I kind of love creating NPCs. I love creating PCs but I find building NPCs to be very rewarding. In and out quickly with a solid view of the character. I’ve used a lot of different iterations over the years for bringing NPCs to life and I’m going to explain the method that I’m using currently for all of the games that I’m playing. This is the method that I use for any NPC who will be interacted with more than a one-off character. From Legend of the Five Rings to Ironsworn through Star Trek to Call to Cthulhu I’m using this method to create my NPCs.

The bulk of my current method is the 7 Sentence Method. This was first described in Dragon Magazine #148 in August of 1992. It has since been talked about numerous different times, built upon, and modified but I still use the original method in my games.

Essentially, you write at least 7 sentences about the NPC, each with it’s own content. Here is the list:

• Occupation and History
• Physical Description
• Attributes and Skills
• Values and Motivations
• Interactions with Others
• Useful Knowledge
• Distinguishing Feature

Getting Started

Before I start to write out the character there are a few things I go through in my head. Is this a truly random NPC? How will they fit into the story? Are there parts that I know and parts that are random? The answers to those questions kind of dictate how I start.

After getting a sense of the NPC, I pull some random tables to get me started. The tables I pull are different depending on the character, how they fit in the game, and what system/setting I’m playing in. For example, in an Eldersworn game I have going, I needed someone to be the quest giver. The game is a Cthulhu-type set in Arkham, MA during the 1920s. I really didn’t care who they were, so I rolled on a number of different tables and came up with the following: confident, rebels against power, reporter, helpful, tattooed, alone, and news report about local gang.

I then took those words and used them to write out the 7 sentence paragraph.

Occupation and History

This is the introduction to the character and a glimpse into the character’s background. This really sets the stage for who the character is. From the words above I wrote this sentence:

Catherine Germain came from a wealthy Boston family, but used her position and privilege to travel the world, upon returning to the states her dad was able to get her a reporter job at the Arkham Gazette.

I rolled on a name table to get her name. This sentence covers the confident, reporter, news report about local gang, and as well see later the tattooed.

Physical Description

The next sentence provides a brief description of what the character looks like. This can be another opportunity to share something about the character, a hint for the players or a bit more of backstory. For Catherine I wrote:

She is an average sized woman in her late 20s with glasses and brown hair, which is usually pulled up into a bun and is often disheveled.

I didn’t really use anything from my words, but I easily could have added in the tattooed, but I wanted to save it for the distinguishing feature sentence, as in my mind, it would be something which would stand out in 1920s New England.

Attributes and Skills

This sentence is for above and below average attributes and skills or any way in which they might be seen as special in those areas. I often use more than one sentence for this one and Catherine is a good example of that:

Catherine is super quick witted and perspective. Her experiences around the world have made her a quick and good judge of character.

Again, I was thinking about her being confident here.

Values and Motivations

It is often noted that this is the most important sentence. This is the sentence which the PC(s) need to figure out to navigate the NPC to their advantage. This is also the sentence which helps you as the GM to think about the NPCs limits and desires.

She is helpful to people she trusts but has a rebellious streak, particularly against power structures and people in power.

Here I was able to cover the rebels against power. It is something which my PC could use to get her to help him.

Interactions with Others

This sentence tells us how the NPC will interact with others, either the PCs or other NPCs. This is the cover. The face that the NPC shows the world, which might be very different from who they are or how they interact with people close to them.

She likes to interact with people but she keeps most people at a distance. She doesn’t date.

I still hadn’t used alone so I added the bit about not dating and keeping people at a distance.

Useful Knowledge

This is also an important sentence. This is the one which describes something the NPC knows which might be helpful for the PC(s). In the case of Catherine, since she was a reporter and I knew there was a gang involved in the story somehow I wrote this for her:

She has been covering a local gang and its various activities throughout the town. She believes they have ties with city hall and she is trying to figure out if that is the case or not.

As a local reporter I assumed she had been covering the gang the adventure was going to feature. This is also why she came to the PC because being a young woman in the ’20s the editor wasn’t really listening to her and she needed some help.

Distinguishing Feature

I think about this sentence as the sentence which makes the NPC stick out in the player’s heads. If was running this adventure for other players this is the sentence that I would use to jog their memories about this character and this is the sentence I hope they would use to remember who this character was.

When she was in New Zealand she was taken in by a group of Maori and she had a lot of her body covered in traditional Maori tattoos, her arms, neck, front and back of her torso.

I felt a little iffy about using this one but I struggled with a good reason why she might have tattoos in the time that she lives. I used this a lot in the adventure because everyone in town knows her from these tattoos.

Quote

I try to end the paragraph with a quote. Either it is something they say a lot, or just something to help me get back into character when this NPC shows up. I don’t always make a quote for NPCs at first and wait until I’ve played with them a bit before jotting something down. I didn’t make one for Catherine, but in that same adventure used this method to create the head of the gang, Lola Perkins. Here is the quote I wrote for her: “I will do anything for someone I trust but as soon as they do anything to fall out of line, they are dead to me.” Just that alone should give you a pretty good sense of who she is.

Stat Block

Finally, is the stat block. This really varies depending on the system. For my Eldsworn game, I don’t make stat blocks for the characters unless I need to and I usually just use modified citizen stats, but for games like Dungeons and Dragons or Legend of the Five Rings, I add the stat block at the beginning, if they might get in a fight.

There you have it. The method I use to create living, breathing NPCs. Random tables, if needed to get me started, then the 7 sentence method, a quote, and a stat block. It looks like it might take me a while but really I’m able to whip one out pretty quickly at this point. How do you make your NPCs memorable?