Ever had an NPC that your party became attached to? Village girl?

Y'know that thing where the DM makes a cute NPC and then murders it to get feels out of the party? I had the opposite happen to me.

I ran a mecha campaign where the fodder enemies were feral melee mechs operated by dog brains. Thanks, Josef Mengele!

After learning about this from scans, our team sniper went full berserk in melee to disable - not kill - the last remaining dog-mech, pinned it down, jumped out and spent the post-combat cleanup period working with the hacker to extract and rescue the dogbrain. I let him make the rolls, and he succeeded with flying colors, luck be damned.

I relented and let him keep it in a jar in the lab, with a wi-fi connection to a box with legs for running around and doing dog-robot stuff. "BARK. BARK. BARK". He was so happy.

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>>48967310
All the time. My players love to adopt every NPC they come across, up to and including a villain from earlier in the campaign. Though at least he had a change of heart.

It's become such a recurring theme that I've made my current campaign into Suikoden-lite, so they can keep bringing NPCs into the fold.

>>48967368
Oh man that's great

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>>48967368
You know what must come of this.

>>48967310

Three of my four players tended to get attached to somebody in each campaign.

In a pirate campaign I ran, the party leader took an interest in a random captured pirate lad I had panic and blurt out some secrets when the barbarian was intimidating the enemy because he was young and nervous, which ended up being a subplot about helping the kid turn his life around instead of just killing him. The party's wizard chick ended up marrying the NPC sailor/swashbuckler I introduced purely to give them a ride before they had a boat of their own. He ended up becoming something of an honorary party member, although he didn't join them in battle.

In the next campaign they got attached to the seven foot tall half-orc lady raised by halflings who they hired as a guide because I inadvertently had her come across as a tsundere and they thought that was adorable.

>>48967618

What about the fourth player? Is he a total psychopath, or has he just not found his NPC bro yet?

>>48967310
Not IRL, not sure if my delivery as a GM is too flat in person or whether my friends are just kick-in-the-door munchkins. (They are.)

Online groups... eh, they vary. But one of them seemed to really like the bombastic mercenary I had offer them their first job.

>>48967310

When my player band of theives teamed up with another npc band of thieves for a heist, they really related to the old, senile, firebomb alchemist with a old-man voice. He would make meta-jokes, suggest bad ideas he would forget, and mix potions to trip balls.

>>48967310
Im in a jojo d10 game with 3 players and a FUCK load of NPCs with them. I think there is like 4 or 5. They all are useful and can fight somewhat. The players like them but there is too damn many of them.

We tend to stab people and then befriend them...somehow.

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All the time. Any game i GM, the players get really attached to at least one NPC. Its the waifus, man...

For example, in my current campaign...
>Awkward megane geek half-elf Mage/alchemist. Too useful, actually got a romance subplot with the Barbarian. It was all very pure.
>Cute teenage adventurer-in-training with abandonment issues. Paladin adopted her as a honorary imouto
(The Paladin actually found a lost little brother as the campaign went. Unsurprisingly, they got attached to him too)
>Redhead Rogue, almost honorary PC and twin sister of the actual PC Rogue

There's more NPC's in the game and they like most of them but the PC's and the players get TRIGGERED if anything so much as touches these four.

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In our group's post-apocalyptic / post-post-apocalyptic game, our favorite NPC is "Diane," a robot who runs a kind of hybrid repair stop / barter shop / snack stand along a long and lonesome traderoute.

We've grown fond of Diane because she's consistently proven herself to be friendly, reliable and adorkable in all our dealings wih her. She usually has whatever our PCs need in stock somewhere, and is always willing to trade some pretty valuable post-apocalyptic stuff for trinkets and treasures from the Old World. For a long time now our group's made it a point to keep our eyes peeled for things Diane might like, not to just to barter with but to give to her as an occasional gift like the sundress in the picture.

>>48967310
Many times. Those that stand out are a powerful yet young wizard who had too much of that adventuring life, and a DIO rip-off. Not in power and vampire abilities or else, just in personality. Charismatic, narcisistic, glorious bastard convinced everyone to help him become the ruler of the kingdom, in exchange for him helping out sometimes and just being ridiculous and over-the-top with everything he does.

The wizard they met on a tavern in a metropolis, telling tales, paying rounds for everyone and being overall the center of attention. They thought he was full of shit at first, but then sat down next to him and found out he wasn't actually boasting about killing dragons or anything, he was just telling the tale about how a barbarian he knew bedded the most hideous creature he ever saw. And generally just telling jokes and stuff he saw in the wilderness, also abusing powerful magic for mundane purposes. Turns out he was quite high level, but retired from adventuring because he's on a more important quest, to stop on every tavern in existance and taste every liquor ever made. I don't remember the specifics, but the party spent about two hours irl just speaking to him and drinking along because the guy was genuinely funny and quite a bro, they even went and made him a honorary member, demanding him to show up every time they step into a tavern again.

