6 Tips to Make Better Non-Player Characters

“How many of your crops are like this?” the Constable asks.

Rosdan, the local farmer who asked for this meeting, looks right into Constable Yerip’s eyes and says, “All of them sir. There’s not a single grain that isn’t tainted.”

Yerip steeples his hands and sits back in his chair. He sits for a moment thinking. “What happened to the few people who ate the grain?”

Rosdan paused and then said, “they turned into monsters. There’s something evil in that grain and I don’t know what it is. It might have something to do with that star that fell not one month ago. I tell ya sir, twas a bad omen to be sure.”

Yelp holds the tainted stalk of grain up to you and your companions. “What do you make of this adventurers?”

You hold it up to your nose. The stalk which would normally have the familiar scent of summer and the harvest bears a sickly sweet stench that seems to hide something more bitter. The stalk that was once golden is now turned a purplish color. Very faint blue lights can almost be seen within the veins of the plant. You hand it to Bophregar whose eyes glow for the briefest of seconds.

“The tainted stalk of grain leaks faint magical energies. This fact does not bode well for the people of this village. I recommend the rest of the tainted crops be burned immediately and not consumed. Other foods must be procured.”

Constable Yerip stands and says, “Well that’s the problem. We have no other food stores. We must find the source of the taint and destroy it. Actually, that is why I called you adventurers here. Can you please rid us of our taint?”

So what would you like to do?

Welcome back to the 17th episode of How to Be a Better DM.

It’s me again, your host Justin Lewis (yes I do have a name). I’m here to help you craft ever better stories for yourself and your players as you dungeon master sessions of D&D 5e.

I want to thank you all for coming back week after week. Lately, I’ve gone through some personal struggles and I’m very grateful for those who enjoy the show even when I don’t feel like myself while doing it. You guys are awesome and are the real stars of this show. 

Now let’s talk about characters, specifically Non-player characters. For those of you who are the newest of the new at this, a non-player character is simply any character in the story that will be played by you. In that, it’s kind of a misnomer because even though you are the DM, you are still playing a game with your friends, a fact that by definition makes you a player, but I digress.

These are the characters your players will interact with and will use to help immerse themselves into your world. So they gotta be good right.

But making characters that come alive can be really hard. So here are a few tips to help make better Non-Player characters.

1. Think about their purpose

All of your NPC’s need a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is just to make your players laugh and add in some comedic relief. Sometimes the NPC is just there to buy and sell items or to move the plot along. Sometimes the NPC is the plot. Most of the time, your NPC’s will have a mix of multiple purposes. Knowing the NPC’s purpose will help with everything else in the story. Just be prepared when the players decided to take the purpose you’ve designed for your NPC and twist it and generally muck things up. You might have a simple merchant that the players decide they really like so they spend way more time getting to know their back story than should’ve ever happened. Oh well.

1. Give them something memorable

With each NPC that you want your players to remember, give them something memorable. This might mean making the NPC funny, or rude so the players remember the interaction with the NPC. Or maybe you give them a defining feature that you constantly bring up in describing the interaction because the players’ characters keep noticing it. Maybe it comes out in the voice you use for the NPC. The best way to do this is probably to think, “What do I want my players’ characters to feel about this NPC or after they’ve interacted with them.” That generally helps create the mix of memorable traits. For NPC’s that are supposed to be very memorable, make their traits that much more memorable. 

1. Know what the NPC Wants

With NPC’s you either need to understand what they want or be able to answer that question quickly while improvising during your session. This will help the players know where they stand as well as whether or not incentives align for the NPC and the party. For most NPC’s you probably won’t need to know the answer to this question (and its accompanying questions) but for those that you do, it often helps to write down this info. 

1. Don’t overwrite your NPC’s

I think a mistake I myself might fall into is either fleshing out the NPC completely or not enough. I’m usually either not using content I’ve created for my NPC or making stuff up on the spot during the session. Therefore you need to cultivate the skill of understanding how much is enough for your NPC. I think a good rule of thumb is building out your NPC based on how much “screen time” they’ll have. If your NPC is a bit player, don’t worry about fleshing out whether they like beer, mead, wine or whiskey for their drink. If the NPC is set to reappear over and over, you might want to make sure you know what the NPC is doing off screen, and why they do what they do. 

1. Make the NPC’s Changeable

Speaking of what the NPC does off screen, you want to make sure that both the actions of your players and the world wide events around you affect your NPC’s. In fact you want your NPC’s to make their own choices as well. It talks about this in the Dungeon Master’s Guide but as time passes NPC’s shouldn’t be static. Things should happen in their lives and the passing of time should be noted. Maybe they’ve decided to farm a different crop rather than farming the same crop they’ve been doing for years. Maybe their child has grown and left to join the army. Perhaps they’ve decided to close their store. Whatever happens, make sure it doesn’t affect your story plot or if it does, make sure there’s a reason why. You can’t just close an NPC’s store down just because (though you might be tempted to if you’ve given the storekeeper an annoying voice).

1. Copying Cool Characters is an Ok place to start

This is my personal opinion, but adding cool characters to your story that you’ve pulled from other stories is totally fine. Most characters are based on archetypes and tropes anyways so adding in a Yoda-like character is totally ok. You’ll never get it exactly like the original character and your players will probably feel the familiarity of the NPC and enjoy having them in the story. Now after you start with those transplanted characters start experimenting and trying new things. Maybe instead of just adding Yoda to your campaign, you make him a combination of Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street and Yoda. When you copy someone else, take the copy and add a twist to make it your own. But remember, don’t plagiarize or steal commercial copyrighted property when doing this for money. For home games, feel free to play a campaign that features Darth Vader, Harry Potter and Gandalf. 

Well hopefully these 6 tips help you make some awesome characters. I know they’ve helped me. Keep making great characters and telling great stories. 

I’d love to keep the conversation going so feel free to reach out to me on Instagram. Just send a message to @geronimolevis to let me know what you think about these tips, or to share any tips you have from your campaign. I’d love to get your opinion.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week. Until then, let’s go ahead and roll initiative.

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