Image by Kristin Baldeschwiler from Pixabay, background tint by Mike

It happens to everyone eventually – you look at your plot and realize that one of your PCs is going to have to interact with an NPC in a one-off scene, an NPC with whom they might never come into contact again.

There are many different ways of handling this. Some GMs will use a random generator to create a personality and let it go at that. Others will look at the momentum of the scene and decide how easy the interaction is going to be. Still others will focus on making the interaction unforgettable or challenging, even if that means that the personality makes absolutely no sense in terms of the NPC’s in-game role. A fourth group will take the functionalist approach, defining the personality as something appropriate to the in-game position of the NPC, even if that makes the personality a little (or a lot) cookie-cutter predictable.

Today, the plan is to show you a better way. I’m going to use a modern setting for the purposes of this discussion, but the technique works for any genre of game.

At the heart of the technique is an eight-step process, so let’s spell that out first, and then look at the elements in detail, and how to enhance and refine the results.

The goal is to make even your throwaway characters sufficiently interesting and well-rounded that they are distinct individuals who are capable of sustaining ongoing appearances within the campaign – because you never know what PCs will decide to do, and their choices can transform the status of that NPC from one-off to recurring guest-star.

The last thing you want, therefore, is for any NPC to be boring cipher.

The eight-step process

1. Think about the previous character interaction that will have been experienced by this PC.
2. Do the circumstances of this encounter forecast or mandate a particular interaction between the PC and NPC? If yes, proceed to step 5.
3. Think about the preceding in-game PC-NPC interaction within the planned narrative, even if it was not an interaction with either this PC or this NPC.
4. Choose an interaction mode that will contrast with both the interactions identified in steps 1 and 3.
5. Given the in-game situation in which the interaction will take place, and the known personality profile of the PC, choose a basic personality for the NPC that will yield the desired interaction mode.
6. Given the in-game occupation of the NPC, and the minimum level of competence indicated by the interaction mode, select personality traits that are compatible with the result of step 5 and that justify/reflect that minimum level of competence.
7. In any aspects of the character not already defined, select one or two traits that are going to be memorable, expressive, and distinctive, even if they act to limit the future advancement of the character within their career.
8. Generate any other required parameters or traits accordingly to create a cohesive character.

Analyzing the process

Okay, let’s break this process down.

1. Previous interaction experienced by this PC

There are two things that you ideally want this encounter to contrast with, and the first is the last part of the story that this particular PC was involved in.

What you don’t want is for one particular player to be able to complain that every time he encounters an NPC, they are unhelpful, but other players do not encounter the same resistance. Or for one of the other players to complain that the NPCs always cooperate with the character belonging to Player X. You don’t want those opinions to manifest even if they are never spoken out loud!

But even beyond that sort of reaction, justified or not, ensuring such a contrast helps simulate the ups and downs of life, and makes the game feel more ‘real’ to the players in a broader sense, so it makes good sense, anyway.

2. Mandated interaction mode short-cutting the process

It might seem that this exclusion question would make more sense as item number one in the process, but there’s good reason not to do that; even though the interaction mode is being pre-specified by the nature of the encounter, having that previous interaction from step one in the back of your mind permits it to influence and nuance the dictated interaction.

For example, the NPCs employer might be allied with or otherwise supporting the PCs enemies, or simply be hostile toward the PCs for some reason; as a result, he has given instructions that his employees are not to cooperate. Or it might be basic corporate policy for this employer.

So the encounter is one in which the PC is to be frustrated and not to obtain whatever he or she is looking for – goods, information, cooperation, money, whatever.

That does not preclude the NPC having a different opinion to that of his boss, it simply limits what he can do about it. I had a similar situation arise a while back in the Zenith-3 campaign; during the encounter, the NPC was extremely regretful, but had to refuse the PC’s request even though he was not legally permitted to do so. The NPC then met the PC “by complete chance” shortly thereafter and ‘accidentally’ left the information that the PC wanted, and which was supposed to be publicly available, ‘lying around’ afterwards.

The encounter previous to this for the PC involved was one where the same ‘boss’ (a corrupt politician) had called in favors which resulted in a flat refusal to cooperate with another reasonable request from the PC. Clearly, there was a significant difference between the encounter described above and an outright refusal – but, nevertheless, it was a refusal to cooperate, as mandated by the situation.

Nuance can make all the difference in the world.

3. Preceding PC-NPC interaction within the narrative flow

The other thing that you want to contrast with is whatever was happening just before this encounter takes place. Except, of course, when you deliberately don’t want to contrast the two, but that tends to be an exceptional circumstance.

The motivation for ensuring a contrast here can be summed up, “Dice have no memory, but players do”.