A slightly crazed alchemist who they found wandering in a dungeon. They basically adopted him

>>48967310
The amount of support NPCs that my players have recruited now outnumber the main PCs. (Granted, a few of them are old PCs whose players have left but it's still kind of ridiculous.)

The one that they seem the most fond of though is probably the generic White Mage girl who only appeared so she could heal a dying NPC the party was trying to save. They liked her so much that she eventually become a support character in her own right. Part of this is due to me writing myself in a corner though so I guess I have no one to blame but myself.

Oh, and I guess one of the players have a thing towards a spidergirl they met (which is who the White Mage girl above needed to heal after they nearly killed her). She eventually died as part of campaign events but her spirit still hangs around the party's Summoner, and is mad salty about being dead.

It happens all the time to me. It's part of why I truly believe there is no easy way to make an NPC likable for certain. There are things you can do to increase the chance, but players will always surprise you.

After my first few surprise hit NPC's became a big deal, I tried to make more like them, but I found the ones crafted to what I thought my players wanted were often overlooked for a random side character who made an impression.

These days, I just start every NPC with a basic concept and personality and base their development off how the PC's interact with them, rather than wasting time putting lots of thought into NPC's they might have no interest in.

>>48968865
>is mad salty about being dead.
This sounds adorable as fuck.

>>48969003
Some of the players would probably agree. They've discovered that despite her being much more sociable than when they first met her she's still a bit of a grouch, which makes the fact that her best friend in the party is prepostorously cheery and optimistic even funnier.

Including that character is the absolute worst mistake I've made in the campaign but I'm too far in to just get rid of her and my players seem to like her so I'm trying to make the best out of the situation. The way these events are unfolding is making me slowly warm up to her too.

The GM gave us an NPC for the introduction 'mission' to survive the combat, he was statted as a tank, but fluffed as the supervisor, for our civil service.
After shit went down we roped him into being part of the party outright because he was there at the time so he's part of this shit now.

My players get attached to the characters I think are just throw away npcs.

>Bunny, the half orc barbarian. She wears a chainmail bikini and thinks she's the hottest woman to grace the planet.

>Zeek, the hafling mage. Slimiest con-artist you'll ever meet. He'll scam and manipulate everyone, and they think there's an endearing honesty in the way he lies to everyone.

>Eugene, a wimpy little twerp who's father left him a huge inheritance. At the end of a dungeon filled with deadly traps and monsters.
I tried to make him as annoying and cowardly as possible. They loved him so.much he's a part of their adventuring guild.

They keep saying I make the best characters, and while I believe them, I kinda wish they wouldn't get so attached.

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>>48969891
Players love taking part of the adventure and making it their own. Something you intended as a throwaway suddenly becomes a major plot point, because they want it to be.

Sometimes it's hell, but what can you do?

My character was once assigned a sister, who happened to be cursed with being a Were-bear.

I grew rather fond of her. Tall, blonde, built like a defensive lineman. And the sweetest little girl you could ever hope to meet.

Shame the group dissolved before I could finish helping her.

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>>48968920
This.

I ran a Fire Emblem campaign using stats and mechanics copypasted from the videogames, and the NPC my group took to the most was an 11-year-old pegasus rider with the personality of a full-on shitposter. Her stats were mediocre and her skills all luck-based, making her pretty much bench fodder, but the group loved her snarky comments and blatant disrespect so much that they took her along in EVERY battle.

Eventually she was challenged to a duel by one of the BBEGs and was headstrong enough to run off to get herself killed, but the PCs found out and put forth ridiculous effort to save her, spinning into a whole arc of the campaign where they chill around in a big city waiting for their loli to recover.
Further, some of my players came to me later and told me how emotionally devastated they'd be if I actually let her die, which was a lot more attachment than I expected. Needless to say, I was pretty impressed.

Later when she had less plot relevance they didn't stop dragging her along, leading her to do stuff like pose as a maid and sweet-talk a major villain's talking sword into betraying its owner because she was a cute girl. It worked.
She also adopted the title of "Best Girl" for herself after all the other PCs kept calling her that for some reason.

In the ending, a PC married her older sister, and she became "that kooky aunt who's also a crazy sword lady." I have many plans for her if I ever end up running a sequel.

>>48971494
>11-year-old pegasus rider with the personality of a full-on shitposter.
Did she ever rant about how she graduated top of her class in the Pegasus SEALS?

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>>48968327
>TRIGGERED if anything so much as touches these four.

Oh my, sounds like you found the perfect motivation to keep them going.

