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NPCs, The Many Faces of a DM
What can arguably be considered as the most important part of the game, non-player characters are who the players talk with and will spend the most time with. From simple monsters to noble paladin’s these figures have to be just distinct enough to make them feel real! One of the standouts I’ve run is an Elven Necromancer named Kaleral the Vile, an Elf who hates the humans for vilifying him and taking his races ancestral land so he wage’s a one elf war against them. Along the way, he picks up strong subordinates, and the players joined in as well. He is one of the NPCs my players remember because he felt memorable to them.
Nothing to Fancy
While you may feel the urge to make every NPC completely unique and have a paragraph or two of backstory, don’t. For most NPCs one sentence is enough, maybe two. A good resource for this that can be used as a guideline is this video by Runesmith. I used this as a template for over a year and just recently stopped using it as I memorized it, and found it easier to just list out the flaws.
But that doesn’t mean every NPC has to be written down. Victor the Blackpowder merchant was a made-up on the spot NPC. Matt Mercer created him on the fly and is a memorable and great NPC. I say this really to just encourage you to not be afraid to wing it as first like I was.
Relationships
Don’t be afraid to make an NPC want to be a friend of a player character. It can make for fun times if there is a personal investment, and they will like the fact someone care’s about their character. It can also encourage role-playing in not too heavy role-playing games. You can also have relationships between NPC’s which can be awkward as you do all the voices, but like anything else, it gets easier with time.
DM-NPC’S
Meaning Dungeon Master non-player character, it usually is used in a negative connotation, and for good reason. It means a self insert character from the DM that usually railroads the campaign, or gets all the rewards. The horror stories from them are terrible, and many people say if you enjoy running NPCs you have to make them less prominent to avoid making it a DM-NPC. I say nay to that. You can easily have NPCs you have a personal connection to that doesn’t influence the party or railroad the campaign. I have a deep connection to every NPC I run and I have also gone out of my way to make sure none of them Railroad the game.
NPC Villains
These I struggle with. It seems to be easy to make a mustache-twirling villain, but I like more depth. Most villains I run either make peace with the players or fight to their last breath for an Ideal the party could never hope to understand. As I have grown as a DM I have made the villains much harsher, making them also more realistic. One of them has only wanted to free their town from a tyrannical ruler and saw the player’s characters as supporters of the Tyrant. Demons are a thing I use often as well as they are always easy to run, naturally beast-like and evil. But it always comes back to making them seem human, even if they aren’t. If you succeed at that player’s will remember the villain.
The Voices of NPCs
Don’t be afraid to use crazy NPC voices. Paraphrasing Matt Colville, It’s only a weird voice for the first minute, then it’s the character’s voice. I started by not doing many voices more focusing on phrases or tonal inflection. You could spend hours researching language and what words different classes use, researching synonyms and using the more french and Latin based words for the Rich. For the poor, old English with a spattering of some Latin based words can make them seem simple to slightly educated.
Practice, Practice, Practice!
After a little while, you’ll get used to doing voices, and there is always some way to improve yourself. I have a feeling this is a skill will alway’s be working on to perfect, and I love that. Dungeon’s and Dragon’s excel at giving you a set of skills that you may never use at anything else, but they are so fun to learn! NPC’s are a passion of mine as I have gone 4 or 5 sessions straight with no combat before only dialogue and travel. Those sessions always stick out to me and make for fond memories.
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