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I'm noticing this pattern.
Book 1 introduces NPC side character allies
Book 2 never references them again, and introduces new allies
Book 3 never references them again, and introduces new allies
You usually only have the main NPC questgiver that stays around.
Would it be difficult to have follow through on these characters without them being GMPCs following you everywhere (like the hated Sakuachi in Gatewalkers)?
I'm noticing this pattern.
Book 1 introduces NPC side character allies
Book 2 never references them again, and introduces new allies
Book 3 never references them again, and introduces new alliesYou usually only have the main NPC questgiver that stays around.
Would it be difficult to have follow through on these characters without them being GMPCs following you everywhere (like the hated Sakuachi in Gatewalkers)?
That is a logical consequence of the three books being written concurrently, not sequentially.
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That is a logical consequence of the three books being written concurrently, not sequentially.I'm noticing this pattern.
Book 1 introduces NPC side character allies
Book 2 never references them again, and introduces new allies
Book 3 never references them again, and introduces new alliesYou usually only have the main NPC questgiver that stays around.
Would it be difficult to have follow through on these characters without them being GMPCs following you everywhere (like the hated Sakuachi in Gatewalkers)?
Might be more of a thing with 6 book APs being long enough that the author of book 6 has some lead time to find out what the author of book 1 was doing in a way the author of book 2 wouldn't, rather than a PF1 vs PF2 thing.
Certain adventures are also better suited to it than others: if the PCs are moving from area to area, they're going to be meeting new people and leaving folks behind all the time, much more so than if the PCs are staying in one area for most of the adventure.
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I shouldn't wonder if some of this can't be attributed to a certain level of caution--not knowing what the state of that NPC will be after the events of a whole book--whether they perished dramatically/ignominiously, whether the party adopted them or loathed them, and any other thing that might have popped up that could have left them in a position where future plot hooks relating to them are rendered jarring by events the writer couldn't know happened at your table.
I mean, there are ways around this, and main-line NPCs can be signposted to the GM to play them a certain way, but there's plenty of significant but not critical NPCs that this could be a relevant factor for.
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I haven't done a survey of which NPCs in Season of Ghosts reappear as significant to the later plots, but I know there's at least a few of them, even outside the 'main' NPCs. This is only natural, since the majority of the AP is spent within one small town.
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No they didn't. Council of Thieves, Kingmaker, and Serpent's Skull all had early-introduced NPC allies drop out of the story (or, to be more generous, be left to the GM to do with as they would).
Correction is that CRIMSON THRONE did well with it.
And SoT on is good example for me because there really isn't strong reason to introduce new cast in books 3, 4 and 5 since besides students introduced in book 1, none of book 2 pc's new students show up either :'D Like... Book 1 students coming back in book 6 just kinda highlights that just because adventure is high level isn't reason to not use them
(Jade Regent in general is great example of 1e ap that handles NPCs exactly as PF2e aps do for most part besides like Fist of Ruby Phoenix: there is cast of npcs who are supposed to be important allies to PCs, but they never really do anything after book 1 outside of occasional mentions)
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I'd say the one that did it really well was Wrath of the Righteous. They include the NPC update for each book on the inside cover. Even if they didn't have a major role to play in the rest of the AP, they give you an idea of what they'd be up to. I'd love to see them continue that, but I also understand that's prime real estate.
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I'd say the one that did it really well was Wrath of the Righteous. They include the NPC update for each book on the inside cover. Even if they didn't have a major role to play in the rest of the AP, they give you an idea of what they'd be up to. I'd love to see them continue that, but I also understand that's prime real estate.
(that is basically what Crimson Throne did, on top of them having appearances otherwise yeah. But yeah it is one of nice things about wrath of the righteous)
Creative Director
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Not every Adventure Path is meant to place the NPCs encountered in the books in equal positions of importance. Part of why we try to put the key NPCs that ARE important in as 2-page entries at the back is to give the GM lots of lore and info about their history and motivations and personality in addition to their rules so that if one of these NPCs is important enough that they take on a bigger role in your game, you'll have those tools to expand upon them.
We also can't 100% predict which NPC your group will take a liking to, which ones might escape a fight to become recurring enemies, or which ones that have just minor roles not intended to do much beyond their single encounter might become breakout stars for your group. This is a great advantage that tabletop RPGs have over videogames still; the GM can make adjustments to bolster the role of an NPC that wasn't intended to be a big deal.
