Fun Npc concepts

[Mystical-man]

I am currently starting a mega campaign that I have worked on for a long time and one the players are all very stoked to play. I decided to watch some reviews on interesting NPCs and such and I was wondering, what ideas for NPCs have worked well for you? Major and minor NPC ideas are appreciated and anything from full NPC archetypes to simple quirks and mannerisms help, wanna make sure the players don't feel like every merchant is a grumpy dwarf, every person in power is evil, every paladin is a righteous knight and etc.

[Demidos]

Some fun ones my DM has thrown at us over the years:

A reasonable and actually friendly paladin, who makes actual common sense decisions and isn't uptight.
Relatable villains, like the one planning to sacrifice a city of innocent people to prevent a cyclical apocalypse that happens every 500 years. He's doing it for the wrong reasons (for fame and glory) but has the potential to do a lot of good along the way.
A librarian which is nearly divine and knows many things but is strictly neutral and tied to a certain spot (is only divine within her library). Limited divinity is interesting to see in play, and a lot more fun than just another overpowered god with no real limit to their abilities.
Diverse villains -- lots of villains tend to be pretty similar, and they're almost always middle aged males. Throw in female villains, villains who were crippled, transgender villains, and all combinations of these and other characteristics, and make sure you let them inform the character, not define them.
Bureaucracy that actually wants to help -- sometimes the forces of law and order should actually be able to, you know, enforce law and order. This shouldn't happen every time -- even the largest country has limited resources and can't fix every humanitarian or minor crisis, but if there is some major crisis they should be able to help in some way, whether it be financing the adventurers as contractors, sending an army with the party as a strike force, or sending an elite paladin with the party (only if the party wants NPC support, and the paladin/NPC is similar in level).


All of these seem obvious, but sometimes people get stuck in the stereotypical ruts and have trouble with making NPCs that actually care about anything other than themselves. Even the worst villains are, at some level, people, with their own interests and desires.

[BWR]

A reasonable and actually friendly paladin, who makes actual common sense decisions and isn't uptight.


This sounds like every paladin in every game I've ever played.



OP: It would be helpful to know a little bit more about what sort of setting, plot and tone you're going for.
Also, so many of our memorable NPCs can't really be boiled down to a couple of sentences. For a lot of them it's a matter of how they were played and/or what sort of long-term interaction they've had with the PCs.
General NPC advice, on the other hand, is easy.
- make them vivid. Give them some mannerism, physical, descriptive or verbal, that is easily identifiable and memorable. NPCs fall easily into a horde of boring, grey-faced nobodies so they need something to stand out.
- give them a reason to interact with the PCs. If there is a good story reason for people getting involved, it's easier to give NPCs time to shine and develop them for your players.
- tied to the point above, give them motivations and personality. Sometimes this develops during play, sometimes you have it all ready before they are introduced, but all the best NPCs have personality that is apparent and understandable to the PCs.
- take your time while playing them. Obviously we don't want to bore players or make NPCs the star of the show, but taking a couple extra seconds to describe and play out what they do is vital for making them come alive.
- look for opportunities to create new full-fledged characters out of nobodies. If the PCs do or say something that will deeply affect a random nobody, you can use it to expand your cast of NPCs. You can turn a defeated opponent into a loyal friend or a bitter nemesis, a grateful rescuee into a benefactor or comic burden, a snobby noble into a major obstacle or condescending patron, etc.


As for a few NPCs that can be boiled down to a few sentences:

- In Rokugan, a Crab ex-warrior missing an arm, a leg, an eye and other serious injuries, as a representative to another Clan's court. Rude, coarse and all-round distasteful, and he would have been in duels ages ago except that he's a cripple and has been through more **** than most other people, and they reluctantly have to acknowledge he's seen and done more than most of them and paid for it.

- D&D, an NPC from the Thunder Rift expansion, is a dwarf innkeeper who is the proprietor of the Sarcastic Goat Inn, named after himself. Polite and attentive to strangers, the more he gets to know people the more sarcastic and 'abusive' he gets. My players love him.

- Grund, originally a throw-away NPC from a BECMI module, was as evil and cruel an ogre as you could find, and the PCs found him tied up and tortured for his misdeeds against his cultist masters. The players set him loose and convinced him to aid them against the cultists. Afterwards they joked about possibly making him change his ways. Then they thought it would be funny if he became a paladin. Then they got serious about it. I told the paladn's player if she wanted to take Leadership to get him as a cohort, that would work. She said yes. Grund the ogre barbarian/paladin now serves as her enforcer of justice. He knows that, sadly, the orcs and goblins of his master's realm only know might makes right so he uses his superior strength to keep them in line in hopes that the younger generations will grow up having learned a more peaceful and Good way of life.

[Mendicant]

Burly tavern owner who runs an establishment called the White Lion. Not very talkative and doesn't care about much of anything that goes on under his roof except danger to his white Persian cat (the eponymous white lion).

Bookseller who runs a bookshop jammed with rare, unique or arcane tomes scattered amidst a massive amount of dreck. The shop itself has more space in it than it seems like it should, and the stacks are cramped, messy, and organized in a bizarre way that isn't immediately obvious. Instead of by genre or language or alphabetically, they're organized according to the seller's idiosyncrasies, such as "books where somebody drowns" or "books with at least four full-color illustrations". The seller has read just about everything in there and might be immortal, but their memory isn't too great.