This Sunday, before our weekly Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying session, we played a few rounds of NPC: a new print-and-play game by James and Kat of Paracosm Press, the guys behind two of my favourite podcasts, One Shot and Campaign.
NPC, or Noisy Person Cards, is a party game designed to help you develop new character voices. The mechanic is very simple and similar to other party games like Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, in which players take turns “judging” rounds. In NPC the judge picks a Character card (Imp, Princess, Bar Patron, The Ocean) and the other players need to choose a Phrase card from their hand, and speak that phrase in the voice of the character. To make things more interesting, both the judge and the players can “Up the Ante”, adding adjectives to the Character card (making your everyday Talking Tree into a cocky, extraplanar Talking Tree, for example).
The Phrase cards are hilarious, the characters cover the length and breadth of the fantasy/roleplaying realm, and everything together, with players willing to go crazy with their voices, makes for a great game and a fun evening with friends.
James and Kat plan to Kickstart NPC in the future, but for now it’s free to print and play at www.paracosmpress.com/npc.
