By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Sizing Up the Target
NPC Essentials is an 84-page supplement written by Johnn Four and published by RPG Objects. Part of the GM Mastery Series, this full color product designed to help the GM design NPCs is available as either an $8.95 PDF product, or as a $14.95 print product.
First Blood
NPC Essentials is designed to assist the GM in learning to master his craft by providing a wealth of information about designing, role playing, and managing non-player characters. The book consists of four solid chapters of NPC information, a ready-to-run adventure, and a chapter of tables, charts, and character sheets.
The first chapter after the introduction, NPC Design, provides a host of suggestions for roles that NPCs may fulfill in the campaign, and establishes a system to help the GM decide to what level of detail each NPC should be developed using a groups of four sets of information. The main villain of the story might have all four groups developed, while his guards might only have their NPC combat statistics. A player character’s mentor might have a deeply developed roleplaying background; a bit part like the stable boy might only have basic roleplaying information. This chapter also discusses the use of names, power bases, personality traits, and quirks to make memorable NPCs who stand out in the campaign world. This section of the book ties directly to the charst and tables in the last chapter, which provides voluminous lists that can be used to develop backgrounds and personalities using this system.
The next chapter covers NPC Roleplaying. It provides a wide range of tips to help the GM recreate the characters in his world at the game table. This chapter includes notes on acting, the use of gestures and props, managing your voice and tone, and provides helpful hints to enable an NPC to be played consistently and believably, without constantly having to refer to reams of notes.
The following chapter on Campaign Management provides the GM with tools to keep track of NPCs, examples of which can be found at the back of the book. NPC Essentials provides hints on introducing NPCs to the campaign and to the characters, and how to balance the power levels of NPCs against those of players to maintain a realistic setting, but one in which the players can still be the stars. Campaign Management also provides hints on creating and managing the cast of NPCs so that they interact believably with each other.
The last NPC-focused chapter covers NPC Archetypes, including the craftsman, merchant, servant, noble, soldier, artist, guild member, clergy, and beggar.. This includes a description of the archetypal character, his or her typical mannerisms and role in the campaign setting, and hints for effectively portraying this archetype. Particularly useful are the five to ten plot hook ideas tied to each archetype that the GM could use to weave an interesting story about that NPC.
The adventure, “When We Practice To Deceive”, is designed to allow the GM to put to use the techniques and skills described in the preceding four chapters. It provides a ready-to-run adventure with full text boxes, backgrounds, maps, and NPC statistics that allows players to get involved in a political intrigue in a small town that revolves around three primary NPCs with a cast of supporting characters. The event-based adventure is designed for characters of 3rd to 5th level, and could probably be run in one to two sessions.
The back of the book collects all of the tables, charts, and sheets the GM can use to implement the NPC development ideas described within. These include personality traits by type of NPC, several pages of random name generation tables; tables which allow the generation of NPC background, appearance, personality traits, quirks, and secrets; and NPC data sheets in a variety of formats.
Critical Hits
While experienced GMs may have learned many of the techniques and ideas in NPC Essentials through trial-and-error, observing other GMs, or combing through a host of gaming products, this is a wonderful resource for both novice and experienced GMs alike. For novice GMs, NPC Essentials provides an extremely detailed tutorial on character design that is part gaming aid, part plot-writing class, and part acting class. The experienced GM will be happy to find all of these great GMing hints collected in one place, and will find that the approach of looking at NPCs as a cast of characters each with a particular role to play can be quite useful. The technique is remarkable similar to that used by script or novel writers to define and build characters, and even the most experienced GM will probably find a few new ideas or tricks worth the read. The included adventure is entertaining, but icing on a well-prepared cake.
Critical Misses
Aside from the d20 adventure, this product is generic enough that GMs from a variety of game systems could use it to develop NPCs. While this is a strength of the product, since it carries the d20 label I had hoped it would tie more of the d20 rules set to the NPC design techniques. It would be nice to be able to provide the GM, particularly the novice GM, with ways to integrate an NPC’s skills, feats, and class abilities with the portrayal of his personality. While NPC Essentials will teach you to roleplay a believable merchant, it doesn’t give you ways to specifically portray a class skill, or decide when roleplaying whether a PCs Bluff or Diplomacy skill best applies, or how to translate the clever and unique personality you’ve designed into a set of skill modifiers that support your roleplay.
Coup de Grace
Three of the seven chapters of NPC Essentials (NPC Design, the adventure, and the tables/charts) are designated as Open Game Content. While this is a useful book that contains a myriad of roleplaying techniques, it is primarily a GM product – players will find other products more tied to class archetypes that might better suit their roleplaying needs. It is a useful reference, particularly for GMs who run a roleplaying-heavy campaign, or those that want to inject a great deal of realism into their homemade adventures. GMs who prefer to run a hack-and-slash game more focused on game mechanics will find less value for their dollar from NPC Essentials.
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