7 things to think about when making NPCs
In almost any RPG campaign, you’ll have a single group of players and then a vast world populated by non-player characters (NPCs). Unless your game is about a group of player characters (PCs) stranded on an abandoned space station full of dead bodies, and they don’t know what happened or why they’re there… Ooh, maybe they all have amnesia!
Anyway, before I get carried away, unless your PC group is completely isolated for story reasons, there’s going to be a lot of NPCs in your game. So making them right and playing them well has a big impact on how the game turns out.
With that in mind, here are a few things to think about when making any key NPC. Most of this advice concerns friendly NPCs, but a lot of it can — and often should — be applied to the antagonists, too.
1. No gods
I have to start here because I’ve seen this a lot and it drives me absolutely up the wall. I’ve never spoken to a player who went through this and wasn’t frustrated: when the Storyteller makes a super-powered, god-like character for themselves.
Look, I understand why it happens. Finding a reliable Storyteller is hard. The work is long and difficult — and often thankless — so sometimes, when a Storyteller can’t find anyone to run a game for them, they insert a character for themselves in their own campaign. They want to play, too!
Everyone wants to make a cool character — and sometimes, there’s competition over playing the perceived “lead” character — but the Storyteller doesn’t have to play by normal character creation rules. They can make whatever they want, give their character anything they desire, and know all the little details of their own story. And because a part of them is trying to play, when things go down in the game, the Storyteller’s own creation jumps in to help.
That’s almost always a mistake. A role-playing game is about the players. Their characters are the main characters, and they are the stars. (If they’re competing amongst each other for a spotlight position or something, that’s a different issue and one to be discussed, but the Storyteller shouldn’t have a character in the running.) The PCs should be the ones solving problems, winning fights, uncovering secrets. Every time an NPC does that for them, that’s one opportunity taken away from the players and It. Doesn’t. Feel. Good.
As far as having a character and playing, you’ve just got to find someone else to run for you, whether you have to tell your players that you’re taking a break to find a group to play in for a while, or requesting that someone already in your group step up and run something. That need is legitimate and you deserve to play, too.
Just don’t try to be a player and a Storyteller at the same time. It rarely works out well.
(There is a special case in games that cycle Storytellers, where one player runs a storyline, then another steps up to do the next one. In these cases, the current Storyteller’s character usually becomes a NPC until their adventure is done. This is a built-in part of a cycling game, and doesn’t really fall under the God NPC heading.)
As for ensuring that the NPCs you make — and create as actual NPCs, not slipping a PC in for yourself — aren’t too much cooler and more powerful than the players’ characters, it’s not hard to make sure they don’t outshine the stars of the show.
Pick a flaw or un-godlike trait for the NPC and make sure that it comes up often. Making an NPC memorable is very often about picking one trait and role-playing it consistently — and that trait can be a flaw.
Your players will remember an NPC that’s comically paranoid. An NPC archmage that knows all the ancient history of the world and can level castles with a fireball, but who searches his own beard for listening devices and checks his boots for boobytraps does a lot to keep the PCs from feeling useless when he’s around. He can cast whatever spells the story needs, remember the history that gives the PCs context… But now he’s a bit weird and any chance of him being cooler than the players’ characters is out the window — along with his hat, which he suddenly thought was a spy.
NPCs being bad at something means the characters have to rise to the occasion and be good at it, so no NPC should be great at doing main story tasks. There’s always a reason they stink at it, can’t do it at the moment, or need the players to do the deed instead.
2. Make them memorable
I’ve spoken of this at length in our Storytelling Guide Companion, but it bears mentioning in any conversation about NPCs. A non-player character needs a little something for the players to remember them by. Keep in mind that your players are going to meet an absolute shit-ton of NPCs during any given campaign. Some of them are there for one scene, others are recurring characters… But if you want your characters to come to know them and love the NPC — or hate them — then you need to give them something to remember.
