The Inside Scoop on Gaming

One of my gripes about the d20 "glut" is that it seems that the average product is little more than a glamour project with a fancy cover. **Another** campaign world??? **More** prestige classes??? Hey, how about **another** six months of adventures??? No thanks. I'd rather come up with my own ideas than sit down and flesh out someone else's. In fact, I'd like a product that lets **me** come up with the fun stuff, and takes care of some of the boring work.

Enter Ambient's "Everyone Else". EE is six-dollar 70-page PDF document of 80 NPC city archetypes. They can either be improvised or further prepared beforehand. Roughly half is d20-specific, and the rest can be used for any medieval city for any rpg system. Want a bartender? Got it. Need a shopkeeper? There. Ship's captain? No problem. How about a seneschal? What's a seneschal??

Glad you asked. More than the usual suspects, EE includes city NPC archetypes you may not have heard of. Once you've become familiar with them (just browse the book), you can use them for variations of the standard PC trip to town. Are the PCs selling something "special"? Try the Art Dealer, Auctioneer, Importer/Exporter, or Fence. Need to feed the PCs a rumor? Use the Bartender, Dock worker, Shopkeeper, Innkeeper, Tavern Boor, or even Farmer. Cleric missing? Send in the Faith Healer, Surgeon, or even Quack. There's even a petty bureaucrat for all occasions: the Customs Agent at the docks, the Seneschal in the palace, the Staff Officer in the barracks, and the almighty Tax-Collector. And more than just titles, enough information is often provided to give them their own personalities. The emphasis **is** on city NPC archetypes, so if you're looking for, say, villainous henchmen, goons, and mooks, you'll need to do a little converting. The six different army NPC archetypes plus a few of the shadier NPC archetypes should suffice, however.

Each NPC archetype is described by title, general information, gameplay notes ("Rules to remember"), four different experience levels of stats (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th), and suggestions for customizing an NPC for different circumstances (eg. a Courtesan who sets up her customers for a gang of ruffians). Beyond 7th level, the supplement suggests a GM-created NPC. You might find an occasional mistake in the stat block, but hopefully you're in town for more than hacking up midwives and carpenters. As said, the introductions often include personality comments, useful for improvisational roleplaying. The book only uses the NPC classes from the Dungeon Masters Guide. A majority of the NPC archetypes are the Commoner class, and all of them are human. In my opinion, this just emphasizes that the PCs really are special.

As a PDF document, the download comes in a color version with bookmarks (the color is mostly brown art on a light-brown background) and a printer-friendly version without the color background. You can also copy and paste from the document. Myself, I wish they went a little further. Some of the NPC archetypes fit a page, but separated onto two different pages. I would have liked the ability to print out a single NPC archetype on a page, and be able to use the whitespace for notes. In effect, the full color version would primarily be a book, and the printer-friendly version would be reference sheets.

The document comes with a one-page Table of Contents, and two-page index. All of the NPC archetypes fit on the Table of Contents, categorized by locale. This makes it easy to look at all the archetypes at a glance for a quick improvisational encounter.

Finally, let me note that GMs who use published supplements with towns or cities will still find this a useful resource. While most such supplements (even cities) explain important NPC's, they rarely detail the mundane folks. Yet it is these such folks who provide the all-important rumors for the PCs, approach them "to save the town", and so on.

For six dollars, I highly recommend this resource. Its electronic format is actually more useful than a conventional softcover format. You can create the campaign world, you can write the heroic adventures, you can design the town, and Everyone Else will supply... Everyone Else.

Everyone Else
Everyone Else Capsule Review by Cedric Chin on 28/10/02 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty) It's better than good. It's useful. Product: Everyone Else Author: Michael S. Thibault & Richard Ruthman Category: RPG Company/Publisher: AMBIENT INC. Line: d20 Cost: 6 Page count: 70 Year published: 2002 ISBN: SKU: Comp copy?: yes Capsule Review by Cedric Chin on 28/10/02 Genre tags: Fantasy	One of my gripes about the d20 "glut" is that it seems that the average product is little more than a glamour project with a fancy cover. Another campaign world??? More prestige classes??? Hey, how about another six months of adventures??? No thanks. I'd rather come up with my own ideas than sit down and flesh out someone else's. In fact, I'd like a product that lets me come up with the fun stuff, and takes care of some of the boring work. Enter Ambient's "Everyone Else". EE is six-dollar 70-page PDF document of 80 NPC city archetypes. They can either be improvised or further prepared beforehand. Roughly half is d20-specific, and the rest can be used for any medieval city for any rpg system. Want a bartender? Got it. Need a shopkeeper? There. Ship's captain? No problem. How about a seneschal? What's a seneschal?? Glad you asked. More than the usual suspects, EE includes city NPC archetypes you may not have heard of. Once you've become familiar with them (just browse the book), you can use them for variations of the standard PC trip to town. Are the PCs selling something "special"? Try the Art Dealer, Auctioneer, Importer/Exporter, or Fence. Need to feed the PCs a rumor? Use the Bartender, Dock worker, Shopkeeper, Innkeeper, Tavern Boor, or even Farmer. Cleric missing? Send in the Faith Healer, Surgeon, or even Quack. There's even a petty bureaucrat for all occasions: the Customs Agent at the docks, the Seneschal in the palace, the Staff Officer in the barracks, and the almighty Tax-Collector. And more than just titles, enough information is often provided to give them their own personalities. The emphasis is on city NPC archetypes, so if you're looking for, say, villainous henchmen, goons, and mooks, you'll need to do a little converting. The six different army NPC archetypes plus a few of the shadier NPC archetypes should suffice, however. Each NPC archetype is described by title, general information, gameplay notes ("Rules to remember"), four different experience levels of stats (1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th), and suggestions for customizing an NPC for different circumstances (eg. a Courtesan who sets up her customers for a gang of ruffians). Beyond 7th level, the supplement suggests a GM-created NPC. You might find an occasional mistake in the stat block, but hopefully you're in town for more than hacking up midwives and carpenters. As said, the introductions often include personality comments, useful for improvisational roleplaying. The book only uses the NPC classes from the Dungeon Masters Guide. A majority of the NPC archetypes are the Commoner class, and all of them are human. In my opinion, this just emphasizes that the PCs really are special. As a PDF document, the download comes in a color version with bookmarks (the color is mostly brown art on a light-brown background) and a printer-friendly version without the color background. You can also copy and paste from the document. Myself, I wish they went a little further. Some of the NPC archetypes fit a page, but separated onto two different pages. I would have liked the ability to print out a single NPC archetype on a page, and be able to use the whitespace for notes. In effect, the full color version would primarily be a book, and the printer-friendly version would be reference sheets. The document comes with a one-page Table of Contents, and two-page index. All of the NPC archetypes fit on the Table of Contents, categorized by locale. This makes it easy to look at all the archetypes at a glance for a quick improvisational encounter. Finally, let me note that GMs who use published supplements with towns or cities will still find this a useful resource. While most such supplements (even cities) explain important NPC's, they rarely detail the mundane folks. Yet it is these such folks who provide the all-important rumors for the PCs, approach them "to save the town", and so on. For six dollars, I highly recommend this resource. Its electronic format is actually more useful than a conventional softcover format. You can create the campaign world, you can write the heroic adventures, you can design the town, and Everyone Else will supply... Everyone Else.