NPC's: The Who's Who of Your World.
The NPC, a vastly important mechanic for the GM to use to create their world, but what is the purpose of a NPC? Why should this character be important to your players or to the story? Whenever given the opportunity to start world creation they are sometimes overlooked until the last second for shopkeepers, barmaids and generic quest givers. Within these paragraphs though I hope to assist everyones creation of NPCs whether it be an important story point character, or a person you just need long enough to get a quest out of, we can get these characters flushed out and humanized to better your game experience
Your Townsfolk
It goes without saying, a games world is going to have plenty of towns, cities, and even small farms that you'd potentially want to populate so that the game world isn't a barren wasteland (unless, of course, that is your setting). But how do we populate these places effectively? Not every character needs a name, there can be hundreds of people in the town, we can attribute a few nameless villagers to these towns because not everyone is a star in this story, but people like your quest givers, shopkeepers, maybe a few regulars at the Red Dragon Inn, and your governing people (most likely a mayor) definitely need a memorable name. Who lives in this town is the first main question to help us with this. If we have a town populated with only humans or elves names can be relatively similar, using the naming conventions in the Player Handbook or other race resources, whereas if we have a town that has a population of a monster race such as Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Kobolds we can have a bit of fun with naming conventions, between great websites such as Fantasy Name Generator, located here , or we can go into goofy naming conventions like a town of modrons and they all go by the name of Tom. Now that we know who lives in this town, lets talk about naming our more important NPCs
Important NPCs, and why they're important
It goes without saying you need some people who are important to your story, but why? For some way shape or form this character is a necessary cog in your campaign either for a second to give a quest, or for life becoming the king later along in sessions. Lets start with, again, who lives in the town this will give us some interaction and emotions to work with. If the mayor or king of the town we are working with is of a different descent than our normal townsfolk there may be animosity between locals and the government, or even if the town is split with half dwarves and half elves the elves may be mad that their mayor or king is a dwarf and vice versa. Continuing with the governing official, how did they get to power? Did they usurp the throne making themselves the king or queen because of an ulterior motive? Did they get elected fairly, or did their parent or whoever was in front of them die and they just aren't living up to the same standard as them? Try and work at an angle that works best for your campaign but a good example would be in a campaign where the king was killed by a rebellion leader and his younger son gets put in charge at say 15 or 16 and the only thing he's concerned with is a way out, how do you help him and how do you get your players to feel for this character who is put into a position they didn't ask for? Giving some sort of background and humanizing these characters is very important to storytelling, if they don't know anything about this character why would they care about a plan to kill the bloodline? Or care that the king suddenly went missing and nobody knows where they are? Other than a hefty reward, your players may not have any moral qualms about helping or hindering his plan. Now, onto the creation of your shopkeepers and some more townsfolk who need real names
Shopkeepers, and the Loyal Patrons
Starting off, revisiting our populus, who is this character racially and what relationship do they have with the town? We have Brady the blacksmith who is a human, he has lived in this town his whole life with his wife and kid but for some reason he has a certain distaste for people of non-human type races, so humans, elves, dwarves and gnomes he gives his normal wares at the regular price but the dragonborn he gives the shoddily made short sword that he didn't make exactly the best quality, and even at an upcharge! Why is he like this? You could give him an elaborate story of cheating and his wife, or you could just say that is how he was raised. Somehow though you can create character development and change his mind by putting his family in danger later in the campaign because of a giant that is attacking the town or something of the sort. Creating your characters and your shops can go hand in hand and kill two birds with one stone in a large amount of cases, you could make alliteration or self-named stores for these characters. It's not 'Components n' Stuff' for your local magical components store, now its 'Festers Full Cauldron' and you now have a great shop name for your components store and have a basis, Fester the dark elf? Maybe it's Fester and he's a local Myconid that only trades his wares for certain herbal ingredients for potions. I personally really enjoy the idea of having a few recurring characters for the towns or for the game in general that can either help or hinder the party based on their own motives. I have a character that I use in nearly every campaign of mine who's a rakshasa, who is reminiscent of a Khajiit from skyrim, who is a demon salesperson of magical items and cursed items is one of his favorite things to prey on. Many times making it so that he has gotten it from certain 'friends' who watch the party and other important creatures for their treasures so he can pawn them off to the highest bidder. Having some local patrons as well helps, such as ideas of a weary adventurer who days prior to you showing up attempted the same trek the party is about to go on and scoffs at their attempts. Or the village drunks who like to pay the parties bard to play requests for him. Always giving your characters something to interact with whether big or small, as long as they have some way of interaction and the character is memorable it's a great NPC.
In conclusion, play around your environment, use the helpful tools provided by the races in the Player Handbook, Volo's Guide, and etc to help name your character as well as the site listed above. Try to make memorable characters but don't force yourself and overdo it, take your time if you are a new DM and just get a few people at a time, and hopefully this post will help in your future endeavors of NPC creation
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