We've been doing Adventure Paths for over two decades at Paizo (and are the ones who publicly popularized the phrase in the first place), and over those 20+ years, we've learned a lot about what does and doesn't work. Including how to pick and choose and present NPCs who are intended to have follow up roles. Some notable examples of us doing this in 1st edition include Wrath of the Righteous, Jade Regent, and Hell's Rebels. Some notable examples of us doing this in 2nd edition include Season of Ghosts and Curtain Call.
Again, not every Adventure Path is MEANT to lean into the idea of "follow up NPCs," in the same way not every Adventure Path is meant to be primarily a dungeon crawl, or meant to explore a part of the setting we've never explored. Each time we create an Adventure Path, we make all of those decisions and more as to how we want to focus the presentation and adventure itself.
That said, we still do tend toward giving out "too much information" for all NPCs, because again, we can't predict your table's breakout-star NPCs.
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When you eventually turn your attention to political / war theater / intrigue heavy / deep dive on one region APs, I think the model for Wrath of the Righteous worked really well and hope to see more of, where the NPCs get an arc and work on their agendas. Just an idea!
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That's basically what my long answer would have been, but I didn't have good moment to write it.
Basically, issue isn't that every campaign needs recurring npcs(rotr has some but doesn't need them), issue is that some of campaigns that would benefit from recurring npcs(like ones involving community, group, base, organization, etc) and/or have them don't really use them. Like AP NPCs that are introduced in way that makes you feel like they are gonna be important and you are going to see their stories grow over campaign then they disappear for most of it.
(and sometimes even that can work with mixed results, like with ruins of azlant further you move away from colony, less you are going to see settler npcs until you return, and it works because all of npcs are kinda introduced as type of civilians who just want to live their life in peace. But the most of npcs are shopkeepers or minor quest givers, and reason you don't see them is because you travel far away from settlement to new locations. So of course it makes sense that shopkeeper doesn't come with you and you can be like "oh hey long time no see" when you finally return. Meanwhile in SoT new Magambyan npc casts for book 3-5 tend to be students and teachers you never saw before and it makes you wonder "Hey where did our friends go?" Like sure, makes sense when you travel away from Nantambu that you meet new npcs, but why the recurring npc cast from Magambya transforms into a revolving cast for couple books? In Edgewatch the problem is even worse, you spend entire campaign in single city, but your colleagues in Edgewatch are never important npcs and you keep being introduced to new npcs allies who rarely show up again in the newer books. Extinction Curse on other hand treats circus members like equipment peaces, most screentime that explores them as people is the blog fiction on paizo.com. TLDR: Without familiar faces, there isn't building up camaraderie as a member of group.)
In 1e it was easier for oneoff book npcs to turn into recurring npcs since they were easier to take along as party npcs and level up over time so that can skew people's views on them. Iron gods doesn't have recurring npcs but it has lot of easy to recruit npcs. Greta from Reign of Winter is technically one scene wonder, but she ended up as party npcs in notable amount of campaigns.
I shouldn't wonder if some of this can't be attributed to a certain level of caution--not knowing what the state of that NPC will be after the events of a whole book--whether they perished dramatically/ignominiously, whether the party adopted them or loathed them, and any other thing that might have popped up that could have left them in a position where future plot hooks relating to them are rendered jarring by events the writer couldn't know happened at your table.
And the GM can always make a NPC reappear in later modules if they survive their original module.
For example, in Trail of the Hunted, 1st module of Ironfang Invasion, the significant NPC Aubrin the Green had a very good chance of dying in the 1st part of the story. In my game, the players actually worked to give her an escape route at the last round, so she survived. Aubrin was a 6th-level ranger who is significantly handicapped and could become more handicapped by injuries, so that she does not overshadow the 1st-to-3rd level PCs. In my campaign, the players set her up as the leader of the refugee villagers who had escaped the Ironfang Invasion and they were her scouts. This freed them up to scout without having a band of noisy villagers right behind them.
However, this also made Aubrin so important that she could not be forgotten in future modules. I had included a Greater Pendant of the Occult in a 4th-level treasure trove (I converted the adventure path to PF2 rules, so often had to swap PF2 items for PF1 items) and the party used that to send a dream message to Aubrin every night they were away. By this time, the refugees were parked in a semi-permanent underground hiding spot along with Aubrin. When the party stopped the conquest of another village in the 3rd module, they returned to the hiding spot and led the refugees to that village. Thus, Aubrin and the refugee villagers did have a role in the 3rd module.
