Favorite Female NPC

[seasong]

Hey Dragongirl, I hope you'll forgive a rambly answer .

My favorite NPCs (as a GM) are those that provide me with one of the following:

• The worshipful awe of my players. Although making appreciative noises with their mouths works about as well.
• The opportunity to ham it up. I like speaking in accents, and I like interacting with player(s) in real-time, in character.
• Story satisfaction. Harder to define, but basically, an NPC who either allows the players to do something simply grand (like a good villain or NPC-in-distress) or who has a good tale to tell.

In the worshipful awe category, I've had a number of female characters whom the players have adored for various reasons, although two archetypes have cropped up the past few years that were particularly favored: Matriarch Grandmother, and Ultracompetent & Cool. The Matriarch Grandmother is elderly, physically frail, with a deathgrip on political power, a sharp mind, and an almost motherly demeanor towards those with the proper amount of respect. U&C, on the other hand, is a bit more typical, and many movie producers have tried to create this as the strong female lead (to listen to Hollywood, you'd think this was the only strong female lead).

In the ham category, I've had one or two, but it's my old men and crotchety misanthropes who tend to dominate this category. On the other hand, I ran an X-Men campaign where the PCs encountered Rahne (who I ran as a sweet-hearted but sharp-tongued, red-headed Irish-Catholic) and the players quoted snippets of her ("Yuir weeeak!" and "Och, ye daft boy!" among the faves) for weeks. That was grand, for certain.

In the story satisfaction category, there's not that many. NPCs usually get the short shrift here (by intention), but there are a few. One in particular, Amber, was a spoiled, blonde brat who eventually matured into her role on the throne and became a highly effective politician, all in a believable manner. I liked that one a lot.

 

[Katerek]

I have three. All of them are of course from my campaign, but that is mainly because it is the only source of NPCs to me.

In No Particular Order

Lady Myra Ra-Ashani Al'Branigan
Myra is a reformed assassin who eventually ended up the head of the Order of Light and was wed to the emperor of her native lands. She nows spends her afterlife as an emissary of various good deities. While living she was good to a fault (after her reformation). She was actually despised by many who thought she was too manipulative. She was caring and motherly. She gave birth to 9 children and raised 4 others as her own.

The Lich Queen Drazil Von-Donovich
Drazil was once an apprentice of Lady Myra's. She was mistreated as a child in the orphanages funded by the light. She went on to embrace the dark and became the master of her own empire of naughtiness and bad stuff. She was as corrupt and unfeeling as they came yet she had a small good side. She had children as well, over twenty, by 7 or 8 different husbands. She loved them all. She eventually turned to lichdom to see the destruction of her enemies.

Bitzkriega Kelnarani-kan DunPsabo
Blitzkriega was a contemporary of both Myra and Drazil, in fact she was known to traffic in both camps. She was friends with both women. She only ever bore four children, all of them merely for breeding pruposes. Another woman raised them. Blitzkriega was too career minded; she was the most powerful wizard of her time, perhaps only ever bested by her own father; Bedwyk.

These three eventually destroyed the better part of the world in a climatic battle. Or rather, brought it about. They only ever worked together in one instance. They had each forseen the loss of most of the worlds knowledge and together they created three libraries to house most of wha they knew at the time so that future generations would not be at a total loss.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I call her the Harlot, she has many names and faces but is always chrismatic and skilled in taking what the players have worked so hard for. She is not an adventurer but the players have adventures with her, she works hard and her rewards are the same as those of the players and she never leaves the city.

It is amazing to me how many times I have used her and the players falling for her and loosing their hard earned treasure.

 

[barsoomcore]

Virtually all of my favourite NPCs are female.

Collette de Maynard
Collette's an accountant, and she terrifies my party. They think of her as devious, ruthless, cold-hearted and slyer than the slyest weasel that ever won "The Slyest Weasel in the World" award. In fact, she's just smart, hard-working and knows when to cut her losses. She doesn't have any combat ability, she's got like three hit points, no magic items -- she's literally just an accountant. But she keeps turning circles around the party and is forever getting them into scrapes then running away while they dig themselves out.