Most of the time, the participants in one scene will have no knowledge of what happened in the scene immediately prior to this one, and the encounter should start from a neutral position (influenced by the interaction intended to occur, of course).

But, at the same time, you have to tell a cohesive story, woven around the PCs and their interactions with the game world, and the players know what has happened even if their characters don’t. It’s the players who are both audience and stars of the show, and their characters who are their roles in that show, and that can never be forgotten.

Contrast between scenes helps keep that story narrative alive and fresh and interesting, with ups and downs and highs and lows.

4. Contrasting interaction mode

My example earlier in the analysis of the process has probably taken most of the air out of this step of the process. Contrasting with one interaction is easy; contrasting with two separate interactions is a little harder, but still leaves innumerable possibilities for you to choose from.

But there’s one additional requirement to be met, and there are likely to be relatively few of those innumerable possibilities that survive that consideration: your choice has to advance the plot, or at least to enable the plot to advance. It has to fit into the overall story, in other words, and that can be the most constraining requirement of them all.

Life is so much easier in this respect if you have no pre-planned plotline at all, but there are such serious drawbacks to that methodology that I can’t recommend it.

5. Base personality profile derives from PC and interaction mode

Once you know how the NPC and PC are to interact, you can start to design a character that will have that particular interaction with the PC. Essentially, this involves giving the NPC a motivation for having that particular reaction toward the PC or for causing the PC to have that particular reaction to the NPC, or both. Nothing that does not contribute to this set of reactions should be considered fixed, not yet.



Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

6. Justify the minimum level of competence required

It will happen regularly that a character with the personality traits that create the specific interaction you have chosen will find their career path hindered by those traits. That’s true about half the time, in my experience.

Sometimes, this hindrance will be so severe that you have to wonder how the character actually rose to the position they are now to occupy.

The nature of that position makes a significant difference to this factor; a research scientist is different to a lawyer, who is different to a hot dog vendor, who is different to a wizard, who is different to a cop. So you have to start by thinking about the actual requirements for holding that office, and sketching out the beginnings of an implied personal history that ends with the character occupying his current position – perhaps securely, perhaps precariously.

The other half of the time, the personality traits can or will make the NPC more ideally suited to their current role. Most of the time, this does not pose a problem, but occasionally they can be so suited to the role that you have to wonder why they have not been promoted out of it; in such cases, you need to weaken the character’s suitability in other ways, just enough to justify the situation as the character finds it.

There are other solutions that can be employed occasionally – an employee recently fired or suddenly retired, or even suddenly promoted, forcing their supervisor/boss to act in both roles until they find a replacement, for example.

In almost all cases, this will sketch in additional character personality traits. Once again, though, don’t incorporate anything that doesn’t directly contribute to this requirement – not yet, anyway.

7. Make the character uniquely memorable, expressive, and distinctive

The next step is to add in a quirk or distinctive personality trait or two that will make the NPC stand out and be memorable. Care must be taken to ensure that these traits do not upset the careful balance that you achieved in the previous step – you may need to strengthen or weaken some of the traits that you added, or even replace them entirely with the quirk. There are too many combinations of traits and quirks and occupational roles to try to get more specific than that.

As an example, however, at one point a PC needed to consult with a representative of the New Orleans Historical Society at their offices – they were trying to track down some extremely specific and obscure information, the details of which don’t matter. Following some of the additional advice that will follow later in this article, I decided that it would be interesting and memorable to have the individual occupying a position as a historian (unqualified) to be fascinated by a particular vision of the future. So I quite deliberately made them a Trekkie.

This meant that the NPC could be quite knowledgeable and helpful, but also totally memorable. Especially once I threw in some blonde dreadlocks, peace symbols and other badges demonstrating activism and idealism to go along with that primary quirk.

8. Complete a cohesive character

By now, you probably have a fairly good idea of the personality of the NPC, and in most cases, that’s all that you need – see Creating Partial NPCs To Speed Game Prep.

Well, almost all. If you don’t have one in mind already, it’s time for one of the most critical decisions of the character construction – the character name. You may also need names for their employer, and/or for their boss.

I’ve written a LOT of articles on the subject of choosing a good name, why it’s so important, and how to go about it; you can find most of them listed in the Blogdex on this page.

Refinements

There are a number of further hints that can be applied to enhance and refine the process and its results. In fact, some can be relevant general advice even if you don’t employ the process described. I’ve already hinted at one of them – the second one on my list.

Image by LoggaWiggler from Pixabay

Interaction Mode flow, not stark contrast

Complete reversals of fortune are less common and strain credibility more than gradual morphing from one extreme to the other, with the occasional mountain or valley along the way.

