How to create NPCs
Easy peasey NPC-sey: Complex characters don't have to be complicated to write
Image of a wiley character by Daniel Locke from ECO MOFOS!!
A good NPC is one that is both memorable and seems to have some sort of inner life, a life that the players can think about and turn to their own advantage in play. I always like to refresh myself about how other people handle this sort of thing, and systemetise it, to see if there’s anything that could make sense for my own writing.
The first blog I looked at was To Distant Lands, one that looks at trying to mimic the particular style of NPCs in Zelda games. This is something I have a particular fondness for, particularly with my love of Majora’s Mask, a game that is basically all about NPCs with very particular needs. As the blog says, Legend of Zelda NPCs are vivid and extremely into their bullshit. They’re ridiculously single-minded in what they’re interested in and what they hope the Player might help them with.
I like this approach very much, as it very quickly creates a memorable character with particular needs. They do, however, err on the side of caracature, which is fine in some more gonzo scenarios, but can be a bit distracting in others.
A little more subtle, perhaps, is Chris McDowall’s Mash-up Character Method. This recommends that you take recognisable archetypes or cliches, and add a twist by combining them with animal characteristics, to add flavour and nuance. This approach is great because it gives you a great key into how to portray them as a GM, even hinting at their voice or mannerisims. A travelling salesman combined with cat creates an instant image of a smiling sycophant who sidles around, trying to ingratiate themselves, then turning to snarls when things don;t go their way.
And then there’s Zedeck Siew’s approcah from the zine, A Perfect Wife. Here, an NPC is briefly described with one defining charactaristic (11 years old/One armed/heavy make-up), named, and given 3 “skills” which really help place them in play. You know what they’re good at. It’s like the Zelda-style approach but more flexible. Here are three of the local “Refugee” NPCs, that you roll for to add to any location in this close-knit city setting (Bolding is Zedeck’s own):
An eleven-year-old. Suki. Organising, hauling, shortcut-taking. With five siblings to support, she has stopped school. Is a gofer for most businesses. Has keys to most back doors.
A one-armed man. Uncle Tin. Marksmanship, bushcraft, forgetting. His panther tattoo marks him as a former resistance fighter. Cheap rum in his pocket. An assault rifle in his flat.
A woman, heavy makeup. Sanda. Dancing, drinking, scrimping. Go-go dancer. Annoyed that the the new girls at the club pinching her regulars. Uncle Day’s favourite niece.
So if we break it down, there’s 3 basic descriptors (gender, physical quirk, name), 3 things they’re good at or known for, then 3 extra background details, about their situation, place in society and something actionable, possibly key, in bold. All together they create a rich snapshot of an NPC that’s both easy to remember and embody. In Zedeck’s other work he often includes a line of speech from an NPC too, which is a great crutch when starting to voice the character at the table, at the same time as revealing a great deal about their personality. And taken together, reading all the entries gives you a real sense of the community that these characters will form during your game, creating a vivid picture, something that helps you to embody all of them as GM.
The last model I’m going to look at here is the Cast List from the script for The Thing, which takes a very similar approach in a different medium. It’s obviously dated in places, but it does give you enough to play them at the table, and even sets up internal conflicts:
An image of a page from the script of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).
Reading them through, you know nothing of the plot of the film, but you do know that there’s a great deal of tension here in this space. Just the two lines of “Hates it here. Good at his job.” and “Hates it here. Lousy at his job.” gives a lot of juice for both roleplay and how they’re going to act in stressful situations. One’s going to fight for the community, the other is going to scarper at the earliest opportunity.
It was this approach that I was really trying to mimic in the d66 NPC list that I put into the ECO MOFOS!! book. A name, an agae, a salient detail, a motivation and something that can be discovered. This is something I learnt from making a bunch of GM-less games (Gathering Storm, Our Place No Place), that you could create a complex inner life with just two details- a Role in their community and a Secret that they hold. The tension between these two (randomly combined in those games) gets players to embody their characters in an interesting, nuanced way. They’re no longer just a Soldier, they’re a Soldier who has a secret lover. Not just an Archivist, an archivist who was once a collaborator.
I wrote these just so if the GM ever needed a reasonably fleshed-out NPC in the largely procedurally generated world, they could grab one from this table rather than rolling one up. If I was rewriting these, I think I’d give each a Burden, the emotional baggage that I added to Eco mofos instead of Cairn’s Fatigue. Players always lean into their Burdens in roleplay, so it would make sense for NPCs too- they are Weary, Arrogant, Shamed, Vain, Sad and Enraged. Each of them would certainly give instant flavour to any NPC.
A page of NPCs from ECO MOFOS!!
So if I was going to give a formula for creating strong NPCs with economical writing , I think I’d combine several of these approaches and write something like this:
Name, rough age, notable physical detail. Skill, Skill, Skill. One Obsession. One Secret. One Burden.
So:
Dillanger, late 40’s, thick pink glasses. Laughing, smoking, deducing. Needs New Things. Is ashamed of their past cowardice. Weary.
I can imagine Dillanger running a weird curios shop, getting friendly with the Players, and trying to pursuade them to gather new stock. They can’t get it themselves as they don’t trust themselves to follow through going to dangerous places. This constant tension between wanting new things to look at and being unable to procure things directly makes them Weary.
I think each style of setting needs a slightly different approach, but this feels like a solid starting point.