I’m on Blogging break until the week of December 20. In the meantime, I’m re-posting some of my old texts.
In this one (August 29th 2007), you can see me start linking out to fellow bloggers where I write my take on a subject they recently talked about. Not too long after, I started getting comments from people other than my friend Yan!
Today, Yax over at Dungeon Mastering brings an interesting post on how to play villains that will be hated by your players. (Emphasis mine, see below)
Vanir, from StupidRanger chimes in the comment section about how the villains in his play group actually take notes from the PCs actions.
This little raises two separate but related issues in terms of playing adversarial NPCs.
1) How to make memorable, credible adversaries in a role playing game
2) How to role-play evil characters without resorting to lame clichés or plain boring bullies.
I’ll tackle number 1 below, and I’ll ponder on number two for a future entry.
From my personal experiences, and hugely inspired by Monte Cook’s D&D 3.0 DMG and Dungeon magazine’s Dungeoncraft series, all NPCs should have 1 or 2 defining traits (physical, personality, rumors, secrets) that bring them out of the ordinary.
I think an adversarial NPC only needs to be fleshed out further than that if:
- It is a returning villain in the campaign
- One or more player ‘bites’ at one of the NPC’s traits and steers the role-play toward exploring the relation with the adversary.
Case in point:
We were playing one of those Dungeon Crawl Classic adventures (The Mysterious Tower) and the party met with an Otyugh (a Trash eating tentacles-equipped walking-mouth). Expecting to see it killed faster than I could say ‘roll for initiative’, I had given it just one trait. In halting Common, it always referred to living creatures, including itself, as food.
So as the PCs came face to tentacles with it, they heard it say ‘Ahhh, lot’s of Food-on-two-sticks! Come to Food-that-Eats, Food-that-Eats hungry!!!!
The player’s loved it! So much so that the creature became the party mascot. The PCs starting feeding it with dead monsters and they got a loyal friend in return.
So giving a few out-of-the-ordinary traits is a great start for would-be memorable NPCs.
Now I could not help noticing that Yax mentioned NPCs that his Players hated.
Strong emotions are the best catalyst to imprint a strong NPC in the minds of players. And this here calls for some metagaming cheating on the part of DMs.
If you want an NPC to truly stand out with a group of characters, you have to go after the player’s guts (note the very metagaming distinction of player’s vs their characters). One of the surest way to do that is to mimic a NPC’s personality or trait that your players hate in people. While all books of good DMing say to stay clear of Real Life issues, you can still ‘borrow’ from it and make that NPC a caricature of someone or a personality trait that is instantly unlikable.
Second case in point:
I made this Bronze Dragon NPC that always, always asked for validation whenever he did or said something:
“Do you think I was scary enough with those cultists?”
“Do you think this breastplate is a good choice when I’m in Human form?”
I had knowingly given a character trait that one of my players (Eric) absolutely hates in people. So much so that we almost had a Good on Good fight right there. The other character’s had to rush to calm their friend down was priceless and made for one of the best Roleplaying scene I had seen in a long time.
That is emotional high jacking at its best and this Dragon NPC became another instant recurring Good guy. To achieve that, I went for the player’s guts, not the character.
Inspiration for strong Hateful character traits
- Web Forum Trolls!
- Ex-petty bosses (or college teachers, or schoolyard bullies) shared by most of the group
- Religious/Console/Computer Platform Fanatics.
- Passive Aggressive people
Lot’s of strong emotions there.
But! There is a fine line to walk. Do not bring to the table issues that are currently strongly affecting one or more players (especially for players that share work/school outside of the game). Go for the common cathartic enemy, don’t be that DM that plays an overbearing alcoholic or needy psychotic NPC that has a strong resemblance to someone close to the players.
Peace out.
I loved Yax’s post, and I think you bring some very valid points about making the NPC’s memorable.
There are certain NPC’s, both good and bad, that I will never forget because they seemed so real: they had emotions and backstories and goals and character traits.
In my experience, the most memorable NPC’s were so memorable because the DM investing part of his (or her) personality into the NPC. And I think that’s sometimes why evil NPC’s fall flat: the DM doesn’t invest enough of his truly evil side in the character.
That’s a very very good point!
If the DM is not a natural Chaotic Bastard or Jerkful Evil there stands a good chance that evil NPC will only ever be a caricature.
I was once told by my players that I had only one NPC personality and that it was that of Lebaneese used car salesman. Hopefully I grew out of that phase.
I can already see future posts on Evil NPCs: DMs of the world, let your inner Fiend out!
Yeah, running into your psychotic mother-in-law or something in game is not a good idea. 😉
But aiming at a player’s dislikes in real life is rewarding, but risky. You might just piss players off to the extent that they start being bastards in game. You also need to know your players very well, and have an idea of what’s going on in their day-to-day lives in order to not cross them with an NPC with an issue that is currently affecting them. Not all GM’s have such contact with their players.
And, (like I think the DM’s guide or Book of Vile Darkness states) you have to be careful not to overexploit the PC’s personal hatred for certain traits, just like you can’t have every evil NPC threaten the places the PC’s like, or have each of them steal their favorite items, etc…
The Web Forum Troll is golden though!
Agreed on all accounts Flying D.
I managed to do this 3-4 times last year. It was worth it and I realized that I could not do it too often. Most of the time, NPCs are just there to be killed or to deliver a message… when that’s sufficient, I don’t add anything more.