Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 24 - Giving Your Character or NPC Dimensions

Episode Date: June 7, 2020

Tired of shopkeepers with no name?  Ready to make your character stand out from the ocean of numbers on the character sheet?  In this episode we discuss how to make your characters or NPCs feel like real, fleshed-out people by giving them goals, motivations, foibles and flaws.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to episode 24 of the Takey20 podcast, How to Give Your Character or NPC Multiple Dimensions. Our sponsor this week, the Dirty Hose Garden Supplies. Please don't spill your seed. Now, giving characters or NPCs multiple dimensions, by no means am I suggesting as part of this episode that every DM should go this deep with every NPC. Absolutely not. Dear lord, it'd take three weeks of solid work just to make a tavern. But recurring NPCs? Important NPCs?

Villains? Absolutely. Most of the NPCs you make as a DM will be simple, but you still need to take notes because you never know when a simple NPC will suddenly become important to the PCs. Words that chill a DM's bones. Hey, let's go see that shop owner's son again. Inner monologue. Oh shit. What was his name? Um, I think he had a scar on his cheek. Yeah, he had that scar. What was it from? Inner monologue. He was stepped on by a mule as a child. Awesome. He had that great voice too. Inner monologue. Oh shit. Part two, electric boogaloo. So write your NPCs down, even the simple ones. Now the level of depth we're going to talk about in this episode, PCs would certainly benefit from this level of depth.

I would argue it's almost necessary in roleplay heavy campaigns. So I want to start by refreshing you on a topic I discussed in episode 9, which was realistic NPCs, and expound upon it just a little bit. The zero-dimensional NPC, there's nothing unique about the person. They exist for one purpose in one state of existence. The shopkeeper wants to make a profit off you. They're another face in the crowd, probably don't even have a name. Now let's flip it to PCs. The zero-dimensional PC is just numbers on a page. Strength of 14, plus 7 on perception checks, armor class of 17. We know nothing about them. They are little more than numbers used as math problems,

rather than actual characters themselves. Now don't get me wrong, campaigns can happily be run this way. One of my current groups has limited or no interest in roleplaying. They like combat, and they want a campaign focused around that. No problem. I'm not going to tell them how to have fun. It's fun to run, it's fun for them, throw in a few wacky voices, and the NPCs go a long way. The one-dimensional NPC have one or more quirks that stand out, but often aren't explained. The shopkeeper keeps an axe over the counter, and no one's allowed to touch it. Things like that makes players say, huh, that's weird, but doesn't really grab attention for long. The one-dimensional PC has quirks or maybe plans and that's about it. My character is the fireballing wizard and that's

what he's good at. My ranger wants to be the head of the guild one day and it never comes up again. Or my fighter has a horrible phobia of spiders. Makes other players say, huh, but doesn't show up at all for the rest of the story. Now a two-dimensional NPC has a quirk with an explanation. Shopkeeper has an axe over the counter because it reminds him of his father who fought in the militia. After his father died in service to the town, his comrades brought it back and presented it to the young shopkeeper, told him how his father had saved others. The axe is an heirloom, and he doesn't want anyone else to touch it

in case they disturb the bloody fingerprints his father left on the grip. The two-dimensional PC has a quirk or phobia or belief and a reason for it. It doesn't have to be thrown in during session one, but the player knows the reason for this quirk, phobia, or belief. Two-dimensional PCs have a few features that differentiate them from other PCs and other people in the world who have the same character class. They have a scar, they have an accent, they have a simple belief. But that's about it. It's the beginnings of role-playing, and you can actually get involved in a role-play-heavy campaign with just a two-dimensional PC. and you can actually get involved in a role-play heavy campaign with just a two-dimensional PC.

They're simple, and the third dimension would probably need to evolve as the campaign evolved. The three-dimensional NPC, we don't get this far with most NPCs, but again, important ones, absolutely. Three-dimensional NPCs turn NPCs from a stat block with a bunch of numbers into what feels like a fully fleshed out person. Think of NPCs like that shopkeeper I mentioned earlier with the axe over the counter that used to be his father's. That's an established quirk. Now let's give that person three dimensions. The party becomes good friends with Baltus, that shopkeeper, and the militia enter and demand the party's arrest. Baltus grabs the axe that no one's allowed to touch from above the counter and helps the party in the ensuing fight. That's a moment that the PCs will remember throughout the

entire campaign and maybe on into the next one. Three-dimensional PCs have a balanced contrast of features and characteristics. Usually they have a clear goal and purpose that you can take from the backstory or from the events earlier in the campaign. Three-dimensional PCs tend to have character arcs. See episode 23 for more about that. They have a weakness or flaw that they're trying to overcome. They have opinions about things. Now listen, I could ramble on, but I want to pull in an expert, and I'm going to start quoting Deborah Dixon, who is a wonderful author in her own right. but I want to pull in an expert and I'm going to start quoting Deborah Dixon, who is a wonderful author in her own right. She posited the idea of goal, motivation, and conflict to give characters depth. Goal, what does your character want to achieve? Motivation, why do they want to achieve

it? And then the conflict, what stands in the character's way. So Thorlag the barbarian wants to become an officer in the army. Thorlag wants to be the officer because he wants to be seen as important. But what's standing in Thorlag's way is that the best path is through discipline, but he fights best when he rages and loses control. Corilla wants to become the village's most talented rogue. She wants to avenge her sister's murder at the hands of the leader of the thieves' guild. The problem is, Carilla has only committed petty theft and has never committed anything as heinous as murder. Baron wants to become sheriff to protect the innocent and uphold the law.

