‘Young’ by pixabay.com/werner22brigitte

It’s a funny thing, but once you’ve thought of two or three tips on an important subject, other thoughts on the same subject start crowding in. This was going to be a quick article listing a handful of tips, things that I always keep in mind when creating an NPC, but then the ideas started flowing…

Some are broad guidelines, some are things not to do. Still others are character elements that I normally consider must-haves. As more tips crowded into the available writing time, of course, the depth with which I could explore each naturally diminished, so I can only hit the highlights of most of them.

Everyone has a different approach when it comes to creating their characters; these are techniques that work for me, but they might not work for you. But hopefully at least one or two can be added to your regular routine, and there may be exceptions to that routine when they can provide an extra helping hand.

So here are ten of my best tips for creating NPCs!

1. Never Forget The Character’s Purpose

I always make sure that the NPC serves the plot or relationship purpose for which they have been created. And the first step is always to make sure you know what that purpose is. It might be to deliver information to the PCs, it might be to do something, it might be to function as an antagonist or an ally – every NPC always has a purpose to fulfill. Anything more that you get out the character beyond that is a bonus.

Bonus Tip

You can never tell which NPCs will become regular fixtures within the campaign, aside from those deliberately designed to do so. So I never assume that an NPC is going to be a throwaway; they are all designed with the potential to grow into a more substantial role within the campaign. That way, when I need a character three adventures from now, I start by revisiting the ‘throwaway’ NPCs from the past, with a view to reusing one if I can. This not only builds continuity and verisimilitude into the campaign, it makes it feel like its all one world, even if players aren’t aware of how you’re working this magic. On top of that, it can save me a lot of prep time!

2. Never Start With The Numbers

There was a time when the first thing I did when creating an NPC was to reach for the dice to generate stats. Quite often, that meant patching the character’s role within the campaign or replacing it entirely. Misfitting between stats and function can spur great creativity from time to time, but it can also lead to horrible malfunctions. These days, I never roll dice for stats, and stats are often the last things that I generate if I do them at all – refer Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep.

3. Appearance Is Important

There are two things that I always try to use to tell the PCs who a character is. The first is Appearance; I’ll get to the second, later.

That means paying a lot of attention to minor nuances and broad impressions. It sometimes means photoshopping additional elements into a character portrait – for example, a union organizer’s badge onto a cap or shirt pocket. On one occasion, I had to replace all the buttons on the shirt being worn in a photograph to convey the nuance that I wanted.

Other times, I’ve been able to employ cultural icons to shortcut the process of identifying the character, for example using an image of J.R. Ewing, as played by Larry Hagman on Dallas, to represent an eccentric Romanian Lawyer in the mid 1930s. Instantly, the character became an Americanophile, affecting his attitude, his speech, his patterns of behavior. Perceptions of the character also immediately shifted into the twilight of morality, which is what we wanted; the NPC was there to (metaphorically) sell the PCs a gift horse, and we wanted them to be looking into it’s mouth, counting it’s teeth and legs, and looking for the fly in the ointment of something that seemed too good to be true – basically, because it was. Creating the attitude that would lead the PCs to discover the rest of the adventure was the purpose of that NPC, and getting the appearance right served that purpose (and gave the NPC a lot of free color).

Things are a little more difficult if you don’t use images to depict your characters. It’s easy to take descriptions so far that by the time you get to the end, the players have forgotten the beginning. You have to condense the heck of descriptive narrative, and you have to actively seek out other ways of delivering important bits of information.

4. Always Have A Handle

Something I always do is make sure that I have a handle on the NPC by deliberately building one in. This is a shortcut to getting into character, often a more succinct synopsis of who the character is. It’s often informed by the purpose that the character is there to serve. Anything else can be tossed aside except that purpose. (See 3 Feet In Someone Else’s Shoes: Getting in character quickly for other tips in this area).

The key point I’m making with this tip is to do whatever you can in the design and construction process to make it easier to get into character quickly when you have to play that NPC.

Tip 9 has a test to use to measure how effectively you can get into character in advance, permitting design tweaks before the NPC appears in play.

5. Look For Ways To Be Distinctive

Distinctiveness gives players a handle with which to relate to the character quickly, making it quicker and easier for them to roleplay interactions with an NPC. I always try to anticipate group-conversation scenes in which the NPC might appear and make sure that the NPC will “stand out” in some way from that group; this is a further function of distinctiveness that is subtly different from the first. The two are not fully interchangeable, though sometimes the one mark of distinction will achieve both.

I’m not great at giving different voices to NPCs, and nuance is often lost when gaming in a crowded situation, so I have to achieve most of my efforts in this direction in the form of speech patterns – which can be more subtle – and the occasional badly-faked accent. I’ve developed techniques that aid in the latter, which you can find discussed in The Secret Arsenal Of Accents.

6. Don’t Be Abnormal If You Don’t Have To

It’s very easy to shade an NPC into a caricature. If that’s what I’m deliberately aiming for, fine, but most of the time what I want is something rather more “ordinary person” – even if what I’m creating is a religious fanatic or ninja assassin or whatever. This acts as a brake on distinctiveness, preventing it from getting out of hand.

7. Subvert Cliches More Often Than You Represent Them

When I rebooted my superhero campaign back in 2001, I began what is now an 18-year crusade against cliches and cardboard-cutout characters. Several articles here at Campaign Mastery have addressed the issue, but it started with the character creation guidelines issued to the prospective players of the rebooted campaign.

