How to Craft Engaging NPCs

Tips for DMs to bring the world to life

By

Robin B Devlin

Consider the scene, your party having deftly avoided anything resembling a plot for the last three sessions, are in a nice cosy tavern and out of desperation, you pull a quest giver out of thin air to drag them, kicking and screaming if needed, to the next adventure. The problem is that the NPC you created has all the personality and charisma of slightly damp white bread.

It doesn’t have to be like this; We’re DMs, we can make NPCs that our players will talk about forever.  We have all had that one NPC we made up on the fly that just clicked with the party for some unknown reason.  In this article, we will look at ways to turn even the most two-dimensional bit part players into fully fleshed-out parts of your world.

We will look at the basics, such as giving them just enough backstory to give the illusion of depth, down to the nitty-gritty, such as providing them a quirk or the finer points of when to reuse and recycle.

Start with a Purpose

You don’t need to make every NPC have a backstory like Jean Valjean, but every NPC who interacts with the party should have a ‘why’, a reason to exist in the scene they are in. Are they a comic relief? A quest giver? An obstacle in the path? The more you know about their reason for being, the more you know how much time and detail to put into the other aspects of their creation.

So, let’s say you have an innkeeper in the scene to give the party a quest, like maybe their beer delivery is weeks late. We’ll need a name for the innkeeper. Let’s keep it simple and call him Ted.

Give Them a Quirk or a Hook

One unusual trait can make the NPC memorable. Perhaps they feed invisible birds, or they could have a verbal tick, like calling every man they meet ‘my lord’ and every woman ‘my lady’. The NPC could have a habit of fiddling with a wooden puzzle or even talking in rhyme.  

The thing about using quirks is that they are a lot like aftershave; less is more. Don’t make it overpowering; keep it relevant to the NPC’s purpose and setting.

You can use this quirk to hint at deeper storylines or character traits. If the NPC says “During the war…” before launching into some anecdote or two, then we know that the NPC was involved in a war, so they could well have been a soldier in their younger days.

Returning to Ted the barman, let’s give him the quirk of saying that his beer is the best in the land at every opportunity. This then implies that he is boastful and proud.

Voice and Mannerisms

You don’t have to be a natural mimic to give your NPCs a distinct voice. In fact, ‘doing a voice’ and voicing a character are totally different things. Just slapping a New Jersey or Mancunian accent on a throwaway NPC is fine, but if they are going to become more involved with the party, you may find that you get more out of it by going deeper into that particular character.

I suck at accents, so I spent a fair bit of time playing with my voice and learning how I could make it do different things. Try speaking from your diaphragm and enunciating more clearly to imply a proud and noble bearing, or if you want to suggest a shifty character, try speaking in short, clipped sentences out of the corner of your mouth.  It’s remarkable how well you can adapt before you even decide what the NPC needs to sound like a cigar-chomping Brooklynite.

Body language can also do a lot of heavy lifting if you are playing in person. For example, maybe the NPC has a slightly dreamy and distracted persona, so they play with their hair or flip a coin while talking like they are in a Humphry Bogart movie. Spend a bit of time with your idea of what that sounds like.

Let’s give Ted the boastful barman (“Best beer in the realm, good sir!”) a voice. We could give him a lovely regional accent, but instead of that, let’s give our chap an out-of-breath voice, like he has always just got done hefting casks of ale around and is slightly out of shape.

Tie NPCs to the world.

One of the reasons for bland NPCS is what I call ‘video game syndrome’, as in they only exist in a small bubble of the world. If a plague or a massive wildfire is bearing down on the town, it would be odd for the storekeeper to haggle over the price of rations like nothing was happening. Remember, you’re not playing a video game, and your NPC, although a bit part, could have a much richer backstory than the one they hint at during the limited interaction with the party.

As well as current events, perhaps the captain of the guard you have created has some very strong feelings about the Prince Regent and is, on the quiet, hoping that some disaster befalls him so they can get a ruler who knows their sword from their sheath, so to speak.  Maybe the barman is secretly in love with the blacksmith’s wife? Or the Goblin War Boss you have made for your one-shot is envious of human culture and tries to emulate it – like King Louie in The Jungle Book (Special thanks to my good friend Groose for that idea)

Back to Ted, the barman.  What if, as well as his out-of-breath demeanour and catchphrase, we had it that he was worried about his wayward son? Maybe previously sent his ne’er-do-well scion to find out what happened to the beer delivery, so now, with his son missing and the tap room about to run dry, he has been forced to get professional help.                                         

Let them react to the Players

A good NPC is a dynamic NPC, one who evolves with the way the players treat them – say they remember insults made by them, or maybe the NPC has grown fond of the party. Also, always have in the back of your mind the goals that the NPC might have that are separate from their purpose.