>>48967310
All of the above in one game. The party wound up helping an Elvish mafia take down their rivals (who were a legit thread to the city they all lived in) and became best bros with them all. The Party actually had a base of power in the city-game for once because the mob was pretty damn loyal to these outsiders who swooped in and set them atop the entire metropolis's pecking order, and the PCs were friends with most of their members from shopkeeps to thugs, to an adorable elven child who was set to be the heir to the whole shebang.

And then one of them fucked it all up. The Sorcerer was kidnapped by the local mad-with-power Uber Lich. He was mad that the party had raided his old tomb and stolen some rather important and powerful cursed artifacts of his, and he wanted them back. He was a bit of a cooky old guy though, so he wouldn't be so impolite as to actually threaten torture. He merely implied that the Sorcerer could potentially be in pain eventually from keeping secrets from the Lich, possibly.

The Sorcerer broke under implied threat of torture, named names, practically told the guy each of the other PCs' main weaknesses, and their home addresses. She also gave away the Elves.

One genocide later, the party is on the run, no friends, no allies. The players were legitimately distraught at seeing all their work going up in literal flames. And then they nuked the city and ended the campaign by fleeing to the four corners of the earth.

>>48967594
Oh shit! Mecha-furries!

>>48971933
Absolutely. I tend to make villains who are pretty hate-able as is, but if i ever need to go the extra mile..

As a matter of fact, there's a yet-neutral NPC who apparently might have had a hand in corrupting (spiritually) the Mage to some extent. The players dont know how or why exactly, but they are mentally ready to face said (dangerous) NPC and her faction because they know there's some connection between the two things.
And they got so sidetracked by the mage's apparent corruption that they prioritized learning more about that over learning more about a potential end of the world.

I am very happy with my campaign and my players

>>48967310

Jesus christ. So many. I had a cleric who was the local healer for a mid sized town who the party went to cause one of them was bit by a Were-Rat and they wanted to be safe. Pretty settled down, widow with a daughter. About 11 levels later she's engaged to one of them and has been adventuring with them for nearly two years.

>>48967683

The fourth player tends to be the murderhobo of the group, although he does tend to make up for this by having an evolving relationship with the rest of the party.

Bumping for fun story times.

>>48967368
...That's fucking amazing

I'm very paranoid about any NPCs, but the other players in my group are always looking to add more NPCs.

>>48967310

There was this one alien lady who managed the crew's storage and investments on a space station. Pretty much Kangaskhan from the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games.

The crew of hardened space mercenaries never failed to bring something nice for her kid, or take on a job that would help her out.

>>48971779
>Pegasus SEALS
I had a good chuckle

>>48967310
Yes, a party of one and his coworker.

No.

Please do not take these items.

I had the players get attached to NPCs I specifically designed for it, but I try really hard to avoid 'moe' style characters that are created for such things.

Scruffy the blacksmith

Wow, never thought I'd get a chance to tell this story... We had one PC, a girl playing a catgirl, who grew really attached to my questgiver-turned-gmpc (the character only stayed with the party because Catgirl dragged her along, often literally). Point there is, she gets attached pretty easily.

When the group got thrust into a bizzare alternate reality that was a fusion of Hell and Earth, the first place the party goes is the fortress of Demonic Archduke Forneus, who immediately welcomes the party, since Powered humans (which by the nature of the game, the party is entirely composed of) hold the same position in society as mid-to-high-level Demons.

After Forneus agrees to accomodate them for an evening and gives them an overview of the world they'll be stepping into in their quest to get back to their proper reality, they encounter one of the fortress' slaves, who are all regular humans. The slave they (quite literally) bump into curses them out under his breath, (damned powered brats, IIRC) which OF COURSE Catgirl hears with her animal sense of hearing. So persuasion checks to improve his disposition, which she rolls way too well on. He apologizes and tells the party about the plight of the human race at large (powered humans and cambions/half demons live essentially in luxury, while most normals are slaves, and almost never rise above being anything but a laborer or a criminal). The group as a whole takes pity on the guy, with Catgirl even giving him a scarf to "mark him as being special". The party petitions Forneus to bring him along, and he acquiesces, since the group does after all need a guide.

And so Ahlo joins the party, eventually driving some of the later plot to get the party home.

>>48980727
>tl;dr Catgirl gives socially hostile npc a "scarf of importance" and turns him into an ally.

>>48967310
>playing VtM
>full on Sabbat invasion needs to be beaten back.
>GM gives us two random Brujah as extra mussel/canon-fodder.
>one dies like the chump he is
> the other one succeeds at even the most outlandish feats thanks to crazy rolls
>he is now sheriff and a hero to the Camarilla.

We helped too, I guess.

>>48967368
>Y'know that thing where the DM makes a cute NPC and then murders it to get feels out of the party?

