#rpg npcs

[oonaluna-art]

Some recent NPC tokens I made for the Edge of the Empire Star Wars Rpg game I run!

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[owlaholic68]

THE ORG

[ID: a digital drawing of three NPCs: Jacques is a pale man with curly red hair and square glasses. James is a pale man with short light brown hair. He is wearing a sweater vest with a shirt and tie. Stacey is a woman with dark skin and large gold round glasses. She has hair in two high curly buns. End id]

Some NPCs from the monster-hunting organization in my Monster of the Week campaign!

[wowawesome117]

How I Make NPCs

I've gotten some questions about my NPC system.

I figured I'd explain and expand on it. Maybe it'll help you make and understand your NPCs with easier to digest chunks of information.

So, if you've read my posts, you've seen this idea. An NPC is:

What they say

What they don't say

What they actively hide

What they say

This is what is on the surface. It can be somethin they literally say, but it's more about what their personality says.

What they don't say

This is what they are just beneath their mask. This is what they think to themselves and seldom share. It's something they might not even be aware.

What they actively hide

This is a secret, sometimes even to the NPC. This is something that they keep hidden on purpose. Whether it's a guilty pleasure, an evil deed, something opposite their character and thus proves some underlying truth about them, whatever.

What do these three things do?

They create depth, even if it's just an artificial depth. The appearance of depth is all you need as a DM to act these characters out. To me, giving me a Quirk is nice and can make for a fun character to act, but the quirks don't mean anything. Looking at these three things lets me imagine what kind of person this is. Are they nervous? Are they hiding a secret? Are they naive?

It also creates Story. Each character now has a Beginning, Middle, and End. When you meet them, you will know the surface. Through any amount of care, you will learn what they don't say. And with closeness and drama you will find what they hide. This lets players get close to characters in a tangible way.

More than both of those, it's very easy to read. I'm working on a town right now and I've done this with all 24 of the inhabitants/shopkeepers. Doing it has breathed life into the town and has created relationships, future plot hooks. But now I can just glance at a list of the NPCs and I'm ready to run them. No blocks of text, no paragraphs, just a clean series of bullet points.

Your NPCs Tell a Greater Story

I'm a firm believer in World Building with purpose. We're not writing novels (at least not for our players). The things we create for the game need to be gameable. It's always bugged me when people make things for their games that have no mechanical use for a game. Fluff is great, but fluff is only called fluff because it's nothing beyond word art.

When you make something you're saying something about your world. Random encounter tables, plot hooks, towns, classes, backgrounds. Each thing is like a note in the story of your world. NPCs are no different. The NPCs of a region/town/village tell the story of that area. They are products of that area. If you want to portray a savage land, your NPCs will tell that story through who they are.

So instead of just having a block of text, you can use this list to tell your story. You can use it to generate story that is natural to this region of the world. A region of politics and backstabbing will have characters with secrets and a phony surface level. While a region of warriors will have blunt surface levels and might actively hide scars from previous battles, both mental and physical ones.

These will generate story in your world because anything your players interacts with, anything they are interested in, will create story. If they notice this politician they might want to take him down, and the more they learn about him the more desperate their plans grow. If they run into one of these warriors, maybe they grow really fond of them and will take up any quest to ease their pain.

NPC + NPC interactions

Most characters will talk to each other on just the surface level. But if characters know each other, there will be subtext to the conversation. It will sound like the surface level, but they'll actually be talking about the second tier. And if they bring up what the other is actively hiding, or are going after it like it's treasure, that creates tension, conflict.

To make these conflicts/relationships stronger, put secrets that relate to other NPCs. These can be good secrets, secret lovers, a shared history, something dark, a traumatic experience, or whatever. I believe this will naturally come when building a village or an organization, or even just a rival adventuring party. It will bring a depth to the group and these secrets can be used as plot hooks in adventures.

Further Expansion

This idea can be used to describe more than NPCs. Organizations, locales, or even cities themselves will follow those three ideals. What the city outwardly presents (what it says), what it doesn't say (what the city is really about), and what it actively hides (either its history, secret government, a tragedy, etc.). Even if it doesn't flesh it out to a point where you feel comfortable running this location, it is a good starting point for further ideas.

How do you do it?

There's no singular formula to follow. Each NPC will have something different. But you can use the Ideals and Bonds from the 5e Player's Handbook, in the Background's sections, to create the first tier, what the NPC's say. These ideals can be something they outwardly represent, and phrasing them as an actual sentence that can be said can give you ideas as to how this person talks.

For the "what they don't say" bit, you can look at the Flaws from the Backgrounds, or you can pick a quirk and work backwords. Someone's second tier could simpley be "doesn't say they have a stutter". The act alone of hiding a tick or a quirk creates some mystery. It creates character. They have this thing about them, and they try not to draw attention to it OR they don't even know they have it. Either option is interesting and can be explored with a character.

Then when it comes to creating what they actively hide, I think you should look towards the Theme of the region they're from. Look to that and think about what's been mentioned above (secrets, history, trauma, madness, love, dreams, hopes, fears).

Using this an Example NPC could be

Jacob

Says he's always going to fight for his friends

Doesn't say that he can't read common

Actively hides that he dreams of writing a novel

This is a character I could see the party being really fond of. He fights on the battlefield, squints blankly at signs and other forms of writing, getting himself tangeled into comedic situations at times, and at night he takes last watch so he can sit by the fire and try to write the alphabet.

You probably saw something similar but entirely your own, rooted in your world instead of mine.

Tumblr

You know what also helps me? And I think so far I'm alone in this, but I browse image boards constantly. I'm always saving images of people and places and things. I keep them on my computer so I can look at them when I'm stumped. This is how I make most of my NPCs. I see an image of a person that intrigues me and I make a story about them.

There's nothing wrong with taking images and making NPCs from them. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? With one image and the three tiers filled out, you should be able to run that NPC without any questions.

Okay, I've talked too much. My head hurts and I need to actually pay attention to my work before my boss realizes I'm just on reddit.

MAKE NPCS! Each and every one of you can contribute. Right now. Takes a minute. Write it, link a picture if you want, and that way other people can steal them and use them in their game.

Go on then.