P5
Primer, Part 1
People,
& Places
By:
Jesse C Cohoon
The P5: People, Places, Possessions, Powers, and Plot RPG engine is not
meant to replace other roleplaying systems, but to help you by giving ideas as
to what you might need and further define what is there providing the people,
places, powers, possessions and plots for your game. It’s designed to
streamline worldbuilding by helping to create vibrant locales, interesting characters,
and complex, crazy plots for your games, both traditional and nontraditional. By
using the P5 system, you’re able to take your world from concept to fully
fleshed out form in five easy steps that should make world creation a breeze.
People
At the broadest sense, people
are the characters that are in the world – both player characters (PCs) and
non-player characters (NPCs). These are the roles, traits, and types of people
that make your world truly alive. But when examining P5, don’t limit yourself
to one type of personality type. People are very complex and may have many
facets. Use as many as you think helps to describe the person you’re portraying
– but keep in mind that more may not necessarily be better. It’s better to have
more characters with fewer traits than to have fewer with more because the more
categories a character can fit into, the less you’re able to make them shine
because the few you have can do it all.
When doing your own people
for the P5 engine, think of all the appropriate types and broad categories of
people that exist within the world that you’re creating and list them out,
providing a short description for each. As you’re making these categories, try
to make sure that there’s no significant overlap (there may be some in that
categories are artificial and don’t exist in real life).
Also, keep in mind that people
aren’t limited to humanoids. This includes all the sentient and non-sentient
monsters in your game as well.
Once you have the people
figured out for your campaign, you can start to give them stats, if your system
uses such a thing. If you’re the type of a GM who has difficulty making names,
nicknames, and or titles for the characters in your game, it’s also useful to
provide a name generator there as well.
Places
Places are the locations in
your world. But don’t think of strictly outdoor places such as forests,
mountains and streams. Places can also be movable things such as the tinker’s
traveling wagon, the touring circus’ Big Top, the revival tent set up at the
edge of town. They can be the rooms of the inn, the campfire around which they
tell scary stories, the kitchen of the inn, and the grand ballroom of the duke.
Places can be as specific or as broad as you want them to be, but the common
thread when trying to pin down places to list for the P5 engine is to ask
yourself:
- Where are the PCs likely to visit?
- How important is this place?
- How much detail do I need to provide?
Answering these questions can
be as simple as figuring out where the NPCs the PCs will be able to interact
with to as complex as defining the rooms and parts of a castle and its
surroundings or the layout of a dungeon. By doing so, you’ll know the necessary
level of detail you need in order to provide your characters. In doing the P5 books,
I base locations off of what’s absolutely necessary for the subject matter and
present the information in broad strokes, as I figure that the individual DMs
can provide the needed details when necessary.
Next time, more about my P5 RPG engine.
Hello. Im new to your site, but i have a system that kind of works like this, only focused on different mental focus points.
ReplyDelete1: background. Remind the players what the location looks like. Keeps the whole group focused.
2: movement. Things like merchant carts always crowding streets as they pass by. Crowds rioting. This adds action to the background.
3: play. Conversations that propel the scenario by allowing players to interact as living characters. Joining the story.
I like your ideas, and i plan on bookmarking your site and using your reminders. Thank you for your time.
I'm glad that you like the ideas contained herein. I'm basically trying to show how to build a world in very broad strokes, and the DMs can fill in the finite details themselves, or, if they don't want to leave the details up to the imagination(s) of their players.
DeleteSame here. I just use mind tricks to keep narration going, as opposed to detailed backgrounds. Combining the two makes a complete dm. I mean, thats the idea right? Thanks again. :-)
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