Your favorite NPC ever.

[Silver Moon]

Mine would have to be Lortes, the over eager party apprentice. His beginings were simple enough. I was running the adventure "Bloodlines" from Dungeon #94, and in it, the baron sends one of his men, Lortes, a good natured lad of 16, to guide the party to the ancient ruin. That was it. Nothing special, just a simple guide.

Funny that you should mention that module, I've been running "Bloodlines" for my group for the last three game nights! They've now finished with the temple but haven't decided to visit the hunting lodge yet. Lortes has been only a minor character thus far, but I may now enhance his role based upon your suggestions.


And in answer to your original question, the favorite NPC of our party is a homosexual bugbear named Bruce who has been a party hireling now for over twenty years of gaming.

 

[WayneLigon]

The most memorable NPC we ever met was Freddy. Victorian London, Call of Cthulhu. Freddy was a member of the Drones Club (From the Bertie Wooster novels), a foppish efete lay-about who was entirely supported by his mother and so had nothing better to do than gad about town, eating and drinking his way through the cream of British society. He came from well-bred stock and so his manner and demeanor was accepted everywhere; he was the 'exception that proves the rule', as it were.

We'd encounter him pretty much anywhere in England and once or twice on the Continent (the campaign spanned about five years of real time in total). He was always a hoot, with his antics and extreme behavior. He helped us a few times, and we helped him out of some social predicaments as well; he was a club member and a fairly good friend despite his outrageously efete mannerisms.

Around about the third year we knew Freddy, we started to notice stuff. Hmm. Freddy was effectively invisible. He was a very well known public figure, but so well known for being a totally useless clod that nobody paid him the least bit of attention. He could hang out anywhere and no-one would think anything but 'Oh, that's just Freddy'. And he was a social lion. He knew everybody that was anybody, whether they would receive him through the front door or not.

We 'encountered' him in the middle of a mission around the end of the campaign, as things were ramping up to a final confrontation between us and the avatar of Nyarlathotep who was going to replace Victoria as queen and Rule The World, ushering in the final darkness. Freddy's voice drops about two octaves and he opens his sock-filled valise to pull out two huge pistols. He was, and aways had been, an operative of MI-6, who had a fair amount of knowledge about the Mythos and who was assigned (among other things) to monitor us and make sure we had no intention of ignoring the Official Secrets Act papers we signed some time ago. It was so stunning and at the same time so totally natural that it took us a couple weeks to stop going 'gaahhh' at the whole thing.

 

[Ealli]

I´ve a strong feeling that a certain kobold from The Sunless Citadel will be named here

Asmo

One of the first helpful and unique NPCs most are likely to meet. Fond memories of him, although I think he remained with his people when we finished the module.

Currently playing in Castle Ravenloft and of the helpful NPCs, one is now dead and another is so annoying we're likely to kill him ourselves. One of the players has taken quite a liking to him actually so we'll have to see how it develops in the future.

 

[KrazyHades]

Does Bane count as an NPC if the players meet him in person? Because if so, I'm decided .

 

[Doctor DM]

Hahaha, oh man, that Bruce character must make for some fun times. How'd you come with him?

And yeah, that whole issue is great. I've used EVERY adventure out of that issue, all of them were a lot of fun. Bloodlines was a memorable adventure for us because it was the end of the low level quests in our first campaign.

The Barron was a piece of cake for my PC's, but I remember that fiendish morhg was one of the tougher battles they ever faced. How'd your group do with it?

These all sound like some fun characters.

 

[Oryan77]

I learned that one of my strong points in DM'ing was making pretty much any NPC interesting even when I wasn't trying to make him interesting. A few that my players really became interested in:

Mordrigaarz from the Planescape Eternal Boundary adventure. I think he actually appears in Harbinger House also but I haven't run that adventure. This guy is kind of a nutjob since he's a Chaosman. He always challenges you to fight him one minute, and then the next minute he comes off as your best friend. He's totally random & the PC's just couldn't figure him out...but they got a kick out of him. One incident that got a player cracking up was when Mordy & the PC rogue were scouting the Hive Ward for the bad guys. The rogue told Mordy to walk behind him & watch his back while they search the streets. So Mordy came up with a good idea...he told the PC, "If anyone stabs me from behind, I'll yell out to you that we're being attacked. If I see anyone stab you from behind, I'll yell out to you that we're being attacked." The player told me that he just stops walking, turns around & looks at Mordy, chuckles & says, "Sure Mordy, that sounds perfect".