At the other end of the spectrum we have:

Madame Yuek Man Chong, the Demon Goddess
Madame Yuek is a vampire goddess who, when the party met her, was one of the most powerful beings in the world. She was literally a deity, with 40 levels of various classes, any spell she wanted pretty much at her fingertips, with magical whatsits out the ying-yang and cranky to boot.
Then she fell in love with a party member and tried to become a good guy. Which isn't so easy when you've been a pretty determined bad guy for the past two hundred years and are just cranky by nature. Now she's lost her goddesshood, she's no longer a vampire, and she's lost all her 40+ class levels. She's a 1st-level aristocrat with LOTS of VERY POWERFUL enemies. And most of the party hate her guts. On account of she's still incredibly cranky.

I run all sorts of female NPCs. There's Natacha the ship's captain who's forever getting herself involved with the wrong guys, Zuleika the farmwife, widowed during a civil war, who got herself made a gladiator and plans to lead a revolution, Sandradeep the restauranteur whose aunt has a connection to the spirit realm, Arina the gloomy spy whose sister was killed in a duel with the man she loved, Isabella the sneaky gang leader who first brought the party together, Trk'tksktyk the Spider Woman who thought Isaac was kind of cute, and of course Kimiko Torokan, High Blood Sister of the Blood Council, who was a staunch ally of the party's until she tried to kill them all and got blown to rubble for her efforts.

Uh, a favourite? Couldn't choose. I love my girls.

(note: I get to call them "girls" cause they all live in my head.)

 

[noretoc]

Vidonia, Dark Mistress of the Dead. A beautiful, NPC cleric of the god of death and the dead. She ws an NPC I made. She was rich, arrogant, powerful, and the players totally needed her, so they couldn't kill her. She always had undead servants around.
"Chester, Grab my bag and follow me. Horace, lift me up and carry me to the boat"
Chester: "arrrrggghhh"
Horage: "oooooohhhhhh"

After she got powerful, she used to have a couple wraiths follow her around. The characters would shiver every time they heard the raspy voice "Yes my mistress"
Man, I loved using her.

 

[Graf]

Re: Re: How many posts this thread would get if it were just about NPCs (i.e.genderless qstn)

Hahaha, I love this character. Yoinkz.

Thanks.

I think I really like her because of all the different things rolled up into one.
In particular the high Wis (20+), low Int (8) makes her a great NPC. A lot of powerful plot moitivators need to be slick, so the evil wizard needs to think really hard about his grand vision so it all fits together well. Which means that I need to think twice as hard (at least) to fake being that smart.
The druid is different. She doesn't need to be right. She makes decisions very quickly, runs with her instincts and if things don't work out she looks at the situation and makes a new plan. SHe rarely thinks beyond the next few days and inhabits this sort of black and white world where things are either opposition (other predators to be scared off, or prey if they're weak) or suborindate members of her pack.
PCs who put their muzzles to the ground can actually get a lot of support from her but its not an attitude most players can take.

Anyway, glad you like her.

 

[Nifft]

Amelia Richaleux -- LG Female Human Paladin

Poor little rich girl gone good, tough as nails when defending her convictions, and nicely set up to become a young officer (who will, of course, face a crisis of conscience).

She currently leads a small band of misfits (female half-orc fighter and half-elf fighter being the primary members -- neither 'race' is common in my setting).

-- Nifft

 

[DarkSoldier]

Elizabeth, female human eminent vampire Ari14.
She's the eternal thorn in Kerad's side. Because of her, he got suckered into becoming a weapon of mass destruction for the god of death, got resurrected after sacrificing himself and his evil weapons to a volcano, she killed his lover and turned her into a vampire, and forced him to jump to Oerth and then to Ravenloft, where he has spent the last 20 years.

Elizabeth is now the darklord of her own domain of depravity, but she will never get what she truly wants: Kerad's absolute subservience. Elizabeth has almost never been denied what she wanted, and when Kerad rejected her for a half-elf, she boiled with anger.

 

[Robbert Raets]

Storm Silverhand. Why, you ask? Because she's the smackdown titleholder of tragic heroes.

Champion of Good, quasi-daughter of a goddess of magic, leader of THE Harpers, deeply concerned neighbour, best friend, sister, ally and..... totally unable to have a child of her own.

And admit it, she totally hot

 

[radferth]

Canoness Y'dey. The group I DM is in RTOEE right now, and they are more scared of her than of the bad guys (of course, they haven't met the main bad guys yet). I guess that I like her because of she is a former adventurer and doesn't take any crap from PCs.