Experiences Your NPC stories

[Onmyoji]

The thread is dedicated to all the wonderful NPCs of your stories! You know, that merchant that sold an apple to your character. Or that cute Quest Lady who is conveniently standing at the city entrance to bestow a task upon your party. Or that Mega Super Evil Villain that all the characters in the roleplay are trying to stop from destroying the world. Or maybe your character's best friend who occasionally gets dragged into their adventures.


1x1 people, aside from your main characters, do you actually 'play' the NPCs? Or you just describe them in passing and forget about them?
GMs, do you plan anything for your NPCs, like their personality, character sheet, anything else to flesh them out?
Did it ever happen that you created a NPC that later on became as important as your main character?
Maybe your character had some memorable NPC interaction during a campaign?

Share your NPC stories!

 

[Ayama]

I played a Kobold NPC in my friends' D&D game who was in charge of guiding them through the tunnels and getting them to the Kobold leader- his main character traits were cowardice and self-interest.

As the game progressed, he took a greater and greater place in the story, until culminating in a final battle where he led an army of Kobolds against the party. When time came to decide the outcome of the battle, I rolled a Nat20 for him, and the GM gave me a choice- either he

a) led his soldiers into glorious battle, where they would decimate the heroes and claim a great Kobold victory, or
b) he would stay hiding in the forest and send his army to fight for him, in which case the heroes would win.

Staying true to character, I had him stay and hide and, despite the overwhelming odds against them, the heroes won the campaign xD

Oh, and his name was Grip-Grip >]
(Well, technically, Grip-Grip Junior xD )

 

[Lucyfer]

1x1 player here -- yes, I play the NPCs, and several end up with reoccurring roles.

I won't count 1x1 RPs that are truly multi-character like the one I have going on with Arca, which has 12 main characters (though even that has reoccurring NPCs, love the Virys family).

Of ones that are more "focused" on a smaller cast of 4 or so, I've had several NPCs rank up to main character status, like Adlai in one of my Star Wars Rps or Cedric of a long lost group RP on another site, or move up to main or even secondary villains, like my beloved Eiji Geminis, who started life as just an annoyed noble upset with the King's replacement after the king was justly executed.

Of current RPs, gotta give a shout out to my delusional "Sun God" vampire Amon, and the meme shitposting vampire Tristan. Tristan's probably gonna die for a LOT of shit he's done, but he's a fully fleshed out character who's had a fun and exciting history with trying to overthrow humanity before he got his ass beat and was given a second chance (but he's never really given up the dream).

 

[Jannah]

I mostly do 1x1 RP and to make the story feel more real there will be a diverse cast of NPC's that show up as needed. Most of them will have pretty vibrant and memorable personalities too so they feel like actual characters rather than just accessories or part of the setting. Some of them may only show up in one or two scenes and then never show up or even be mentioned again, but even in those situations I like to make their time in the spotlight truly shine.

Because of this attention to detail in NPC's I have managed to come up with some pretty memorable ones. Nika, the crude and manipulative revolutionary leader who eventually became the primary antagonist of the story. The two silent District 3 geniuses (can't even remember their names now as they lurked in the shadows for most of the story) who almost won the Hunger Games by building a functioning lightning machine. The innocent 12 year old District 11 girl who died from trauma (literally). Dima, the selfless medic who simply wanted to help people and was in way over his head. Zhalai, the loyal wife whose prejudice becomes a major source of suffering for the protagonist.

Aaaaaaand countless others I'm definitely forgetting...

 

[Edric Blight]

This is a super good question and cool thread idea!

Yes, actually I have had an instance of a side character NPC dude becoming somewhat of a main character in a 1 x 1 RP.

He was basically meant to be that classic best friend character for my OC who was one of the main characters. He was the life long friend of the main character with a little twist- he was slightly more good looking and talented and popular.

But he ended up becoming somewhat of a main character (or at least main side character) and became a good antagonist character in the RP.

 

[Edric Blight]

This is a super good question and cool thread idea!

Yes, actually I have had an instance of a side character NPC dude becoming somewhat of a main character in a 1 x 1 RP.

He was basically meant to be that classic best friend character for my OC who was one of the main characters. He was the life long friend of the main character with a little twist- he was slightly more good looking and talented and popular.

But he ended up becoming somewhat of a main character (or at least main side character) and became a good antagonist character in the RP.

I could’ve explained that more eloquently but whatever lol.

 

[StuartAnderson]

It's mental to me how some people want to roleplay without them. I genuinely can't comprehend the logic behind it. How is it even possible to create a realistic and engaging world when you literally only ever speak to one person?

My best NPC stories come from someone who was as equally passionate about NPC's as me. Perhaps, even more so. They were amazing at creating them. We did a romance story and had all the friends and familys involved and became major characters.

Their character cheated on mine and so MC broke up with them and moved onto someone else who was actually a much better fit for them on paper. so much so, we discussed making the new girl the main character instead but decided we loved the original storyline too much and so the first two ended up getting back together.

 

[Jannah]

It's mental to me how some people want to roleplay without them. I genuinely can't comprehend the logic behind it. How is it even possible to create a realistic and engaging world when you literally only even speak to one person?

Yep. Plus NPC's are often needed to drive the story forward. They are often necessary to ignite certain events within the narrative. To use one of my own examples, I was writing a 1x1 that involved two characters from opposite sides of a revolution. From that you can infer there's a revolution going on, but without the NPC's you don't really get the full context of who is leading the revolution? Why they're leading it, etc. One of the revolutionary leaders literally became a major antagonist because he didn't agree with my character and my partner's character having any sort of relations. He believed my character to be a traitor essentially. You can't really write storylines like that too well without the use of NPC's.

 

[Murdergurl]

So I have this one NPC. I guess he's a borderline OC. But not really, as he's like a sidekick to compliment a specific character of mine, but not really meant to be played heavily or consistently in the narrative. Anyhow, "he" is an android that I basically made as a dedication to a late friend of mine that passed away several years ago. The android was named after Jeff, as he was a socially awkward friend that had a big heart but always had people take advantage of his loneliness and kindness. He drank and partied a lot, and I'm not gonna lie, that's the reason we met. But as the years went on, I got to know Jeff past a party monster, and we had a lot in common. One of our biggest shared interests was sci-fi. We were both total nerds about sci-fi stuff. I mean, Jeff worked for NASA and flew satellites out of a base in New Mexico. So, after Jeff died of liver failure, I revamped a skeleton of an NPC and put some effort into its character, put a lot of his personality into it and named the android after him.

Every now and again I'll go back and read over the profile and think about all the stupid conversations we would have about sci-fi and Star Wars and AI and star Trek and all kinds of concepts. Rest in Peace, Jeff.