My latest NPC that a player seemed very interested in is Torquato, the Thri-Kreen fighter who is a bodyguard to the evil NPC Sorceress that is the parties long time nemises. They recently had to team up with both NPC's in order to work together to escape a Sahuagin city. It was the first time they met Torquato. Being a Thri-Kreen, he doesn't do much except eat & kill. None of them can talk with him since he clicks & clacks his mandables & they don't understand him (but he can understand them). The PC's were intrigued that the Sorceress had him as a bodyguard and kept asking her all kinds of questions about him. They thought he was cool in combat fighting with 4 arms, they liked how he guarded the party while they rested since Thri-Kreens don't sleep, they were interested in why he'd possibly eat a party member without caring simply because he's hungry, & I guess they liked how he was the big silent type but followed orders from the sorceress without disobeying her.

It's always interesting when players get attached to the most random NPC's.

 

[Fieari]

The most successful NPC I ever created and ran was Greeble, the Blue an elderly Kobold sorcerer who, while ruthless and thus deserving of the Evil alignment, cared highly for the care and wellbeing of his people. My players loved him, and did everything they could to help the guy and his clan in their efforts towards civilizing themselves. Which was tricky, because other than Greeble, the other kobolds were quite barbaric... so Greeble pushed them in the direction of civilization through fear and magical coersion... again, evil, but with noble goals in mind.

Greeble's dream was to be recognized as a king of a real civilization by the neighboring human lands. He never got that dream fulfilled. And eventually, the players started losing faith in him when he decided that he would have to become a lich in order to extend his lifespan... after all, if he died, no one was left to pick up the dream where he left off. Of course, becoming a lich is an unspeakably evil process...

A pity the campaign ended do to out of game issues before that plot could be established further. I'd love to run him again, and really establish a good plot around him for new players.

 

[Silver Moon]

The Barron was a piece of cake for my PC's, but I remember that fiendish morhg was one of the tougher battles they ever faced. How'd your group do with it?

They didn't. One character had magic that made him ethreal so he checked out the room before they opened the door. Once they knew what was inside they decided to leave the door shut. So he is still there.
I'll eventually get around to logging this module as a Story Hour so you will be able to read the full story.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

Heh, that'd be the inimitable Comrade Mhaseem... ex-KGB Russian mafia boss from the near-future campaign run by my brother... the guy was always played in an excrutiatingly cheesy Russki accent. Oh boy the number of stereotypes and cheesy references trotted out... He had an odd history as an NPC; he started off in sincerely different form as a PC in a campaign I ran back in 2002-2004, longest -running campaign we've managed, to the point we've still got the character sheets and intend to restart it some time.
The original Mhaseem was a barbarian loon in a cyberpunk version of Tokyo who somehow managed to get half the city's street gangs banded together, and he used to drink vodka by the pint. The latest incarnation (the NPC) has the same weird way of getting people to muck in together, and he doesn't just drink vodka by the pint - he gets everyone else to join in.
Heh, fun times.

Then there was the most memorable bad guy... Ethan Hollister. My brother still gets this murderous gleam in his eyes if you mention the name Ethan Hollister. He was German, former special forces, a psychopath and a sociopath. He regarded everyone around him as either a tool to be used or an obstruction to be ignored or killed. He got his hands on the designs for a mech-style superweapon, and decided to make an AI-controlled version for sale to the highest bidder.
Where was the easiest source of cheap AI's he could see?

The escaped self-aware sex dolls the players were trying to protect...

It led to some of the most heartfelt roleplaying I have ever seen, and the only time I have ever seen a player genuinely celebrate an NPC's death.

 

[Lord Ipplepop]

My favorite NPC was actually from the old Runequest game I ws playing in the mid 1980's. It was an intelligent skeleton that was a recurring villian.