So I had this great idea to add a small female child around the age of 11 to the group as a NPC. My goal was to have some of the PCs like her then do a Season 2 of Walking Dead. SPOILER (She gets missing, they spend days looking for her and find undead roaming the area, They use a small village as a base camp that has a large barn, Later they find out the people were keeping zombies in the barn in hopes of finding a cure for them, When the PCs finally let the undead out, or kill them all they find the girl as one of the undead and she has been there all along.)
My problem is, 1 member of the party hates her and 2 love Her with the rest of the party with no opionion. She is watching the party members and asking questions as kids do about everything the PCs do. She is picking up habits of the party members and has expressed desire to prove that one of the party members (a drow) is a spy. I have grown to like her more then I should if I want her to die. 
No question here, just wanted to share.
K-Ray
I never played the Walking Dead games, though I don't mind the spoiler. I think you should have her stick around, maybe even start gaining class levels and become like the party mascot. I imagine her running into combat and waving a magic wand about at an orc, casting Prestigitation to make sparkles and random other silly little things. In certain circumstances, her excessive adorability actually diffuses encounters, in others, it gets her into trouble and the PCs have to bail her out. As for the Zombies, just have it play out normally, but let her live. After all, it doesn't make sense for her to just disappear for no good reason, and unless you completely restructure how zombies work in D&D, she can't contract anything from them. Just have her trapped in the barn or something, like up in the rafters. The PCs have to practically nuke the barn on their way in to get her. Just like that, you just reformatted an encounter to be really interesting (Perhaps even allow the little girl a chance to grow and develop deeper ties to the PCs) and established a nice plot point for an interesting campaign. Why are their zombies in a barn? Who's making zombies and stuffing hoards of them in barns? Why was the little girl in there? Questions lead to fun adventures. NPCs that raise interesting questions lead to tons of fun stories.
Yeha, I would not decide to deliberately kill the girl without any player input, that can be just to cruel for somebody (mind you, I don’t know your players, but if the all like drama and angst like this than go for it). But you can definitely make it a challenging adventure to save the child. As iserith would say – as long as steaks are clear and everyone buys into it everything should be fine, even when they don’t succeed in the end.
Well the worst thing that could of happened is that the pcs completely ignored your npc. Hate or like, at least they accept she exists. It sounds like a good set up, especially since not everyone likes her. That should lead to drama when she is a zombie and a pair of the pcs are sympathetic.
I'd say, keep her in the party longer. Introduce some situations where she can be of use, rather than situations where she gets into trouble. I'm not sure if killing her off would be a plot twist your players would enjoy. I know some players would take offense, especially if it seems as if there was nothing they could do about it. But then again, I do not know your players.
But having a child along for all sorts of adventures seems like a fun idea, so why not keep her around?
A zombie-barn doesn't need the girl going missing as an adventurehook. The pc's could be asked by frightened farmers to check out the undead presence in the woods too, for example. Just make the adventure, and think of multiple hooks the pc's can bite into.
The storyhook of the missing girl only works (to the fullest) if the players get emotionally attached to the girl, and if they feel responsible for her vanishing. The first will happen, or it won't. Just play the girl, and see how the players react to her (the haters may change their minds). The second is important too, though. Not just the characters, but the players must feel responsible for her walking off. If they like her so much that they take many precautions of her getting into trouble, then her walking off anyway may start to feel like railroading with the players feeling there was no way they could have prevented her walking off. Then they won't feel responsible for what happens.
Plus other things could happen that could make your adventure hook unusable. What if he players like her so much they arrange for her to stay at a loving family, in the middle of a city, in the middle of a protected kingdom? Then how will she end up in the barn anyway? Or maybe she winds up dead before you get to your zombie-barn adventure.
You can add some emotionally attachement to other hooks too though. If not the girl, than maybe the kid of one of the farmers that the players get a detailled description off (and have to promise the mother to help find him, just to calm her down). When a little zombie in the exact same checkered clothes, with the black handkerchief his mother described staggers out the barn along with the rest of the zombies, it'll sure make an impact as well.
I advise that you tread lightly with ally NPC use.
In my old campaign, overusing NPCs was part of the problem. I was using them, at least partially, to railroad the players. I was also solving a lot of problems for them through NPCs. It was also keeping me from making fair rulings, I would fudge rolls to keep my NPCs alive. I was a pretty lousy DM back then.
