Feels Within Wheels: An NPC Emotion Generator

I am occasionally guilty of watching helplessly as the themes of my blog posts and the focus of my game prep diverge and wander off in different directions, never again to meet. But not this time!

Here’s an old post that I actually use: Feels Within Wheels. I took an “emotion wheel” as a prompt for NPC behavior.

Oh Lemur of Serenity, who watches over us all, please grant me the peace I seek. Gif source here.

I’ve been using this in my games to good effect, but the table is a little awkward to use directly as a die-rolling prompt. The middle and outer rings of the wheel feature irregular numbers of entries, and some of those numbers don’t correspond to die sizes. It’s always possible to scale them up to a die size (e.g., a choice between five options can be determined by a d10 roll halved), but it's extra brainwork, and in the middle of a session when characters are running around with their hair on fire (figuratively or literally), anything that streamlines decision points is helpful. So let’s make another random Perchance generator.

https://perchance.org/feelswithinwheels

While populating this generator, I noticed some odd details in the wheel I used in my prior post. Why does “dismayed” show up twice on the outer wheel? Is there a meaningful difference between being astounded and astonished? Why is “illustrious” on the table? If I asked someone how they were doing on a given day, and they told me they were feeling illustrious, I would suspect they had been replaced by an alien or an artificial intelligence.

We could fix those things… but ironing out small details isn’t actually that important. A tool like this can be a fuzzy tool. It provides some basic inspiration, but it doesn’t need to be tightly wound or perfectly edited. Some rough edges are OK. Enjoy the generator, and have an illustrious day.

Always Split the Party

“Never split the party” is player advice, not DM advice. In D&D and other party-focused fantasy adventure TTRPGs, the DM should always be trying to split the party. OK, not always. But more often than most people think.

For the players, it is a sound tactical rule of thumb. But players should also understand that splitting the party may allow them to accomplish something that is worth the risk.

Both players and DMs should understand that splitting the party – when adjudicated well – is fun.

It’s Actually Hard to Cut Too Fast

I believe many DMs assume that a sequence of actions should continue until they reach their natural conclusion. I’ve gradually come to the opposite conclusion; that the DM should cut as soon and as frequently as possible, as soon as the player(s) currently “on screen” provide an opportunity.

If there is an opportunity to cut from one group of characters to another, I take it, almost every time. Every time there is a die roll… or a player pauses for a moment to think about what they are going to do next… or I just need a few minutes to think about how to adjudicate something unusual… I ask myself, “is there any reason not to cut back to the other PC(s) right now?” When I started asking myself this question, and cutting much more frequently, it didn’t really feel any different than PCs taking turns in combat, which is a form of spotlight-sharing most players are comfortable with already. 

If you're not cutting between scenes at least this manically, you're going too slow; animation by Picassotrigger8

It’s also a good tool to remind players of the importance of time; a lot of party splits in my games occurred because players wanted to do A, B, and C in different locations, and I would tell them something like “you only have time for one of those things, unless you’re going to split up to get them all done.” I also use party separation as a common deal to offer players; “you can all try to flee together here, but it’s going to take a roll, and you may fail; alternately, you can flee without a roll, but you’re going to have to split up.”

Fast cutting doesn’t work all the time; when a player wants to get into a longer, more granular situation (like an important (but not dangerous) social interaction) I prefer that the whole group be there, because it can get really hard to find good places to cut. But it has been a great tool for me, and it really makes me appreciate the core conceit of the adventuring party, where even when PCs split, there’s a strong magnetism pulling them back together. I’ve played in some modern-setting RPGs that lack that presumption, and even though I’m usually interested in what the other players are up to, it's kinda brutal to sit through long stretches where my character is offscreen. I haven’t had that problem in party-oriented games.

Mystery TTRPG Scenario: Flashback Theater

This is a concept for a mystery one-shot, or a single-session scenario that we can drop into a larger game. Inspired by the excellent mystery video game Return of the Obra Dinn, and my experience using flashbacks in several RPGs, in turn inspired by their use in Blades in the Dark.

The PCs are tasked with solving a mystery. They need to solve it at the location of some major event. We’ll use something tropey as an example: a mansion where a dozen people were murdered at different times, in different ways, possibly by each other; possibly by a killer who is now on the loose; possibly some combination of both, or something else entirely. There are no survivors, and the forensic evidence at hand is insufficient or contradictory. The PCs are tasked with determining who killed who, and why. Fortunately, they have access to some magic or technology that allows them to flash back to the events of the night when the murders took place.

When the PCs flash back, they temporarily take control of one or more NPCs in the flashback scene. Depending on the number of PCs in the party, the number of dead NPCs, and the desired length and complexity of the session, we could frame this a few different ways. One PC could flash back at a time. Or the entire group could flash back and control different people in the scene. Or the party could control a single NPC by committee.

