The Care and Feeding of NPCs

[π=3.14]

Role-playing that's what do. We seldom stop and think what it takes to project a story into the minds of your players. Narrative and character are the tools for storytelling making worlds coming alive. Worlds are peopled by NPCs and when your NPCs live so does your world. Let's start a dialogue that uses what know works for you and suggests trying something new ideas to fit Pathfinder.
Sometimes all you need is a name, a profession, and motivation. There are other times when complexity is needed. What is the bare minimum do you need to play an NPC. What do you look for when you want to slip into a persona? Do you have a method to come up with NPCs?

[DungeonmasterCal]

Most of my NPCs are made up on the fly to fill in things the players want to get done. I can't create one for every possible thing the players might want in a city so I just have a catalog of them in the back of my head that I spin randomly and then chuck one out there.

But when it comes to a major NPC, such as the one for whom the PCs are doing a favor or a cackling, half-mad foe at the end of the quest I try to put a lot of things into their creation. Most of it is never seen by the players but writing a BBEG's back story helps me visualize him better and make the encounter more memorable for all involved.

[π=3.14]

I had imagined this thread to become a Rogue Gallary of posters' favorite NPCs and how to write them up so they can be played by other DMs so they are recognized by your players. Or if you need an NPC this should be a good place to find one. Then finally I want to offer an easy template that will make role-playing NPCs less hit or miss, and a template for players to design and format their characters.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Ah, gotcha. I'll find my old notes and come back.

[π=3.14]

This is a modified template but most grunt work is done by Third Culture Kids at
www.thirdculturekids.net. in their "MYNT: MAYBE, YES, NO, TWIST" [list]

name- a good name goes a long way

Ability scores.

AC, init., Offence/Defence

" Personality - what the character is like,

Profession - what they do as a job,

Education - what they were trained to do,

Background - how they were raised,

Interests - what they care about, and

Experience - what has happened to them."

Motives.- what the want out of life,

Tactics - what is their method of operation.

catch-phrases, other words they might use that defines the character,

This is not meant to be for all NPCs, just those that Breath on their own.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Little Bertha - NG F Human (sort of) Adept 1/Expert 1

I say "Adept 1/Expert 1" 'cuz that's the closest approximation to what I ran her as. Little Bertha was a 12 year old girl with some terrible physical abnormalities around her face and right arm. When I spoke as her I spoke with a very pronounced lisp; she also drooled slightly from her right lip so I'd occasionally pretend to suck and slurp the drool back in.

Little Bertha was also nearly 6' tall. In real life I'm 5'5". In order to portray her height, since my other players were sitting, I stood up on a stool then stooped over (she had a hunched back).

Y'see, Little Bertha was from one of the PC's home village; a village they described as having a particular problem with Aberrant creatures. Bertha has an Aberrant Bloodline and is just starting to manifest her powers but she's always looked and sounded different from the other villagers. She was born after the PC moved away for many years so when they returned to their home at the beginning of the campaign they met Little Bertha for the first time along with the rest of the party.

Bertha is actually highly intelligent and dexterous despite her physical attributes. She manages to stay hidden most days, even from her own family, and exists primarily on the kindness of strangers. Bertha however is also extremely resourceful and knows most of the secrets around the village.

She only had 3 scenes with the party over the course of the current campaign which is coming up on 2 years of real-life game time. She is without a doubt the most memorable of all my NPCs and I still get requests to do the voice. The key is to put your tongue in the back of the right side of your mouth, speaking slowly and deliberately slurping between sentences. Also remember that just because she's smart Bertha isn't very well educated; she speaks with the vernacular of a kid raising themselves on the outskirts of a rural farm.

I agree that NPCs need to live and breathe in your game world. The standard tendency of most players I meet nowadays is to think of the setting like a video game. In fact I've had more than a few who thought nothing of running around a settlement looking for chests to open or vases to smash for extra gear and GP. If you want players to invest in a story and care about the outcome to anyone other than themselves you have to give them someone to care about.

Any time you consider throwing out an intelligent villain, even the lowly goblin dog rider in the opening scene of your campaign, consider who they are and why they're there. Just something as simple as some snide taunts or some conversation between foes could open a whole new dimension of the campaign to your players.

Another of my favorite NPCs was Shara Mooncrazed. I don't have her stats but she was a villain with a statblock around being a CN F Human Adept 4. She was kind of a take on the Stephen King protagonist Carrie; Shara was a shy, sheltered girl a bit on the odd side whose mother had been kidnapped by the fey. Her father, a local woodcutter, had tried to keep the girl safe from the capricious faeries but Shara had a habit of sleeping outdoors, under the light of the moon, earning her the cruel nickname all the other kids teased her with.