Ironfang Invasion also had an interesting case of an NPC appearing in 2 separate modules. In Trail of the Hunted the party encountered Novvi:
A traveling Darklands merchant, Novvi (N female svirfneblin rogue 2/expert 4), arrives within a few days of the PCs moving into the [underground hiding spot,] and announces her presence
by tossing a glowing rock down the tunnel and calling out a greeting in Undercommon. She’s ... surprised, but not angered, to see new owners claiming the caverns.
Novvi is one of the few opportunities to buy and sell items because the Ironfang Legion controls all the nearby villages.
The next encounter with Novvi is a minor spoiler.
In Siege of Stone, the 4th module of Ironfang Invasion, the party is traveling in the Darklands. They encounter a friendly caravan on an underground road.
EVENT 3: TRADER IN THE DARK
As the PCs reachthe final 50 miles of their journey to the side tunnels to Kraggodan, they come across a unique convoy. Unlike the duergar they’ve become accustomed to, this caravan consists of somber men and women swathed head to toe in dirty rags—dark folk—towing a makeshift wagon. The caravan wagon mostly holds supplies—blankets, sleeping mats, rations, water, ropes, canvas, oil, and lanterns—while most of the valuable stock is carefully hidden away from prying eyes in various pockets sewn into the caravan members’ equipment and clothing.
...
That caravan mistress is a svirfneblin named Novvi (whom the PCs may have met while occupying the [Misthome] caverns in Pathfinder Adventure Path #115: Trail of the Hunted). Like the PCs, Novvi has not rested on her laurels, and she has honed her skills as a spy and scout while growing her trading empire amid the fighting between the dark folk and fey. Novvi offers the party a chance to resupply.
In a twist, my players did not encounter Novvi as a surprise in Siege of Stone. Instead, once they learned that the party's mission would take them into the Darklands, they used their Greater Pendant of the Occult to contact Novvi and ask for her help in navigating the Darklands. She agreed to meet them near their planned entry location and arrived with her caravan.
Because Novvi was encountered for trade away from any dangers, the module writers could be confident that she survived Trail of the Hunted to be encountered again.
Furthermore, Tridus and CorvusMask described the many teachers and fellow students the PCs encounter in Strength of Thousands who often show up again when the PCs return to the Magaambya Academy. My players in my current Strength of Thousands campaign embraced their role as students, so I invented classes for them. The 1st module Kindled Magic mentioned only three teachers by name, but I needed more names, so I researched ahead and found more teachers. And more students to be their classmates. NPCs borrowed from future modules will be encountered again in those modules, of course, even if those encounters are away from the Magaambya Academy.
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Creative Director
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In 1e it was easier for oneoff book npcs to turn into recurring npcs since they were easier to take along as party npcs and level up over time so that can skew people's views on them. Iron gods doesn't have recurring npcs but it has lot of easy to recruit npcs. Greta from Reign of Winter is technically one scene wonder, but she ended up as party npcs in notable amount of campaigns.
I feel like you're talking about two things here.
1) Recurring NPCs. These characters are and should be built as NPCs, not as PCs, and are what we generally include in adventures. These NPCs might ally with the PCs and adventure with them for a time, but they're in the same arena as a monster that does the same. If you want any non-PC character to remain adventuring with the PCs, you should either instead consider #2 below OR just use the rules for creating monsters to "level up" the NPCs as needed between advenutres so their numbers keep up. It's easier to do this than build an entire PC, so in this case, this is EASIER to do than in 1st edition.
2) GM PCs. These are built from the ground up using the player creation rules from Player Core. We use these rules and publish characters built in this way only very rarely—typically as pregens for things like the Free RPG day adventures. One exception that does come to mind are the companions we detailed in the Kingmaker Companion Guide—those characters were also built as PCs, and we gave two versions of their stats (one at 1st level and one at a higher level appropriate to their linked adventure), but these characters were not a central part of the Kingmaker Adventure Path. Their content lived in an entirely separate and sizable book that would be well beyond the scope of a regular Adventure Path. If you want an NPC to accompany the PCs and adventure with them, your best bet is probably to build them as a PC using the stats we provide as a baseline... but that's NOT something we really ever assume will be happening because we want the players to be the main characters of our Adventure Paths.
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Well with that quote I was talking about cohorts to be clear, there were lot of oneoff npcs in 1e were the AP was directly like "this is a potential cohort if you allow leadership", but yeah I do think recurring npcs =/= party npcs, just that its easy to turn oneoff one into a party npc and that can confuse people sometimes when they think that 1e had more recurring npcs than it actually did.
