Campaigns built around Protecting an NPC?

[PTTG]

I'm curious what sort of player response you've gotten from campaigns built around protecting one specific NPC -- and a weak one at that.

Perhaps the prototype for this sort of campaign might be the first half of most Harry Potter books, seen from the perspective of his teachers. The PCs have responsibilities and adventures outside of the NPC, but things tend to revolve around it, and it might make trouble.

This partywide Dependent (or small group of Dependents, I suppose,) probably should be played with a careful hand, in order to avoid making them annoyingly weak or passive -- or, for that matter, too powerful or proactive.

Has it worked out? Was the story able to work interestingly? Did the players enjoy the structure? Any thoughts going into it?

[dcarson]

I ran a convention game once where the party was hired by a dragon with a injured wing to smuggle him back to the mountains. The couple of groups that played seem to enjoy it.

[Michele]

I've run a multi-session adventure set in Paris in the 1930s with secret supernatural, and the PCs essentially served as bodyguards. There were parts in which the PCs were a bit bored, because that's part and parcel of that job; but those were the parts in which the players could spend time in non-combat roleplaying, so the players (as opposed to the characters) weren't bored.

Then, of course they also gathered intel, and eventually opted for the obvious the-best-defense-is-the-offense strategy.

The main NPC wasn't weak per se, he was rich and powerful; but he was out of his depth in the kind of threat he had stumbled in. That's what was annoying in him. A member of his family didn't understand the danger and tried to sneak away on her own - which was annoying too, but also typical of bodyguard work, I believe.

[johndallman]

I recently played a two-session fantasy scenario built around taking a mute four-year-old back to her home village. Fortunately, she was pretty sensible and didn't make much trouble for us, but protecting her definitely made life complicated.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Long long ago ... A Supers campaign. We were protecting a philanthropist from asaassins. There were several plots thwarted and intrigues entangled. When we caught the adversaries, though, we ended up being shot in the back of the heads. It turned out our "philanthropist" used his charities as a cover for accumulating human sacrifices and our "assassins" were the Good Guys. After we managed to win, we had a "A-Team" arc, eunning from the law for killing a well-known philanthropist.

Remember the twist ending.

[coronatiger]

Originally Posted by Campaign handout exerpt

Something is rotten in the Northern Province...

It has been a bad year for the people of the north. When last year’s crops failed and livestock fell sick and died, everyone seemed to think that it was only natural that some years would be worse than others. The nobility instructed merchants to import food from the south, and as the price of food grew, the church preached solidarity and generocity. Of course, there were those who ignored the church and sought to profiteer in various ways, but in general, people accepted that times were hardandhoped for a better yield from farms and fields next year. Then, the Incidents started happening.

Nobody knows what the first Incident was. Maybe it was the farmer who hanged himselfin the woods. Maybe it was the boy who broke his neck tripping over a fallen branch. Or maybe it was the hunter who was raving mad when she returned. When countless stories of such events reached the nobles’ ears, they told village mayors and other local authorities to make a record of these tragic incidents, and to forward reports to Gioling, the province capital. The people took heart, confident that the nobles would find a solution.

Time passed, and no solution presented itself. Most Incidents would, in better times, be written off as bad luck or tragic accidents, but with the sheer amount happening in so few months, rumors of an unseen evil started spreading.

When the first outlying village burned, someone claimed to have seen orcs in the vicinity. A platoon of soldiers was sent to investigate. They were never heard from again. Garrisons from Gioling were relocated to distant villages, in the hope that they could detect and prevent an orcish incursion. Merchants doubled the guards on their caravans. More villages burned, and the soldiers were always too late to engage the attackers. While the general populace seemed to agree that the attackers were orcs, no actual evidence was ever found to support this theory.

Farmers and villagers started moving towards Gioling, first as a trickle, then as a flow. As Gioling filled up, the number of Incidents there increased. As past turns to present, this is the situation where the players find themselves.

In this campaign, the players had to figure out what was happening to the Northern Province, and to find a way to deal with it. The first story arc revolved around saving two young princesses from the madness of the Incidents and bringing them safely through the wilderness to the South where they could beseech the King for aid. Both princesses were thankful for the PCs' help and protection, but they had widely differing personalities and wishes as to how things should proceed, which made for great role play as the players had to decide which of them (if either) should be allowed to command in a given situation.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Michele

There were parts in which the PCs were a bit bored, because that's part and parcel of that job; but those were the parts in which the players could spend time in non-combat roleplaying, so the players (as opposed to the characters) weren't bored.

