We’ve done a few articles now about the real-world strategies that support your game, so let’s wade into a topic centered on spicing up your game content.
Today’s article is about how to make interesting NPCs! I’ll go over two main strategies for building fascinating characters in your world, including knowing their motivations and knowing how to subvert familiar tropes.
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It’s common knowledge that most roleplaying games out there succeed when the audience loves the cast of player characters. Ask any fan you meet; they all can give you an instant answer about who their favorite character is and why.
Less common perhaps is an answer to which nonplayer character is a clear favorite. NPCs often fall by the wayside, serving as cardboard cutouts to dispense information or sell pints of ale. These lackluster characters lead to repetitive conversations, boring shopping scenes, and ultimately degrade the integrity of the world. So how do we save our worlds? By creating exciting NPCs!
Know Your Motivation
A fast way to make an NPC meaningful is to decide what their motivations are. “Know your motivation” is a common phrase in beginning acting classes for a good reason. Keeping the motivation or agenda of an NPC in mind while you roleplay them gives you a great idea of what to do next in an interaction.
These motivations can be simple, like an innkeeper needing to earn money for a new summer home, or complicated, like a villain dealing with a devil to avenge their slaughtered family. Whatever the scope, having the desires that motivate your NPC in mind breeds richer interactions.
NPC motivations are just as important to consider as player motivations because when the two align or conflict, exciting action is bound to arise.
To take the motivation principle one step further is to acknowledge that NPC motivations can (and often should) change. Player characters usually discover a lot about themselves and how they fit into the world throughout a campaign. If your nonplayer characters evolve in the same way, they feel like real pieces of the developing story.
For example, your players burned down the innkeeper’s establishment. That innkeeper’s motivations would likely move from collecting savings to collecting vengeance. Or, consider what happens when your players resurrect the villain’s slain family; perhaps that same villain now becomes an ally. These changes guided by player action are a prime example of how NPC motivations can radically raise stakes in your show.
Subvert Familar Tropes
Let’s face it, the fantasy genre is built on a pyramid of character tropes. Buxom barmaids, forgetful wizards, rogues from broken families, the list goes on. Those tropes exist for a good reason: they are fun and relatable. People have an idea of what they’re getting into, and they can get into it more quickly with tropes. You should not subvert every trope.
Since you know that, you can now use the power of the trope wisely. If every single NPC in your campaign is a predictable trope, your audience gets too comfortable. To the point of being bored. Equally so, if every NPC is an complicated anarcho-re-envisioning of the genre, your players and your audience won’t be able to keep up. They might move on to find a game that clicks a little better.
The best shows marry the worlds of tropey hilarious characters with a handful of surprising NPCs that shape the events of the world. As a general rule, the best NPC candidate to avoid tropes with is the villain of your campaign. The most memorable villains in media are the ones we all can relate to a little, and achieving that feeling often requires a more complicated motivation than those you find among familiar fantasy tropes. I did say that some fantasy tropes are good to have: the villain’s “this is why I did everything” monologue at the end of the campaign is the true exception to this rule. Ultimately, if you create a well-mixed band of NPCs, both your players and your audience will enjoy them.
In Closing
In summation, if you build your NPCs with motivations in mind and use the power of the trope wisely, you can populate your world with exciting characters. When your background players are interesting, you invite your players to interact with them in interesting ways, your audience becomes invested in their lives, and your grow your world. So get on out there and make some unusual suspects!
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