One task that confronts every GM is giving characters a personality. There have been a number of articles on the subject here at Campaign Mastery and I have no doubt that there will be many more.

I tend to think of characters as coming in three different kinds or tiers: Feature Characters, Secondary Characters, and Walk-on characters. These roughly correspond to Stars, Supporting Cast, and Extras.

A GM’s creative requirements should vary according to the scrutiny a character will receive in the course of play: Stars get the most attention in-game and appear more often, or in more significant roles, and need to be constructed to the highest standard – PC-equivalents or better. Supporting cast occupy important and usually recurring roles but in a secondary capacity. They don’t need as much richness of detail as a star, but need to stand up to repeated scrutiny without seeming superficial. Supporting cast can be the easiest to create, or the most difficult; they need only the most superficial creative effort, but it’s easy to make them cliches or caricatures. Giving them personality, making them seem to be real people, can be quite difficult without investing excessive efforts.

This article will look at some of many different techniques that I use for the creation of NPCs of all types while focusing on just one. This technique consists of a core process that occurs in three distinct stages that dig successively deeper into the personality, it’s nuances, and how it will be expressed in-game.

Walk-ons complete phase 1 and then branch off into a “final polish” that readies them for game play. That final polish consists of selected activities from the later phases, and a number of activities that only happen in “final polish”.

Secondary characters continue the process through to the end of phase 2 and then branch off into their own finishing process that again readies the character to appear in-game. That finishing process has a lot in common with the walk-ons “final polish”.

Stars go through the whole process, all three stages, and then get a few final touch-ups in their own “finishing school” that readies them for use in play.

Phase 1: Distinctiveness

1.1 Hook

I always try to start with a “hook” or central concept. I call it a “hook” because whenever I go fishing for new ideas or more detail, it’s always to the hook that I turn.

Hooks can be

1. an ethnicity,
2. a religious or pseudo-scientific belief,
3. an occupation,
4. a socioeconomic position,
5. a name,
6. an appearance,
7. a choice of clothing,
8. a personality trait,
9. a political position or cause,
10. an attitude,
11. a relationship,
12. trappings or environment,
13. or a mode of expression / speech pattern.

In some genres, there are more options – paranormal abilities or personal magic items or a distinctive weapon choice or what-not. Not is this list exhaustive – you can (and will) always find more items to add to it.

The hook is something that is (or will be) distinctive about the character. It follows that some options may not always be available – if the character is not expected to ever be in a position to speak, a distinctive vocal pattern is fairly useless as a hook. But most of these will be readily obvious to a PC at a glance, or in the most superficial interaction.

The circumstances under which the character is to appear will dictate two or three of the above, and that normally rules them out of consideration for being the hook – what you want is something that will distinguish this example from everyone else in the role. Though you can deliberately choose one of those “mandated” items and cast against type, making that aspect of the character the hook. Unless doing so deliberately, though, it’s better to pick something different to a “mandated” item.

Example: Almost every village has a “leader” of some sort. The titles can vary, but should be consistent over a culture. This dictates the occupation of the NPC and restricts his socioeconomic position, and probably defines his ethnicity to boot. Unless deliberately going against type – a human “Mayor” to an Elvish community – you are better off picking something else off the list as the hook for this character.

1.2 Avoid, Embrace, or Undercut the Cliches

This is a critical decision.

“Avoid” simply means doing something other than the cliche. A scientist who looks like a nerd? Cliche. A nerd who is a highly-successful track-and-field performer? Distinctive. A Tolkienesque Elf who spends his time obsessively playing a fantasy football league instead of composing poetry? Distinctive.

“Embrace” means that you take the cliche on board as part of the description of this character because you have thought of something original to do with it. That probably won’t happen often, but I always ask myself the question at this point to keep my gray cells ticking over on the question. Every now and then, a “yes” happens.

“Undercut” means embracing the cliche and showing it to be a hindrance to the successful performance of the character in the cliched role – again, this only happens when you have a specific idea in mind. A military scientist who looks like a geek and who is less successful in his role because the military bully him? That undercuts the cliche of “geek”. A geek who is a military scientist because he revels in combat, is gung-ho and bloodthirsty? That uses one cliche (the bloodthirsty military type) to undercut the “geek scientist” cliche and results in a very distinctive character.

Most of the time, “Avoid” will be your choice.

Before you can make that choice, however, you need to mentally identify all the applicable cliches so that you know what you are choosing between. So mentally list the applicable cliches, and for each, ask the question: avoid, embrace, or undercut?

Note that it is unusual to embrace or undercut more than one cliche at once.

1.3 Avoid repetition

The other thing to avoid is repeating yourself (unless you choose to do so deliberately, for some reason, of course – “every cop in the city has a partner who is petite, brown-haired, and mousy” for example). That means quickly running your eye over the last half-dozen or so examples of the same role that you have generated, and making sure not to do the same thing again.

