NPC Personalities for a Few Guard Applicants

Kid Charlemagne · Jun 19, 2019

One bit of possible inspiration: the recruitment scene from "The Untouchables" where Kevin Costner and Sean Connery are trying to find honest cops in Chicago to add to their team.

"that's the future Chief of Police..."

aco175 · Jun 20, 2019

Nikademus the Bold
Nick is a middle aged human who is rail thin with a hawkish nose and balding hair. He has lived in the city for a long time but recently took to hiding out from trouble. He is in face a middling mage acting as a guard of sorts. He wears ill-fitted leather armor and awkwardly wears a short sword.

aco175 · Jun 20, 2019

Nikademus the Bold
Nick is a middle aged human who is rail thin with a hawkish nose and balding hair. He has lived in the city for a long time but recently took to hiding out from trouble. He is in fact a middling mage acting as a guard of sorts. He wears ill-fitted leather armor and awkwardly wears a short sword.

Draegn · Jun 21, 2019

Name: Stumpy the White

Race: Half troll/half dragonborn

Sex: male

Appearance: Stumpy suffers from both genetic dwarfism and albinism. His skin is a pasty egg white with blotches of mother of pearl. He has crimson eyes, a long flickering tongue and a neck frill (Australian frilled lizard) that expands when he is excited.

Personality: Stumpy is very protective of his friends and over protective of those he considers to be family. He has a sweet tooth and is always eating some sort of candy or treat out of his many pockets.

History: Stumpy knows nothing of his parents, he merely assumes that a large quantity of alcohol was involved. His earliest memories are of living with the monks of the autumn wind. They taught him through his childhood and encouraged his exploration of the greater wider world. He would like to find his best friend the witch Gigi, he could never pronounce her name Godive properly in the old tongue and like others he was a bit lazy to say God's gift in the new word thinking it somewhat pretentious of her to expect to be addressed as such.

Future: Stumpy would like to take a job to earn some coin. He hopes to continue on learning about new people and places in this great city.

Kurotowa · Jun 21, 2019

When you're picking personalities for minor NPCs, it helps to remember that cliches become cliche because they work so well. They're only tiresome when creators try to save on effort by only lightly sketching in the most surface details. Done with any amount of genuine effort they quickly remind you why they're so popular. It's like the difference between a remix of a classic song that both reminds you what you loved about the original and introduces enough new flourishes to entertain, and someone who can only sing the chorus and just hums "da-dah-dah-da" in between.

So throw some cliches at them. The earnest young kid on his first real job, the lamed veteran looking for an easy gig till retirement, the guy with a shady background who's trying to reform, the woman who seems really eager for a night job and avoids questions about her past. See which ones the players bite on. Then you can put in the trouble of fleshing that one out some more.