Running Tom and Will Stoutly, marines of saltmarsh, looking for resources

[Naeharon]

I'm a completely new DM (though I'll be running my game for a group that includes experienced DM's). But all the same, I've not done this before. I have read through the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book thoroughly and have noticed there are quite a few characters that don't have much backstory to them. Particularly Tom and Will Stoutly, the married couple that run the Marines (they're named but that's about it). I was wondering if anyone has any resources or links to lore surrounding the characters. If not, if you guys have resources that you draw upon for embellishing these characters. I gather that they've been left "blank" along with a lot of other characters to give DM's wiggle room on how and when to play these characters in the story, but as new DM I'm hunting for some guidelines and pointers. Any tips on running/establishing NPC's for a newbie DM? I've played several campaigns as a PC, but never a DM.

Thanks in advance! xx

[Unoriginal]

Well, the DMG offers some help on this.

On top of that, I think that a good guideline for NPCs is: find what makes them interesting to you.


For example: this couple are marines. Why are they marines? How did a married couple end up there? Is there anything interesting in their past?

[Obermax]

Sometimes as a player or a dm it can be good to talk to your players/dm about NPCs - more often than not in my experience npc backstory is a go with the flow kind of thing outside of a specific villains / rivals / or quest givers

That said a while back I had made a wizard and went out of my way to have the herbalism kit , alchemist kit , and poisoners kit I then approached the dm during character creation mentioned this and noted that I thought it would be super cool if I could encounter interesting alchemist or semi related npcs during our adventures and maybe even rare ingredients upon his discression and he happily oblidged and before long I had several contacts in several towns and was in the process of establishing a trade route and my own shop

Does that answer your question no not really but it's easy for players on purpose or on accident to literally just walk right by or outright ignore several important NPCs so it can help to chat them up and really see what they are interested in interacting with prior to setting up a ton of fully fleshed out bios

On a module note I've never really ran any myself besides phandelver when we were playtesting 5e so everything from my perspective is playing and running home brew campaigns - best of luck! :)

[Man_Over_Game]

It's important to come up with one solid thing that makes them stand out against every other NPC. From there, you can kinda just flesh in details as needed.

Maybe Will has a noticeable limp, uses a cane from the leg of the crab monster that caused it when Tom swore vengeance and slain it with his bare hands. Little things like that.

Before you know it, the players will ask about their relationship, how close they are, and more thoughts will come. If you overstep, and give out details that are too grand or too boring, you can write it off as a personality quirk (Will is modest while Tom is very dramatic).