You've invented the bottle episode! Now you can spend the production budget you saved on that adventure for fancy locations or flashy special effects in the next adventure.

(Yes, there are narrative reasons relating to pacing and buildup for having such pauses.)

[Gold & Appel Inc]

I've pitched a kinda-sorta similar idea with one key difference to two groups, but it never got off the ground for life reasons the time I was taken up on it, so I don't have any real experience to report (yet). That said, the key difference is that the NPC the PCs have to babysit is powerful, physically and socially, and most of their job is to protect him from himself. It's basically an Action! campaign set in a Supers world, with the party desperately trying to keep a vain, tempermental, hard-partying corporate spokeshero safe, happy, and free of bad press.

If I ran it now, I would just use the templates from Action! for the PCs; IIRC the ones I almost ran it with were a Facewoman (The corporate lawyer / PR rep), a Wheelman (Chauffeur / Pilot), a Fast Guy (Physical Security Chief / Crowd Control), a Wire Rat (Electronic Security Chief / Secondary Archivist), and a very patient and dedicated Medic. Their ward, Captain Coke, is not indestructible, but you wouldn't know it from the way he acts. He may be named for the kind of coke that comes in a can, but a lot of his behavior traces directly back to the self-administration of the kind that comes in a small plastic baggie, taken to the logical conclusion of doses that would kill a hippopotamus.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

I've pitched a kinda-sorta similar idea with one key difference to two groups, but it never got off the ground for life reasons the time I was taken up on it, so I don't have any real experience to report (yet). That said, the key difference is that the NPC the PCs have to babysit is powerful, physically and socially, and most of their job is to protect him from himself. It's basically an Action! campaign set in a Supers world, with the party desperately trying to keep a vain, tempermental, hard-partying corporate spokeshero safe, happy, and free of bad press.

If I ran it now, I would just use the templates from Action! for the PCs; IIRC the ones I almost ran it with were a Facewoman (The corporate lawyer / PR rep), a Wheelman (Chauffeur / Pilot), a Fast Guy (Physical Security Chief / Crowd Control), a Wire Rat (Electronic Security Chief / Secondary Archivist), and a very patient and dedicated Medic. Their ward, Captain Coke, is not indestructible, but you wouldn't know it from the way he acts. He may be named for the kind of coke that comes in a can, but a lot of his behavior traces directly back to the self-administration of the kind that comes in a small plastic baggie, taken to the logical conclusion of doses that would kill a hippopotamus.

I love it!

For best results, make sure that the NPC is someone they love to hate, but, also someone that they hate to love. That is, make him witty, charismatic and genuinely someone the players want to help, even as they recognize that his behaviour is destructive.

Fortunately, pop culture is full of examples. There's Tony Stark, of course. Really, the proper way to look at Sherlock Holmes is as one of these heroes. Some of the more sympathetic moments from Tony Montana. His vices are laziness, vanity and gluttony, not cocaine and ill-advised shenanigans, but Nero Wolfe is a very lovable hero who needs sensible friends to take care of him. I personally like Eliot, from The Magicians.

[namada]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I'm curious what sort of player response you've gotten from campaigns built around protecting one specific NPC -- and a weak one at that.

Perhaps the prototype for this sort of campaign might be the first half of most Harry Potter books, seen from the perspective of his teachers. The PCs have responsibilities and adventures outside of the NPC, but things tend to revolve around it, and it might make trouble.

This partywide Dependent (or small group of Dependents, I suppose,) probably should be played with a careful hand, in order to avoid making them annoyingly weak or passive -- or, for that matter, too powerful or proactive.

Has it worked out? Was the story able to work interestingly? Did the players enjoy the structure? Any thoughts going into it?

Back in my 3E days, I ran a campaign in Caithness, where the PC's were the closest protectors of the prince during the civil war. My inspiration mostly came from the movie Red Sonja - if you've seen that.

I let the players know the basic premise of the campaign before they decided to join in or not, which IMHO is the only way to run a campaign. So they were on board from the get-go. I ensured there was a wide variety of activity, from basic intrigue & character interaction, to assassination attempts, to mass combats, to assigned missions, etc.

Variety & buy-in are the keys to keeping ANY campaign going.