(sometimes such npcs can be cooler than actual recurring NPCs especially if they have really natural story hook to actually join party. They are usually characters that can temporarely join party somehow and it can work great even in late campaign like with Isuma from Iron Gods. Recurring NPCs' value is in seeing sidestory and development of minor cast around PCs, but they don't actually need to join the adventure to do that even if side quests or adventure sometimes intersects with their story, but cohort npcs basically can funnily enough really make campaign feels like pcs' own because its up to them to convince npc to join them permanently.)
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Creative Director
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Well with that quote I was talking about cohorts to be clear, there were lot of oneoff npcs in 1e were the AP was directly like "this is a potential cohort if you allow leadership", but yeah I do think recurring npcs =/= party npcs, just that its easy to turn oneoff one into a party npc and that can confuse people sometimes when they think that 1e had more recurring npcs than it actually did.
(sometimes such npcs can be cooler than actual recurring NPCs especially if they have really natural story hook to actually join party. They are usually characters that can temporarely join party somehow and it can work great even in late campaign like with Isuma from Iron Gods. Recurring NPCs' value is in seeing sidestory and development of minor cast around PCs, but they don't actually need to join the adventure to do that even if side quests or adventure sometimes intersects with their story, but cohort npcs basically can funnily enough really make campaign feels like pcs' own because its up to them to convince npc to join them permanently.)
Ah; cohorts are an entirely different shenanigan.
The tight math of Pathfinder 2nd edition makes including cohorts tricky, unless you have fewer than 4 players, in which case letting a player play two characters (their main and their main's cohort) is an excellent time to do this. Otherwise, the Leadership rules in GM Core might be a good place to look into? That's one of the subsystems I haven't done much work with at all.
But yeah... the expectation that there'll be 3.5 style or 1st Edition style cohorts from the Leadership feat in a group is not really something we have in 2nd edition, and isn't something that we build into our Adventure Paths anymore.
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My players love befriending NPCs and they occasionally have an NPC traveling with their party.
Sometimes guiding NPCs are built into the modules--at least, they were built into some PF1 modules. For example, in Fangs of War the party is on a quest to visit the hidden forts of the Chernasardo Rangers. Early on, they rescue a Chernasardo Ranger named Cirieo Thessaddin, who guides them to the forts. In Prisoners of the Blight the party encounters a quickling rogue named Wendell who is willing to guide them through the Blight in exchange for them rescuing his sister. The second appearance of Novvi was intended as a merchant to help the party restock, but in my campaign the party recruited her as a guide, too.
I converted Cirieo Thessaddin into a Summoner playtest character. I lack the energy and my players lack the time to run separate playtest sessions, so for the Paizo public playtests we simply have a playtest character join the party as a temporary member. We also had a playtest inventor and a playtest kineticist join the Ironfang Invasion campaign, run by a player as a 2nd character.
If the same campaign is still running when the official rulebook for the playtested class is published, then I convert the playtest character over to the final rules for the class and arrange a cameo appearance. For example, 5th-level playtest summoner Cirieo Thessaddin appeared again as an 8th-level summoner in Assault on Longshadow to aid in the defense of Longshadow.
Technically, an assisting NPC would disrupt the tight Encounter Budget mathematics of PF2, but I figured out how to balance this in the Encounter Budget. The assisting NPC is treated as just another party member. The rules as written for Character Adjustment of Encounter Budgets can be followed if the NPC is the same level as the PCs, but the math is more complicated if the NPC is a different level.
1) Recurring NPCs. These characters are and should be built as NPCs, not as PCs, and are what we generally include in adventures. These NPCs might ally with the PCs and adventure with them for a time, but they're in the same arena as a monster that does the same. If you want any non-PC character to remain adventuring with the PCs, you should either instead consider #2 below OR just use the rules for creating monsters to "level up" the NPCs as needed between adventures so their numbers keep up. It's easier to do this than build an entire PC, so in this case, this is EASIER to do than in 1st edition.
2) GM PCs. These are built from the ground up using the player creation rules from Player Core.
Of course, playtest characters are built like PCs. However, I discovered that any NPC designed to fight alongside the PCs even in just a single encounter is best built like a PC, too. The tactical dynamics of a NPC-built character and a PC-built character are different and roleplaying a NPC-built character in a PC party gets weird.
