NPC Advice

As a Storyteller, how is playing an NPC different than playing you're own PC while running the game?

Hrm....they are ....similar-esque. But very different.

So for both, you're obviously playing a character and you're making character decisions, and you're roleplaying.

But when you're playing a pc, you are playing the main character in a story. The focus should be on them, but more importantly, the story should be "about" them. Actions/interesting bits/threads of the story should lead back to them. If I were reading it all as a book, I should be able to very easily tell that the book is about the PC.

NPCs however are adjunct to the story. They are important, and they have their own dreams and goals, but they arent the main character(the protagonist) of this particular story. They may have the spotlight once in a while, but in the grand writing of the story, they are a cog that makes the PCs story better/brighter/more fulfilled but they arent the protagonist. If I were reading the game as a book, it should be easy for me to see that this character is "alive" and "full" as a character but is obviously not the central focus of the story. And the story is not "about" them.

Another difference is in focus. A player gets to think about their character a lot more, and when they sit down for the game session, only has to worry about their character. However an ST has to split his/her focus on many rules, story elements, plot bits and many many other npcs. So attention able to be spent on one particular npc is very limited compared to how much attention a player can commit to their pc.
Last evening, Mat had to worry about what Geoff would do in a king's moot and how Geoff would react to each thing and how Geoff would vote on each item.
I had to worry about how 11 different NPCs would all react and vote on those things, and often I had to be thinking about what one NPC was thinking while another was talking.
Also....pcs dont have to interupt themselves so other pcs they're playing can talk....


But, if you're just focusing on playing the one npc at the time for whatever reason, and you've already planned everything out so that all you have to worry about is playing that npc(such as in a very intense short scene with only pcs and that npc), then playing an NPC, for that short period of time, can be very VERY similar to playing a PC.

I hope that answered your question. If not please drop a note about more specifics you'd like me to get into. I didnt think the question was unclear....but it was difficult to formulate an answer that seemed satisfying.