Purpose

The first thing I think about is the purpose this NPC is going to fulfill.

Is this NPC a villain, a hero, a resource/ally for the player characters, someone who adds verisimilitude (worldbuilding), or an information source?

My main concern is to define the primary way they’ll interact with the player characters. That decision narrows down how much detail I need and the nature of those details. If the NPC is a quest giver or information source, I probably don’t need to create a stat block or a list of resources beyond what will be useful to the players. A villain will require different information.

What Do They Want?

Everybody wants something. Even an ascetic wants a bowl of rice and a cup of water.

Understanding what the NPC wants is an absolute must. You can have a fascinating character description, concoct a silly voice, and a full stat block. If you don’t know what they want, then they are inert.

The NPCs function in the adventure or campaign will help to narrow the possibilities. An inn keeper in a rural village is not likely to be searching for the Rod of Seven Parts but an arch-mage might be.

What Are Their Obstacles?

Something is always blocking us in our goals.

An NPC wants something and they have to overcome something to get it.

Heroes stand in the way of the villain.

The villain stands in the way of peace and prosperity in the kingdom.

The obstacle an NPC faces in achieving their objectives motivates them to do something to get it.

It could be that very little is standing in their way and that’s where the players come in. If the players want to prevent a villain from getting what he wants, then they have to be that obstacle.

What are they doing to get what they want?

Passive NPCs are boring NPCs.

If the Dark Lord is just sitting in his tower brooding about how he could take over the world if only he had the Chaos Staff but doesn’t do anything about it; then he might as well not exist. Players might decide to raid his tower because what else are they going to do?

What works better is when the NPC is actively working to achieve their goals. If the NPC is a lawful or good figure, then they may try to get the party to help them achieve their goals. If the NPC is trying to conquer all the land, then their activities are going to impact the safe havens player character rely on for rest and refit between adventures.

What/Who Are Their Resources?

We all have resources. They are the tools we use to get what we want and overcome our obstacles.

A wealthy merchant has a sick daughter. The healer says he needs a rare herb that only grows deep in the swamp. The merchant is not an adventuring type. He wants his daughter to get better. The swamp prevents him from doing that but he has a resource. Money. He deploys that resource to get adventurers to overcome the obstacle he can’t overcome himself.

With powerful NPC’s or monsters this can be quite a list of resources.

Magical items and abilities, minions, weapons, large amounts of money and political allies are all potential resources the NPC might have at hand. The more important the NPC the longer this list may be and more complicated the interactions with the player characters.

How Will They React?

Player characters are active in the world doing things. Some of the things they do will be detrimental to an NPC or faction in the game world.

I can anticipate some of those interactions and jot down notes about how an NPC will react to certain choices from the players. The better I know a group of players, the better I can anticipate their response. I’m not going to get this right 100% of the time but I do manage it frequently.

I create NPC’s, give them objectives and resources and then set them in motion.

When players make a choice that impacts the goals of an NPC, I role-play that NPC or make some decisions during my preparation time. I decide what the NPCs do about the player characters who are causing them headaches. I base those responses on what the NPC wants and the resources they have at hand.

What Can I Exaggerate?

One way I make memorable characters is by exaggerating something about them.

I exaggerate an accent, a mannerism, appearance, clothing choices, spell selection, or a detail on a weapon. Sometimes I’ll use a random table if I don’t have an idea.

I keep a notebook of observations I’ve made of people with odd quirks. Several of the entries are particularly annoying co-workers. I grab one of those quirks, give it to an NPC and then exaggerate it.

The characters meet an NPC with bad body odor. Hours later, the smell is lingering on their own clothes and the only way they can get rid of it is to wash. They may not remember the link boy’s name but they will remember how his horrendous body odor lingered on their characters and got them thrown out of the tavern.

Stat blocks

I want to have a firm idea in my mind or on paper of who the NPC is before I think about how they are represented in the game mechanisms.

We don’t experience other people as mathematical quantities. We think about people in terms of how they make us feel. We think about nearly everything in terms of how it makes us feel.

The function they have in the game, their goals, obstacles, actions, and resources of an NPC tell me what the class (if any) of the character should be, what their STR or INT should be, and so on. Those other elements are what players can learn about the NPC. They won’t ever get to see the stat block and since the game experience is what I describe to the player at the table, I want to put most of my thought into how the players are going to interact with that character. In classic D&D, the stat blocks only matter if the players fight the NPC.

If I don’t think players are going to fight them or the NPC is a zero level human with no class abilities then I don’t write down stats at all. It’s easy enough to roll a D6 to find out how many hit points they have if the players insist on attacking the guy.

I will sometimes create a custom mechanic for a unique and important NPC like a new spell, a magic item, or magic like ability.

What About Backstory?

I don’t create detailed backstories about non player characters. I will sometimes write a timeline or a list of events in the NPC character’s life. What I care about is what the NPC is like and what they are doing in the moment the players encounter them. What the NPC did prior to that only matters if it has some bearing on the decisions the players will make in play, something I need to know in order to decide how the NPC responds to the players choices, or some element of the campaign world I want to communicate to the players.

If I know the NPCs objectives, obstacles, actions, and resources; then I know more than enough about the character to improvise some element of their past if I have to.

Sometimes, I have to improvise information about an NPC’s backstory because a player asks something I didn’t anticipate. If the NPC will continue to be part of the campaign, then I record whatever thing I improvised in my session notes. I transfer that information to my notes about the NPC in my campaign binder after the session. If the PCs kill the NPC or move on to another part of the campaign world then I don’t bother.

Conclusion…

That’s how I go about creating major NPC’s for my table top role playing games.

What do they want?

What are their obstacles?

What are they doing to get what they want?

What are their resources?

How will they react?

What can I exaggerate?

What game mechanisms fit this NPC?

What parts of this NPC’s backstory might be relevant to the players or the actions the NPC takes?

Other Resources

The Alexandrian… his posts on NPC’s have been very helpful to me.

On The Non Player Character by Courtney Campbell of the Hack & Slash Blog is also a very useful resource. I don’t use the social combat system as it is written in the book but I do use many of the concepts and the random tables in the back when I get stuck for an idea.