. But when you’ve got world-shaking events and armies clashing, it is easy for NPCs to get swallowed up in the durm und strang. Many of my personal favorites got no more than a brief mention, and I couldn’t help but feel like those characters deserved more.
You know what though? That’s likely as it should be. Long campaigns accumulate minor players and and unfinished storylines. As GMs, it’s only natural to have our favorites. But at the end of the day, building a satisfying Avengers Assemble moment is all about providing a sense of scale before directing attention back at your PCs.
So here’s my question for today’s discussion. When you have a complex combat to choreograph, is there a better way of briefly shining the spotlight on your supporting cast? Would a random table of “NPC interventions” serve the purpose? Perhaps asking your players to choose a favorite or two to escort the party personally? Or is it all better left as set dressing in the background? Whatever your take on NPC integration, let’s hear all about those epic confrontations and cast-of-millions conflicts down in the comments!
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During the Norse marauder campaing the GM handled our warbands as nameles mooks unless one of them had a awesome roll or other note worthy deed, this let to him name the guy and roll bit of proper stats. Elevating the random norse marauder #17 to a named NPC and of boy did they become valuable assets.
Also in Planet Mercenary camoaing,one of my players picked up a mayhem card with upgrade to their team becoming snipers, that player proceeded to name all of their npc team members as historical sharpshooters, Simo Häyhä being the first choice naturally. Oh the sorrow when couple sessions later a misfortune falls and one of those buys the farm, not only did they loose the team upgrade but got a probie to fill in… this poor redshirt(s) got used to catch incoming fire untill several encounyers later one survives and as per rules of the game gets name.
And the heroes are inviting that Half everything abomination but there has been no mention of Gunslinger, is he still havibg tea with the orb or did no obe bother to invite him?
A gentleman with an eye patch informed me that Gunslinger will return in Handbook: Age of Orbert.
Huh, Special Snowflake lost her wings?
She’s had a rough couple of years since her last appearance, I guess.
You can see an outline of her wings on the back of her dress. And considering their glowey nature in the original comic I assume she can make them appear whenever she wants. Probably with a Sailor Moon-like transformation sequence.
^ We’ll go with that! 😛
What a heartwarming sight. 🙂
I remain shocked every time this comic manages a bit of continuity. 😀
You can see an outline of her wings on the back of her dress. And considering their glowey nature in the original comic I assume she can make them appear whenever she wants. Probably with a Sailor Moon-like transformation sequence.
What do you suppose her transformation object is? Wand? Compact? Copy of a 3rd party splat book?
Informant and Shopkeeper name themselves, Special Snowflake and Pizza Goblin are obvious. The one who I have trouble placing is the last one whose either conjuring the portal or just has their hand being devoured by portal energy. My first that was the rule of cool dwarf but they were blonde, so I’ll keep looking and see if I can figure it out,
Found ‘em (I think). Beardy Goldaxeale McBeardminerson.
Talking with Gunslinger about his totally not random generator name 07/13/2020
+30 XP to you! Is that enough to level up?
Personally I love it when I can bring back people the players helped or otherwise allied with earlier in the campaign for big moments like this.
I prefer short and sweet moments rather than attaching them longer term to the group (even for values of “longer term” that’s still contained in a single session).
Something that can be handled in the time a single “new monster” turn would take in combat is usually ideal.
For big battles I like to put that in at initiative 0 “the influence of the rest of the battle”. Sometimes that’ll be someone throwing some kind of quick aid, other times it might be the enemies allies doing something (throwing an AoE attack, perhaps reinforcements showing up).
Depending on the size of the battle we focus on, I might have both an “enemy stuff happens” and “ally stuff happens initiative”.
Makes me wonder if some kind of “tides of battle” mechanic could trigger one or the other in response to player successes. Hmmm….
The characters in the background/not named in the comic are Pizza Goblin, Special Snowflake and Beardy Goldaxeale McBeardminerperson.
Correct! Unfortunately, you were the second to answer. You therefore only get half the reward: -30 minutes of your life. 😛
I wonder if Special Snowflake and Miss Gestalt know each other?
I bet they hang out at this venerable institution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g5ZLEgoLPg
I once thought a campaign I was DMing was headed toward an epic conclusion like this, only to discover that my players were trolling me to see just how many distinct NPC voices I could manage at once before I broke character or my head exploded.
Players love nothing so much as forcing their tormentor to RP with themselves.
the way our DM did it in last campaign was to simply describe the scene as we started our specific journey and chose our path.
A battle of epic forces began outside, we were given our choices on which path we could take to get into the place where we would decide the final fate of the entire world (we chose the sneakiest path as we had all campaign), and the DM described each individual part of the big final scene with key characters and allies before we went our separate ways and delved into the mountain cave secret entrance alone…
It was like that scene in a movie where outside there is some epic conflict between massed forces, but inside – with the main characters, everything is dark, quiet, and almost eerie in the difference between what is going on outside.
Then we got to the final boss fight and saw a small piece of the battle from a different perspective (dragons fighting each other in SWARMS above our heads!) and we had to finish everything without know what exactly was happening around us because we just couldn’t see it all.
BUT, when everything was finished (and we won the day) we got to sort of get a recap from different “important NPCs” and different angles of what had happened, including an alt team of heroes that had come in a different direction (and would have been an option for us to play should our group have TPK’d in the big fight) – a team of heroes that were basically some of the most “important” and influential characters we met across the entire campaign up to this point (and a well rounded group of class options too XD )
So we got sort of the best of both worlds. The general and the specific, delivered at different times, but keeping some things secret until the reveal “meant something”.
Shine some during the combat. Have the others be mentioned in the aftermath / during the afterparty. And some, well, some will be found, fallen amid bodies of the enemy horde, obviously holding their ground until their last breath…
…plus you find Jerry stuck in a barrel he tried to hide in from the combat.