during the opening adventure, but you should find other ways to keep them involved in the story The featured NPCs also give the heroes personal attachments to the settlement they help establish The NPCs should join this community, and may even become leaders of it, if that fits their descriptions While you may frequently put the featured NPCs in danger, you should never kill them while the heroes are away This not only seems cruel or arbitrary, it also destroys one of your most powerful tools If a featured NPC does die, it should be oncamera, and it should be a result of the characters’ actions (or lack of action) This is why the featured NPCs in the prologues aren’t killed by the slavers They might be incapacitated and left for dead, but they live long enough for the heroes to find them and try to bind their wounds Using the Community The heroes’ community is another powerful tool to keep the players involved in the game You can use the citizens of the community to answer questions about the world of Broken Earth, provide adventure hooks, and as allies on missions Remember that the NPCs have lives and wants of their own They’re likely to ask the heroes for help, and volunteer for missions NPCs are particularly interested in accompanying the group on missions that interest them Chelsea Vang (page 70) might accompany them to check out a hydroelectric dam, while Eagle Eye (page 69) may want to go along to explore the slavers’ base to the south As you introduce new characters to the heroes, they’ll gravitate to some more than others Include their favorites in recurring roles, and let some of the others fade into the background Rotating Cast As per the normal Savage Worlds rules, the players should run the NPCs accompanying them in combat If they enjoy it, you can allow players to control them outside of battle too Following this approach, the players might control a stable of characters in the community rather than a single individual They probably won’t need to bring every character on every adventure, but instead take those who are most interested or whose skills are most appropriate You can use a similar approach to tell stories in various parts of the world For example if the heroes are exploring the ruins of Wisconsin when slaver scouts arrive in town, you might ask them to control a secondary character left in the community to see what happens there If you use the hero points system presented the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player’s Guide, award a PC a hero point each time they tell a Road Story Pointed Questions In Broken Earth, we suggest using more directed prompts by asking specific questions about the characters’ backgrounds Featured NPCs are great fodder for these sorts of questions, as are character traits, and following up in detail about comments made, and actions taken by, the heroes in the course of the adventure Here are a few sample questions you might ask: • What happened to your parents? • How did you meet [featured NPC]? • What is your favorite memory you have with [featured NPC]? • What is the strangest thing you’ve seen on Broken Earth? • Why you have [trait]? • What’s the most trouble you’ve gotten into because of your [trait]? In-Character Questions Though you could just ask the players as the GM, these prompts might feel more natural if they come from a companion traveling with the heroes You might take a minute to think about the nature of the individual asking the question and what they’d like to know about the heroes Turnabout is also fair play Invite the heroes to ask anyone they travel with questions about their history This both helps the characters develop a relationship with the people they meet and gives them background information about the world Random Encounters As the group explores new areas, each day they travel you should check to see if they have a random encounter Each region has a ifferent likelyhood of a random encounter occuring, and have different potential encounters See page 161 for all these tables After the heroes have traveled through an area a few times, these encounters may become rarer Simply have them pull a random encounter card as you see fit Road Stories Because the heroes spend a lot of time, traveling in Broken Earth, their characters probably get to know each other pretty well Though it doesn’t make sense to role-play every minute of a threeday journey, you can highlight stories the characters tell as they travel The Road Stories have the secondary benefit of helping the players develop their characters’ histories and motivations 63