It forced the players to stretch beyond their previous experience, but it says something that most of those players are still players within the campaign and that at least two of those early characters are still active in the campaign (though one has had multiple ‘owners’ through the years) – and that those characters are still growing and evolving, while remaining true to their core personalities.

Nevertheless, a cliche that is implemented with a clever twist is often faster and easier to create than a completely original character, and there are times when that’s a necessary shortcut, or an appropriate choice. And, on at least one occasion, an NPC deliberately invoked a cliche to mislead the PCs as to his true nature and motivations.

My rule of thumb is to make sure that I break the mold more often than I use it as a template. My ‘good guys’ almost always have some shady corner somewhere – it might be in their backgrounds, or in their personality, or just be a potential to go too far in certain circumstances. Very few of my antagonists have no bright spot, or (at least) the capacity to claim to have one. And both are inextricably affected by circumstances as the character perceives them. Which keeps them fresh and dynamic. The day that stops being the case for a particular NPC is the day to start thinking about that character’s imminent retirement (though I’ve usually laid some preliminary plans in that direction, anyway, just to be on the safe side).

Something that I will take quite a lot of time over is getting the PCs to trust an NPC if that’s appropriate, especially if the NPC is initially perceived as an enemy. It takes time to build a relationship like that; only when that status can be metaphorically ticked off does the character get to advance to the next stage of their plotline.

Don’t be afraid to play a long game. Design characters to evolve and grow into what you need them to be, whenever you can. It pays big dividends in the long run.

8. Better Than A PC?

One trap to look out for is creating an NPC who is better at something than the PCs. There are times when that’s fine – creating a villain who has to stand up to the entire group of PCs, for example – but there are times when it’s demotivating to the players. In particular, I never create an allied NPC who is better at the PC’s shtick than the PC is, without also saddling them with a crippling shortcoming of some sort.

9. The TV Tests

Record a TV show that regularly has dialogue between two characters whose personalities you know well. Playback that section of the show, pausing after each character says something, and then reply in the persona of an NPC that you’re creating (translating anything that doesn’t fit the milieu into a statement that does). If you have to stop and think about it, the character is insufficiently delineated in your mind.

Next, find another section of the recording that meets the same criterion. This time, predict what the other character will say in response and what your NPC would say in response to THAT. This tests the speed with which you can get into character. If you can’t immediately respond in character, your ‘handle’ (see tip 4) is inadequate.

These two tests are simple but surprisingly comprehensive. As a general rule, they will push the character in the direction of simplicity and cliche, so it becomes an acceptable design technique to deliberately go too far in the preliminary design process, then simplify and ‘clean up’ until you reach a satisfactory compromise between distinctiveness and playability.

One word of warning regarding this technique: when using a character in play, you will usually have other things on your mind and may be more mentally ‘tired’ from hours in the GMing chair. I used to be able to GM for 20 hours straight; these days, I’m exhausted after about 6. Part of that is being better at the job, more focused, and playing to a higher standard, but part of it is getting older, and part of it stems from increasing physical infirmity that has to be overcome.

None of those debilitations is in effect when running the test, so make allowances and don’t mislead yourself into a false sense of security. Run the test just before heading for bed, when you’re tired, or make sure that you precede any appearance of the NPC with a rejuvenating break.

10. Start Telling The Story With The Name

This is the other half of the story that commenced with Tip #3. You have virtually total control over the name of the character; sure, you can pick some vaguely-appropriate name that has no significance whatsoever, but you can also use the name to tell the players quite a lot about the character.

Ethnicity, Social Class, Self-Image, and even Personality can be expressed – at least in part, and in a preliminary way – by the name and by the way the NPC gives the name.

Picture a well-dressed NPC, slightly youngish, who has just been asked his name or put into a circumstance where offering it is culturally appropriate. The character takes a deep breath, sighs, and says in an almost-regretful tone, “My name is Galahad Jones.”

Right away, you can tell that the christian name is distinctive, and that the character finds the name to be a burden to live up. He would have been teased mercilessly as a child. He is naturally inclined to be a good guy, but feels hemmed-in and unable to be human because of the name and the pressure that it places on him. If he ever does find a situation that enables him to fully let his hair down, he’s likely to go way, way too far.

Or perhaps the character draws himself erect and announces with a sniff, “I am Harold Hawthorne-Sainsbury the Fourth, and don’t you forget it. You may refer to me Sir H.” Instantly, you know that we’re talking about a flake off the extreme upper-crust, British, possibly American, an exerter (and demander) of privilege and possessor of a deep-seated insecurity (this is skirting very close to a cliche, however, so use this one with caution).

Or, for a third example, the character grins, sticks out his hand, and announces “Bradley Hawthorne-Sykes the Third – call me bud! Good ta meetcha, buddy!” – the character expressed is at odds with the formality of the name, and indicates a character who is so comfortable with his social rank and its privileges that he doesn’t need to grind them in the faces of everyone he meets. He also sounds like someone who genuinely enjoys people and tries to meet them all from a standpoint of equality and respect.

That’s a lot to get out of so little.

Good NPCs should be rich, fun to play, and interesting to encounter. They should fulfill their plot functions with flair and style. The interesting thing is the way so many of these desirable attributes help make the others easier to achieve.

Second Bonus Tip

Oh, one more thing while I’m in the vicinity – no NPC exists in isolation. They all carry part of the campaign background with them, and – if they get the chance – make that background accessible to the players. Of course, for some NPCs, that is their sole or primary plot function, but even when that’s not the case, I always try to take advantage of the opportunity that the NPC presents in this area. Just something else to keep in mind when creating your NPCs!