A Cast of Thousands: Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Games
A Cast of Thousands: Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Games
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A Cast of Thousands: Non-Player Characters in Role-Playing Games by Graeme Davis (Reprint)
Early roleplaying games were all about monsters. Magazines published endless new beasts, as well as articles on the design and effective use of monsters. Some writers even ventured to suggest that monsters should be more than Just Another Thing to Kill, and offered suggestions on presenting them as thinking beings with purpose and culture. At the time, NPCs were given scant consideration. Most were either merchants to buy gear from or town guards to be beaten up whenever they tried to rein in the PCs’ out-of-dungeon fun. That is what prompted me to write this article, which was published in White Dwarf magazine back in 1986. Things have moved on since then, to be sure, but these ideas can still be useful.
NPCs can always add a great deal to a game, whether they be monstrous or otherwise - and while you can run any game without monsters, it is virtually impossible to do without NPCs. They are the medium through which players and referee communicate; they are both fine tools and powerful weapons, and should be handled with great care and thought.
To this end, I present the ‘3P’ Plan for Making NPCs Real People. The three Ps are Purpose, Personality, and Potential; three facets of the NPC - three sets of questions, if you like- and once you put together two or three answers in each category, the NPC begins to come to life.
PURPOSE
Every NPC in a role-playing adventure has a purpose. Some purposes are grander and more vital than others, but no NPC is without one, and the first step in running an NPC is to understand their function within the adventure’s plot. Here are a few of the more common NPC functions:
1. Patron. Many adventures start with someone getting in touch with the player characters about a job. The basic function of a patron is to divulge information and get characters started on the adventure. The patron may be a single character, but the function can be fulfilled just as well by a crop of rumours, or a book or computer entry discovered by chance. It is seldom important how our heroes get on the track of the next adventure, just as long as they do. For this reason, patrons can be the most underused NPC class, which is ironic because in many ways, they have the most potential.
2. Foe. Even those few scenarios which do not need to involve fighting will always have NPCs who are inimical to the player characters and who will try to prevent them from achieving their objective. This is the NPC category to which monsters most commonly belong, and one of the most abused, usually being cut or shot through without a second glance from the players.
3. Clue. As an adventure progresses, it will often be necessary for the referee to leak certain information to the players. Call of Cthulhu is a perfect example of this, where a whole phase of the adventure is taken up in finding out precisely what is going on. This class of NPC, whether they themselves know it or not, possess information which can be useful to the party, and it is generally necessary for the party to seek them out and coax the information from them.
4. Objective. Every adventure has - or should have - an objective beyond the simple ‘kill the monster, grab the treasure, count the experience’ motive, and occasionally this objective will be an NPC - a hostage to be rescued, a defector to be recovered, an enemy leader to be murdered, or whatever.
5. Obstruction. It is possible for one or more NPCs to constitute an obstruction without actually being a Foe. Consider, for example, the policeman in a Call of Cthulhu game who runs the party out of the graveyard minutes before - unknown to him - the ceremony is due to begin to summon Something Nasty from Out There. He is an inconvenience, but not really an enemy, whatever the players might conclude.
6. Sidekicks. These are the ‘extras’ - troops, henchmen, followers, cannon fodder, call them what you will. They have a rough time in most games, taking all the risks and doing all the dirty jobs when a player doesn’t want to put his character at risk, all without a word of thanks or a penny in reward. Many referees, taken up with the running of the bad guys, neglect the poor sidekicks and assume that they will meekly do whatever they are told; on the contrary, they should have minds of their own and definite opinions about the way they are treated.
7. Wallpaper. This class of NPC is at once the most and least important of all. These are the people on the street, the lift operators, the reception clerks - all the people who might be expected to be around, without having anything definite to contribute to the storyline. Their purpose is to make the backdrop against which the action unfolds look and feel genuine - just like walk-ons in a film or TV scene. Without them, the illusion is weakened, and so long as they are around, you always have the option of letting them get caught up in the action. The fact that they have nothing definite to contribute does not mean that they have nothing at all to contribute - on the contrary, it gives them greater flexibility and consequently greater potential.
