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Message: <blockquote data-quote="weem" data-source="post: 4991432" data-attributes="member: 9470">Awesome NPC’s… from nothing?The last game I ran on Wednesday (session #3 in my new campaign) introduced a beggar to the players, after having just stepped off a ship, in the city of Port Winters.In my notes, this beggar didn’t have a name. The note simply read “a beggar harasses the players”. The intention was to introduce them to the market at the pier and give them the feel of a seedy, lower income area that they may not be comfortable with staying in for long. In fact, upon departing the ship, a crewman warned them “mind yer bags”.As the players moved through the crowd, they were approached by the beggar. In my mind, he was going to ask for money and maybe even follow them a bit annoying them with requests. But when the time came, something else came to mind… and so instead they instead encountered a struggle between two beggars, this one winning a shoving match with the other – apparently the right to the players as potential clients was at stake.He introduced himself as “Jerit” (name off the top of my head), and before I knew it he was offering to be their guide to the city, since it was obvious they were new in town. The players thought this was smart of him – offer a service, don’t just beg, so they took him along… “where should we stay tonight, where is an armorsmith…” etc. They paid him well too of course – after all, what is a gold or two to them.By the end of the game, it had been established that Jerit was well known in town as a guide/beggar. What he did with his money was unknown – a player followed him to his home one night, a really run down dump of a building shared with others.Jarit is now one of the favorite NPC’s of the players, and will definitely be playing a big role as the campaign progresses… and all of this from a simple line in my notes with no intention of him being around more than a few minutes.This result is a benefit of two major decisions I have taken to this new campaign, I think…One was the plan to introduce more NPC’s than I usually do, allowing some to fade away quickly and others to shine (as opposed to most feeling placed there because they are important to plot). The other was to plan less and rely more on my skills of improvisation, a topic I go into in my recent “<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/267737-bottom-up-world-design-i-am-believer.html" target="_blank">bottom-up world design</a>” post.I think that these cases of NPC’s exploding in glory from nothing is not too uncommon, and I’m sure most have experienced this, but my question to you is this…Of your most prominent/popular/infamous NPC’s, what portion (or percentage) were thoroughly fleshed out ahead of time vs those who sprung from thin air (or almost thin air)?</blockquote>

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