Baron watched thugs kill his childhood friend and wants to keep others from the same fate. But the problem is, Baron is secretly addicted to space meth. Now what you do is you rewrite these three things as one sentence. The character wants goal because motivation, but will struggle because conflict. Thorlag wants to become an officer in the army because he wants to be seen as important, but he isn't a disciplined leader in combat. Corilla wants to become a talented rogue because she wants to kill the leader of the Thieves Guild, but she's never stolen anything of note or killed anyone before.

Baron wants to become Sheriff to protect the innocent because he witnessed his friend's unlawful murder when he was young, but he's addicted to space meth and can't hold this office with this crippling addiction hanging over his head. By giving your character a goal, motivation, and conflict, you're going a long way towards making that character interesting and giving it three full dimensions. The easiest way to do this, by the way, is with a backstory. Backstory can make your motivations very clear. As a DM, I don't want you to write a 10-page backstory and then hand it to me for review and feedback.

I'm thrilled that you're that into your character. But I've got the rest of the world to build and populate. So I would ask you to write a nice, short, quick backstory that you can present and that we can discuss. Think about what in your backstory would drive the why of your goal. Loss of a loved one. Desire to be something more. You want to be compared positively to someone else. There's someone you want to emulate. Another way you can flesh this character out is give them a prejudice. A predefined belief based on appearance or characteristics.

It could be racial. They hate fungus people or leshies in Pathfinder 2e because their father dyed the yellow mold. They assume all halflings are swindlers, traitors, and cheats. They dismiss humans because they don't live long enough to matter in their lifespan. Give them a religious prejudice. They believe strongly in one religion and outright dismiss others. They may believe that everyone should be at some church, one of the religions, or maybe they believe faith is for idiots. Give them a social prejudice. They don't speak to non-nobles.

Yes, I'm sorry, who's your family? Be gone, peasant. They hate rich people for having what they don't. They'll only connect with other members of the thieves' guild. Everybody else is a potential mark. Anyone who's been resurrected is against the natural order of things. So they have some sort of prejudice based on social or past activities. Maybe they're prejudiced for or against certain jobs.

All bartenders are just lazy bums. You can't trust any cops. Instead of a prejudice, give them a flaw. Think of a virtue and take it to the extreme or flip it. From temperance to gluttony, for example. Maybe this person just is a voracious eater. Every time they go somewhere and they try to sit down to dinner at a nice tavern, they just make themselves look stupid with the amount of food that they eat and everybody's embarrassed to be seen with him.

Maybe this person has no patience at all and flips it and basically it becomes the embodiment of wrath. They take no insult lightly. Any sort of personal affront against them must be responded to in kind or stronger. Further flaws that you could give, give them personality challenges. Maybe they're forgetful or moody or self-important. Give them phobias, fear of strangers, heights, spiders, or even the vastness of space. And make sure these flaws come up during the campaign. If your character has a fear of heights, the first time they have to climb, make sure everybody knows. Maybe even voluntarily take penalties on the roll because of your fear of heights. It's good role-playing.

Here's the great secret. If you've listened to any of my other episodes, you know I've said this before. Suppose your character has a crippling fear of heights, has to scale a cliff to save a friend. You voluntarily take a penalty penalty and because of that voluntary penalty begin to fall. One of two things happens. One, your DM, understanding that you're role playing, may give you some sort of bonus or some sort of opportunity to save your character. Or two, your character dies. His fear was his undoing. Her fear of strangers, her fear of the vastness of space cost her her life. Fascinating character moment. Fantastic lore building. Fantastic role playing.

And so you can bring your next character in. Your next character idea. Because if you're like most of us, we have tons of character ideas and not enough games to play them in. Instead of a phobia or a flaw, give them a challenging aspect of their life. Sure, he's a ranger, but he's also taking care of his sick mother. Maybe the rogue is about to lose her job and has taken to a life of crime to supplement income. Give your character unrequited love for someone that they're trying to earn that person's love or they're trying to prove their worth to them. Give them an emotional fear, by the way, not just scared of spiders, but terrified their husband will leave or fear that someone at work will find out that he has no idea what he's doing. Here's my personal favorite for characters. Give them secrets. He's addicted to

space super myth, like I looked earlier. Let's see. The space super myth is cooked by, um, I need to avoid copyright infringement, but I really want to reference Breaking Bad, so let's just swap the first letters of the first and last name. Um, it's cooked by Walter White. Shit. Make the secret the fact that not necessarily they're addicted to space meth, which I've mentioned too many times now. Make the secret that they're the sibling or child of someone famous or infamous. They're having an affair. They're secretly a monster, like a vampire or a werewolf or a creature from the Black Lagoon or whatever.

