and the Dungeon Master for
Geek and Sundry’s Critical Role,
and welcome to my video series with
tips and tricks on Dungeon Mastering
or Game Mastering your own RPG. Today, we’re
talking about NPC creation: one of my favorite topics.
[trumpet fanfare]
MATT: Things you want to consider when
creating your NPCs: first and foremost,
are they a major or a minor NPC? I mean, if you have a lot of
free time on your hands, you can flesh out every person
in the world to an extreme degree, but at the same
time, that can get a little… ominous. So when
you’re thinking of a minor NPC, you want to think
of just the basic elements of their character:
think of their name, their sex, their race, their
class (if any). And they don’t have to always be
classes from the player’s choices – they can be
Merchant, they can be Butcher, they can be the guy
who cleans the bathrooms in the space lodge, you
know? You don’t have to be too particular, but
note those things. Note their general alignment or
morality, if they have any political or social
affiliations in the world that you’ve created or
you’re currently running. That helps as well. If
they belong to any guilds. Any major allies or
enemies they might have. But all you need is quick
notes just in case those come up in conversation.
As you get more intense about NPCs, and more major
ones, you start considering, “What are their
ideals? What are their desires? What are their fears?”
Those are really cool driving elements
that you can understand where that character
exists in your world, and when players have
conversations with them, where a lot of their
answers would come from. You also want to keep a
little note on what their disposition is towards the
players. Sometimes they’ll start indifferent,
or even hostile, but depending on their actions and
how the players interact with them, they can
become their friends. [baby voice] Their fwiends. And
you want to make sure you note that on the
side for future use if they ever come back. Or, if they
do something really terrible down the road,
that can completely flip to the other side.
[serious voice] Not fwiends.
Also note their appearance, their equipment, what their
special skills and mannerisms may be,
especially if they’re going to be a recurring NPC. And if
they ever decide to fight alongside the
party or help them out tremendously to some extents,
you want to know what they’re capable of
and maybe hint that to the players through some
social encounters, which is kind of fun.
If they’re planning to go into battle, whether it be as an
ally or an enemy, put up a combat sheet that
generally lists what abilities they have. You can
definitely make things up on the fly, but I prefer
and would recommend having something solid on the
side at all times, even if it never comes into
play, just in case it does. It’s really helpful, and
you’ll be glad you had that, as opposed to
sweating it last minute going, “Uh, I– he has,
um– laser sword.”
If you’re doing silly voices, like I do– I do a lot of
silly voices. A lot of them. It helps keep
the psychosis at bay– keep a note of what type of
vocal texture or tone or accent you used for that
NPC so if they come back later, you can quickly
reference the ballpark of where you had them. If
they had a high, shrill voice, if they had a thin,
reedy voice, if they had a low, gravelly voice, if
they had a very intense militaristic tone, if they had
a particular dialect or accent, just write
little notes in the side to that NPC so that you know
exactly where to jump in if the players go,
“Oh, we’re going to go visit Timmy this week!” and
you’re like, “Timmy? Timmy was nine months ago.
[voice cracks] I don’t remember what Timmy sounds
like.” But they’ll remember. They always remember.
There are also a lot of great resources and a lot of
source books like the RPG Dungeon Master’s or
Game Master’s Guide or any of the source books,
the main books. They have really great tools for
creating NPCs that involve personality traits,
story hook backstories for them, and cool places
to branch off and create someone from, so don’t be
afraid to do some research. Don’t feel like it’s
lesser of you to pull from the books; they’re there for
a reason and they’re wonderful resources.
One of the most important aspects of a good story,
though, is a good villain. And creating a good
villain can be many things but it’s something you
want to make sure to put enough energy and effort
into. For one, not all villains think they’re villains.
Their morality may be skewed, and they
have their own personal goals, but what they’re doing
is for their own beliefs and for their own
personal interests, and they may see others as the
villains of their own story. So try to flesh out
why they’re doing the things they’re doing. What
are the driving experiences in their life that
gave them this twisted righteousness? What acts
have they done in the past that mark them as evil
in this world or from the player’s perspective?
These are cool things to keep in mind going
forward. Also, good versus evil, black and white,
that can work every now and then, but it’s really
fun to play in areas of gray. As you will find
out, or have already, players tend to play in
areas of gray. No matter how good you make your
characters, weird, sometimes not-so-good things
happen in games and characters spontaneously end
up dead and you have to hide bodies. Happens.
Often. So, you know, villains also can play in areas
of gray. Sometimes a character who starts
good can turn evil. A character that starts evil
can turn good. Sometimes they just borderline that
middle area where even the players aren’t sure if
they’re good or evil for a lot of the game and
it’s one of those, “Are they useful in the moment?”
It’s fun to leave those questions up to
them and let them make those choices. And you
secretly know what the outcome is. Haha!
Now as far as grandiose villains, it’s good to
choose an archetype. And a really great reference
that I pull from is the classic DnD book called
Book of Vile Darkness. The 3.5 one in particular
has a wonderful breakdown on deliciously built
villains. They have archetypes like the scheming
liar, the tyrant, the sophisticate, the misguided fool,
or the monster. These are all different,
great personality types that you can build a great
villain off of. The sophisticate, in particular –
one that’s very involved in societal, grandiose
attention, and uses society to get their means,
and sees themselves as definitely an erudite and
above-it-all type persona, is really fun – versus
the monster, which is the straight-up murderer,
a person that relishes in the death and destruction
they cause. You can pick from any of these and
customize and alter from those bases, but I
find that those are five really cool bases to
build a villain off of.
And then once you’ve created a cool villain,
consider how much power do they wield? Are they
solo? Are they just this unbridled force of chaos
in the world, or do they have a network of
henchmen and people that work for them that
either agree with their cause or at least can be paid
enough to go along with it? Is there some sort of long
reveal that you can build the character
towards? – something about their history that’s either
dark or very surprising that you can,
later on, pepper in clues to as the players progress.
These are cool things to discuss as you’re
building this villain. And don’t be afraid to let
the villain have a grandiose death, no matter how
attached you are. If the players are really smart
and really intelligent about it, sometimes the
final encounter may not be as epic as you think,
and you don’t want to steal that from the players
just because they were really clever and really
intelligent in how they approached it. Just make
sure you give him his Hans Gruber final scream as
he falls off the building into all of oblivion.
Thank you guys so much for watching! We’ll have
more of these videos available for you to watch on
the geekandsundry.com website and we’ll see
you next time.