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Favorite NPCs: June RPG Blog Carnival

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

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Characters Everywhere

Everyone has a favorite player character, whether it is one of yours when you were a player or one played by a member of your gaming group when you were game master.  It’s the character you trot out and reminisce about when remembering the grand adventures of the past.

But characters don’t live in the world by themselves.  The world is full of other non-player characters all run by the GM to give them something to do.  Someone to interact with.  Someone to fight.

Recently, Johnn Four, author of the Roleplaying Tips newsletter, send out a pair of articles on “3 Line NPCs” and ran a contest to see what kind of NPCs people would create to help him populate the Chaos Keep setting he is working on.  I, unfortunately, failed to make a submission, being a little too swamped by work and family responsibilities to have time to sit down and think of a good one.  However, the series and contest got me to thinking about all the NPC’s that populate our games.  As game masters, we’re always having to come up with new ones and are always looking for sources of inspiration.

Who’s Your Favorite NPC?

And that brings us to this month’s blog carnival topic.  Everyone has a favorite player character, but who is (or was) your favorite NPC?  Maybe it was a villain you faced as a player, maybe it was a favorite henchman, or some other inhabitant of the world that provided comic relief or stood out in some way.  Maybe it was an NPC you, as GM, put a lot of work into that you just loved to have pop up and help, hinder, or annoy your players.

For this month’s blog carnival, we want to you dust of those memories and spotlight your favorite NPC (or NPCs) from current or past games.  Who were they?  What role did they play in your game? How did your players interact with them?  What made them memorable?  Why did they stand out and cause you to like/love/hate them?

Share your stories and help us generate a who’s who of famous or infamous NPCs that can provide inspiration to all the game masters out there looking for ideas.

The Highwayman

Toady I’ll share a memorable NPC, though not my favorite.  I’m going to save that one for a post later in the month, but this one comes close.

Our intrepid NPC doesn’t even have a name.  At least not that I ever learned in the 4+ years gaming in that campaign setting (I’m sure he has one and I could find out if I drove over to my old GM’s house and asked him).  He was always just known to us as The Highwayman.  He set up shop on a small coastal road that was the only access to a town that had another important NPC that our group liked to visit for information and advice (That NPC was the former captain of the king’s guard).

Whenever you traveled down the road, he would accost you with a ringing “Stand and Deliver!” as he stepped out of the trees lining the road with his double barreled (very) heavy crossbow.  The game system was RuneQuest and one good hit from that thing would really ruin your weekend as it could punch through plate armor and still probably kill you.  He was only one man, but you didn’t want to take the chance of losing a character in a little skirmish.  It was easier (and safer) to just pay up.

Because, you see, The Highwayman wasn’t very bright.  He had a really low intelligence score.  He wasn’t really interested in taking all your money, he was operating more as a toll collector.  And since he wasn’t very bright, it didn’t really matter how many or what kind of coins you gave him.  You could give him brass pennies, copper crowns, or gold dragons and he would gladly accept any of them.  Of course we didn’t know that at first and since we were rich adventurers, we were mostly carrying silver and gold and paid with those coins.  Then after you’d given him the coins, he’d tip his hat, wish you a good day, and go back into the forest.

After a time we wised up and started carrying brass pennies when we went through there as it didn’t matter, although some of the characters still gave him gold or silver, just to be nice.  But he made a killing off us the first few times we went through there before we figured it out.

One of the final memorable moments with this NPC, before the campaign took us out of that area, was when we had been headed down to the small town (it was called Kir if memory serves.  I’d have to go dig out my old map to be sure) when we got wind of an invading force that had landed and was working its way up the coast.  We were spotted and were being pursued up the road when we heard the familiar “Stand and Deliver!”  We didn’t even break stride as we galloped past, tossing coins as we went.   A few moments later, we heard “Stand and De— <thump>”.  The force pursuing us had just ridden him down.  By that time we had become kind of fond of the guy as a part of the setting  and so, once the issue of the invading force was resolved, we went back to Kir specifically to make sure he was okay.  I think we kind of felt bad for what had happened.

In the end The Highwayman was memorable not because he was integral to the campaign’s plot but because he was a fun character that added life and humor to what would have otherwise been a boring bit of the game.  He didn’t really serve any purpose but flavor (and maybe to relieve us of a bit of our hard earned loot).  Still, he was memorable and one of the few NPCs that immediately sprang to mind as I was thinking about this topic.  and it’s been nearly 20 years since I played in that campaign.

Come Join the Fun

So who was your favorite NPC?  Share links to their stories in the comments below.  At the end of the month I’ll do a follow-up article to share a bit about the NPC’s highlighted and give everyone all the links.