Whenever we meet someone out in the real world, we make a little file in our brain for them and fill it in with information.
- Name: Jeff
- Hair: Brown
- Height: Short
If that’s all you get when you meet Jeff, it’s not a lot to go on. How many other short, brown-haired people do you know? How long do you think you’ll recall his name if that’s all you’ve got in the file? Answer: Who the hell is Jeff again?
But if Jeff has a habit of breaking into song, that sticks out. How many other files in your brain feature Quirk: sings to himself? Now Jeff’s got something that no one else in your brain does and your chances of remembering who he is go way up.
And an NPC isn’t much different than those “files” we make for real people. They just have an extra line — Fictional.
For one game campaign, I created a vampire NPC from the Malkavian clan. If you know nothing about Vampire: The Masquerade, the Malkavians are cursed with madness (which can easily become annoying or insulting when played poorly). My NPC was a psychologist, so she was able to identify her own madness — not that it stopped the psychoses — so she was honest about them.
She offered to help the player group with something, but informed them that since she was paranoid, she was going to bring a gun to the gathering. “I look forward to meeting you tomorrow night, unless you’re a spy and plan to kill me, in which case I’m terrified. See you then!”
And in small doses, the player group loved her! She made them laugh, but she was also a sympathetic character and they grew swiftly protective of her. There are lots of NPCs in my game, but believe me that she’s one that they all remember.
For more short-term NPCs — like the bartender the party talks to once — a basic, simple quirk will do. Maybe the bartender flips bottles and shakers in the air while he talks and shares rumors. Maybe the gruff, grizzled bartender is always drinking tea behind the bar — with his pinky out. The next time the party walks into the inn and I mime taking a delicate sip with one pinky out, the players will instantly imagine the burly, tattooed bartender.
Give each NPC a quirk and see how well the players start to recall them, and how much they start to enjoy interacting with the NPC. Just remember to pay attention to what the PCs seem to like so you can make sure your quirks don’t annoy them.
3. Don’t let NPCs be one-note
Now you’ve got an NPC and they’re not your own character that you slipped in on the sly, they’re not so super-powered that they’re cooler than the PCs, and they have a quirk to help the players remember them and form attachments. Now it’s easy to accidentally tip too far in the other direction and let your NPC fall into a rut.
For short-term NPCs, people that the PCs may interact with once and then never again, it won’t become an issue. But if the NPC is going to be a recurring character, a companion or part of the party — or a romantic interest — then you don’t want them to be one-note or two-dimensional.
In media circles, it’s called Flanderization, after the character Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. A Flanderized character has a quirk, but that quirk grows until it swallows the entire character. So instead of an NPC with one quirk that runs out of control until the NPC is a walking stereotype, go the other direction. Start with that one quirk and then mine it for nuance.
Let’s take that bartender I made up who drinks tea with his pinky out. Maybe that’s not the strongest quirk in the gaming world, but we can work with it. Why does he drink tea instead of ale? Maybe someone introduced him to tea — a wandering bard who couldn’t pay for their ale and convinced him to take a teabag in payment or something — and it rocked his world. This bartender came to appreciate the subtleties of tea and finds it far superior to the booze that he serves. Maybe he dreams one day of opening a tea house instead.
Or perhaps the bartender was once a drunk and a brawler, but he had to stop drinking because he almost lost his family… What? Now he has a family! That’s another dimension to this character. He not only drinks tea with his pinky out — he’s a recovering alcoholic, has children and a husband and relationships with them all that might lead to still more developments.
It depends upon how much the PCs want to interact with him. The more they interact and ask about my bartender, the more of his character will be revealed. And you don’t have to make that full backstory in advance — the PCs might never talk to the bartender other than to order a drink and inquire about quests.