I've also played in campaigns where DMs do similar behavior. I can't stand it as a player. The NPCs were "solving" everything so fast, it felt like my PC was only there to fight for the NPCs. Some DMs are so busy explaining how cool their PCs are, they don't even run the game!
In my "rebound" campaign, I've decided to cut way back on ally NPCs in the party. An NPC will only be "in" the party if it's actually relevant to the quest (like prisoners being rescued or nobles being escorted), and then they're gone.
- Players like to be the center of attention. DM-favored NPCs distract from that.
- Players want to solve everything themselves. Having NPCs do it steals their thunder. Well, some players hate puzzles & mysteries and would prefer not to have them, if you have that kind of party you should probably just get rid of puzzles & mysteries instead of having NPCs solve them.
- Players see NPCs as window dressing. It's hard to get them interested in things that are happening to NPCs.
- Players have low tolerance for stupid PCs. If a DM is constantly using "favored" NPCs to lure players into danger, the players will eventually let them die, even if it's a "cute little girl."
Of course, just because I screwed up doesn't mean you'll do so. You may be doing everything right, I' m not trying to judge you. I'm just pointing out my mistakes and the lessons I learned from them.
Good luck!
Sounds great, so long as your players aren't fans of the show and see it coming a million miles away.
Set up her running away during a night encounter with the zombies. The Necromancer would then take her and do his thing. They search around for a bit, but can't find her that night.
They find the farming community a few days later, encountering more zombies along the way. When they get there, they'll be told that the farmers have been having problems with zombies in the area recently, aren't sure what to do, and desperately need the PCs' help. Hopefully they'll want to set up camp and start searching for the Necromancer and their missing mascot. The rest should possibly play out as planned so long a the PCs don't catch on to what you've cooked up.
Kennethray wrote:
Be very careful not to aim the "DM Gun" at anything you're unwilling to totally obliterate.
I have had mutlple NPCs with the group off and on, they stop trying to use them since most of the time the NPCs cause more trouble then help. None of them have seen past season one of the show, the ones who have watched it hate it for some reason. I am not having any issues with the party and the NPC and they expect drama. One PC does nothing but cause drama for the party. I dont force my group to do anything, ever. I do give warnings and ask one final time (Are you sure you want to go this route? it may end badly) before I allow them to kill themselves. We have lots of fun and there have been some very tense and emotional moments, but they Love it.
When we first started playing 4 years ago most of the group was all about the "perfect build" and jumped from one charc to another. With the start of this 5E campaign almost a year ago and concertation on Roleplaying all but 1 love their charcs and level up based on what they charc would actuly do.
Like I said, there is no Party issues, just my wanting the girl to live. She would join the ranks of NPCs in the background during any combat and has no real use out of combat other then a moral question here or there such as "Is necromancy evil?" as the cleric raises a zombie.
I had the plan set up, and fully expect that the party will either bypass the village or just go straight to the barn and figure everything out the first night.
As far as the zombies, there is a Item that is turning people that have died into Undead. The party is dealing with that now.
Kennethray wrote:
Barky wrote:
I liked the young child npc in the Sabre River module.from way back in my gaming career.......he turns out to be a transformed magic weapon
I am a very pro player .......erm player and gm. I prefer a light touch npc so the players are kept as key drivers and the centre........one reason I gave up on PF APs was they way they used npcs.
I hope you aren't planning to use the red herring from the show as well. It was bad enough in the show but making your players waste all their time doing something which you know is pointless only to find out by accident where the girl actually is... yeah. It could work in a TV show (it didn't) but I don't see it working for a game.
I'm pretty big on using as little DM fiat as possible meaning if I want to do something to the players or their allies I use the same rules that normally apply. Typically, that means rolling for it, or giving the PCs a chance to react. I hate it when DMs pull complications out of their arse without it being fair in terms of the rules and a natural extension of the situation.
Coredump00 wrote:
From what I have heard, the meta-plot of Walking Dead is to drive the primary characters insane then kill them. Your players may not appreciate having their characters be put in THAT storyline.
Silly question: What if the PCs figure out a clever way to get in and out of the upper story of the barn - say, swashbuckling off a crane via a long rope into a window? (If I knew the groud floor of a building was full of Zombies, I would not open the door!)