For example, in Siege of Stone I converted the PF1 dwarven paladin Colga of Trudd into a PF2 dwarven champion according the the NPC rules. She was designed as an adversary, because the paryy encountered her at a secret entrance to the dwarven city of Kraggodan and she viewed them as trespassers. But they talked with her, got on her good side, and invented her to travel with them so that she could see that they did not commit any crimes. Thus, Colga joined the party as long as they were in the Reliquary of Ascension beneath Kraggodan. But due to her NPC build, she was a 12th-level character who hit just as hard as the 14th-level PCs. Her weakness was that her tactical options were very limited, so she often had to stand aside and merely watch as the party dealt with hazards and other complicated situations.
A similar situation was in a homebrew class field trip I added to Strength of Thousands, River Into Darkness Revisited. Because the student PCs were on a class field trip, their teacher Takulu Ot was accompanying them. And I decided that their dorm-mate Ignaci Canterells would be along, too. And I added a boatman for the river trip, Itoro Djana. The Kindled Magic module gave a stat block for Takulu Ot and I built Ignaci Canterells and Itoro Djana by PC rules. The other students on the field trip were nameless and stayed out of combat.
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Of course, playtest characters are built like PCs. However, I discovered that any NPC designed to fight alongside the PCs even in just a single encounter is best built like a PC, too. The tactical dynamics of a NPC-built character and a PC-built character are different and roleplaying a NPC-built character in a PC party gets weird.
Yeah I didn't comment on it earlier when I expressed opinion on it being easier in 1e, but this is why when I converted JR to PF2e, I built all of party npcs as PC builds. Even the ones that were bestiary creatures with class levels and thus didn't have ancestries in 2e. It felt easier to me to replace some of class feats with monster inspired abilities than build them as a monster and then level them up with party.
Easy example of this is level 1 PC and NPC: level 1 NPCs' high strike bonus is +9. So all of melee npcs at same level are equivalent of fighters unless GM takes care to simulate how powerful pc would be or otherwise avoid using table strictly. On average PCs have more versatile builds while NPCs have simpler tactics but have stronger bonuses. So PCs can feel overshadowed as result even if balance wise it ends up about even because all of NPCs' rolls feel high in comparison.
NPCs are also technically easier to level up, just add plus one to number (or follow up the table and see which levels they get +2 increase instead) but again npc creation table is built in mind around npcs being challenges to PCs, and frankly party allies getting new powers as they get stronger is slightly cooler than them just getting bigger numbers.
(that said yeah, NPC statblock temporary allies can also be cool, Prey for Death has good example of that, but I do suspect there is reason why they are only for one encounter usually)
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I always felt like the main reason that APs kept throwing NPCs out there is because when the PCs are particularly interested in (or the players have the most fun) talking to a specific NPC, that's an NPC that the GM is going to want to bring back in the future. You can't anticipate which NPCs where the players are going to jive with the GM's take on them, so you throw a lot of darts at the dartboard.
A good part of an AP experience, of course, is the specific implementation of the story by the GM and the players. It shouldn't be all dictated from the top down.
There can also be a question of "want vs need" to a certain degree, Skull & Shackles was made with the PCs needing crews in mind, Jade Regent had the caravan thing, other APs will point out extra hands are more a want, and unfortunately, some APs are not consistent with the question/possibility/intent.
How can Paizo know what the GM has done with the NPCs? What if the NPC dies? What if they PCs don't even bother talking with that NPC and they create a relationship with some other NPC Paizo wasn't expecting?
DM should take care of any ongoing NPCs in their campaign and their history and role should be group specific according to how the PCs interact with them.
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How can Paizo know what the GM has done with the NPCs? What if the NPC dies? What if they PCs don't even bother talking with that NPC and they create a relationship with some other NPC Paizo wasn't expecting?
I do have to point out that quite a lot of the 1e AP did have NPC keeping their role between books, and simply said "we assume that NPC is still alive and important, if they're not, NPC X or Y can fill the role, if they can't, you have to make up some way to reach the same effect". So this argument is kinda moot.
However, NPC dissapearing aren't that much of an issue in the few 2e AP I read, blood lord, curtain call, season of ghost and warden all mention NPC from previous books rather often, so it might just be an "early 2e" problem? In the end, I think the crux of the issue here is mostly that the writers for latter modules didn't have a lot of info on what was happenning in the early ones, so they didn't necessarily knew the important NPC of these module and thus create new ones, even if they filled the exact same role. And from what I saw, it seems that this issuehave been mostly fixed in the recent APs.
