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It’s an age-old problem inDungeons & Dragons.Your players are walking around a new city or town, pulling off to shop or speak with characters. Suddenly, you’re glancing at your notes and… nothing. You have all the shops written down, the alleyways have names, and the quest-bearing tavern is just two feet away, but as far as NPCs go, you come up completely blank.
For some Dungeon Masters, this is part of the fun! Creating a character out of thin air is delightful. But for those among us who have trouble coming up with concepts on the spot, a little guidance can make all the difference.
Prepare Information
There’s an old joke in the community that every Dungeon Master has a ‘Boblin the Goblin.’ While Boblin is a quintessential example of improv,you may want your characters to be a bit less fast and loose, especially when they ask what Boblin does, what he eats, and who his wife is.
The idea is’preparing to be unprepared:‘preparation of concepts you can roll for or draw from on the spot. At any time, this concept allows you to haveaccess to a wealth of information to make those on-the-spot decisions easier.After all, with the rise of online Dungeon Masters, we tend to compare ourselves with people who must improvise professionally. Preparation is much more common among those who do this as a hobby!
Know Thy Setting
If youknow the purpose of the areayour players are exploring,you’ll know better what sort of information to prepare.If your players are shopping, you’ll prepare shopkeepers and beggars. If your players are infiltrating a Thieves’ Guild, a black market or a noble soirée may be more suited.
If you have this sort of structure at your fingertips, you can draw from it andcreate NPCs that align with these objectives.The dice will help decide half of the player’s success anyway, sodon’t stress if you find yourself having to create characters to guide them along.
Another idea would be todevelop small NPCs ahead of timeandwrite small amounts of informationon cue cards. you may shuffle through these and pull from them at random throughout the session if you want to populate an area. Some Dungeon Masters may find it useful tofind quotes they can writeto inform the NPC’s manners of speech or attitude. Others may be more drawn toincluding stat blocks,should a fight break out!
Some Dungeon Masters find it easier to have information in binders on hand. You may find it helpful to do the same with your improvisation materials, so they remain accessible for when moments requiring improvisation arise!
Create Tables
Having a table you can roll upon can make your job infinitely easier. Not only does this allow you to work on the fly with a couple of dice rolls, but it alsomimics concepts introduced to you in the Player’s Handbook.
Names
You can go to various fantasy generators online and copy them to a document or write them down on a sheet of paper. You can find a wealth of names on such sites, or you can find them from various media and baby name lists.
Whatever your method,make sure you number them.Thisorganizes your informationandmakes it accessibleto pull from once your players need it.Mark them off as you use them, and keep the list updated.
Having a notepad to jot down the information you come up with can help in planning for future sessions.
Flaws And Strengths
Having a couple of traits on hand helps inform roleplay at the moment and reminds you of the way you played them before. Making a table full of traits such as this also saves you the trouble of having to create distinct personas for each character they interact with. Here’s an example:
d6
1
2
3
4
5
6
Helpful
Tactless
Make sure these traits aresimple and broad enough to let you play with them.Don’t get bogged down with details, andfill in your table with traits you like and think you can play quickly.
Goals
Sometimes memorable experiences can be created for your players by rolling on a table of goals.If you know what the NPC is after immediately, you can roleplay a scenario better.For instance, if you want to do random encounters, you might add a goal like ‘this NPC will attempt to rob your players’ or ‘this NPC will repeatedly try to convince a player to marry her daughter.’
If you’re more interested in smaller stakes,come up with goals that align with a job.Selling paint, joining a guild, hiring people to take care of rats in the cellar, and investigating an area are all great jumping-off points.
Yes And…
The biggest rule of improv is the famous “yes, and…”
This concept is simple:someone starts with an idea, and you expand on it.Your players say, “I’m looking for a mage who can help us figure out how to kill the chimera.” You say, “The barkeep says there was one, and he rented the room upstairs.” This can seem daunting, but it makes all the difference when deciding who a character is.
In this case, you’ve just introduced a mage they can speak with who may know the basics of monster hunting and has chosen to stay in a tavern without going incognito.You already have the groundwork for a potentially fascinating NPC, and you just made him up in six seconds. This also allows the players to have a small hand in creation, whether they know it or not.
This works for so many scenarios, and you may find yourself thinking, ‘Well, I’ve introduced this character. Maybe he’s a monster hunter because one of his loved ones died. Maybe his cousin? Sister?’ This, too, is the ‘yes, and!’
As your players ask questions, you may feel pulled to let those questions guide the development, whether instinctively dismissing them or not.This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to say yes to everything your players present.An NPC is under no obligation to reveal their full backstory if you don’t think they will.
