Most loved or hated NPC of all time?

[Traveon Wyvernspur]

Thinking about the games I've ran, I always love to have memorable NPCs that the PCs will love, hate, dread, laugh at, etc.

I was just curious about what/who (doesn't matter about editions/genres/themes) you have run across or created to be the best (or worst) NPCs of all time?

Some of mine:

4E Campaign I had a Halfling Female - Maggie Trickfoot, Captain of the Westgate Guard. She instantly fell in love with the party's very charming half-elf paladin when they first met and when the party was trying to get some free provisions... Later in the campaign she ended up putting a potion* in his drink to make him do whatever she wanted. She married him that evening and 9 months later they ended up having twins (boy and girl) helflings (a term I coined for halfling/half-elves). *Side note - the other party members saw her spike his drink but decided not to do anything because they wanted to see the outcome.

4E Campaign I was playing a DMPC because it was only two players in the group so the DMPC was a Dragonborn Warlord who was basically there just to provide a meatshield and didn't do any thinking on his own. He'd just follow orders and go into battle. This was an evil campaign and my brother's PC had just finished interrogating a slave girl in their inn room. He ordered the DMPC to "take care of the girl" to which the DMPC immediately cut the girl's head off. My brother's PC became annoyed and yelled at the DMPC to "clean up this mess!" at which point the DMPC took the body/head and tossed them out the window to the street below scaring everyone that saw it. They had to quickly find another inn room in another inn...

2E Campaign that spanned many planes, settings, and planets. My roommate had just finished a campaign that I ran for him where his PC became a demi-god. The next campaign he started out in Ravenloft and I had his demi-god PC as an NPC. I played him just like he did and played tricks on him, including putting him into a dream and running about 3 levels of adventures in this dream state. I wasn't too evil other than to take away any weapons he acquired in the dream, he got to keep his levels... After that the NPC demi-god was part of my pantheon and would show up every now and then to cause some havoc.

 

[giant.robot]

Bargle. I hate Bargle to death.

 

[francisca]

I'm betting Obmi and/or Eclavdra, will show up on the hate lists for a lot of 1e AD&D-era folks.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

I was just curious about what/who (doesn't matter about editions/genres/themes) you have run across or created to be the best (or worst) NPCs of all time?

Back in my 2E game in college, we came across this guy named Thad. At least, we think that's what his name was because that was all he ever said. He was able to convey simple emotions through speech patterns and body language. Whenever things got dull, Thad would arrive to make things more chaotic.

This was more of an imaginary friend, but in a GURPS game, my Ogre got shot through the arm (critical hit) and ended up going to the hospital. While he was there, a little girl gave him a stuffed penguin. When he woke up, he had a vision of an Ogre-sized penguin following him around and talking to him.

 

[jonesy]

Bargle. I hate Bargle to death.

Bargle killing Aleena was my Kobayashi Maru.

Baaaaaaaaaaargle!!

 

[Ringlerun]

I ran a d6 star wars campaign for 10 years and had a recurring pirate that when his name was spoken one of the players used to actually start sweating. It was quite fun.

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I have a tendency to make very memorable NPC's, often to my own dismay as they sometimes are never encountered.

Two that stand out the most to me:

Balasar, 4e Dragonborn Warlock, homebrew world. One of the party members, Skrok who was a wild dwarf from the savage Lexnon Forest and had never encountered a city before, stumbled into the third largest metropolis on a diplomatic mission from his homeland. He had never seen "domesticated" trees, large-scale buildings, or even clothing in a contemporary sense. He was in all effects a baby wandering into an incomprehensible nightmare land. Balasar, a drunken hobo continuously shunned by his family and society, found poor little dirty Skrok nestled in the branches of a tree in a city park.

Together, they hunted a pack of wild (stray) dogs, ate a feast of dogflesh, and became life-long friends. Balasar went on to be by far the most powerful Warlock in the world, eventually moving along with the party into the upper twenties. Eventually he became an Aspect of Law, embodying the ability to control the laws of nature, energy, and somewhat time.

He died once protecting the party, in which case my actual players were in tears. I was so shaken up and hurt by his tragic loss that I left early that night and stared at the ceiling in sorrow for hours. Eventually he was resurrected by the characters (now a considerably higher level) and slowly acquired his Demi-God powers. He sacrificed himself again, this time with the majority of the party, to bring harmony to the imbalanced material plane and saving billions of lives. He is and was my favorite and best creation I think as a DM.

My other favorite is Toogan Harbeck, an industrious dwarf artificer with a boisterous and business-oriented personality. He is constantly heckling, stealing, creating, selling, and redesigning everything he can get his hands on. Think of a mixture between Barbosa from Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, not when he gets all weird), a crazy wizard, and Friar Tuck (from Costner's version). He built a portable lab with magical tools to allow him to forge on the go, and would often make (and then sadly, lose) millions of gold in a matter of very short time.

He was always very helpful to the party, but at the end of whatever deal they struck, they always seemed to get the shorter end of the stick, or often enough no stick at all. Occasionally he would prove to be truly useful, saving their hides a few times with some shady folk he had dealings with in the past.

Two of my favorite villains:

Maugras, a 3.5 master necromancer (CR~22) who wanted to effectively rule the world. He was so universally loved by nearly every city he visited that often once he conquered a people they threw elaborate parades for him to enter, at which point speeches were made to a fascinated populace. He was an exceptionally dangerous villain because in many ways the party agreed with his logic, and could understand his motivations. Unfortunately, one of his primary tactics was the Undying Legion, an ever-replenishing horde of undead soldiers kept under his control by a series of Eidolons and epic level artifacts.

The other was the Primordial of Passion, an extremely emotional and violent creature of ancient power. He was the primary villain in the same campaign involving Balasar, and was the primary reason the Material Plane was so out of whack. He gave anger and exponential force to most living things, including plants, insects, etc. Picture cows that would spontaneously become pregnant, within a matter of minutes, their pregnancy would progress to term, the calf would burst forth without warning as it started to mature to near-adulthood, and the cycle would continue several times in less than an hour. As you can imagine, the world was very messy for a while...

I think NPCs serve as one of the best ways for a party to experience the world. Nothing can embody the personalities, beliefs, or culture of a setting better than a character who the party can become close with. I like to make several such NPCs every game, and almost more attention goes into them than the quest line so that organic and natural quests will just, happen.

 

[billd91]

A DM for a long term campaign had quite a stable of NPCs.

Zaedmur the drunkard cleric with his beer keg toting ox Bessie. We all liked him.

But we hated many others.

Mallory Kane, a winged woman sorceress

Lord Slothron, a fat and greasy local lord. The DM even made himself sound like his own tongue was fat to talk like him.

But the one we hated most, and feared most was Caedur. He was a cloaked creature, humanoid, who usually rode up on us on his horse and shot arrows of slaying at us. As this was 1e and there was no save against those arrows, he was TERRIFYING.

 

[UselessTriviaMan]

From Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Hedrack. My players HATED that guy, and they cheered even more when they killed him than when they defeated his bosses.

When I DM, I prefer to mimic memorable actors/characters from either the big or small screen. I once had a player go ballistic on a poor low-level flunkie who acted just like Napoleon Dynamite (the player hated the movie).

Favorite? In recent memory, probably my goblin high priest NPC with the fantastically thick Jersey accent.

 

[Stormonu]

Strahd von Zoravich. At least five of my gaming groups hate him with a purple passion for what he's done to them in Ravenloft.