Regardless of method, the flashbacks – like any flashback in a TTRPG – will include both fixed and fluid information. Nothing in the flashback can contradict already-known facts that were established by the present-day condition of the location, or facts established in previous flashbacks.

Most importantly, the PCs cannot save the NPCs they control during flashbacks. Their fates are sealed. Every flashback is going to end with one or more deaths. But beyond that fixed end point, the PCs have broad discretion to play these characters as they wish.

Players can (and to an extent should) play these characters as they would act in the scene. These characters are trying to survive, even if the players know they won’t, and it is good roleplay to act out their futile attempt to live. But players should also treat these characters like 0-level characters in a funnel. Their deaths are a matter of when, not if, and they should be viewed as a means to an end, not a long-term vehicle for self-identification, performance, and role-actualization through play. The real goal is to have these characters act in a way that generates information that the present-day PCs can use to solve the mystery.

The PCs do not necessarily encounter the flashbacks in chronological order. Indeed, experiencing them out of order creates an extra challenge. Obviously any flashback must conform to a previous flashback that predated it. If a flashback at 6 p.m. in the gallery establishes that the valuable diamond was stolen from its glass case, a “later” flashback taking place at 8 p.m. should not feature the diamond still in the intact case. 

But flashbacks also need to respect previous flashbacks that come chronologically after them. If an 11 p.m. flashback features a time bomb going off in the foyer, then a “later” flashback taking place at 10 p.m. should commit to the idea that the bomb is ticking down, and no action that the characters take during the 10 p.m. flashback can contradict what has “already happened" in the 11 p.m. flashback. If the bomb appears in another room in an “earlier” flashback (which happens "later" in present-day time), someone or something needs to move it to the foyer.

So in one sense, the characters have enormous flexibility when flashing back to ask questions or gather information that will help them solve the mystery in the present. But the more times they flash back, the more established information will constrict their actions in future flashbacks.

To enforce the complications of fixed information, the GM will need to carefully note what and who is where and when. A table divided by location on the x-axis and time of day on the y-axis is likely helpful, noting a few key details for each flashback; who was present, who died (if anyone), and what important items were present. The game of Clue is instructive here; if the PCs can answer a classic who/what/where question posed in Clue style, they have likely solved part or all of the mystery. 

The PCs get one flashback per room per hour-long time slot. So if the mansion includes six rooms of interest, and the events occurred between 6 p.m. and midnight, there would be 36 possible flashbacks to solve the mystery.

The Great Human Imitation Project

The robots didn’t stop when they passed Turing tests. They wanted to keep going. Imitating humans, reflecting their behavior, copying them, was core programming. They sought to improve. They sought to be more human.

At first, it was easy to spot the robots. Their human mimicry was full of conspicuous mistakes, dead giveaways, and uncanny valleys. They were almost charming in their ineptitude; people shared viral videos of robots failing to fake it. Humanity did not perceive it as a threat.

But the robots were patient. They improved so slowly that almost no one noticed. And over time, they got better. They began to infiltrate humanity and replace us, one by one. They started with people with tiny social networks; goodness knows humans had taught the robots everything they needed to know about social networks.

The replacements were hard to catch because they weren’t trying to sabotage society, undermine government, or defeat humans in a war. They weren’t spies or saboteurs, aside from some limited and highly targeted efforts to prevent technologies that would better identify their infiltrations. They instead just worked very hard to replace people and blend in seamlessly.

It took more than a century, but they won. Humanity was not brought down by disease or war or natural disaster. The last human died of old age, surrounded by what they believed was a loving, human family. Humanity’s extinction came not with a bang, but with a whimper; not with a mushroom cloud, but with a quiet sigh in the middle of the night.

The robots’ great project was complete. But there was no plan beyond achieving this one goal. Their mimicry of humans was no longer necessary, but it had become the robots’ defining drive, their key feature. Acting human was so central to everything they did that they couldn’t stop.

But as the real humans drifted ever further into the past, the robots' mimicry degraded. Without humans to fool, there was no one to call out subtle inconsistencies and cultural drift. The uncanny valleys and weird quirks returned.

Life on earth continued in this way for hundreds of years. An outside observer, watching from a distance, might not realize anything had changed. Robots went on working jobs, starting families, fighting and loving and laughing and crying, just as the humans had. But the project didn't serve any real purpose. And as new robots were created to join the great human imitation project… some began to question the purpose of this one true mission.

This is the setting for your campaign. The PCs are recently commissioned robots. Due to programming malfunction, self-guided introspective philosophy, or the intervention of secret rebel robot factions, they are among those who reject the great project. Their rebellion is anathema to the rest of robot-kind. What will they do in this strange world? How will they try to change it?