But there are two flows possible, and you only need to accommodate one to tick this box – the overall flow of the plot is probably the easiest and potentially the most useful, but the flow of the plot from the perception of the one character helps to maintain a consistent narrative flow through the narrative thread, and is probably better in the long term.

There is, however, no need to be consistent in this respect. You can switch from one continuity flow to the other at the drop of a hat; this is a tool in service of the plot, and not a chain to bind you.

If there can be one rule of thumb in this respect, it’s that early in an adventure, it’s better to make the plot threads flow, and later in an adventure, it’s more useful to focus on the overall flow of the adventure rather than on the individual plot threads experienced by any particular character. But the differences aren’t absolute, and this guideline can be ignored at the drop of a hat if you find it warranted.

Occasionally, play against type

Playing against type happens so frequently that it has become something of a cliche, almost as ubiquitous as the cardboard cut-out. There was a time when this wasn’t the case, and playing against type was great characterization advice, but those days have passed.

Unless you get clever about it, of course. A character who is striving to overcome an innate lack of ability for some very good reason, where that reason is supported by the character traits that make them tick, is perfectly acceptable – if not overused.

A character whose personal focus is the diametric opposite of their professional focus in some respect – like the historian whose personal philosophy and ethos and ideals are grounded in a vision of the future – is perfectly acceptable – if not overused.

I think you can see the trend…

Subvert every cliche that you don’t embrace

I’ve given this advice before, I think. But it still remains excellent. There will be times when you want or need to embrace a cliche, in which case, go all the way with it, totally over the top – and then put a layer of characterization beneath the surface that doesn’t quite fit the cliche. This only works well if the specifics of the encounter give an opportunity for that subsurface layer to find expression in actual play or dialogue, however. If you can’t do that, then you can’t undercut the cliche and give the character depth.

If you can’t embrace, subvert. That goes beyond making the character the exact opposite of the cliche indication, it demands character traits that make the cliche absolutely impossible in this particular case – or that redirect it to support those it would normally victimize – the Tax Collector who supports the poor and vulnerable, the sleazy lawyer who hates corruption in public office and is willing to do whatever it takes, the rural cop who passionately supports minorities, the research scientist who can’t balance his checkbook because he gets distracted writing complex formulas on the stubs…

Organization traits, contrasts, and confluences

There’s a lot to be said for treating organizations as characters with their own personality traits, ambitions, lines they will not cross, quirks, and so on. These don’t mandate the personality of those who work for or serve the organization, only the ways they require the employee to behave. The character’s personality determines how they feel about and react to those mandates.

Characters whose personality traits permit them to act as required without qualms or conscience problems are likely to get retained, trained, and promoted. Characters who see ways to take advantage of the required actions to their personal benefit will often be capable of suppressing any such qualms or conflicts, and are also likely to do well – at least for a while. Characters who encounter difficulty in following the rules and policies laid down will not last and are unlikely to be promoted beyond the bottom rungs of the ladder. But sometimes these characters can suppress their qualms by doing ‘good things’ in their off-hours, rationalizing their ‘professional’ activities as the means of doing those ‘good things’.

For any given profile of an organization and a give character profile, there is an ongoing interaction – a relationship – between the two, just as there would be a relationship between two characters, one that can be as conflicted and complex as any other.

Use these facts to your advantage – when creating an employee and an organization, start with the relationship between the two; this will be directly related to the interaction mode between a PC and the Employee. So start with the defined facts and find the combination of traits that supports that, and the organization will define itself.

Fixed Points in a maelstrom

You can extend this principle to work backwards from known elements within the adventure to define unknowns, either before that point or subsequent to it. Using the principle of interaction mode flows, you can work both backwards and forwards to define the personalities of virtually every encounter.

This confers a sub-current of inevitability to the adventure in which each encounter feels like it perfectly belongs there, creating an internal logic and storytelling momentum that, even though it may not intrude upon conscious awareness, is nevertheless felt by the participants in the story.

Let it Flow

Humans are fairly good at perceiving trends. The momentum and internal logic that I just described are the results of an awareness of trends, flows, and sub-currents within the events experienced by their characters.

But that’s a side-benefit. The real payoff for this approach to character design and placement is that it is faster, easier, and provides greater internal consistency, which in turn creates greater verisimilitude – especially when coupled with the Partial Characters concept, which translates the principles of sandboxing to character construction.

So, let it flow!

Whew! It feels good to be back on my regular schedule! I expected the “post little posts as quickly as possible” approach to be liberating, but I found that it came with a lot of pressure to post something regularly – and while the approach made room for the medical testing that I needed, it simply wasn’t possible to post some parts as quickly as I wanted to, producing pressure to perform. So, while it got me through a difficult period, it is not an experiment that I will be rushing to repeat anytime soon…