NPCs as adventure elements.

I was watching the Angry DM talk about Super Metroid, and the ideas of doors and keys and showing the players the door before making the key available, etc.

And I thought about how that can be applied to NPCs. An NPC can be a door (preventing the characters from X) or a key (an NPC knows that the door guard likes cake, and will probably look the other way if bribed with a nice cake.)



Thoughts?

NPCs as adventure elements.