Take a moment to think about your favorite NPC from a game that you GMed.
What made her stand out? Why did your players enjoy him so much? What made her fun to play?
I’d lay even money that at least two of these seven traits came into play.
Not every NPC will have — or should have — all of these traits, but they’re some of the simplest and best ways to make your NPCs stand out.
A Memorable Characteristic
There’s a reason most NPC-related GMing advice suggests giving each of your NPCs one major quirk, idiosyncrasy or behavior that makes them stand out.
That reason is twofold: because it gives your players an easy hook by which to remember the NPC, and because one characteristic is usually enough.
It’s not always enough when the same NPC becomes a recurring part of your campaign, but it’s definitely enough right off the bat. And if you do decide to re-use the NPC (which is nearly always a good idea), you can always introduce other characteristics later on.
A Clear Hook
As a GM, you’re always going to have a lot of balls in the air. The less you have to remember about each ball, the better — which is why giving your NPCs a simple, clear background hook is so useful.
It can be as simple as, “Samwise the city guard hates his commander, and he takes his frustration out on everyone he meets.” That’s not a complicated hook, but it actually tells you quite a bit about Samwise — and you can write it in a single sentence, which means it’ll be pretty easy to remember.
Something That Surprised You (and Your Players)
My favorite NPCs have nearly always started out as improvised characters (sometimes even throwaway characters). In every case, they’ve become favorites because when I came up with them (generally on the spot), I winged it and wound up surprising myself.
For example, in a D&D campaign back in college the PCs visited a sage — nothing unusual there. When they climbed up to his hut, they found a wizened old man covered in what looked like shit, and as payment he demanded a pair of silk stockings. When they gave him the stockings, he rubbed them into his poo-coating and answered their questions.
Did it make any sense? Nope. Did it make him stand out? Yep. All of us remember that random sage, and it’s been ten years since I ran that campaign.
A Connection to One of the PCs
Giving an NPC a connection to one of the PCs is a good way to generate buy-in with your players. It can be a good connection (an ally, a contact) or a bad one (the sorceress who killed your brother, the cop who foiled your last robbery) — either way, it gives at least one (and probably more than one) player an immediate cue as to how their PC will act towards this NPC. And that’s always a good thing.
Something the PCs Need
Giving an NPC something that the PCs want, either as an adventure goal (the mad wizard who guards the dimensional portal) or as a means to an end (the fence who can move the PCs’ stolen goods) automatically puts an “Important!” flag over their heads.
If the party has a confrontation with one of these NPCs, it’ll be intensified by the fact that they have a clear goal in mind. If the NPC plays a recurring role in the game, the PCs will look forward to (or dread) seeing them again.
How easy or hard you make it for the PCs to get what this NPC has that they want will, of course, make all the difference in how they interact with them.
An Irritating Power
Years ago, I played in a fantastic Mage campaign that featured a corrupt cop as a perpetual thorn in the party’s side. I don’t remember much about him, except for one thing: He had a charm power that took Willpower points to resist. And we hated him.
Every time he showed up, the whole group groaned — but in a good way. And every time we interacted with this cop, we got more and more determined to stand up to him, precious Willpower points be damned. This led to lots of memorable encounters.
Right Place, Right Time
This is a tough one to quantify, but sometimes an NPC becomes a favorite because you introduced them at exactly the right moment. Maybe the PCs really needed an ally, or the players themselves just got done cracking up about something.
You can’t build this trait into an NPC and count on it working out well, but over time you can learn to anticipate the right places and right times.
There are lots of ways to make NPCs fun and memorable — what are some of your favorite tricks that you’ve used in your own games?
Good article. I’ve had some memorable NPCs that followed that formula. The most memorable ones, however, add a little something extra that builds on what you already listed: They were ambiguous in some way.
An ambiguous NPC is one that the party isn’t quite sure about. And because they aren’t quite sure, the NPC sticks in their mind, and they want to interact with the NPC (and the folks around the NPC). The reason that ties into your article is that an ambiguous NPC without a clear hook or connection to a PC or one of the other things listed–is likely to come across as vague rather than ambiguous.
Unexpected actions also help; there’s one campaign which we remember in which a NPC ally guided the characters towards a quest. However, midway, the NPC betrayed and attempted to sneak-attack the group. He was eventually defeated, though not without cost. Even when defeated, his mocking words upon death ended up spurring on the rest of the adventure.
Of course, a surprise like that can only have such an impact once but as a character, it was one that we remembered.
Hmm, thinking back…
One of the most memorable NPCs was in my first Cold Iron game. It was a little dragon, the Little-o (a play on Cold Iron’s author’s most notable NPC, the Big-O), who was a 16th level wizard (ok, so he was like way over powered compared to the PCs). He started showing up whenever the PCs needed to be bailed out (yea, so that was a stage I lived through…). His favorite means of announcing his presence was to zip into the scene, drop a dispel anti-magic shell on an obnoxious troll, followed by 3 fireballs. Crispy troll. Memorable characteristic check. Something the PCs need, yea, I guess check.
