De-Flanderizing an NPC
Erica’s written about one-note characters, the Ned Flanders of role-playing games. While we were discussing her post the next day, I realized that I tend to do the opposite with my NPCs. They begin as a simple concept, a vehicle to carry just one aspect or need of my game, but then they grow and become more complex.
I had to think hard to figure out how and why that happens — and it doesn’t happen to all of my NPCs. Many of them aren’t “on screen” long enough to develop layers. They’re a Flanders with some trait that makes them stand out, makes them easy for the PCs to remember, and is easy for me to play while still distinguishing them from the rest of my NPCs. And that’s fine.
One-note player characters can be problematic, but one-note NPCs are vital. A gaming group might have issues with Mister Lights-Candles-With-a-Fireball-Spell the wizard, but as a small-time NPC, they might be a standout weirdo who makes the whole group laugh. And then the PCs leave with a fun story and never have to deal with Fireball the Mage again.
But any NPC that hangs around for a long time will run into the Flanderization problem. If you want your gaming group to form an emotional attachment to a specific NPC, then it takes more than a one-note personality.
You can start with one trait to be the core of the character. You’ve got to begin somewhere. Be careful with that seed, though. If you make an NPC a total badass, they’re going to feel like your character, and the players will feel like they’re competition for the spotlight. The game is about the players, after all, and their characters should be the heroes.
Not that I’m saying an NPC can’t be a badass, just it can’t be their defining trait. And that’s where I start de-Flanderizing. Silas Wingfield is the mentor for my players in my Vampire: The Masquerade game. He’s two hundred years old and a powerful sorcerer, he has to know everything about the city so he can teach the PCs.
Silas could so easily overshadow my player characters. Because I need him to for the story, he knows more, so he could have all of the answers. Silas is older and more powerful, so he could fight every battle for them. He could be the leader, taking all the glory.
None of that sounds like much fun for my players, though.
I made Silas a dork. He’s a teacher, so he’s nerdy. He’s a little shy, and he doesn’t have much of a reputation, so he doesn’t talk much to the other vampires of the city — forcing the PCs to be the social ones. He’s an academic, so when he joined the players in combat with his conjuring abilities, he panicked and summoned a chalkboard, just like he did in class.
If you asked my players about Silas, they’ll talk about him fiddling with his glasses, and being anachronistic as he mangles modern slang. They like sending him texts made up of emojis because he writes long letters in return, complete with signature. There’s a lot more going on than Silas being a powerful undead wizard.
But Silas was always a teacher, and the PCs needed a mentor. Having him send his students to the fore was easy, as was taking his single story role as an ancient teacher and turning it into a number of different quirks. What about someone who needs to be more in the thick of things, and who can’t be quite so comedic in his eccentricities?
Alak’ai was an NPC for my Tydalus game. He’s the captain of the ship that serves as home base for the game. He’s a fighter and a leader because I need someone to direct player characters through an unfamiliar world. Because he needs to be around for most of the story, Alak’ai could easily overshadow the party or fall into a one-note rut, and he needs to develop other parts of his personality.
So I made Alak’ai a stargazer. It suited a sailor, who needs to navigate by the stars, but it also gave him something to discuss with the PCs. He could tell stories about how the constellations got their names or invite them to look through his telescope at something interesting. And since I was riffing off Alak’ai being a sailor — his one-note Flanderization — I kept going.
The story took the PC party inland and Alak’ai became an almost literal fish out of water. I made him get landsick. He had never seen trees up close, and never ridden a horse. It got the players involved with helping Alak’ai, talking to him, and made him seem more fleshed out than just being “the captain.” And importantly, made him more flawed than a one-note badass.
So take your NPC and give them some defining characteristic. That quirk that makes them stand out, makes them memorable. If they only have a small part to play, then stop there. But if you want your players to love an NPC, to listen to their advice, or to cry when you kill them, then build on that trait. Give the NPC a hobby, a flaw or a weakness. Maybe they like singing? Maybe they draw?
And then branch it out. With Silas, I could play with his age and being a teacher, the core of his character. He starts as an ancient know-it-all, so I dug into that age. Silas likes to talk about history as if he were there — which he was. I used as much nineteenth century slang as I could find… though I wasn’t very good at it. Because he was a teacher, I gave him glasses and played with them often as a prop. And he never used a single-syllable word when a four-syllable one would do.
A teacher isn’t just a teacher, they’re a lot of things. And a pyromaniac wizard isn’t just a fireball-pitching machine, either. If they’re going to be an NPC that you want the party to like — or if they are your own player character — then dig into that. Why do they like fire? Why did they study magic in the first place? What’s their goal?
With NPCs, the players will tell you what parts of the character they like by interacting with them. If they wonder where the NPC learned to draw, ask them to draw an insignia for the party, or ask them to sketch a player character, then you know they found something they like. Now you can run with it.
The same thing works being a player. A character has got to start somewhere, but that doesn’t mean they have to end up a Flanders. I played a pyromaniac once — a pyro firefighter, to be exact. But he wasn’t just some guy who liked to play with fire. He burned down his house as a kid to kill his abusive mother, but accidentally killed his sister, too. He was more than a pyro. He was a scared kid who made problems go away with fire. He was guilt-ridden, and a failed father looking for a family. So he told dad jokes and took the best care he knew how of his much younger companions, taking them on as his children. He built a family, and feared ruining it again.
All it takes is a single seed to grow a character. Water it and it doesn’t take much to de-Flanderize a character.
