I find uniformly oppositional NPCs tiresome, it feels like I’m not getting anywhere. One of my beliefs is that players invest primarily in the things they invent or shape (e.g. their characters, NPCs they created in their backstory, their plans and the consequences of those plans) – so having an NPC come by and saying, “Hey, nice job taking down that orcnest!” is a cheap way for the GM to telegraph that they’re building on player offers.

One of the things I’ve found in the Grunweld campaign is that 100% of the time I had an NPC do that, the PCs immediately asked them for a favor. This strikes me as exceedingly functional.