One of the burdens of being a Game Master is maintaining the
juggling act of: Running the game; Maintaining the flow of the
action/adventure/plot/story-flow and readjusting the flow due to players
always coming up with out-of-left-field actions/ideas; Playing the part
of every single NPC, from the major antagonists and supporting
characters, to the random one-note-joke "spear carrier" extra who is
just there to make a Warren Ellis-styled joke about a Farmer who brags
about fucking pigs. There is so much effort in running a game that I
find that I have to scale back on things for the sake of speed and
efficiency.
To deal with the game system, I
try to use simple, rules-lite game engines. For example, I find it
easier to broaden skills into the category of what a character archetype
(Soldier, Thief, Barbarian, Technician, Cowboy, etc.) could do then to
compile a long-ass list of skill areas (Melee Weapons, Rifles, Survival,
Pick-Pockets, Fashion, Mechanics, Electronics, etc., etc.), each with
their own set of sub-rules. This is the approach Barbarians of Lemuria
did with Heroic Careers. If you want to intimidate someone, you can use
Barbarian or Torturer. If you want to hide-in-plan-sight within an urban
area, you can use Beggar, Thief or Slave. Its all open-ended, and
subject to GM's approval. Also, the use of quick-and-simple combat
mechanic, that gives you a good amount of options, without dropping a
D20-styled grapple rules on you in the middle of the action, goes a long
way into resolving the mechanics quickly so we can focus more on
role-playing the action.
Dealing with the
herculean task of maintaining the flow of the game without holding the
players by their noses into a railroad adventure is a whole topic into itself, and not the topic I want to focus on right now.
To
deal with having to play each an every NPC the players would run
across, I use SPCs, or Semi-Player Characters. I first did this with
intelligent magic items and magical familiars. Instead of acting the
part of the magic item or critter, I would have one of the players do
that for me, and not the player who is handing the item/critter, but another player as to get
more social interaction between them, and without the innate bias that
could occur with, let say: A morally questionable Fighter character
wielding an intelligent Holy Avenger sword. Outside of intelligent magic
items and magical familiars (or high-tech equipment/drones with AI), I
can use this for minor NPCs during non-critical social encounters. To do
this, I ether slip players index cards with normal NPC notes on them
(name, job, personality, motivation, quirks, etc.), or I can allow players, within reason, to write their own SPC notes, then allowing them to "go ham" with it.