PERSONALITY
If purpose tells you why NPCs are, personality tells you what they are. There is more to it than just rolling up a few statistics and working out a couple of attitudes and mannerisms - you need to know exactly what makes this NPC different from any other. Unless you know each NPC as an individual, you will play them all as cardboard cutouts.
Obviously, there is no point in taking this to extremes, but you should make sure that you have all the information you need to play the NPC effectively. The amount of detail you will require depends on the size of the NPC’s role in the adventure; major NPCs will require as much detail as player characters, while the desk clerks and lift operators will require somewhat less. Things to consider include race, distinguishing marks, special equipment and skills, and attribute scores, which will actually have some effect on play.
As well as determining how much data to record, the NPC’s purpose can give you a starting point when considering character traits and game statistics. The less exceptional the role, the less exceptional the character’s skills and attribute scores, while a two-bit hood is not likely to be interested in culture and good works. All fairly obvious stuff, I know, but it’s surprising how much you can sort out simply by stating the obvious.
I don’t want to dwell on the complexities of NPC characterisation too long - it is an area literally without limitations, and a great many very useful words have been written about it already.
Some games provide ‘Instant NPC’ tables, which allow you to generate the whole character with a series of dice rolls, right down to hat size and favourite colour. These can be useful if you’re really stuck, but the more complex they are, the more contradictions and anomalies they can throw up - the prime example is the ‘NPC Facts & Traits’ section in the 1979 AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. However, a couple of exploratory dice rolls can give you a start on a personality when all else fails, provided that you are prepared to ignore, amend, or re-roll results that don’t fit.
POTENTIAL
Purpose and personality are all you really need to know to run an NPC satisfactorily - they enter, strut, and fret their brief hour on the stage and are gone - but the difference between an adequate NPC and one who will be remembered beyond the end of the adventure lies in an awareness of the character’s potential. You wouldn’t expect a player to use his/her character at anything less than maximum potential, and by the same token, you owe your own characters - the NPCs - nothing less. A lot of work will have gone into some of them - don’t waste it.
Potential can seem like a tricky thing to assess, but part of it, at least, follows on from the purpose and personality which have already been established. Purpose tells you what you need the NPC to do, and personality will give some indication of how he/she will go about it. You also need to ask yourself whether the NPC is aware of their purpose in the adventure, and if so, where the purpose fits in with other priorities. Every character has ideas, ambitions, and motivations, and these should have come out through your work on the personality.
For example, the purpose of guards in most role-playing games is to give our heroes some kind of a fight before they reach their goal, so that they can sit back afterwards, contemplate their wounds, and feel that they have achieved something. The guards themselves might see their purpose a little differently, preferring to raise the alarm and fighting only if they have a very good chance of an easy victory. Priorities will be preservation of self first, raising the alarm second, and protecting the guarded area third. Actually fighting to the death will come a long way below that.
As well as the group objectives, there may be personal objectives. Let’s say that the guards are orcs, and one of their group objectives is the taking of prisoners (when possible) for questioning and slavery (or lunch). The sub-chief in charge of the unit might have other ideas - for example, he might try to recruit the party to murder the chief, taking them in as ‘prisoners’ and arranging for them to escape, armed, at a critical moment.
Many NPCs can be stretched in this way beyond the immediate requirements of the scenario, but stretching must be done carefully - too much of it and the adventure will collapse in a writhing mass of subplots from which the players will be lucky to find their way out. However, it is one of the best ways of adding depth and credibility to NPCs, especially those who have more of a role to play, and it can usually be done without detracting from the main thread of the action.
