The Roleplaying Game of Heroic Adventure in the - Mazes ...

Non-Player Characters
In M&M, non-player characters (NPCs) are divided
into two broad categories:
Major NPCs include the most important enemies
and allies of player-characters. Such characters
have a fully defined personality and the same game
characteristics as player-characters, including a
class, a level and individual attribute scores.
Minor NPCs include ordinary people, faceless
guards, nameless thugs as well as most henchmen
and followers. In game terms, such NPCs are
treated as zero-level and are divided into two broad
categories: fighters and non-combatants.
Non-combatants represent the majority of civilians,
peasants and other common people. They cannot
attack and only have 4 Hits.
Fighters represent the majority of soldiers, sailors,
thugs and other fighting personnel. They can attack
and have the following combat characteristics:
Initiative = 11
Melee mod = +2
Missile mod = +1
EDC = 12 + equipment bonus
Hits Total = 8
Fighters make all their saving rolls using an
unmodified D20. Non-combatants always fail their
saving rolls. These rules reflect Minor NPCs’ lesser
importance in the grand mosaic of Fate and makes
them far more vulnerable to danger, magic and
hardships than major characters.
2007 Edition Notes & Comments
Revising Creatures
Despite what occasional malicious rumors implied, a
lot of thought went into the revising of the rules on
creatures. The two biggest (or, at least, most
obvious) changes from the original M&M rules were
the way a creature’s Melee attack modifier and Hits
Total were calculated.
In original M&M, the Melee attack mod was based
on Ferocity as well as on Cunning; since Small and
Tiny creatures tended to have higher Cunning than
the bigger ones, these creatures also tended to
have surprisingly high Melee attack bonuses,
especially when compared to the biggest creatures.
Somehow, this didn’t seem quite right and the “killer
mouse syndrome” became one of the favorite topics
of discussion (especially between over-obsessive
Maze Masters and ex-wargamers). The Revised
rules solved the problem by taking Cunning out of
the equation and adding a Size-based Melee bonus
for Large and Gigantic creatures – without applying
an equivalent penalty to Small and Tiny beings, who
thus retained some of their fighting ferocity.
The change in Hits Total calculation was probably a
more important issue, since it made quite a few
creatures significantly tougher, especially Mediumsized
nasties with Supernatural Vigor, such as
Gorgons (“Oh no, not these Gorgons again!”).
On the special abilities front, a few abilities were
modified or streamlined (like Life Energy Drain or
Psychic Powers), a few others were dumped and a
few new ones were added (such as Vocal
Entrancement, which quickly became a Maze
Masters favorite). Lastly, the Lifeless / Mindless duo
was finally clarified (which caused a sigh of relief -
or was it regret? - among rule lawyers everywhere).
These revised rules heralded the third book of the
Revised Mazes & Minotaurs trilogy, the Creature
Compendium, which compiled the revised stats of
more than 100 creatures (taken from the original
M&M rules, Men & Monsters and the unspeakable –
in all senses of the word - Hekatoteratos). Heralded
as “the biggest RPG bestiary ever published”, the
Compendium was saluted as “a graphic triumph” by
some (slightly over-enthusiastic) gamers since each
of the 100+ creatures it described had its own
individual illustration – something that, even to this
day, few RPG bestiaries have managed to achieve.
Two Minor Non-Player Characters
Can you tell the Fighter from the Non-combatant?
Anyway, the publication of the Creature
Compendium did not prevent Griffin magazine and
various RPG fanzines from publishing myriads of
new creatures – or new variants of mythic creatures,
in the grand M&M-esque tradition of Albinotaurs,
Pyrotaurs (fire-breathing minotaurs) and Twinotaurs
(bicephalous minotaurs) – and let’s not forget the
much dreaded, mind-warping Psychotaur…
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