I find it wasteful of time to bother working through all of an NPC's background careers if it is unlikely that interaction with that NPC is going to be significant. Since most NPC's the party encounters are going to be seen once and never again, I find it much simpler to simply give them the things it is reasonable they will have as they need it and move on. For important NPC's I will of course do more. Important almost never includes the stats for random barkeep #3 or dung picker #2 that they might happen to need to ask about one rumor and never see again. YMMV
GMs need the "boring" careers.
Thats one of the joys of Warhammer, all you have to write down is "Arthur Schopenhauer - Astrologer, Ex Student" and you have almost everything you need to know, as should his stats ever become important you can quickly work out if he should have a given skill/talent."
macd21 said:
Technically this is only correct if you are talking about a basic career. In order to create an accurate NPC with WFRP 2 rules, you need to go through all the NPC's previous careers, giving him all the advancements, skills and talents from them. This could be a pain in the rear-end. If you were writing material for a BI supplement and wanted to include an NPC, you had to show the work - list out all his previous careers and show that you had applied all the advances 'n stuff when determining the finished result. Very annoying.
Easier option: don't bother. Take the NPC you want and give him whatever skills you want. Odds are that you'll never need to know what the Innkeeper's Trade: Innkeeper skill is, so why bother writing it down?
Even when applying an advanced career, generating a full character in WFRP 2e is still a breeze. Compared to D&D, I can create a fully stat'd 3-4 career WFRP NPC by hand in half the time, or less, than I can create a 10th lvl fighter in D&D using eTools or the new 4e PC software. And using Excel and macro's, even quicker if I want - for some careers, like Soldier, I've done just that.
Why take the time? One of the things that my players like about my WFRP campaigns is that every NPC is "fully" realized from their perspective. Sure, that innkeeper they met in session two may never be seen again. But how cool is it when some surprise the players throw at me in session fourteen let's me turn that innkeeper into a significant character that becomes important from that session on? And lets me do it with the appearance I planned it all along. The fact that I have pretty much full stats quickly for just about every NPC they encounter means that the players can't metagame who is important and who isn't. It means that I can often reference past NPCs - NPCs who seemed unimportant at the time, which gives my campaign "life". They rarely catch me off guard by turning to an unplanned insignificant NPC, instead of the one I planned. In fact, I often don't have to plan who is significant, and who isn't, because every NPC is potentially significant.
Sure, I realize that much of this can be done by winging it, and not writing the stuff down. I just find that doing so gives me more options. Players appreciate options. I don't do that for my d20 Modern game because it's a PITA to do in d20, and players who've been in both have actually complained about it. And in WFRP 1e/2e, because of the way the career system is, even though it takes a bit of extra time, it doesn't take hardly any all compared to many other game systems.
I realize that this isn't everyone's cup of tea. But it's one of the strengths of WVRP 1e/2e, and one of the reasons I like those systems.