In real life, things are seldom as simple as they appear on the surface, and role-playing scenarios can profit from this example. For instance, motives need not be what they seem. A wealthy patron hires our heroes to do a job - why? The simple answer might be that he wants the job done, but there may be more to it than that. If he is wealthy - and by the same token, powerful -why does he approach a band of independent adventurers rather than using his own people? Maybe he doesn’t have the right kind of specialists at his disposal, or maybe he doesn’t want his own people to know. Maybe, too, he wants to be able to disclaim any connection in the event that things go wrong. All perfectly reasonable motives, but the situation may not be that simple. Let’s say that the job involves the recovery of a stolen object. Is it stolen? Or are the party being tricked into stealing from its rightful owner? Is the patron what he seems? He may look like a wealthy noble, but is he? He could be working for an arch-enemy of the party, leading them into a set-up, or he might be hoping to use them to create a scandal or an international incident. And is the object what it seems? Is it a holy relic or the prison of a demon lord’s soul? Is it the prototype for a revolutionary new device or a clever mock-up containing a fortune in illicit drugs? Even if the patron is genuine and the whole job is perfectly legal and above board, the patron would have to be an exceptionally trusting soul to give the party any more information than is absolutely necessary, and if it is to his advantage to withhold information or to tell them lies, he will almost certainly do so.
Foes need not be the obvious type; indeed, the most deadly assailant is the one who is not seen coming because he looks like someone else - a desk clerk, say, or a lift operator. Conversely, if you take an NPC of no real importance and play them up big, you can have the players chasing their tails for ages trying to work out where he fits in.
‘Objective’ NPCs need not be all that they seem, either. In a fantasy game, captives might be placed under some sort of charm or compulsion spell to lead their rescuers into traps, or they might have been captured in the first place just so that they could be rescued, having been brainwashed to perform some evil task.
Sidekicks, as has been noted, tend to lead a hard and thankless life, and this may make them prime targets for the party’s enemies, who might bribe or otherwise persuade them to betray the party, steal some object, and so on. Severely disgruntled sidekicks will probably desert when the going gets tough, or might even attempt the murder of one or more characters.
NPCs can add a lot to a game if they are broadened out in this way, but you must be careful not to overdo things. If you use all the devices I’ve mentioned in one scenario, the players will eventually give up trying to sort out what is real and what is not, they will lose interest (and hope), and things will begin to fall apart. This kind of device is best used in small quantities.
The best NPCs are those who make it from one scenario to another - the evil genius who always contrives to escape, the policeman or bounty hunter who dogs the party’s every move, Joe the bartender who knows all the best gossip, even the friendly, eager-to-please shipboard computer - these are your star turns, and you should look after them with as much care as the players look after their own characters. Don’t become too attached to them, though, especially if they are the party’s enemies; accusations of bias can ruin a game, and players will quickly become disenchanted if they sense that their characters are nothing more than fodder for your arch-villain.
As well as having the time to develop in depth of character, these long-lived NPCs can provide a sense of continuity and provide one of the easiest methods of turning a series of disparate scenarios into a coherent campaign. The patron may have another job for our heroes (he may even use his knowledge of the first job to blackmail them into the second); the arch-enemy might reappear, bent on vengeance; the policeman might be determined to nail them for something - anything - after what they did to his reputation; there are many possibilities. As these characters grow and develop through time, they might change in their roles and their attitude to the party. The patron might decide that they know too much and try to get rid of them by sending them on a suicide mission or setting them up.
Trusted sidekicks might, as already noted, become embittered, frustrated, and hostile, selling the party out or deserting at a vital moment. Remember that NPCs continue to grow, develop, and change after you’ve got them down on paper, and that they will react to what happens to them in the course of a campaign.
In conclusion, never lose sight of the fact that non-player characters are characters, no less than the characters who happen to be controlled by players. The only difference is that they are played by the referee. Take as much care over them as you would over your own PCs, and make sure that you have enough information to run them properly before you start. If you look after your NPCs, they will look after you - and they have a lot to offer. #
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Non-Player Characters for Your Games
Many thanks to Graeme for letting me reprint the article above. I’ve created books of NPCs you can use in your games. Check them out.
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