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By request, this is a thread about good NPCs with depth and how I make them. I've never written down my process before, so I'm just gonna post things as they come to mind and assume I'm talking to a new GM. I'm pretty sure a lot of this is obvious, but I have played with GMs who hosed up all of it, and you goons have linked me how-I-mine-for-NPC guides with the absolute worst advice. I have seen some poo poo. Feel free to ask questions or ask for help with NPCs you are making! You can even post a few short tips if you like.  Good NPCs Should Say Something Good NPCs should add flavour to the setting, tie into the game's themes or advance the story in an interesting way. It doesn't have to be complicated, just not generic. NPCs are the primary way many players interact with the setting, so if you can use them to reveal some cool setting fact, you should. If you have an important order of mages of something, an NPC mage can be in the order, have opinions on the order, or know something interesting about it. If they can be ported directly into another setting with no change to their story, you are potentially wasting an opportunity. If you have a specific theme, ask yourself what the NPC has to do with that theme. If your game is an examination of the conflict between good and evil, do they have any connection to that conflict? If your game is about cool friends doing ghost things, is your NPC a cool friend, or do they do ghost things? If your game has grimdark themes, why do you have bad taste? Really you don't have to think about this too hard, as long as it's not obviously jarring without good reason - if wizards are hunted down and persecuted in your game, you shouldn't have your players encounter a pointy-hatted mage who runs Ye Olde Magic Shoppe unless there's an important reason he's not affected you want to examine. If they don't do much with setting or theme and don't have an interesting purpose in the story, there's no point in adding depth. NPCs with important information, NPCs who want to kill the players, NPCs who want to give them a really soothing backrub at an inappropriate moment - all these kinds of people can be handled with one-line descriptions, but if you want me to think about them for more than a minute you are going to have to present a reason they are different to other expositionists/murderers/backrubbers. Every setting and every adventure has something unique. Take that thing and put it in your NPCs. You're The One Saying It If you make an NPC that does something stupid or lovely, then turn around and say "Well I don't like it either but that wasn't my decision", you are a loving idiot. NPCs are not autonomous things that spread their wings and fly free from the nest that is your brain once you think about them hard enough. They do not make choices on their own. There's no "I can't wait to see what they do next!". You are the one who decides what they do next. It's you. Not them. They do things because you decided they did. You. If your NPC exists to give out necessary information to the PCs but doesn't because they didn't ask in the one specific way that works, you are the one who decided that. If an NPC does something really stupid or offensive because "that's their culture!", you're the one who made up that culture. If an NPC screws the party over and ends the adventure and you would have rather seen them act differently, you should have had them act differently. If you are worried about your immersion but you can't think of another way the NPC could act that would keep you immersed, you are not interested in immersion, you are interested in being a moron. That doesn't mean characters can't do stupid or lovely things. They just can't do it unless you decide they do. Own it, you coward. If It Won't Come Up, Don't Waste Your Time All that said, there is no point to any of this if you're not going to use it. This is really more of a general thing: don't do unnecessary prep. For NPCs, if something's not going to come up, don't bother thinking about it. If you have a really cool backstory or some cool setting fact they can impart, use it or lose it. Not everything has to be deployed immediately - recurring characters don't need to reveal everything about themselves in the first session, for example - but if you find yourself telling the players "Oh, you didn't notice this, but..." after the session a lot, think about why that is, and whether it is because you are bad. Recurring NPCs Are Great Rulebook showed me a guide that said recurring NPCs are dumb, so I just want to make this clear: that is dumb and the author is dumb. Recurring NPCs are memorable. Players can connect with them, and in turn connect with your game. They also reinforce any setting fluff or themes they were meant to represent every time they show up. If people like an NPC, or having an NPC around works really well for you, there is no reason to ditch them just because you used them before. If there's a way they could fit into a later adventure, go for it! Recycling NPCs Is Great I like keeping notes on NPCs that worked really well or got a good response, so if I ever need an NPC in a hurry in another game I can just bust one of those guys out and tweak the details slightly. This also works well for PCs in games that folded before you got to do much with them, PCs from other games you liked, and characters from TV shows, games, webcomics, etc. If one of your players has seen the NPC before you should probably change the details though, unless it's a silly running joke that all these NPCs are suspiciously similar. Same goes for characters from recent or popular media, or based off Trad Games moderators.
