Mandatory NPCing - Zero Tolerance

Mandatory NPCing - Zero Tolerance

Everyone that attends an event and plays a PC is required to contribute four hours of his or her time to an NPC shift during that event. It is by this rule alone that there are enough NPCs to entertain everyone throughout the weekend. For quite some time now, some people have found ways to slip through the cracks, ignore this requirement, and go unnoticed. This post is here to serve notice that from this point on NPC duty will be monitored much more carefully than it has in the past, and you will no longer be able to get away with skipping NPC duty by having your card signed and calling it done. Improved checks and balances have recently been introduced and are now functioning effectively so that the signature of a Monster Marshal on your card is merely the first layer of evidence of your completed duty.

To clarify the rules and procedures of NPC duty one more time, the following people do not have to serve an NPC shift:
• Officers – contribute a great deal of time between and during events helping KR to run efficiently and so are excused from NPC duty.
• Monster Marshals and Storytellers - contribute their four hours by developing and executing encounters and adventures and so are excused from NPC duty.
• Kitchen Marshals - contribute four hours (and usually much more) working in the kitchen and so are excused from NPC duty.
• Players that attend an event for less than twelve hours are excused from NPC duty at the Director’s discretion.

The first three groups of players defined above are responsible for signing their own cards in the NPC Shift area, and their names are then verified as excused from NPC duty when Character Cards are updated. The final group – players who attend for less than twelve hours – must report to the Director to have their cards signed for NPC duty and their names added to the roster of excused players for that event. Rules Marshals who are not also MM are supposed to spend roughly half of their NPC shift marshaling encounters with a white headband.

Everyone else must serve an NPC shift, following the procedures explain below.

When you arrive at an event and sign in, you must select an NPC shift and write your name on the sign-up sheet and the shift time on your character card. If you cannot participate in combat or would strongly prefer to avoid it, you should discuss this when selecting your NPC shift, so that you can be placed on a shift where there will be the most need for non-combat NPC players.

Performing an NPC role that a Monster Marshal, Storyteller, or Main Plot Author has asked you to play does not count as the entirety of your NPC obligation, unless that role consumes your entire shift. If you are asked to played such a role, you should still follow the normal procedure - select an NPC shift when you sign-in on Friday night (whichever shift aligns with the time of the role that you have been asked to perform), report to the Monster Marshal at the start of the shift that you selected, and then inform the Monster Marshal about your special assignment so that he or she knows to coordinate with the person that you are working for to fill your shift around his or her needs for you. You cannot insist upon remaining in Logistics and waiting, but must fill other roles as the Monster Marshal needs you to. The Monster Marshal is responsible for ensuring that you are available for your special role when you are needed for it. At the end of a shift in which you perform a special role, you must once again follow the normal procedure and have the Monster Marshal overseeing that shift sign your card for NPC duty.

Those are the procedures that everyone must abide, stated many times before and restated once again. Now, how will we ensure that they are followed, at long last?

First, the Director will only sign a character card for NPC duty if the player has checked in with the Director to inform him that he or she will only be in attendance at the event for less than twelve hours. Apart from the Director in that one circumstance, the only people that will sign character cards for NPC duty will be the Monster Marshals, and only for players who performed NPC duty on the same shifts as them.

Second, rosters will be maintained of everyone who checks in with a Monster Marshal for an NPC shift, and a roster will also be maintained of everyone who checks in with the Director about attending for less than twelve hours. These rosters will be compared against the sign-up sheet for NPC duty and the signatures on the character cards to verify that each player selected an NPC shift at sign-in, attended that shift on time, and completed that shift to the Monster Marshal’s satisfaction.

Furthermore, after each event the KR staff will discuss whether anyone is believed to have skipped NPC duty - in whole or in part - or to have made a false claim to be excused from NPC duty - such as performing Kitchen Marshal duty or attending the event for less than twelve hours. Even if all of the paperwork lines up for that person, the matter will be investigated further if the staff decides that something does not seem right about it.

In closing, we ask that you understand that NPC duty and our new, strict attention to it are in the best interests of the game. If some players are allowed to skip NPC duty, then we are depriving the game of one of its most essential resources. In addition, looking the other way while some players ignore an obligation that most players faithfully abide is profoundly unfair to those who do their parts every event.