It’s always improv night at the D&D table, so practice various reactions on your own.  That way when your cocky bard challenges the lich lord you have been building up to for the entire campaign you can react with a cutting remark, or cold stare rather than stunned disbelief.

As a DM, you should always encourage interaction with NPC’s, make it rewarding for your players to be part of the world you have created and not just witnesses to it. Friendships, rivalries and romances are all to be encouraged and fostered.

Ted, the barman, could remember how drunk various party members got the last time they were in town. He could have taken a shine to one party member in particular, and, although money is tight, he offers them a small cash incentive for getting his beer (and his son) back.

Don’t Overprepare

A roleplaying game is not a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet and should not be prepared for like one.  I am a bookish and weird individual; I like to prepare and have as many options as possible.  I have a very good friend who once prepared for an excellent session of D&D by writing “Goblin” and “shoe” on a half-page from a reporter pad, but, oddly, neither came up. And do you know which of these preparations is better? Trick question! They are equally valid.

That’s not to say you should do zero prep; you need to have some basics, or at least be able to remember the details you give out. For my fellow preppers, you need a Name, a voice, a goal and one interesting detail. If you have to come up with them on the fly, like for example if the party get oddly attached to ‘Will the stable hand’, so be it, as long as you are consistent and he doesn’t start talking with a broad Scottish accent whereas before he had a North American one, you’re fine.

Some DMs like to prepare by keeping notes of NPCs that pop up from time to time on index cards. This is a handy method because you can add notes to them as their interactions with the players evolve. You might also add a few events that have occurred in their lives outside of the player characters.

So, for our barman;

Name:   Ted

Role:      Quest giver/ally

Job:         Barman (The Cat’s Whiskers Tavern)

Voice:    sounds like he is always out of breath

Detail:   Boastful; “Best beer in the realm!”; has a wayward son (Tom)

Owes the players a favour for rescuing Tom from a goblin slave caravan

Reuse and Recycle

The number one piece of advice I can give you as a DM is: Forget Marie Kondo; hoard like a dragon with OCD! Whenever you feel an NPC has gone down particularly well, put them on a cue card, a Google Doc or an Excel sheet if you’re mad. By gone down well, I don’t mean they were universally loved; they don’t have to be.  They have to spark a reaction.  It’s possible that an NPC can be despised entirely, but what matters is that the players have a good time disliking them.

Let’s face it, not many of us can say we would like to raise a mug with our last in-game nemesis, but the game would be a lot poorer without them.

Always keep one eye on a repeat performance. It could be that bringing the NPC back in an unexpected situation might be called for. It could be that a watchman they had a run-in with turns up a few towns over. They could have been chasing an escaped prisoner, for example.

Don’t be afraid to reskin an NPC when it comes to recycling. If you have an NPC that worked out, you think it would go down well, but it didn’t get used for its original purpose. You could have the captain of the guard all worked out, but for whatever reason, they never came up. Just keep their card handy because one day the party will decide that, for example, a blacksmith holds the key to the fountain of knowledge. You have all the cues you need to play them as if it were all part of your plan all along.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Just because you have a rich and detailed back story in mind, they don’t have to vomit up their entire biography to the first armoured stranger they see.

Having an NPC you have earmarked as a potential ally check to see if any of the fighters have 6 fingers on their right hand is one thing, but having them announce their backstory as soon as they have said hello is quite another.

Take all of the advice in this article with a pinch of salt.  Don’t make every single NPC the party encounter a goblin with a funny voice, or a quirky genius and don’t make everyone a brooding and mysterious stranger.

Avoid at all costs railroading your players with NPCs, none of us like to feel like we’re having our agency taken away when we play a game, and although you and I both know that players sometimes need to be led by the hand to an adventure, there is no need to make it obvious.

Conclusion

When you need an NPC, always start with the biggest question: ‘Why are they here?’ You can then build on this foundation with quirks, giving them a voice, and any physical mannerisms that you think would be fun to include. Once you have done that, you can tie them to your wider campaign, and always remember to make them a dynamic part of the world.

Making the NPC part of the world is the first step. Once they are established in your world, you have a valuable tool in your kit for making them part of a collaborative storytelling experience.

If you’ve got a favourite NPC moment or a character your party unexpectedly fell in love with, share it in the comments!