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Apr 15, 2014 04:20
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 Bonus Round! Names Are Hilarious This is less of a tip and more of a dumb habit I have because it is hilarious. I like names! Names are cool. They can have meaning. They can have double meanings. They can just be stupid puns. And since you're telling a story, you can use dumb names that would never happen in real life (and some weird poo poo happens in real life, let me tell you). Sometimes I waste more time naming an NPC than I spend making it. At this point my players look for dumb things hidden in an NPC's name as soon as they see it, even when there isn't anything. (just kidding there is always something) Here are some names I liked doing even though they were dumb. Some of them were suggested by players after I asked them which ones they remembered last night. Coeval Finlow: This dude was a gnome NPC in an old D&D game. He was kind of a mystery, at least until you noticed his name was an anagram of "I FOLLOW VECNA". Coeval had some magic boon from Vecna that erased his original identity from living memory, and relied on aliases. All of them were anagrams of I FOLLOW VECNA. Pro tip: To take NPCs with dumb anagram names to the next level, introduce other NPCs with names that only look like anagrams when people start working it out. Dr Synapse: An Eclipse Phase mad scientist who happened to look exactly like this:  Citation Needed: An Eclipse Phase AGI. Really I am mentioning this one because there is a specific method I use for naming Eclipse Phase NPCs that I would like to share with you: 1. Do one of these things: • Use Behind The Name to randomly generate names with first and last names from a different region • Use a really long science word or put a science word next to a name or a title (Professor Hemoglobin, Phenylalanine Kwan, 5-Formyltetrahydrofolate Cyclo-Ligase) • Use a noun or a phrase and pretend it is a name (Citation Needed, Takoyaki, The Wu-Tang Secret) 2. Claim this sci-fi transhuman setting means any of these names are appropriate Mikoto Mikoyama: She is a miko. Mikoto has "miko" in it and "Mikoyama" means "mountain of miko". It's really subtle. Yaburakoujinoburakouji Go: This is Japanese for "really long names are hilarious, and really long names with really short family names are also hilarious". Madoka Mawaru: Madoka can be written with kanji meaning "circle", Mawaru actually means turning/spinning/revolving, a turning circle is a wheel, and Madoka gets around in a wheelchair. Example NPCs ProfessorCirno posted:I actually am curious as to the origins of Kaiya (Dubai Flavored) and MadokaMadoka. The Terrible Lives Of Kaiya Harajuku Like years ago I was in a L5R pbp by Facts Are Useless. I decided to make an Asahina shugenja lady who was curious about everything, and while picking disadvantages I decided to also give her the gift of prophecy and a Dark Secret to make her half-ghost. (In Facts' version of the setting having a ghost dad could get you in huge trouble and maybe killed). I picked Kaiya because it sounded cool, but also Google told me it mean forgiveness and she was a little angsty about her ghost thing. Facts' game folded pretty quickly. Around a year later I recycled her for TychoBrahesNose's L5R pbp, but tweaked it a bit to make her Kaiya Ikoma. (Actually it was Kaiyada, but everyone kind of forgot about that.) I decided to keep the ghost theme, but instead of being half-ghost, I gave her the Haunted disadvantage for a different kind of ghost dad. Kaiya was killed in the first combat right before meeting up with the rest of the group. Thanks Cirno. At the time, I was setting up the anime/Cthulhu Mythos-themed NyarlathoTech games. I needed NPCs, and since Kaiya just died again, I decided to get some use out of her and recycle her as Kaiya Harajuku. This was set in a Mythos future, so I made her a hip-hop idol wizard. Harajuku is actually a district in Shibuya, Japan known for its trendy young people who dress like dorks. I even commissioned some art from awesome goon obfuscobble:  Then Ridley set up his Scorpion Emperor L5R games. I wanted to join one of them, and at the time I thought it would be funny to apply with Kaiya again. This time she became Tamori Kaiya, her ghost connection became Touch of the Spirit Realms (Gaki-do), and since in this game we were all ronin working against the Scorpion Emperor, I gave her a tragic all-my-friends-are-dead reason to defect. So now we've kind of got this thing going where every time I need an NPC to get dumped on, I use Kaiya. I needed one of the NTech NPCs to be forced to work for the Yith, and Kaiya seemed like a good fit - I was actually planning on having the players be forced to kill her, but so far they have evaded that in favour of befriending the poo poo out of