Give them a characteristic against type. A paladin. Lawful good, noble, protects the weak and saves everyone, but he freaking hates gnomes. A big bad evil guy who runs pet adoption centers on the side. So give them something that might go against type. Another idea, you might give them a job or hobby. They're a bounty hunter. They're a hyper weaver.

They're a junk salesman. They're a slave hunter. They're a hyper weaver. They're a junk salesman. They're a slave. They love chess. They collect moose figurines. They like to paint. Maybe they raise and shear sheep, and they happen to produce the best wool in town, even though they also happen to be a horrible murderer on the side. Make them unique or at least memorable in some way. Clothing. Make them richer or poorer or just different in some way. Imagine a clean, well-dressed man at the city docks. Oy, who's the fop? Give them scars that automatically hint at past trauma. One of my favorite examples of this is from Tombstone. Wyatt Earp's brother Virgil rescues a kid from being run over in the street and he

brings the child back to a young woman nearby who is hurting children. It's probably like the school teacher or something similar. But she has a massive scar across one eye, which obviously suggests she's been the victim of violence in the past. That woman with the scar is memorable, as she's one of the catalysts for Virgil to become the sheriff of Tombstone, thereby leading the events in OK Corral. By the way, Tombstone is such a disjointed, but it is a great movie. It's one of my top five of all time.

If you haven't seen it, highly recommend it, even if you don't like westerns. That scar, besides being a victim of violence, could indicate a dangerous current or former life. Imagine an older priest or acolyte with an eyepatch, or the owner of a hostel has an artificial left hand. an older priest or acolyte with an eye patch, or the owner of a hostel has an artificial left hand. An adventurer has black veins on her neck. There's history there, and wouldn't you love to know more about it? Make their hair different, neat, unkempt, modern, out of fashion, or maybe even antiquated. Imagine walking into a coffee shop named Barstucks and seeing someone with a 1950s beehive hairdo or 1920s slick down comb over, you'd probably take notice. Make them obsessed with keeping their hair that way. For example, from Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Everett was obsessed with his hair and keeping his

neat. Make them be overly clean or overly dirty, especially compared to the area that they're in imagine a grimy overly perfumed servant at a fine noble dinner the way your character npc appears can set the stage for further interactions with them last way i want to talk about differentiating npcs or characters is give them voices you You immediately may say, I'm not as talented as the members of Critical Role. I can't do voices like they can. Hint, none of us can. But there's subtle things that you can change. Make it high or low. Make it very slow speech that has to be dragged out of them. Or make them talk really, really fast. Give them a clear voice, gravelly voice, navel-y voice. Give them an accent of some sort or none. There's all sorts

of YouTube videos out there that you can watch to help learn how to do certain accents. Pick one, and I do recommend picking one at a time. Years ago, I tried to learn how to do an Irish accent and an Indian accent at the same time, and now all of my Irish gradually devolves into sounding vaguely Indian or Pakistani. I wish I could break myself of it, and I've tried, but invariably somebody will ask, where's this NPC from? Oh, well, he grew up in Ireland, but he was born in Pakistan. I don't know. Moving on. Practice that accent on your commute, in the shower, home alone. Okay, hang on. Actually, I just thought about this. If your commute involves public transportation, like the subway,

you might not want to practice there because you might get strange looks if you're sitting there talking to yourself in funny voices. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. And everybody clears out from one seat radius from you because they assume you're schizophrenic. Talk to your pets. Talk to your pillows in this voice to try to get it down. Record yourself speaking in this voice. Play it back, maybe cringe a little, but get better at it. Then roll it out.

You won't feel like it's ready and you won't like it, but do it anyway. Get a reaction out of your players, even if it's, the hell was that accent? Or, it sounded like Sean Connery on bath salts. That's okay, they'll remember it. Gives that character depth. So DMs. Going back to Deborah Dixon's goal, motivation, and conflict,

suppose the characters stop at random NPC on the street and ask for directions. Goal, get to work on time. Motivation, I was late to work twice last week and I can't be late today. Conflict, societal mores say I should be polite and answer these strangers' questions even though I want to get the hell to work and shut up. Yes, Baker Street is three blocks over. Is there anything else I can do for you? Write down details about your NPCs. You're trying to keep track of dozens. It's easy to mix them up. Have a cheat sheet. I've got one taped behind my DM screen.

Two to four words per NPC so I can read it very, very quickly. I usually alphabetize it by the name of the NPC. Many times I'll group the alphabetized list by towns that they are in. With just a little bit of work, you can make your characters and NPCs feel like real people with a real purpose. And in roleplay campaigns or in campaigns where these players have interacted with one-dimensional NPCs, suddenly that two and three-dimensional NPC is memorable and they'll want to come see them again. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I once again want to thank our sponsor, Dirty Hoes Garden Supplies. Come here first before you plow. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I sincerely hope that your next game

is your best game.