The Care and Feeding of NPCs
By
Matthew McFarland
The majority of the characters in RPGs are non-player characters, alternately called “storyteller characters” or “cannon fodder”. This essay gives some guidelines and advice about to portray NPCs effectively — without stealing the limelight from your players.
NPCs take on many different roles in a story. Some are just passerby, not really all that important (the guy that sells a character a newspaper, for example). Others have standing roles and personalities, but aren’t important to the ongoing plot. I had a character in a Werewolf game who had a rather adversarial relationship with his landlord (yeah, a werewolf was renting an apartment. He didn’t feel like sleeping outdoors, OK?). The landlord didn’t matter much to the game as a whole, but he did lend some color to the character’s life.
More important NPCs can be allies, rivals, or just plain enemies (note that I avoid using the word “villain”. That’s because I detest it, along with “hero”, “good/bad guys”, “evil”, “good”, and other meaningless absolutes). These characters — the ones that will play important roles in the story and that the characters will see and interact with time and again — should be as carefully crafted as any player’s character. If that means extensive notes, fine. Normally, I’ll make up character sheets for any NPC for whom I think stats will become important.
Character’s allies and friends are tricky characters to play. Nominally, they are there to help the characters (or at least the one they’re attached to), so common sense tells you to give them skills that will aid the character. After all, if they’re useless and unskilled or have the same specialties as the characters, they’re either redundant (in which you’re wasting energy playing them when you could be running the game) or they’re playing the Dr. Watson role (letting the characters explain everything and asking the questions that the characters don’t ask).
On the other hand, if the characters all have allies or friends who have highly useful skills or carefully guarded secrets, the game can rapidly turn into “Hey, my brother’s an ex-Navy-Seal-turned-archeologist! I’m sure he’d love to go digging into these cursed ruins with us!” The game is not about the NPCs, it’s about the player’s characters, and the game should be tailored to them.
Along these lines, another thing to avoid is deus ex machina. The phrase means “god from a machine” and it refers to old Greek theater when plays were typically resolved by a god (pick one) descending from on high (in this case, above the stage and being lowered by a machine). In literature or film — or roleplaying — a deus ex machina occurs when some very contrived circumstance solves the problem at hand. Read Tartuffe by Moliere for a good example (it wasn’t Moliere’s fault, of course — he was getting pressure from the king to…ah, never mind).
OK, back on track. In RPGs, the most common deus ex machina occurs when the characters get into a situation they can’t handle and some NPC shows up to save their lives (check out the Giovanni Chronicles series from White Wolf for some great examples of this. Heather and I avoided that in the Giovanni Chronicles Epilogue, thank you very much). In some circumstances, this is all right. If the players have had plenty of warning that they’re entering a situation they can’t control, and do it anyway, bringing in someone to save their bacon just might be preferable to wiping out the entire lot of them — but make sure they feel the consequences forever. If, however, the characters are reasonably well-informed and well-equipped and you make the foes too tough just so Jerry the Wonder-Llama can show up and save the day, you’re stealing the players’ thunder. That’s a bad idea.
(An aside here: If the characters decide to ask someone along to act as backup, or call someone during a fight to save their bacon, that’s not god-from-a-machine, that’s being smart. Know the difference.)
Another thing to avoid with allies is using them as bait too often. In the comics, girlfriends of superheroes usually exist for one reason only — to get kidnapped and/or killed and spur the hero into action. This sort of thing is okay in small doses, but don’t make it a habit, first of all because it’s clichéd as hell, and second because it frustrates the players. Also, the players who are most susceptible to this sort of treatment are the ones who invest time and energy into defining relationships with NPCs, and they will be justifiably upset if the NPC they spent an hour detailing and writing a history for is suddenly kidnapped by a vampire prince and changed into his willing slave. Not saying it isn’t okay to do that sort of thing, but give the players some foreshadowing — behavior changes, subtle cries for help.
And that brings us to another important note for allied NPCs — be consistent. Get a sense of how the character talks, behaves, what s/he will react strongly to, etc. Why? Because if you need to show a change in the NPC, you want the players to recognize it. It may seem simple, but I’ve run games where an important NPC started down the road to damnation (or wherever) and the characters didn’t notice the hints I dropped because the NPC had been too erratic to begin with.