her. I'll get her yet, guys. Later, when I whipped up Breakfast Cult for the October Design Contest, I recycled a bunch of NPCs for the sake of speed and made Kaiya Shibuya. I used her in the Breakfast Cult pbp, and she has mostly advanced the plot by having accidents or getting roughed up. I am not a fan of NPCs who get dumped on for laughs unless they get a payoff at the end, so one or more of these Kaiyas will have a happy ending. Until then, it sucks to be her. Madoka Madoka This is actually a thing I have done before! Some names also work as surnames, and nobody would actually be named like that, but it's fun to say. Also, "Madoka" written as a surname means "circle", so Madoka Madoka is a circular name. HA HA HA Besides that, Madoka's purpose is pretty simple - I needed someone in NTech who straight-up couldn't handle all this Mythos bullshit, but could be forged into a strong ally if the players wanted. With that in mind, I tried to make someone who they wouldn't hate, that also wouldn't come off as being forced on them so they could decide not to help her if they wanted. Madoka became friendly but shy. Every major NPC in NTech has a "Passion", something they are really good at (I like Danganronpa, okay), and I thought it would be great if someone's Passion were Dubstep, so Madoka got that one. Also, I have a Madoka in another game, so when I need to differentiate between them I call this one Madoka^2. PublicOpinion drew some sweet art for me:  Right now the PCs are calling her in to blast byakhee with her dubstep gun so I figure that NPC was a success. If anyone wants to ask about another NPC/name go nuts.
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Apr 15, 2014 05:26
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Mazed posted:So, I actually do have a question, sort of unrelated to that. How do you feel about fudging the dice, so to speak, in favor of opponents that are intended to be recurring? You know the old story where the PCs meet the guy intended to be the main villain but outright kill him in the very first encounter, thus ruining the GM's brilliant plan. What this involves is rather than having the opponent die, let them escape, have them go You can try it, but you should avoid it. Escape plans are better than deus ex machina. If you piss off the players that way you might ruin the NPC, because instead of thinking "hey, it's that recurring NPC! Cool!" when they see them again they might think "hey, remember that time the GM screwed us out of killing this guy?" I did this by mistake a few years ago - a rogue villain was fighting the party from the roof of a building, so he could tap out at any time by disappearing off the far side. I didn't communicate the layout of the battlefield well though, so some of the players assumed that actually meant it was time to gang up on him and flipped out when he was gone. So make sure your escape plan makes sense too I guess. Fate has a way of doing this baked into the system that's worth looking at. Characters who are losing a fight can concede, which lets them get away but also forces them to give their opponent something that makes the fight worth it. Also, if you win the fight and take someone out, you can decide what happens to them - if you want an NPC to be recurring, you can let them know that's an option. It's not hard to take that into other games - give the players some victory if the bad guy gets away and they're less likely to get mad. Since trying Fate I have had players in other games ask if bad guys I didn't intend to be recurring can get away too, which is nice. If it's D&D or some other setting where resurrection and undead exist, plan for that too. 
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Apr 15, 2014 06:46
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I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME
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Golden Bee posted:the Slut and the Closeted Gay Guy These are both terrible NPC archetypes.
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Apr 15, 2014 11:31
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homeless poster posted:Unless you're playing UA and one is an avatar of the Mystic Hermaphrodite and the other is a rogue Pornomancer. Admittedly the labels conjure some less than plesant connotations, but it's all in how you execute it. Golden Bee posted:That's the genre of Monsterhearts though. If your examples need specific cases to not sound skeevy write them better. Old Kentucky Shark posted:One of the meanest things I ever did was have a villain invite the PC to a dinner party at his parents' house. That is a conflict scenario with no successful outcomes. Stealing this. 
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Apr 16, 2014 04:48
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