NPC creation trends?

[Jeff Wilder]

Recently I felt like I've been losing a handle on the details of my M&M campaign (mainly because of my propensity to improvise quite a bit and write notes on literally any flat surface), so I've started synthesizing a "Master Campaign Log." It's got entries for superheroes, supervillains, NPCs and organizations of various allegiances, and "issue summaries" (basically short recaps of adventures).

Anyway, I noticed a significant bias in my NPCs (i.e., those I have created, not taken from other sources), which I thought was interesting:

All of my "good guy" science-oriented NPCs are female, and all the "bad guy" scientists are male.

Good Guys - Dr. Emily Riche (geneticist, Stanford), Dr. Akasha L. Farraq (bioelectrical engineer, Lockheed-Martin), Dr. Valerie Simmons (neurobiologist, AEGIS), Rebecca Aguila (reformed supervillain battlesuit, Seattle), Firmware (gadgeteer)

Bad Guys - Challenger (Tony Stark-level engineer, battlesuit), Grey Gull (weather controller), Dr. Dylan Greene (geneticist, The Labyrinth), Manuel Sanchez (CEO of Sanchez Chamicals, polluting the bay).

It's really a stark divide ... way too much to be coincidence.

It gets more interesting because it doesn't break that way in other areas (magical characters, heroes or villains, and so forth). Just science-types.

Have you ever looked at your NPC creation and seen anything similar? Take a look now!

 

[Relique du Madde]

Since I also use M&M (for pbp), the trends I notice are that the characters I make are never used. But seriously, I do notice a lot of similar trends, however, since my characters tend to have low PLs (5-8), these are the trends I see:

1. Characters tend to have lots of devices and or gadgets
2. Weapon arrays are heavily used (gadgets).
3. Bad guys are more likely to have elemental themed powers.
4. Good guys are more likely to have pure archetypes (martial artist, psionist, etc).
5. Lots of templates ("Knights of Round Street Gang Members", "Victoria Town Watcher Training")
6. Bad guys are more likely to have affliction type powers.
7. Bad guys are more likely to have nullification type powers.
8. Good guys are more likely to use "fighting styles" / "martial arts styled" attacks.



BTW, you are able to change he name of the subject yourself. Click on edit, then select the advanced settins options.

 

[pogre]

Advice on how to fix title already given.

My bad guys are all demon-worshippers the last few years.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I use lots of "leader types", generally using pre-gen minions or followers as the various editions tended to be good about these.

I don't think a fighter with 18 Int and 17 Cha or a wizard with 17 Cha makes a good leader; they still have no leadership abilities or (in 2e or 3.x) social skills.

4e has an entire class (warlord) devoted to leadership, but it's still Strength-based. (No Cao Cao or Julius Caesar here.) So I've combed various sources looking for leaderly monsters and NPCs (both of the "Lead from the Front" and "control troops" varieties) and frequently generated my own NPCs using concepts from these.

The MM2 noble and various hobgoblin and gnoll leader types in the Monster Vault were really handy. I ended up with a 5th-level sergeant and an 8th-level special forces commander that can work with any character class who I'm dying to use. (My PCs are currently only 3rd-level.)

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I'm very amused by Jeff's initial example of a pattern, because it's quite similar to a pattern that I had a few years ago. Some of the players in my D&D game noticed that female NPCs were always either competent good guys or important villains. The master villain might be female, and a random female town guard would always be reliable, competent, and honest, but the incompetent good guy or minion villain would always be male.

Once I started realizing the pattern I started randomly determining the sexes of most of my NPCs, at least when I think about it in advance.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Variety is the spice of life. Thanks to a massive backlog of comics, a wealth of reading material, and of course printed products for my general game of choice for supers, Hero 5th ed, I rarely had to worry too much about duplication of material.

Long before the drug wars in Mexico were the issue they are today, I had gangsters that were smuggling 'super' drugs that allowed their enforcers to become bricks that wouuld quickly burn out.

When one of my friends was running a Nighbane game using Hero, he stopped and asked me to take over. I kept the Nightbane elements and brought in Mechanon with his own plan to take over the world through nanobots, stolden pretty much straight from an X-Men run.

NPC design is based around what the party needs and what I feel like running. I've done everything from the fat cop who loves his grinders to the ultra competent cop who disdans supers for being 'above the law'.

Keeping the setting rich with characters that are friends, rivals, political or otherwise 'untouchable' enemies, and not being lazy and having those same characters be the same for all the players, allows the setting to showcase how someone like 'Wildclaw', one of my players who was a military man Wolverine clone, can be on the same team as Grungetruck, the world's strongest man and goth heavy metal singer.

Their private lives lead them to completely different elements but when they're on the team, they'll have some cross over NPCs.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

The master villain might be female, and a random female town guard would always be reliable, competent, and honest, but the incompetent good guy or minion villain would always be male.

So why do we do this? Does it reflect well on us, or poorly, or both, or somewhere in the middle?

Once I started realizing the pattern I started randomly determining the sexes of most of my NPCs, at least when I think about it in advance.

I think I'll start doing that. I can't use dice, because my players (fools! mwahahahaah!) believe that I have everything prepared ahead of time. But the clock, with a second hand, is in my sight-line, so I'll just use that.

 

[Jacob Marley]

So why do we do this? Does it reflect well on us, or poorly, or both, or somewhere in the middle?

I think that there are certain archtypes that I just enjoy using. For example, in my campaigns I like to include an elderly halfling woman. She tends to be very wise and is one of the highest level characters in the campaign. She is a powerful supporter of the forces of Law and Good. However, she is also quite frail and can no longer act much in the world. She also happens to be based on my Grandma.

There are others as well. I have based many NPCs on various Sam Elliott characters. There is almost always a Micheal Corleone NPC.

 

[Wik]

Oh, this is a fun thread. I think the reason you were doing this is something we see in TV all the time - the Political Correctness of the world. You don't want to make incompetent female villains, as it runs the risk of offending.

Evil science women probably goes against your own sense of how the world should work - which, despite what some neo-feminists might say, is perfectly okay. There is nothing wrong with just innately believing that women who are dedicated science types would naturally be good guys and couldn't exist as bad guys. Or something.

Personally, I have a similar problem with ethnicities. I don't think I've ever introduced a black villain NPC in my game - mostly because in the back of my head, I'm thinking "If he's a villain, my players are gonna think I'm racist", even though I know just how stupid a thought that is. Granted, that really hasn't been a problem in my current campaign, set in the feywild, but still.

Another trend I tend to use is that of bucking stereotypes in games, to the point where it becomes a stereotype itself. Revolutionaries in my games are usually the bad guys. Religious folk are NOT scheming manipulators, but actually believe in the causes they espouse. Those who work for the government or are part of the government are quite often good guys, or at least are not active villains (kings and queens are exceptions to this rule).

 

[Nifft]

Perhaps it's a consequence of the Snowflake Conservation Hypothesis*, which goes like this:

Every NPC deviates from "normal" by a fixed number of traits.​

Unfortunately, since you're a sane male, "female" and "evil" are deviations which compete. To get around this, try building your NPCs by their functional role first, then roll dice to randomly assign them sex, race, nationality, height, weight, eye color, etc.

Cheers, -- N

*) which I just made up