So naturally a fey - templated hag offered Shara power to get back at her bullies. She targeted 10 the most beautiful adults in town, robbing them of their beauty and turning them into Thawns under her control. The teens who abused Shara though the hag's magic made into rats the girl could command with a song.

However Shara wasn't entirely evil and as it began to dawn on her that she'd been tricked by the same hag who had stolen her mother away so many years ago the girl was conflicted with her actions. Essentially this was a villain the PCs could redeem. The one time I ran the adventure she was brutally murdered but I'd hoped that by talking to Shara the PCs would be motivated to helping her come back from the brink of true wickedness.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

The most 'beloved' of my current NPCs is Karius Maximums

Note on Broken Lands kobolds:

the kobolds of the Broken Lands of Mystara are a parodically bad attempt at being a democratic Roman militaristic society. All kobolds are addressed as Citizen-X [name], such as Citizen-Sergeant or Citizen-General, and they are inordinately fond of obsucre, non-sensical rites and rituals that can be twisted to have a quasi-military feel. The Broken Lands has little in the way of wealth so most equipment is stolen/salvaged from outsiders, reused, mended and patched together

Citizen-Lieutenant Karius Maximus is a kobold with horrendously bad breath and rotting teeth. He wears formerly puffy rotting fur shoulder-pads and an oversized helmet which conceals all but his tiny snout. His leather armor is a former butcher's apron cut to size and festooned with enough 'bling' to dazzle a magpie - his medals for valor and comptency. His sabatons are made for a medium-sized creature and have to be filled with straw to let his feet fit in them. He has yet to change the straw from when he first put them on three years ago.

He is a hopeless coward who sells out his own at the slightest hint of danger, yet is too cowardly to actually desert, and he will go on missions. Thanks to the PCs the missions are successes, and he gets all the credit and promotion.
The killer is how his actions are described. He never shakes with fear, he quivers with excitement at the thought of battle. He is never paralyzed in terror, in his excitement he simply cannot choose which enemy to attack. He never runs away, he is taking care of the enemies that are sneaking up on them from behind. He never pisses himself in panic, he is showing the enemy how little he cares for them. His urgent insistence to return home is merely impatience to get the job done so he can 'volunteer' for new suicide glory missions.

[π=3.14]

What is the very least I can use to play the roles?
The dwarven stripe-miners

• Olaf Dane- ng { Dwarven Sorcerer 8th level} "Supreme Nexus" str16 con 17 chr18( is arrogant)
  
• Oslo Dane- ng {Dwarf fighter 7th lv} the Hammer str.17 con 16
  
• Ogdan Braga ng {Dwarf fighter 6th lvl}"the Shovel} str16 Shovel of Excavation Is the quirky Mechanic type
  
• Archiball Brindalbeard n {Dwarf mountain druid 7th lvl} Wis17 chr15 companion Willa Wildwood Brownie
  
• Gregorie Noonan ng {Dwarf Ranger 8th lvl} "the sniper" Dex18 wis16 +2 short bow Clint Eastwood Type
  

[π=3.14]

Here is one of the Dwarven stripe-miners

• NAME-OGDEN BRAGA-"The Shovel" RACE: CLASS: LEVEL:-Dwarven Fighter 6th
  
• ABILITY SCORES: st.16 dx.13 cn.13 in.9 ws.10 ch. 11
  
• AC:-Chainmail.INITATIVE: -1 OFFENSE:-WARHAMMER +1, spear, axe
  
• Appearance: Wearing chainmail and helm with horns and written on the back "Pile it on"
  
• Personality: A tinkerer he retreats into his inventions, doesn't understand other dwarves {excemption the Stripe-miners who he thinks of as brothers.}
  
• Profession: Miner, engineer, and inventor
  
• Education: mining, engineering, sapping
  
• Background: Ogden "Oggy" grew up around the mining camps of Upper Noveria and spent his youth in the sub-surface smeltering shop helping his uncle process the metal.
  
• Interests: metal gears
  
• Tactics: When he is fighting in single combat he uses his warhammer when in the Dwarven Phalanx uses a spear. When not serving on the line he digs earthworks with his spade of excavation,
  
• Catch-Phrases: "Pile it on." "I'm stacking 'em up like cordwood."

  This system works for me and I know it will help you.
  Sometimes it helps to put it down into words.