Representing NPCs

The past week ended with some LaTeX programming regarding the representation of NPCs on one hand and monsters on the other hand. Because both are in a sense similar (at least, if you provide stat blocks for your NPCs) I had treated them completely the same when writing their definitions, but differentiating in their display (e.g., printing stat blocks for monsters, while leaving them away for NPCs). That lead to errors when auto-generating overviews over NPCs for the appendix, e.g., as shown below for my first publication Bent Goblin's Companion to Dragenlance: Scales of War): monsters would show up interspersed with NPCs.

So I started separating monsters and NPCs: now an additional argument in the NPC definition structure governs, whether the defined entity will be listed as NPC or as monster in the appendix.

I also took the opportunity to revisit what some of masters of all things D&D have to say about the presentation of NPCs on one hand and stat blocks on the other hand.

Minimalistic approaches to NPCs

The Angry GM advocates a very minimalistic approach to defining NPCs. He writes:

If you want to create a relatable NPC you can portray in your game - that is, an NPC that seems human enough that the players could grow to like them or hate them - there's only two things you need before you can start portraying that NPC. ... First, you need to define the NPC's game purpose. Why is the NPC even in the game? ... Second, an NPC needs one - and precisely ONE - humanizing trait. No more. No less. One. ...

A good, humanizing trait fits into one of the seven categories I mentioned above (Ed: These are: personality; vulnerability, fear, and pain; hopes, dreams, and aspirations; values, virtues, and beliefs; flaws and failings; self-awareness; challenge, growth, and agency.) and it also fits onto an index card when written in fairly big letters.

Also for M.T. Black, less is more (though, he qualifies this advice by explicitly talking about minor characters): in his The Anatomy of Adventure, he writes on pages 102-103:

For a minor character, you may only want to focus on one physical characteristic, as your players are unlikely to recall more than that. (...)

But it's not enough to find a striking physical feature -- you want to ensure it reinforces the story you are telling about that character. (...)

Many adventure creators seem unaware of this principle and produce a column of text describing minor details about an NPC in the hope that this makes the character "realistic." The poor DM does not know what to do with all this detail at the table, especially when there is a large cast to handle. In most instances, a couple of lines of well-written description is much more effective than a wall of well-meaning but largely irrelevant text.

Succinct, yet thorough

On his blog The Gameatory, Creighton Broadhurst recently published a mini-encounter, in which the central NPC was described as follows:

Rister Mieho (CG male human fighter 2 [Str 15, Dex 13, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 12]) dreams big and knows that an average, boring life is not for him; Appearance: tall and handsome in a rough, tousled way, Rister has flaxen hair and an impressive moustache; Personality: brave, optimistic and friendly; likes a drink and rarely gives much thought to consequences; Mannerisms: wipes his nose with the back of his hand; Background: son of a farmer bored with the mundanities of everyday life; Hook: offers to share the proceeds of his treasure map with the characters; Notable Gear: treasure map

Here we have the kind of description of the NPC's appearance that goes hand in glove with the NPC's overall role in the adventure as advocated by M.T. Black; we also have the humanizing trait demanded by the Angry GM (although one could argue that Creighton packs more than strictly a single trait into "personality" and "background". Also, a very condensed stat block is provided for the character.

NPC templates

Ben Riggs and Justin Alexander provide NPC templates. Ben Riggs' template, described in his book Encounter Theory - The Adventure Design Workbook
is shown below:

The template must be understood as template for an NPC-driven encounter, hence the template also contains information that goes beyond what can usually be found in an NPC description.

Justin Alexander has been refining his NPC template over the course of many years -- he wrote about a first version in 2015 and revisited it in 2021. In the latter, he advocates the following:

• Description
  A physical description of the character.

• Roleplaying
  Three facts about the character that help the GM with roleplaying the character. This can be traits of personality, quirks, etc. Justin emphasizes that these three facts should be separate rather than three different aspects of essentially the same idea.

• Background
  Information about the character with the most salient facts in bold font.

• Key Info
  Information about the NPCs role in the adventure, such as clues, topics for conversation, how the NPC might react to certain actions of the characters, actions the NPC might attempt, etc. In this, Justin Alexander is very close to what Benjamin Riggs advocates for his NPC Encounter blueprint.

• Stat Block
  If you need stats for the NPC, put 'em at the bottom of the briefing sheet in whatever format makes sense for the system you're running.

Bent Goblin's style of NPC presentation

Let us look back at Ernt Crowboar's representation in Release from the OGL Vault, I find my current style closest to Justin Alexander's NPC template:

• I have put what Justin Alexander has under "Appearance" and "Roleplaying" into a single section (the upper half under number '5' in the figure above). However, that section always starts with the appearance, followed by variable entries that support role playing and make the character memorable -- the information thus could easily be presented as two different sections.

• Also, I have merged the background section and parts of the key information section in a single description of the character (number '6' in the figure above), in which the most relevant bits of information are not only emphasized, but can be extracted and represented in an itemized list (the lower part of number '5' in the figure above). Some of the information that Justin Alexander would put into the key information section, however, would be placed outside the NPCs description in the encounter description. One reason for this: putting "key information" relevant to the adventure into the NPC descriptions does not really go together well with the gazetteer-style presentation of "The City of Pentée" (see my post from two weeks ago, which represents the characters independently of the adventure itself (though, adventure hooks could be added, of course!)

• From the way Justin Alexander describes the stat block, I feel that he shares my sentiment, that in many situations a stat block may not be necessary for NPCs.

I must admit, that I very much admire Creighton Broadhurst's concise style of NPC representation, some of which I should be able simply by reprogramming the way in which my NPCs are represented. Though, how much background and "key information" is required for an NPC, also depends very much on the type of adventure in which the NPC appears. So the conciseness demonstrated above by Creighton Broadhurst may not always be achievable.

For example, in Release from the OGL Vault, half the fun (at least for me) is to play with the NPC's background so as to make it reflect it the NPC's real-life inspiration -- hence there is more background than would be strictly necessary for the purposes of an adventure. In another draft adventure that I have lying around half-finished, the NPC backgrounds are absolutely essential for the story, requiring again more background than what Creighton Broadhurst needs for his mini encounter.

For now, I will stay with the kind of information I have for each of the NPCs and experiment with how to present it. I will also probably add a "lightweight" NPC format with information content somewhere between what Creighton Broadhurst and The Angry GM & M.T. Black advocate to handle "lesser" NPCs that may appear in the story but are likely to play only a minor role (of course, you never know, whom your characters take a liking to and end up with an NPC you thought of as completely unimportant as what the Angry GM calls a Tagalong NPC
I am still sitting on the fence regarding stat blocks for my NPCs. Does the GM really need them for NPCs with a fight is highly unlikely? Of course there may be the need for an NPC to cast a saving throw against some kind of charm or carry out some opposed check, but shouldn't the GM be capable of coming up with a sensible modifier for the NPC on the fly?

Progress this week

There has been very little progress regarding the word count, so no corresponding graph for the past week. The Trello board looks like below - still a lot to do, I am afraid (and I am sure that I have forgotten several work items ...)