Comments

Greyhawk – June 5, 2013 at 12:05 pm

Here’s mine, Vert: http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-favorite-npc-vert.html

Alexander Osias – June 6, 2013 at 6:09 pm

Here’s my first!

http://armchairgamer.blogspot.com/2013/06/npcs-of-court-adamantine-michael-canar.html

Craig – June 9, 2013 at 10:55 am

My entry is up and can be found here:
http://lunarshadowrpg.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/june-rpg-blog-carnival-favourite-npcs/

Wes – June 11, 2013 at 3:03 pm

Here’s mine!

http://perceivethings.blogspot.com/2013/06/my-favorite-npc-balthazar.html

June 12, 2013 at 6:00 am

The Gassy Gnoll: My Favorite NPCs (June RPG Blog Carnival) | Game Knight Reviews

says:

[…] month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is all about your favorite NPCs (hosted by the Arcane Game Lore blog), so I thought I’d bring up a few of my favorites from my own gaming history as both a […]

Edward Lockhart – June 12, 2013 at 7:15 pm

Here’s my ranting on the subject. Enjoy!
http://violentmediarpg.blogspot.com/2013/06/blog-carnival-favorite-npcs.html

Fitz – June 12, 2013 at 9:14 pm

Here’s my entry:
http://www.gameknightreviews.com/2013/06/the-gassy-gnoll-my-favorite-npcs-june-rpg-blog-carnival/

Great topic!

June 14, 2013 at 8:32 am

ReplyArcane Game Lore « Favorite NPC’s: The Gullwing Bandit

says:

[…] post on “The Highwayman” got me to thinking about one of the most notorious NPC’s in my Earthdawn game. For […]

yosimoshe – June 18, 2013 at 1:03 am

Here’s mine…
http://holilo.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/the-story-of-mellisa-lermondon.html

jedion357 – June 25, 2013 at 8:11 pm

Ok, I’m a little late to this but here’s my entry for the blog carnival, My Favorite NPC, That Never Got Very Far:
http://arcanegamelore.com/2013/06/25/my-favorite-npc-that-never-got-very-far/

July 28, 2015 at 1:50 am

ReplyThe Gassy Gnoll: My Favorite NPCs (June RPG Blog Carnival) | Gamerati

says:

[…] month’s RPG Blog Carnival topic is all about your favorite NPCs (hosted by the Arcane Game Lore blog), so I thought I’d bring up a few of my favorites from my own gaming history as both a […]

Resources for Campaign Design

This post originally appeared on the now-defunct Arcane Game Lore blog.

Today’s post was inspired by yesterday’s Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #577. I thought I’d share a couple of the great resources I’ve found recently.

Roleplaying Tips

The Roleplaying Tips Newsletter is put out by Johnn Four.  You get 2-3 emails a week with various ideas and links to resources primarily aimed at GMs and designers.  I’ve only been subscribed for a few months but the wealth of information received in that time has been amazing.  If you run or design games and you’re not already subscribed to his newsletter, stop reading this, jump over to the Roleplaying Tips website and subscribe.  There is also a blog you can follow.

Go.  I’ll wait.

Seriously, get over there and sign up.

All done?  Okay, let’s continue.  The topic of the specific newsletter that prompted this post was written by Perry W. Rogers and deals with building adventures by using the villain’s perspective.  I’m not going to rehash the entire article here, but the main points were:

  1. Create the villain and flesh him/her/it out in great detail
  2. Create the Master Plan
  3. Put the plan in motion
  4. Have the situation come to light
  5. Escalate and up the ante
  6. The pursuit of the villain by the characters
  7. The last gambit by the villain to try to get the Master Plan to work
  8. The villain’s escape plan (if any exists)

I think the style of campaign design was best summed up by the writers own words:  “I design the villain, and his plan. Then I stick the players in the middle, and see how it plays out.”

This style of game design resonated with with me quite strongly.  I think it is how, on a subconscious level, I’ve always approached the game design that I’ve done.  I typically set up a villain and what they are doing and write various contingencies (i.e. the master plan) for how things will play out based on possible player actions.  This article was great in that it provided a codified way to approach my style of game design.

Campaign Mastery

The Campaign Mastery website is another great resource for GM’s and game designers.  This site is actually where I learned about the Roleplaying Tips newsletter as Johnn Four is one of the authors there.  The entries here are often very long, many over 10000 words.  That said, the content is amazing in both it breadth and depth and I look forward to every entry.  The authors cover just about any topic related to designing campaigns and adventures and bringing your world to life.

One of the great things I like about this site is that you see the creation process “live” as it is going on in the authors’ campaigns.  They discuss things that they are currently working on and dive into their thought processes as they do the design.  Like the Roleplaying Tips newsletter, the amount of great material I’ve read just in the few short months I’ve been following the site is simply amazing.  And I haven’t even had a chance to dive into the archives of either site (which stretch back to 2008 and beyond).