Enemy NPCs are another can of fish altogether. Since they normally provide the conflict in the story, it is very important to understand their motivations. Forget the movies, forget the comics, forget TV. You want to see complex rivals and adversaries? Read. Skinny Legs And All by Tom Robbins has a really great antagonist whose motivation for nearly plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust is love of God Almighty. Doctor Frankenstein went into his little experiment with the best intentions, and look what happened to him! And Edmund, my favorite character in King Lear, all he wanted was for his father to notice and love him. Not very evil, right?
I mentioned earlier that I don’t like the word “evil”. That’s because it doesn’t really mean anything. Nobody wakes up and says, “Hmmm…I’m evil. Must destroy the world today.” People rationalize, they create reasons for the horrible things they do. Some folks are indeed sadistic, but even that’s different from being nasty just to be nasty.
All this diatribe in mind, when you create an enemy for the game, do your homework. Where has this character spent his/her life? It’s perfectly all right to have rough ideas and then change things later; one of my most successful NPCs started out as a minor character that the players went to for information and evolved into such a reviled figure that people would snarl if I mentioned her name. Yet people understood her — she was a victim of unrequited love and had been swept up in the supernatural just like many of the player’s characters. Some characters liked her, most did not, but everybody who met her had an opinion about her.
When creating NPCs of either stripe, decide on a few things from the get-go:
• Appearance. Figure it out. Then write it down. This is a good piece of advice to give the players, too; my brother had a character whose hair kept changing color because he’d forgotten his character description.
• History. You don’t need to know everything, but a general idea of how the NPC spent his/her life is important. This is especially critical for NPCs that have torrid pasts involving one of the player’s characters.
• Mannerisms. Bad habits, accents, modes of dress, whatever. Make the NPC special in some way, because players tend to be bad with names.
• Motivation. As mentioned, this is especially important for enemies. But even allies need to have motivation; after all, they aren’t just helping the PCs for the fun of it, right? Why do it? What would they want in return?
• Destiny. Do you have an end in mind for the NPC? I’ve been known to introduce NPCs in early games, let them develop relationships with the characters, and then kill or use them in some other nasty way as a plot device. Likewise, you might have some idea of how to resolve a plotline with an enemy, and that may require some miraculous escape. Just be careful — players are unpredictable and clever, and if they corner the enemy, said enemy better have a way out that doesn’t look forced! (Now that’s frustrating).
Well, now that you know how to create NPCs and how not to use them, let’s break them down into categories a little more and discuss how best to employ them.
Allies: Any NPC who isn’t actively trying to harm the characters can be construed as an ally. This does not mean that the NPC is looking out for anybody’s well-being but his own, mind you. Allies can serve any number of functions in the game, from information to favors to cavalry.
If the NPC is neutral in his attitudes towards the characters, take note of just what that NPC knows. Might he sell out his “friend” under bribery or torture? Might he get curious enough to follow the characters? Or, what if he suspects the characters of illegal activities and considers himself a good, law-abiding citizen? Having police show up at inconvenient times always makes for good facial expressions from the players…
If the NPC is generally well-disposed towards the characters, figure out his limits. As Angela Basset says in Strange Days, “Friendship is more than one person constantly doing favors for another.” If the characters tap an NPC for information or assistance too often and then never give him a thought, you’re perfectly justified in having that NPC turn the characters down flat next time.
Family and close friends as NPCs are another matter. Yes, they are likely to aid the characters because of the relationship alone, but they also exert some influence over the character. And, they are within their rights to know what the character is doing. Plus, these are the sorts of people likely to engage in aggressive attempts to help the character if they perceive him as being in trouble — and player characters usually are.
Enemies: Anybody who is, in general, negatively disposed towards a character is an enemy. Feelings here can run the gamut from rivalry to bitter hatred.
The most important thing when running enemy NPCs is to know why they act as enemies. For example, in a Vampire game I ran in New Orleans, one of the players chose as part of a back-story to have a bitter rival within his own clan (vampire family, for you non-White Wolfers out there). They had both been made vampires by the same sire, but whereas the player’s character had risen to fame and fortune, so to speak, his rival had descended into bitter feuding. No real murderous intent here, just two characters of roughly equal stature trying to one-up each other. The reason for the rivalry was jealousy, plain and simple. The player chose his own poison in that instance; I really had to do very little work on the rival other than playing him as the story progressed.
The motive in that instance was very basic and relatively harmless (at the start, anyway). But motives for enemy NPCs can stem from rejection, love, greed, lust, money (what if the characters can pay the enemy more than his employer?) or just two characters working at cross-purposes. The NPC I mentioned earlier, Sarah Cobbler, very rarely went after any character personally. Her interest was in gaining power and learning magic, and sometimes she stepped on toes to do that. However, she managed to be conversational with about half the group, because she’d never angered them personally.
