5 Crucial, Memorable Non-Player Characters for Your Adventure
hive-189497·@makerhacks·
0.000 HBD5 Crucial, Memorable Non-Player Characters for Your Adventure
 It is always a surprise to me when in groups and forums we hear about Dungeon Masters leaving all their NPCs to improvisation on the fly. Yeah, some need to be invented on the spot, just due to the fact our players will often (sometimes intentionally) go to some weird and wonderful unexpected places. This is part of the thrill of the game! But to leave *all* the NPCs to be invented in real-time does yourself and your players a big disservice because, like any narrative, there are some characters who are *crucial* to the action, but also you surely want your players to remember the events long after they are over. When you craft characters that your party feels like they *know*, when they think of them fondly (or with great anger), and they think they could predict that character's response to events, then you have really been successful. Here are some character archetypes to consider for your next adventure: ## 1. The Instigator * Not to be confused with a player who starts fights amongst the party! Consider some of the epic stories we all know and love. Think about the hero and how they get involved in the adventure. Very often there is a person, central to the plot early on, that kicks everything off and ropes our hero into the story. In Joseph Campbell's Heros Journey, the hero often needs to reject the call to adventure to begin with.  Even when the players meet in a tavern, there is usually a **Quest Giver** - someone lurking in the shadows who needs a task completing, knows of a great treasure, a dragon to kill. Another form of Quest Giver, however, is one who *implicitly* provides the quest for the party to go on. Perhaps this NPC is also the BBEG and attacks the party? Maybe the players hear about a Lord who has had his daughter kidnapped? It could be the quest begins because a huge-ass dragon lands in the village and starts burning things up! This is your instigator. Behind the scenes, it is good to have a *character* instigate your adventure because this character can help provide the players with answers *in character* rather than you tell them directly. This also means the instigator doesn't necessarily have to be 100% in the know or honest with their intentions ... ## 2. The Advisor Following from character archetype #1, the instigator could be an advisor or otherwise a helper to the party to get going. Tradespeople, such as armourers, shopkeepers, tavern owners, and so on can be good as advisors, because they naturally hear gossip and have wares to sell.  A Wizard, Cleric, or alchemist or other specialized operatives can be good too, especially if your adventure has magical or spooky elements! Advisors can be used to impart local lore (and law) to the players, give them good background information, history, context, strategic, and cultural insight. ## 3. The Fixer Every big bad evil guy needs henchmen and lieutenants, those are usually part and parcel of any adventure. A particularly pivotal, and memorable, kind of bad guy though is the "**Fixer**". Think of Darth Vader in Star Wars A New Hope. He was the Emperor's right-hand man but was *subordinate* to the boss of the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin.  Did kids play as Tarkin or Darth Vader in the playground? ## 4. The Sidekick Just having a sidekick around can give the players options, such as sending the character off on errands, leaving them as a lookout, as a pack mule, and so on. More importantly, as your players get more and more powerful due to leveling up and gaining magical items from their adventures, the risk to their own characters becomes less compelling. #### We need your characters to feel some measure of peril, to fear loss. What better than a sidekick character that they can grow to care about, be protective of, who can get the players into trouble, and can become a focus for motivation.  ## 5. The BBEG No list of important NPCs would be complete without the Big Bad of the story. [I have written about great villains before](https://peakd.com/dnd/@makerhacks/create-great-villains) so I won't repeat what I said there. What I will say is that your villain doesn't need to be obvious, or even physically or magically powerful. A nice twist is when one of the characters above *betrays* your party and becomes the BBEG! Maybe the antagonist deceived your players all along and was the mastermind the *whole time*...
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