It is always a surprise to me when in groups and forums we hear about Dungeon Masters leaving all their NPCs to improvisation on the fly.
Yeah, some need to be invented on the spot, just due to the fact our players will often (sometimes intentionally) go to some weird and wonderful unexpected places. This is part of the thrill of the game!
But to leave all the NPCs to be invented in real-time does yourself and your players a big disservice because, like any narrative, there are some characters who are crucial to the action, but also you surely want your players to remember the events long after they are over.
When you craft characters that your party feels like they know, when they think of them fondly (or with great anger), and they think they could predict that character's response to events, then you have really been successful.
Here are some character archetypes to consider for your next adventure:
1. The Instigator
- Not to be confused with a player who starts fights amongst the party!
Consider some of the epic stories we all know and love. Think about the hero and how they get involved in the adventure.
Very often there is a person, central to the plot early on, that kicks everything off and ropes our hero into the story.
In Joseph Campbell's Heros Journey, the hero often needs to reject the call to adventure to begin with.
Even when the players meet in a tavern, there is usually a Quest Giver - someone lurking in the shadows who needs a task completing, knows of a great treasure, a dragon to kill.
Another form of Quest Giver, however, is one who implicitly provides the quest for the party to go on. Perhaps this NPC is also the BBEG and attacks the party? Maybe the players hear about a Lord who has had his daughter kidnapped? It could be the quest begins because a huge-ass dragon lands in the village and starts burning things up!
This is your instigator.
Behind the scenes, it is good to have a character instigate your adventure because this character can help provide the players with answers in character rather than you tell them directly.
This also means the instigator doesn't necessarily have to be 100% in the know or honest with their intentions ...
2. The Advisor
Following from character archetype #1, the instigator could be an advisor or otherwise a helper to the party to get going.
Tradespeople, such as armourers, shopkeepers, tavern owners, and so on can be good as advisors, because they naturally hear gossip and have wares to sell.
A Wizard, Cleric, or alchemist or other specialized operatives can be good too, especially if your adventure has magical or spooky elements!
Advisors can be used to impart local lore (and law) to the players, give them good background information, history, context, strategic, and cultural insight.
3. The Fixer
Every big bad evil guy needs henchmen and lieutenants, those are usually part and parcel of any adventure.
A particularly pivotal, and memorable, kind of bad guy though is the "Fixer".
Think of Darth Vader in Star Wars A New Hope. He was the Emperor's right-hand man but was subordinate to the boss of the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin.
Did kids play as Tarkin or Darth Vader in the playground?
4. The Sidekick
Just having a sidekick around can give the players options, such as sending the character off on errands, leaving them as a lookout, as a pack mule, and so on.
More importantly, as your players get more and more powerful due to leveling up and gaining magical items from their adventures, the risk to their own characters becomes less compelling.
We need your characters to feel some measure of peril, to fear loss.
What better than a sidekick character that they can grow to care about, be protective of, who can get the players into trouble, and can become a focus for motivation.
5. The BBEG
No list of important NPCs would be complete without the Big Bad of the story.
I have written about great villains before so I won't repeat what I said there.
What I will say is that your villain doesn't need to be obvious, or even physically or magically powerful.
A nice twist is when one of the characters above betrays your party and becomes the BBEG! Maybe the antagonist deceived your players all along and was the mastermind the whole time...
Thank you for this mindful post! I think everyone has to invent themselves an approach to reach the characters. I use an NPC who is statistically peasant, but knows some street info, because he tries to tag himself with a group of people to get some money for booze reasons, and sometimes he pass through some place he probably shouldn't, and accidentally hears some info. Generally party loves this guy, they offer him some beer and ask questions about the village/town/city/surroundings. I think it's a good way to socialize.
I also use some asshole characters who are not fighting against characters, but party find them extremely cringy. Sometimes party do something and have those characters in debt, and sometimes they just don't interfere and walk away.
I love the street urchin as ear to the ground intel source! It's like in police procedural tv shows where they have a confidential informant who is strictly a criminal but gives info to take down the big bads :)
In one campaign, my friends and I had a NPC dwarf in the party named Dagg who says “profound” stuff just so we can randomly say “Dagg yo” for absolutely no reason except for occasional humour.
I love it, and the fact you told that story proves the point - you might remember Dagg in 10 years but the rest will become faded like your adventure journal notes pages ;)
There’s that and the critical fail that became a recurring meme for our bard historian who denies the existence of Yak Folk like lizard people.
Thank you for your witness vote!
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BEER.Great post ! I've got a few NPC's that have been kicking around and developing for a very long time now.
One in particular came to the fore a couple of years ago, she was very much the fixer type in the town she is based in. The party passed through, spent a lot more time there chasing red herrings than expected. I thought it would be a shopping and re-supply stop that would take about 15 minutes of play; they ended up being there for nearly three months.
Now, one of the characters gets a tick every time the name "Merielle" comes up, growls and says she'll go back and settle scores one day, and the player isn't much better. I'd say that's job done.....
Your players holding a long-lasting grudge is like a gold medal of character creation and world-building, congratulations ;)