But if they ever do ask why he drinks tea, come up with a reason that makes sense to you. If they ask how he almost lost his family, make up another answer. Maybe he got in a drunken fight and almost died, maybe when he got drunk he used to be abusive. Perhaps he just woke up one morning naked on a donkey in the wrong kingdom and realized it was all a bit much.
One quirk helps the PCs remember an non-player character, but if they’re going to be important NPCs, then go deep into that quirk and see how it affects them. You’ll find that there’s a nuanced character inside each little quirk.
3. Modelling behavior
Chances are, your player party is going to interact with at least a few NPCs, and anyone in position of authority will be an NPC: the rulers of the kingdom, the head of the Mystic Order of Whatevers, the mayor or the town constable. Even the innkeeper who is only boss of their own inn is still the boss under its roof. NPCs exert a lot of authority over the PCs, but just ordering them around — or worse, threatening them — doesn’t often yield good results.
Pistol-whipping your players with an NPCs authority is what we call the Storyteller Hammer; the stick part of the carrot or the stick. Players tend to push back against authority; so instead, NPCs can model behavior and offer carrots.
When an NPC is in charge of the PCs — the guard captain, the queen, the sector commander — a good general rule is to give the PCs an objective and then let them decide how to do it. If your NPC lays out a plan and expects the PCs to follow it to the letter, then it doesn’t leave them much room to exercise their creativity. But if you just give them a mission, all the team-building and problem-solving parts of role-playing come to the fore.
Now, authority isn’t always that direct and the NPCs can influence the characters and players without giving anyone a single order. All the NPC has to do is react to something. “Who did you say? Did you just say that Hazbin the Sorcerer is coming!? After what he did to me?” The PCs have never met Hazbin before, but because their NPC friend distrusts him, they will be very wary dealing with the wizard.
You can set up just about any emotional reaction that you want your player characters to have if you build trust in the NPC, then model that reaction.
If you’ve won your players’ emotional investment in an NPC, then they’ll care what the NPC says or does. As soon as you’ve got that hook into them, now you can subtly guide your players just by how the NPC behaves.
4. Guide to the story
I can’t tell you how important this one is. If your story is just to go to an evil place and kill everything there, then there’s maybe not much need for a guide. But for anything more complex, your PC party will need a guiding light.
A guide tells the characters — and their players — why it’s important to go to the evil place, to tell them how it became evil, and to tell them what will happen if they don’t stop the Bad Thing.
Complex plots with political intrigue, personal development, secrets and lies, or deep background stories really need a guide. Game campaigns accumulate questions and answers. Players uncover mysteries and solve problems, they search for the next challenge and then face it. But a guide places it in that all-important context. If the PCs miss a vital clue, an NPC can provide some much-needed exposition. If they’re stuck and don’t know what to do next, then the NPC can scratch their chin and ask “Have you tried [blank] yet?”
And the NPC can just give some background information. I’ll use my current game as an example. Cedar, Jim, Jason — if you’re reading this STOP NOW!
Are they gone? Okay, it’s just us, so I can tell you what’s going on in my game. It’s about a band of NPC heroes, historical figures who defeated a legendary demon and became famous throughout the region, reaching the highest rank possible and becoming leaders over their own courts. But the thing is, they didn’t really defeat the demon. The demon struck a deal with the NPC heroes, giving them credit for his death with all the glory entailed and fifty years of peace. So when the time is up, he will return more powerful than ever.
I created stories of this original group’s heroism and opportunities to tell them. I want my players to know the names of each of the previous heroes and I want them to be awed when they meet my NPCs. To help out, I have a younger NPC fanboy who worships these old heroes. He has notebooks filled with hand-drawn comics that he made of their exploits, and knows all of the cool stories about them. In the first session of game, I opened with the PCs actually participating in a reenactment of the heroes’ final battle against the demon. They wore costumes and played the parts of the heroes while an elder narrated the legendary struggle.
