Characters Needed!

[Sparky McDibben]

Hey friends,

For context:
I'm going to be starting up a Western-themed hexcrawl campaign pretty soon. I've done about 4,000 data points for the hexcrawl, and sort of wrung my brain out for the moment. So I wanted to tap the hivemind here.

I need ideas for NPC's. What I'm looking for is character concepts: "Madame running a school for her girls' bastards," "Bartender who's a secret cannibal," "Gay lawman with a secret crush on one of the town prostitutes." I do not need character builds; this is strictly for NPCs.

Thanks!

[Kessel]

if I need NPCs that day for a session, I'll borrow characters from a favorite movie or show.
just match the tone to your campaign, change some names and you're laughing.

[Kvess]

A faction of halfling wererat rumrunners who are despised by officials but beloved by the town.

An old hermit who makes up terrible remedies so the townsfolk will leave him alone, except they all work despite his best efforts.

A librarian in a town without a library.

A ragtime musician who plays the piano more and more frantically as the saloon brawl escalates.

A speakeasy door that leads into a mineshaft that leads into an entire underground town, run by Old Xanathar’s Gang. Just take Undermountain and add a coat of old west paint.

[Sigreid]

An inn where the inkeeper is secretly a Dryad.

A wild hermit deep in the woods

A begger who happens to be the riches person in town and is jus bored and does it for entertainment.

A woodcutter and his wife who used to be old but found something in the woods that made them young again. (stolen from an actual legend)

A mysterious figure in a city that is doing the whole batman thing.

A bar maid that is secretly a silver dragon putting on the act for a few years to get to socialize with people.

The leader of a peasant cult that sacrifices "travelers who won't be missed" to make the crops grow better.

An old woman who is publicly reviled as a foul witch by her entire village and made to live outside town but who all go to when they need healing as she's knowledgeable in herbs and healing and has a kind heart. Years of cruelty have made her have a foul disposition.

A wondering tinker that is a low profile holy man directly invested with the power of his god, but no desire to preach. Wondering and doing random acts of kindness or punishment depending on what is needed.

Hope that helps.
Edit: One of my old favorites: A knight that is being hunted by her order for tainting their order by becoming a werewolf. The twist is she is still an honorable knight and the rest of the order has fallen for abandoning instead of trying to help/save her and that's why they've lost their paladin juju.

[Pandamonium]

Western themed 'ey?

A famous gunman and his horse, the horse is Intelligent (awakened?) and the brains of the pair.

A snake-oil salesman whose tonics sometimes actually delivers on their promise but with a grave side effect

A former outlaw turned priest/cleric, his new peacefuller life just seems to get interrupted (classic)

those are the ones that came of the top of my head :)

[msfnc]

Feuding tavern owners on opposite sides of Main St.

Bandits on the edge of town who kill their victims and leave evidence pointing to a local tribe of gnolls.

The wandering cleric, spouting prophecy and plot hooks. Folks say he’s ‘touched’ by the gods. Or is there some plot behind his ramblings?

The bully mining magnate who is forcing locals to sell off their claims. What is he searching for beneath the hills?

[Stattick]

A wild mage. Whenever they surge, they have a 25% of also changing physically. This can be changing height, weight, hair color, skin tone, etc. Sometimes they change races altogether. But mostly, they change sex.

[Aett_Thorn]

A young shoeshine that is actually a halfling in disguise, spying on the town residents as they chat. What could he be up to?

A whole lot of normal farmers and ranchers, just living their day-to-day lives.

The local whiskey distiller, who constantly needs guards to move his goods into the town. Tries to not use the same guards twice and tends to move his operations around so that he won't get robbed. Might be paranoid. Might not be.

A Gnomish inventor of new farming tools. May have blown up half the town a few years back with his revolutionary new tilling machine. But be honest, the tool did really turn over the soil well.

[Stattick]

The undying duchess. She's been the duchess in her region for over four hundred years. Young, beautiful, human, perpetually unmarried, though she does occasionally take lover(s), which she invariably calls "pet". She has red hair, streaked with aqua green. Usually wears green. Her heraldry is in green and orange. Has a cadre of extremely loyal dragonborn as guards and servants. Unknown by most, some of those dragonborn are her descendants. She's a copper dragon.

[Lokishade]

A tribe of nomad barbarians (can be whatever race you like) whose hunting territories shrink due to the expansion of civilisation. They have much internal dispute as to how to deal with this. They have extremists among them who strongly wish to "unleash the strength of the ancestors" upon all settlers while their more temperate brothers desperately try and temper them to avoid war.
-The chieftain wants to maintain peace through treaties that grant his tribe compensations for loss of territory.
-The shaman listens to the "cries of the ancestors" for war.

A regiment of cavalry led by a wise and charismatic general who maintains peace in the wilderness. Should the party get in a bind, they can swoop in at the last moment. They signed a treaty with the tribe of barbarians and won't come close to their designated territory, as they honor said treaty.

A dwarf hermit who died of old age a few years ago. He stayed alone in the mountains well after the gold rush, continuing a seemingly fruitless prospection. Nobody noticed his passing. In the end, though, he found THE gold vein and has amassed a huge fortune.

A guild of explorers who sends people out to explore the wilderness and to secure a route for new settlers. They are the first chain of general stores, providing what their artificers produce to the various communities.

A church of (the god of your choice) wants to become the beacon of spirituality in this new world. This branch, however, hides the fact that it was branded as heretical in the mainland for staging a coup against the king. Among its ranks are those who were exiled and who still only care about seizing new political opportunities and those, newly converted, who really care about the Lawful Good tenets of the faith.

And don't forget the caravans of settlers, anxious to actually start their new communities. They may quarrel among themselves for new opportunities.


I realize I thougth mostly of institutions rather than individuals, but they can help come up with dozens of NPCs that have a defined place in your setting.

[Catullus64]

A tracker in cahoots with local monsters, who leads adventurers into ambushes so he can rob them before they are devoured.

A wizard who makes a living as a card sharp. (Locate Object? Clairvoyance?). People suspect him, but nobody wants to accuse him without proof.

You know, you don't see enough Dwarves played as old-timey prospector characters.

Two geriatric farmers locked in a longstanding feud, whose relatives play along but are quite friendly, while both men continue to fail to kill each other.

The ghost of a notorious outlaw, whose is magically bound to perform menial chores for the townsfolk as a post-mortem punishment. (His sentence is up in 78 years, and he vows that he'll destroy the town then, which everyone just tries not to think about.)

[JonBeowulf]

Import and rename every character and major NPC from Firefly.

[Wizard_Lizard]

A kobold bartender and entrepeneur named Yikyak. They're an alchemist who specialises in potions and explosives, but has been known to resort to selling refreshments and healing potions when business falls ill, they're an npc I have used as a little easter egg in all of my campaigns!

Pretty much most of my made up on the spot npcs are kobolds with varying gimmicks. I even had Count von Haggis, the kobold vampire with bad breath.