建立對抗者

當你完成你的麻煩時你可能已經想出了一個或一群的非玩家角色負責做什麼事，但如果你還沒有，你需要開始把那些解答你的故事問題的關鍵角色們湊在一起。你還需要敲定他們的動機和目標，他們為什麼反對玩家角色的目標，他們追求的是什麼。

最起碼，你應該要能夠為你的劇折中每個有名字的非玩家角色回答下面的問題：

• 這非玩角色需要什麼？玩家角色如何幫她得到，或者玩家角色如何擋到他的去路？
• 為什麼非玩家角色不能通過合法途徑得到他所需要的？ （換句話說，為什麼這個需求會導致麻煩？）
• 為什麼他不能被忽視？

只要可以，試著讓非玩家角色們合併，這樣你就不會要追蹤太多角色。如果你其中一個對抗的非玩家角色在你的劇折裡只有一個目的，考慮捨棄他並將他的職責混合到另一個非家角色中。這不僅降低了你的工作量，也可以讓你多開發一點每個非玩家角色的性格，讓你調和他全套的動機而使他更加多元化。

對於你的每一個非玩家角色，決定你要讓他們當輔助或主要角色。根據運行遊戲給出的指引製作他們的資料。

An Arcane Conspiracy: Opposition

Amanda looks over the story questions and thinks of NPCs she’ll need in order to answer them. She makes a list of the obvious suspects.

• Cynere’s mysterious employer (not appearing)

• The chief arbiter for the Collegia Arcana (supporting)

• Cynere’s competitor for the Jewel (supporting)

• A barrister who isn’t part of the conspiracy (supporting)

• A corrupt barrister, and the one that Zird’s rivals want to set him up with (supporting)

• The Collegia wizard who engineered the conspiracy to bring Zird down (main)

That’s six NPCs, four supporting, one main, and one that isn’t going to be in the scenario—she really doesn’t want to drop any details on who’s hiring Cynere yet. She also doesn’t really want to keep track of five NPCs, so she starts looking for opportunities to consolidate.

One pairing that immediately strikes her is making Cynere’s competitor and the neutral barrister into the same person, whom she names Anna. Anna might not be involved in this conspiracy, but clearly, there’s a more complicated motive at work. What’s going on with her? Amanda ultimately decides that Anna’s motives are beneficent; she’s secreting the Jewel away to keep it out of the hands of more corrupt elements in the Collegia’s infrastructure. She doesn’t know anything about Cynere and will mistake her for an agent of those corrupt elements until they clear the air.

Then she decides that the chief arbiter and the architect of the conspiracy are the same—he didn’t trust anyone else to stick the final nail in Zird’s coffin, so he made sure he’d be appointed arbiter over the trial. Amanda likes this because his political power makes him a formidable opponent to investigate and gives him a powerful lackey in the form of the corrupt barrister. But why does he have it in for Zird in the first place?

She further decides that his motives aren’t personal, but he’s getting ready to do some stuff that will rock the foundations of the Collegia, and he knows that as a misfit in that organization, Zird is one of the most likely candidates to resist him. So it’s basically a preemptive strike.

As for the corrupt barrister, the first thing that comes to mind is a pathetic, sniveling toady who is totally in the arbiter’s pocket. But she wants to add a measure of depth to him, so she also decides that the arbiter has blackmail material on him, which helps to ensure his loyalty. She doesn’t know what that info is yet, but she’s hoping that nosy PCs will help her figure it out through a story detail later.

She names the arbiter Lanthus, and the corrupt barrister Pight. Now she has her NPCs, and she goes about making their sheets.

優勢能節省你工作

當你為你的劇折建立你的非玩家角色時，即使到了你要開始玩時也不必定好一切設定，你可以透過讓玩家創造的優勢成為非玩家角色的形象來幫助你建立。另請參閱後面文章來了解在遊戲中使用它的建議。