Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="random user" data-source="post: 1531128" data-attributes="member: 16581">Knowing an NPC's motivations I think is a great start and definately helpful.The thing I do is I often model NPC's off of someone I know either in real life or from the screen.  That way if my players present a situation which I didn't expect, my memories/insight into the person I modeled the NPC after help me figure out an appropriate response.I do think that this is a bit of a crutch -- that good DM's won't need to do this.  But I'm not there yet, so for me it helps me define my characters.  Just make sure you don't pick someone so popular that everyone will know who your NPC is emulating.  While it may or may not be disruptive ("This guy is acting just like Ross from Friends"), you also don't want your characters to be predictable by the players.This can sometimes lead to some amusing results.  As an (hypotethical) example, the party came upon an inn.  It was run-down and hadn't been dusted in quite a while.  I want to introduce an NPC traveler that the party will meet and potentially be able to get information out of.The person I base this off of likes to clean things and make things prettier.  So as the party is sitting at the bar, my NPC comes in sits a little ways away from them.  The first thing she does is start dusting off the countertop and stool.  She's spending the night and after being shown her room, she's going to go outside and cut some flowers to take up to her room to make it nicer.  Why do I do this? Because I'm pretty sure the person I've modeled this NPC off of would have done the same in the same situation.This helps me make my NPC's more distinctive.  Wiping off the countertop and snipping some flowers isn't a clue, has no meaning, and is totally irrelevent, except that I know that this is what this NPC would do, and it helps makes the world more real for my players.</blockquote>

Verification