Weeb DM was bored and decided to throw a loli at us to see how we'd react. His original intention was to distract us from our mission of killing some bandit chief or whatever. We decided to adopt her and protect her smile, at the cost of the mission reward.

Eventually (not really eventually, it was towards the end of the same session) DM decided it was going to be his mission to protect her smile too, and we all worked together to protect the loli. Note that the setting is notFallout, with more murderous animals. Our plan was to get her to this military base and figure something out, because obviously we couldn't be taking her with us everythere.

Anyway three or four sessions and a lot of sidetracking later, its 3am and we're mostly drunk, and we fuck up a bunch of rolls and make some shitty decisions that lead to the loli ending up dead. The DM did his best to let us save her, but somehow we got fuckshit for rolls, and were too drunk to think up any bullshit to keep her alive.

I hope you're in a better place now Amily ;_;

>>48968865
Does, eh, spider have pusspuss?

Does...spider have pusspuss?

>>48971494
Do I take it your group likes doritos gremlin d.va?

>>48967594
Question one, what the fuck is that?
Question two, why does it have a chainsaw?

>>48983951
Its a robo doggo
It has a chainsaw because thats how he can fight against ninja cyborgs

Im suprised there's still someone out there who isn't familiar with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

>>48983625
Good on you all for honouring the dice even when they rejected your desires.

She will be Mcfeasting in Valhalla my friend

>>48983951
http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Blade_Wolf

I had 2 NPC mercenaries who were bodyguards for a Sigmarite initiate's mission to bring a message to an isolated rural village (and introduce him to the party).

The initiate's player was quite put out when one died during the climax of the scenario fighting off some wan wans while they fought a werewolf.

I had my players fight a big nasty demon, once. It was a decent fight, and my players were weird. They chopped its head off, and before it could melt into black Ichor and return to its Gods realm, the cleric cast 'spare the dying'.

So the Ranger, who claimed the kill as his, goes over to the demons head, which is now yelling all sorts of abuse in a psuedo african accent, and starts rolling intimidate. The head cries "KILL ME! KIIIIL MEEEE!!" And the Ranger and his player find this adorable.

The ranger wonders what would happen if he cast a healing spell on the head as the Wizard/cleric prepares the still bleeding headless corpse as some sort of reagent fountain. Ranger casts heal, and with a terrible scream the demons giant head sprouts a tiny body.

This little demon became the Rangers favourite thing ever. He carried it around on a necklace and impressed all the elf ladies, then he convinced it that worse things awaited it beyond the veil and got it to turn coat. Eventually it made a deal to trade information for a proper position in the kingdom other than the rangers pet/slave, and was awarded a tiny parcel of land and two cows. The ranger still acted as a sort of parole officer, as the Demon lord manifested a straw hat and tiny overalls and a pitchfork

>>48970036
This happened in the first campaign I ran. Since I pretty much had no idea what I was doing, I just did some typical pre-made castle online with a bunch of goblins and bandits having a feud over territory, while undead were roaming the bottom. The game detailed out ways for them to help out the bandits, while the goblins were incredibly xenophobic. So of course the party finds the bandits first and, as is the nature of DnD player, breaks into their home and kills them all without so much as a how do you do. They find a couple of goblin prisoners in the bandit keep, which basically sit there insulting their mothers, spitting at them and calling them every curse in the goblin language (of which a good portion are curses.) For some reason the rogue decides that he likes these particular gents so much he lends them his knife, then sits down and has a couple of beers with them while the rest of the party fights the next combat. Each round I give him a shot at bantering with these gobs and after some decent rolls on top of exceptional diplomacy stats I decide he's made some friends.

Skip forward a couple hours of a new group now realising how boring giant dungeons are when you can't run the game at a comfortable pace and I figure why not just let them sneak past the goblin section. Sure, goblins kill people on sight due to a LOT of past racial tension, but since they know that particular one has booze they decide to look the other way (in exchange for more booze).

After all's said and done they have one final encounter, this time with the goblin's chief who was none too happy about the treachery that was afoot. However by some coincidence the dungeon I'd pulled off the net noted that the man (now ghost) who used to live in that place was an alcoholic and had a hidden wine cellar. At the mere mention of a hefty supply of fine wine the chief quickly found himself lacking in command and decided these people were alright.

>>48984430
This is exactly what taught me about how important improvisation is and that dealing with problems the less conventional way is a heck of a lot more rewarding for players. These days I tend to only come up with one way that a problem could be solved, then just let them make their own way.

In the end they went to the ends of the earth to get that chief a wife, solved his drinking problem, and one even stayed with them as a diplomat to establish trade and good relations with the local people.

Basically if you give something life, your players can love it. Or crush it mercilessly for no reason. Depends how much they need that exp really.

>>48967594
TIME
TO
LEAVE
THEM
ALL
BE-
HIIIIIIIIIIIND