GM advice

>>51460640
>How do I subtly imply that the vampire lady and the crown prince are crushing on each other?
have them ask questions about each other from whichever PCs seem friendliest with the other

>How do I portray the ambivalence the priest may feel about the vampire companion?
passive-aggressive comments about undead, creatures of the night, any category which would include her without actually saying it

Sherman is the priest's son. In order to keep him from turning into a vampire the priest had a druid/witch/whatever put a curse on him that turned him into a donkey instead but the curse also affects the priest's memory so he nor anyone else knows, except for maybe the sister who can talk to him but in a way that not even the players would ever believe or even suspect.

>>51460640
make like a small passive side quest for the PCs where they play match maker for them possible? Create maybe minor conflict for the priest and couple for the party to resolve and to keep relations exciting? Just make your player become attached to certgain characters in your story.

>>51460640
My advice? Don't use filler. Keep in mind your players came to your game to be HEROES in your game, not made into passive observers as you tell them about your world and your characters. In my experience PC's will only not ignore the things around them that actually effect their experience. Only when the personalities of those characters start to regularly affect the PC's and their goals in regular, significant ways will they start to pay attention.

Center things around the desire of the party. Lets say they want to deliver this crown prince somewhere and get paid, but he's mysteriously weak/anemic. Make his weakness a severe, noticeable hindrance to what the party wants to, in many cases putting them or their goals in serious danger. Make it clear to the party that this is a problem that needs to somehow be addressed immediately. The priest believes this is because the vampire is feeding on the prince, and acts in a way that makes sense for the character and effects the party, like trying to kill her in her sleep/asking the party in private to leave her behind/leaving the entire group and depriving them of his services if he's too ignored. The kid vehemently denies that it's because of the vampire, sometime lying about his health for her sake (leading him and the parties interest into more danger) Meanwhile the vampire insists that the crown prince is somehow cursed and makes a loud, dramatic exit claiming she's going to find a cure, which may or may not have great plot impact somehow later. Make the personality and characteristics of these npc's either a boon or a hindrance depending on how the party manages them, and make the situation dire enough that the party has to manage them well in order to get through.

>>51460640
The problem is that a game shouldn't be about interaction between the NPC's, but between the world and the players. If the players want to follow the plot, they should be actors in it.

I mean, those are five NPC's on top of any they encounter, and that's a bit too much. And NPC that joins the party is ideally either temporary, or filling a mechanical gap that requires filling, or makes it easier for everyone to have filled. Nobody who is telling stories about a game afterwards is recounting the shit the NPC's do with each other or say to each other.

Basically, this sounds like a huge clusterfuck. Remove the NPC's from your party and concentrate on one plot. You have already established their roles, so you can just park them somewhere to bring up later. This makes things a lot easier. Say you want to drop the hint that these NPC's are into each other? Have one of them ask the party to deliver a letter to the other. It's a sealed letter, so they can make the decision to maybe open it, but possible piss off the NPC's, but learn for certain what's going on. Otherwise, it should be a clear enough hint.

It also puts the holy warrior under more pressure when the vampire asks him to undertake a quest that's important for her safety. Say to erase her name from some record, from before she became a vampire. This might put him in the temptation of breaking his promise, or of using the sensitive information for himself. Alternatively, she might be trying to trick him into doing something that is not part of their agreement.

NPC's as a storytelling device are completely useless when they're hanging out with the party all the time.