1.4 Bait The Hook

Given what you now know about the character, he, she, or it is almost ready to exit the process and head into polish (if it’s a walk-on). But not quite yet – first you need to make the characterization a little more internally consistent and justified. You do that by picking two more items off the list – three, if there was a relatively low degree of “mandated definition” – and filling them with “logical implications” from the hook or expressions/representations of the hook.

That’s sometimes not as easy as it sounds. Sometimes the hook doesn’t lend itself to being expressed in very many ways, all of which are already defined for this character. But it will usually be manageable with a little effort.

For example, if your hook is “Scottish red-head”, you might put something that invokes Scotland on the walls of the NPCs environment – a poster of the Scottish football team, or a beauty poster from a hair-die manufacturer, and you might choose to have the character wearing leather boots embossed with a tartan pattern, or wearing a tartan scarf.

These are all ways of expressing the individual uniqueness of the character in other ways that are internally consistent with that uniqueness.

Polishing a Walk-On

1.5 Name

Unless appearing only within a mob/crowd scene, the character needs a name if they don’t have one already. This might be a nickname, it might be christian name only, or title and surname only.

Try to derive one from the hook first, from any socioeconomic or ethnic definition second, and from any other source only if those let you down.

1.6 A story to tell

Every character needs a story or anecdote at the ready for any social interaction that might take place. This should be something personal, but it might be something recent or something historic. It need not be relevant to anything beyond the character, and it’s often better when it doesn’t have any further relevance. It might be “My daughter is running a fever and I’m worried about her” or “there’s a new coffee shop in town and I can’t wait to try it” or “I once visited Africa and was distressed over the hunting of elephants to near-extinction” or “I was born to money and abandoned it to feel relevance in my life”. As you can see from these examples, it should be something short – it’s a conversation-starter for the character.

At least one element that you have defined needs to reflect this story in some way – if necessary, define another one to the extent of incorporating the story. That might be a photograph of the daughter on the character’s desk, or a cheap-and-nasty coffee urn on a side table or a WWF pin worn (perhaps incongruously given the rest of the clothing choices).

1.7 Something to care about

Every character needs a cause or event of some sort to care about, something that will push them to exceed authority or normal limits. This can be something trivial, like always paying their bills on time, or a social commentary, like being distressed by falling standards of customer service, or whatever. If this can derive from the hook, do so, but I usually find it more valuable to make it something that puts spin or context on the hook.

1.8 Key PC relations

Every PC has one or more distinctive attributes – ethnicity, class or profession, reputation, fame, wealth, history,
prominence, religion. Any one of these might interact with the hook to produce a positive or negative reaction to that particular PC on the part of the character (though it’s equally possible that none of them will). I make sure that I have identified any “buttons” that will be triggered by a particular PC’s presence, or the reason for the PC interacting with the NPC, in advance, and may even script a couple of sound-bites in advance.

1.9 Document it all

The final step is to compile these decisions, and any associated notes, into a single coherent paragraph for quick reference. Remember, this is a walk-on role; the character is not expected to ever recur. The process and polishing has given them just enough distinctiveness to make them seem to be a person and not a cardboard cut-out. At best, they have enough depth to survive a single conversation with a PC, and/or a couple of in-passing encounters (the secretary of a more important NPC who will make multiple appearances in the adventure, for example). The process should have taken seconds. The extent of your notes and the depth of your prep should reflect this; be quick, be efficient.

But always remember that strange things have a habit of occurring when players get involved; it is entirely possible that the role will becoming a recurring one. Your notes and prep need to be substantial enough that you can recapture the character if that occurs, so don’t skimp too much.

The absence of completion

But wait – that’s all? Surely, you need to make sure that you have a description of the character / know where they live / know who the character’s immediate family are / whatever?

Actually, no. By giving the NPC enough color to be an individual, and making sure that this gets conveyed to the players, their imaginations will do the rest. If they ask for something you haven’t prepped, derive it from the hook if you can, from the cliches and your decision with respect to them if the hook isn’t enough, and from everything else you know about the character in the third place. But – given the relative “importance” of a walk-on – you will rarely be asked for more.

If, however, you are, pay close attention to the scene and the interaction with the PC, because it might be that the player is interested in making the character a recurring element within the game – they scratch some itch that the PC has, or has some mutual interests with the PC or whatever. There is a foundation for something more, and you need to identify what that is and how you are going to build on it if you choose to (or the player asks you too).

This was supposed to be one long article but exhaustion caught up with me – so I have split it into three. In the next part, I’ll continue to build on the process with Stage 2 and Supporting characters polish!