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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Whitey" data-source="post: 1304763" data-attributes="member: 15994">Long live the three dimensional NPC!When I DM, in whatever game, I consider it my first responsibility to come up with engaging NPCs.  I take this pretty seriously.  The PCs do things, the NPCs do things, and this interaction impels the whole adventure.There's a lot of roles to fill in a world - the party gets the heroic ones (or most of them) and then there's everyone from swineherds to sovereigns to succubi to cover.  But let me pick one example, which would be better than exposition.Brenner the paladin.  His parents are very minor nobles, but they're in good with the local clergy, and they have some auguries performed on the lad.  The prophecy about him isn't so great.When he dies, he gets consigned to the Abyss.  Whoever kills him goes as well.To avert this, he's given a scrupulously scrupulous upbringing, and trained in paladinery.  Things are going pretty good for him, and when he's grown up to adventuring age he gets told about this prophecy.  Cautious fellow he is, he leads an exemplary life, and most hostiles that try and kill him end up in the Abyss anyway courtesy of his sword.  Word of this prophecy and his prowess gets around, and most things evil learn to leave him be.  He retires after a fine adventuring career and devotes the rest of his days to teaching young folks about the virtue of virtue.Then he dies.  But keeps moving around.  Undead.This is a bit alarming for him.  He tries to resume his life in unlife, remaining righteous, but his spirit begins to decay with his remains.  His prophecy proves inevitable.  Soon he's cursing such a fate and the gods that would let it befall him, further condemned with each passing day - in time he vitiates all his good deeds and earns the Abyss, as the prophecy foretold.  By the time the party meets him, he's bones in armor, past the point of fighting just anything in front of him to end such an existance.  He's moping in dungeon ruins, between fits of blasphemy and pleas for redemption, up agains the irrevocability of fate.The up shot of this long-ass post?  One hostile, in one encounter, and they talked with him the whole session.  No casting, no charts, no nothin'.  They talked about fate and faith and all those crunchy hero issues.  I was one happy Whitey for it.  An NPC that's not just a cog in the works, but one that brought the party into something bigger than the game.</blockquote>

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