I need my players to know this story. I need them to look up to these heroes. I need them to stand in a little bit of awe — so I can betray their memory of it when they learn the truth. Ultimately, the PCs will find out that the demon still lives and is working behind the scenes. When the demon rises again — it’s year forty-nine and counting — my player characters will be the ones to stand up and do what the older heroes couldn’t: defeat the demon for real.
So every game session features the fanboy NPC telling a story about the epic heroes and helping them understand the history of my game. He’s one of my guides, there to help build context and put the PCs’ own heroics in light of the elder heroes’ stories. The higher the pedestal I can get them on, the more dramatic the fall will be. And I can model the behavior I want with my fanboy NPC — who will be crushed and depressed when he finds out his heroes made a deal with a devil.
So that’s part of what a guide can do, but how do you make an NPC into a good guide? Well, the players need to trust a guide character, so a total screw-up isn’t going to win their trust. They have to be competent and have something to offer the party in the way of aid. So my fanboy NPC knows the old heroes’ stories inside and out, by heart, and he’s got an illustrated version if you prefer comic books! Also, he is the party scout and rogue, so I can have him sneak around and snoop out any information that the players need. And he does so competently.
The other thing that a guide NPC needs is the PCs. To phrase that a little differently, if the guide has all the answers and all the power to do what needs to be done, then why do they need the player characters at all? Why not just have the NPC save the world themselves?
Well, because then it wouldn’t be an RPG, would it? The players are kind of the point. So a guide NPC needs a solid reason that they’re not able to solve the problem by themselves. In my current example, the fanboy rogue is one of the party, just as young and inexperienced as the rest of them. He can’t unravel the lies that the heroes told alone, and he can’t hope to face the demon lord solo. It’s a truth that they need to find together and then face as a team.
Other ingredients for a successful guide NPC include likeability. Humor is always good for that, but the right amount and the right kind of comedy is a whole other skill on top of Storytelling — and if it’s not your strong suit, it can become a liability. A guide who becomes a buffoon loses that competence and trust that they need for the PCs to follow their advice. But while humor is an easy way to make the players and their characters like an NPC — see Rainbow Murder Princess — it’s not the only one. Unless you’re gaming with strangers, then you probably have some idea what your friends like, and you can always steal bits from movies or books that you all enjoy. If they have a favorite character from some other media, discretely borrow a bit of that character for your guide.
The other side of likeability is that the guide NPC needs to like the PCs, too. Trust me that if you have no ideas at all about how to make your players like a non-player character, that having the NPC like them gets the ball rolling. It’s natural to like someone who compliments you, believes in you, and trusts you. It’s a two-way street, so start on your NPC’s end and it gets the players moving the right direction. Find something in each PC for the non-player character to trust, respect, or like and you begin to build a bond.
Now when the NPC speaks, the PCs listen, and you can give them whatever kind and amount of guidance that they need to navigate your campaign.
5. Allies in battle
It won’t happen in every session or even every game, but NPC allies get drawn into battle sometimes. Depending upon how it goes down, the result can piss your players off, or make them love your NPC all the more. Let’s work toward that second option.
Because I tend to build one or two NPCs that are very close to the player group, involved romantically, or even acting as members of the party, they’re often around when a combat scene breaks out. I’ve said elsewhere and will say again now — and probably in the future — that NPCs should not get full character sheets.
Antagonists get stats because they need butts for the PCs to kick, and you make butts out of stats. But friendly NPCs? Allies that support and aid the party? Well, they’re not getting their butts kicked — except by other NPCs at dramatic story points — so they don’t need stats. While they don’t have butts, though, they do have boots. Because the PCs are doing the butt-kicking and a good boot is nice… Alright, it’s not a perfect metaphor. Leave off.
What I mean to say here is that the NPCs who end up in combat alongside the PCs grant a bonus, not their own attacks and stats. Some extra movement, a bonus to hit or to damage, a minor heal for the party… Something like that. Be creative. Let each NPC slap foes with a unique status effect, or give their PC friends a bonus to their next defense. If you’re playing on a map or battlemat, maybe the NPCs can help the PCs flank and stuff like that.
