When I saw the topic for Day 22 of the RPGaDAY 2024 Challenge, Notable Non-Player Character, I wasn’t certain where I was going to take this. We’ve played against various NPCs in past games. Some NPCs have helped us. But none really pop-out as “notable”.
So I think I’m going to talk about some tools that will help GMs make NPCs for their games that I haven’t mentioned in previous blog posts. Some of these are PDFs published by different companies. Some of these are online tools that I have used in the past. They are in no particular order. This list is also just a sample of what tools are out there.
Basic Fantasy Tools– This website is a list of links to different tools that will help quickly generate various NPCs (as well as maps, treasure lists, HP box generators and more).
Fantasy Name Generators– Tired of Bob the Blacksmith, Bob the Guard, Bob the Milkmaid, Bob the Evil Warlock? Here is a website that will help GMs come up with various names based upon cultures and races. I’ve used this site in the past when making characters for the Character Creation Challenge.
Lazy DM’s Companion– This PDF was created by Michael E. Shea and contains both an NPC Generator and a Villain Generator among other things that may help DMs.
Frontier Space Referee’s Handbook– Like most GM handbooks, there are sections on NPCs. This particular book has quite a few pages dedicated to generating a Master Villain. This includes origins, type, motivations, power base, henchmen and more.
The Adventurer’s Guide to Non-Player Characters– This was primarily written for the RPG “For Gold & Glory” but it could be adapted for any OSR style game (or more). This actually treats NPCs like classes. So there are Arcanists, Aristocrats, Commoners, Soldiers, etc. It also talks about wages, personality and appearance.
The last thing I wanted to talk about was using illustrations to represent your NPCs. There are plenty of stock and historical illustrations that can be used that you don’t need to bother with AI image generators. I’ve tried these image generators in the past and honestly they just suck. I’ve talked about how plasticy they make everything seem. Just skip those all together.
What tools would you use to help generate NPCs? Are there any memorable NPCs that you recall from past games? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.