Most of my memorable and recurring NPCs have been NPC party members, and even then, they haven’t been all that memorable.
Ok, so there was the NPC, also from that first Cold Iron campaign, who rolled a really good Dex, a pitiful Con, and mediocre Str. Kyla came in as a 2-handed spear user (2-handed so she could have a hope of damaging something, spear so she could fight from the 2nd rank). Unusual characteristic check. And then something that surprised us all. Combat is going bad. She’s surrounded by 4 opponents. Life is going to suck, she can’t possibly hold out for the few rounds she’ll need to. Being surrounded in Cold Iron really sucks. But when you’re small, and dextrous, your dodge can be nearly as good as your parry. And she survived. A later surprise was when I was running with one player, and the PC (a cleric) and Kyla ventured into a cave. They spotted a dragon before it spotted them, so they backed off, buffed up, and charged into the fray. Kyla’s first attack roll was nearly off the open ended table. And this little wimpy (well not so wimpy, she was 8th level or so by that time) spear user killed a mighty dragon in a single blow. Kyla probably rates as my favorite NPC because of her pluck, and the fact that she just didn’t have the stats to dominate, but after that battle where she was surrounded, she continued to consistently be someone to be counted on in a fight.
A memorable NPC who was more of an opponent to the PCs was in a Taveller game. They had ventured to this former prison planet. All the population lived down in the former cells (with wild armored car rides through the tunnels…). One form of entertainment was every man for himself combat in a maze. The PCs saw posters for the game, and investigated some. One of the most famous players went in with full battle dress and a fusion gun (basically the best powered armor and man portable weapon). One PC decided to try it out. Of course he ran into the guy with the fusion gun. And of course he was toasted… The player of course whined up a storm, but the other players pointed out that he had done the equivalent of walking up to a dragon and sticking his head in the dragon’s mouth…
Frank
Easy: Damocles Everton. The secret to his success was two-fold: 1) he was uniformly hated by the party after he unexpectedly usurped control of their adventuring guild; 2) he earned the enimity of two of the primary PCs, the wily would-be guildmaster Malphas and the libertarian cleric Kalib.
The PCs knew — knew — that Everton was up to no good, and Malphas expended a huge amount of effort in attempting to outmaneuver him and second-guessing his plans (“did he send us to this dungeon to kill us, or to actually recover the artifact within?”)
The clashes went on for a year, with Everton besting Kalib in a duel, the eventual murder of the cleric’s mentor (and the subsquent channeling of said mentor’s soul into a sword named Justiceseeker … a memorable NPC in its own right) and the realization of Everton’s plans for domination.
As the adventurer’s home city fell to Everton’s allies, Kalib and the guildmaster fought for a second time, this time with Kalib wielding Justiceseeker. It ended with Everton decapitated, the city’s defenses overrun, and the party fleeing with their former guildmaster’s head in a crude burlap bag. In the months of exile that followed, Kalib would often query the preserved head with speak with dead trying to ferret out the identity of his co-conspirators.
It was grand, it was epic, and the party still talks about it to this day. What more could you ask from an NPC? 🙂
The most memorable, according to my players, was probably Doctor Thomas, a sage in my long-running college AD&D game. Unlike Martin’s scatalogical wonder, Doc Thomas was always clean-shaven, well dressed, and the perfect gentleman. He knew almost anything, and, if you could pay his fees, he’d answer almost any question you gave him. The players spent years trying to figure out how he knew so much and were not surprised at all when they learned he had an office on every plane of existence.
So, we have a memorable characteristic (perfect gentleman), a clear hook (his ability to acquire information and his need to sell it to any buyer), and something the PCs needed, frequently (information).
Good list, Martin!
Ambiguous NPCs, NPCs who do strange things and NPCs who outperform their stats are all great examples — I can’t believe I forgot the last one!
I can think of at least a couple of well-liked NPCs off the top of my head that shared that trait, and (like “Right Place, Right Time”) it’s tough to plan for — but great fun when it happens.
I suppose you could fudge rolls to make it happen, but I don’t think the end result would be nearly as satisfying. 😉
I’m glad this list resonates with you. 🙂
Sadly, the most memorable and oft-quoted NPC in my group did not come from a game I ran, but a friend of mine’s.
She was an old crone from a Deadlands game, who was a chicken-farmer, and who let the party stay at her house for awhile. Some very, very bad things happened at that house.
Her infamous lines, “What’d you do to my MY chickens?” and “If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a chicken-killer!”
It tears my eye to this day.