The result is that the NPCs help the players out in combat, but they don’t eat up a whole turn. They move at the end of the round — I don’t give them initiative rolls — and if their bonus isn’t one that the PCs use on their own turn (like a buff or debuff) then that happens at the end of the combat round, too.
And I don’t roll for it. The PCs just get the bonus. It prevents my players from sitting around waiting while I roll against myself, and it keeps the NPCs from doing all the work for my players. What if I gave them a character sheet and full actions and stuff? Every trap they disarm, every enemy they kill is one less for the players to do and their characters are the stars — they should be doing all of the important stuff.
And a side-effect is that my players love my NPCs. They love the bonuses, the ass-saving, having allies to flank with and there’s no resentment. And if I take away an NPC bonus — because the character is absent, or maybe an enemy hits the NPC with an attack (which I also don’t roll for; it’s simply a narrative event) — the players miss it. Having my non-player characters give the PCs bonuses in combat also reinforces the work I do out of combat scenes making the NPCs support and help the party.
So everybody wins.
7. Listen to the Players
I usually have some character concept for my NPCs. I know what quirk it is that I’m going to give them, maybe have an idea for a voice to use — but nothing’s carved in stone. Keep your NPCs flexible.
The quirk that I give them might be enough, but if the players interact with a particular NPC a lot, I may need to explore that quirk further for some layers (see above). Maybe I thought a quirk was a good idea, only to find out during game that it’s rubbing one or more of my players the wrong way. Now I need to explain it away or bend the quirk into something else. Perhaps I thought that an NPC is going to be a one-off, but the players liked them enough to come back for more interaction.
What’s the common theme here? The players gave me feedback — usually implicit, but sometimes explicit — and I changed the NPC to be a better fit. The example that I like to use here is Alak’ai from my Tydalus game. He’s the captain of a ship that carries the player characters around for the first half of that story, an experienced fighter and sailor — and the party’s #1 ally.
Because some of the PCs in that game were prisoners onboard the ship, Alak’ai needed to be kind to them. If he was a jerk, they would never like him. They would refuse to listen to him when he needed to deliver some important plot stuff or if I had to use him as a guide. Well, the PCs noticed Alak’ai being nice and instead of digging into his sailing experience or his martial expertise, they were interested in him as a softie. Why was he nice to a bunch of prisoners when he didn’t have to be?
Now, they never lost respect for Alak’ai, but the compassionate part of him was the bit that hooked them. Not what I expected, but I shrugged and went with the flow. It led to developing that part of Alak’ai’s personality and backstory — out of his small handful of minor quirks, his kindness turned out to be the one that informed his whole personality for the rest of the campaign.
But the key is that I explored Alak’ai and developed him along the lines that my players were interested in. If they had spent all their shared scenes asking about sailing, maybe I would have come up with stories from all of the far-off places that Alak’ai had been to and amazing things he had seen. He might have become more of an explorer. If they had challenged him to arm wrestle or spar, or asked him to teach them how to fight with a net and harpoon, Alak’ai might have become more of a warrior character.
Don’t get stuck on what you think the NPC is. There’s always going to be bits about an NPC that are fundamental and don’t change, but don’t hold onto a singular vision of them with an inflexible deathgrip. Give your players a chance to interact and they will tell you what they like about the NPC. Then all you have to do is give them more of what they asked for and boom, now they adore your NPC.
Keep in mind that NPCs populate your in-game world and provide much of the shape of that world. They are instrumental in conveying your story, and have a huge impact on the players’ experience. The advice that I laid out here is by no means an exhaustive list or even an in-depth dive into these seven ideas.
Erica and I have written about these thoughts in their own posts and each one can have a major impact on your game. Take what you need and go fill your campaign world with imaginary people. Happy playing!