Altho I do have to say, NPC that could actively travel with the party and become "lesser party member" is something I miss in the 2e APs. I get why they aren't as many of them, there isn't any cohort and the math is much, much tighter, but these NPCs were the most memorable in 1e and their absence here is felt.
Altho I do have to say, NPC that could actively travel with the party and become "lesser party member" is something I miss in the 2e APs. I get why they aren't as many of them, there isn't any cohort and the math is much, much tighter, but these NPCs were the most memorable in 1e and their absence here is felt.
The full mathematics of PF2's Encounter Budget tight math is at junior-high-school level, and their Character Adjustment guidelines outline how to handle it with elementary-school mathematics. I trivially adjust the encounters and the experience points earned whenever my players recruit NPC aid. I have to make adjustments anyway due to my 7-player party.
But the players won't have to perform that NPC-aid adjustment math if the module writer planned ahead. For example, I am running Spoken on the Song Wind right now and my players finished the encounter, "B6. MPESHI CAGE, MODERATE 4." I am considering inventing a Rune Smith character Virgil for the upcoming Necromancer and Rune Smith playtest. Virgil will be a Chime-Ringer, a member of the police force of the city of Nantambu, accompanying the PCs as they solve crimes. If the module writer had intended Virgil to participate in the party's battles, the B6 encounter could have been labeled, "B6. MPESHI CAGE, LOW 4 WITH VIRGIL, MODERATE 4 WITHOUT."
Spoken on the Song Wind is the source of the Nantambu Chime-Ringer archetype, but no Chime-Ringer NPC appears in the module. Instead, we have the excuse, "Nantambu’s overworked town watch are stretched thin with the rise in crime, but they’re eager to speak with conversants [i.e., the player characters] from the Magaambya who might solve this problem for them." That is a disappointment that I would like to correct.
As James said, Paizo doesn't know which NPCs the group will connect with.
It's up to the GM to find ways to include the "important to your group" NPCs in the later books. Replacing new NPCs with the older ones is (typically) pretty easy, which is on the GM to do. Or the PCs checking in with the NPCs every once in awhile is a good, proactive way that the players can ensure that the NPCs feel like they're still around in the later books.
People on either side of the screen can help to keep NPCs around. It shouldn't be put on the shoulders of the writers.
As James said, Paizo doesn't know which NPCs the group will connect with.
It's up to the GM to find ways to include the "important to your group" NPCs in the later books. Replacing new NPCs with the older ones is (typically) pretty easy, which is on the GM to do. Or the PCs checking in with the NPCs every once in awhile is a good, proactive way that the players can ensure that the NPCs feel like they're still around in the later books.People on either side of the screen can help to keep NPCs around. It shouldn't be put on the shoulders of the writers.
A short story arc description can help guide a GM on how this NPC can get character development or make important choices. In 1e, we got this with many APs so it's nothing new to ask.
A short story arc description can help guide a GM on how this NPC can get character development or make important choices. In 1e, we got this with many APs so it's nothing new to ask.
Hunh.
Other than Wrath of the Righteous, I don't remember seeing something like that in any of the ones I've run / read.
A short story arc description can help guide a GM on how this NPC can get character development or make important choices. In 1e, we got this with many APs so it's nothing new to ask.Hunh.
Other than Wrath of the Righteous, I don't remember seeing something like that in any of the ones I've run / read.
I am currently running the Strength of Thousands adventure path. In the 1st module, Kindled Magic, teacher Takulu Ot, who is the main point of contact with the PC magic students, has a two-page description in the NPC Gallery. This is to help the GM roleplay Teacher Ot.
In the 2nd module, Spoken on the Song Wind, Learned One Janatimo (CG male half-elf storyteller 12), a higher-ranked faculty member, takes over as point of contact, but he lacks an entry in the NPC Gallery. Instead, the module has a few descriptive sentences, such as, "Janatimo has heard about the heroes’ victories and wants to speak with them himself. He thinks that, with proper guidance, the heroes can be part of the next generation of teachers and representatives that the Magaambya needs." It also has a Question-and-Answer script so that Janatimo can answer the questions that the PCs are likely to ask.
What more would a GM need for running Janatimo? Well, Janatimo is also the leader of the Uzunjati branch of the Magaambya Academy, one of the five branches a PC could select. If a PC chooses Uzunjati, then Janatimo will become more important to them. This does not matter for the plot of Spoken on the Song Wind but it would lead to Janatimo becoming a recurring character in later modules. Hopefully, the GM will be able to roleplay Janatimo's character without hints by then.