Let your players build your NPCs
Run-of-the-mill NPCs are fairly easy. Just give them a simple quirk so that they’re not identical to every other non-player character, and that’s all they need to hold up a single scene. But NPCs that become recurring characters, romantic interests and antagonists who need to carry the emotional weight of the plot — these need a bit more effort than that. But there’s good news! Your players will do half the work for you.
Obviously, it’s still the Storyteller’s job to actually create NPCs, give them names and personalities and all that good stuff. But players have their own preferences and they have favorites. Just by listening to your party, they’ll tell you — usually by their actions — which NPCs are worth cultivating as more layered or nuanced characters, and which ones they’ve already forgotten.
Most all role-playing games have non-player characters, often many of them. I tend to create large casts of NPCs to fill various roles, but my players are the ones who have to interact with these creations. In short order, they will gravitate toward the ones they like. In my current game, the players were introduced to two new NPCs in the same session. One was the kinfolk of the local shape-shifters — she’s not a changer herself, but carries the gene — who is a street racer. The other was the servant of an allied group and a mysterious half-vampire.
While the player party showed some interest in the half-vampire –how does that even happen!? — the one they spent time with was the kinfolk racer. They needed a driver to get them somewhere quickly, and despite me describing her driving as Mad Max-ish at best, they kept calling her back, and even invited her to share some of their social scenes.
So that’s step one. Of the array of NPCs that the players met, they’re beginning to pick a couple that they like or have interest in, bringing them closer to the party. Closer to the party means closer to the plot, so I’ll put in some time thinking about how my NPC is going to interact with the campaign’s story. Do they have any personal connections to it? Can I slip some in while the players aren’t looking? Will they have anything unique to contribute to the plot?
If the street-racing kinfolk ends up an honorary member of the party, then I should probably have some more car chases, so I’ll look for places when driving from point A to point B could reasonably involve some automatic weapons. If I can, I’ll bring her closer to the plot, too, maybe make her the relative of an antagonist or something.
Those connections often give me fodder to develop the NPC out from a crude archetype — drive fast zoom-zoom girl — into something more like a real person. Let’s say that I make her related to one of the antagonists, then what is that relation? What kind of relationship was it, good or bad? How will she react to the events of the plot that stem from her relative? Maybe she took to street racing because her family tried to keep her safe and away from danger, so she needed excitement. Maybe her relative was the one who taught her how to drive, drift, and do other wild Vin Diesel things.
So step two is once the players have indicated which NPC they like, bring them closer to the plot or someone involved in it. That’ll give you some developmental hooks. If nothing else, when the PCs say “Tell us about yourself, oh NPC whom we are interested in,” you want them to have some kind of answer.
What is step three? Well, the players will tell you that, too. Let’s take our kinfolk girl as an example. She drives fast, so she’s a bit of a thrill-seeker. I’ll detail her family ties so that I have a better picture of how she relates and interacts with the shape-shifters. Then maybe I’ll give her some other interests so she’s not so one-note. Perhaps she’s also a musician, or an artist. Maybe she longs to fight alongside her shape-shifter family.
Whatever bits are most interesting to the players are the parts of the NPC that they’ll interact with. If they spend a lot of time talking about her complicated family and the drama that comes with being related to shape-shifters, then that’s the side of her that I’ll develop. If the players don’t give a shit about her family and just want to race against her, or start incorporating a fast getaway driver into all their missions, then her thrill-seeking crazy driving will be the part that develops.
My current game is still in the first handful of sessions, so only the NPCs that are part of the party have done much development so far, so I’ll go back to a campaign that I’ve finished — Tydalus.
Tydalus featured a small cast of NPCs, and only one of them was really crucial to the plot, but there was also Alak’ai. He was the captain of the ship that carried the players around the first half of the plot. Alak’ai was an explorer, a warrior, a sailor, and since he was in charge — while on his ship, at least — I needed to make sure the players wanted to follow his orders, so he was a nice guy.
Did the players ask about navigating by the stars? A little, sure. Did they ask about sailing or the sights he had seen on the strange oceans of Tydalus? Not a bit. When they decided to teach the weak NPC how to fight, did they ask Alak’ai to help train her? Nope.
But he was nice, so they came to him for support. Alak’ai the warrior-captain and master of sails was still there, but all that faded to the background as they asked him how he spoke the common tongue so well, coming from a society outside of it? Why didn’t he abuse the mainlander prisoners like many of his fellows? Why did he take care of prisoners when he could have just used them?
That kind streak — which I put in place simply to make sure that he could execute his story role without alienating the players — became his most prominent character trait. He became their rock, their source of confidence… And in a horror-themed game like Tydalus, that was important to them.
I could — and have in the past — come up with fully-formed NPCs with traits that I found interesting… But that doesn’t mean that the players will like them. I can’t just beat them over the head with this stuff and make them think it’s as cool as I do. So now my NPC concepts serve simply as starting points instead, and I let the players tell me what direction to take them.
When players give you hints about what they like and you develop your NPCs along those lines, the players are going to like these NPCs best! After all, they helped make them, and you can let them guide you toward making the best NPCs possible.