That’s something to consider as well — one member of the group might have a bitter enmity with an NPC, but how does the rest of group feel about the enemy? In games like Chill or Werewolf where much emphasis is placed on group solidarity, the characters will probably adopt an “all-for-one” sort of mentality, but in games like Vampire and In Nomine where individual characters’ motives play a larger part, one character may regard the NPC as a threat to life and limb when another is indifferent or even inclined to like the “villain”.
Playing enemies is probably the greatest roleplaying challenge the GM faces. If you do your job, the characters should be wary of attacking even their most hated foe on sight — they should wonder what he’s doing first. And, a good game of verbal fencing between foes is great fun, and much more challenging than a fistfight. Veiled threats, dropped hints, the player trying to figure out what the enemy knows or needs to know, and so forth, are great ways to make the players nervous. This is especially true if the enemy responds to threats with boredom (not maniacal laughter). Watch The Saint and check out the scene where Simon Templar meets Tretiak in Germany. The Russian crime boss threatens Simon with death, doing his best to be menacing, and Simon responds with a yawn and says, “It’s so early. Do you want to get some coffee or something?” (To his credit, Tretiak backs off and agrees). The relationship between a character and an enemy should be just that — a relationship — not a series of fights, and, in a relationship, not every moment is spent in biting insults. Another cinematic example of this (and a much better movie) is Heat, where Al Pacino and Robert De Niro sit and chat, each knowing full well what the other is and what he wants (free up three hours and check out the movie).
OK, with all the emphasis on motivation and knowledge of the NPCs, how do you, the GM, use NPCs in the game? Well, of course it depends on the function they’re meant to play, but a few general guidelines:
• Know where they are. If a group decides to bring an NPC along for whatever reason, remember that she’s there. This is one reason I like to make character sheets for NPCs; it’s extra work, but if I have the sheet in front of me, it’s less likely I’ll forget to include someone in the conversation.
• Develop them. An NPC who starts off as a minor character can develop into a major adversary. Maybe it’s the village idiot who gets tired of the abuse and turns to the Dark Arts (or whatever) for revenge. Maybe that landlord character that my werewolf had a running argument with finally learns my secret — what might he do? When one story ends and another begins, take some time and list the major NPCs in the game and note what they’ve been doing and how they’re changed (another reason to keep character sheets for them; it’s easier to mark changes in stats). Even if the note is “Sarah: No change from last story”, at least you’ve thought about it.
• Keep notes. If one of the characters lets an important tidbit of information slide to an NPC, jot it down. If an NPC witnesses an important event, make a note. You might think, “Oh, I’ll remember that he said that to his sister,”…but you won’t.
• Beware of combat. A proverb for all GMs, especially those who have trigger-happy players: “Never stat anything you won’t let the characters kill.” If it’s statted, its strengths and capabilities are quantified, and you’ve made the unspoken agreement that there’s a way to kill it. Likewise, if there are no stats for the NPC, the players should realize that you’re winging it, and they’re either going to win or lose very quickly. I had several players wage an “NPC War” in some of my stories for a while. To their credit, they didn’t act out of character to further the war, but it did annoy me. You are, of course, within your rights to fudge rolls to allow an NPC to survive, but really, the best way to avoid having to do that is keep people you don’t want dead out of deadly situations.
• DO NOT UPSTAGE THE PLAYERS. Few things are more frustrating than a GM who dangles problems in front of the characters, shoots down their clever attempts to solve them, and then has an NPC (probably somebody the GM played in someone else’s game) waltz and in rectify the whole thing nonchalantly. If you feel the characters can’t solve the problem or win the fight without help — and you set up the situation (if they walked in like lambs to the slaughter, all bets are off) — get the characters a way to win the day. Another clue, a mistake from the enemy, whatever, but don’t bring in your favorite NPC in an attempt to look good.
• Avoid gratuitous death. It’s one thing to bring in an NPC and kill him off to motivate the players. Just don’t make it obvious, make sure it really will motivate them, and don’t do it often. Otherwise, the impact of death is gone, and unless you’re playing Paranoia, you want to keep that impact alive.
In closing, just remember that the NPCs serve all the roles that player’s characters require — and that is their function. You might create NPCs that will have them rolling in the aisles or gnashing their teeth in rage, or even quivering with fear (now that’s fun), but be aware that the stars of the show are the player’s characters, and they should always come first.
© 2000 Matthew McFarland. No
reproduction is allowed without the author’s express permission.