What is your favorite npc you've ever encountered?

[sir_raftalot]

They can be one you’ve seen on rollplay or other online show, one your gm made or and i think this is where im going to start, one you made for your players.

My absolute favorite was named; Jaida “The Hound” Combs. A charachter i made for my players. she was a part of an underground mob type organization and she worked for her boss; “The Maestro”.

the party encountered her and maestro and transported them across the sector (stars without number) and one of my players decided to have some “fun” with her. Jaida’s life being kinda freespirited(cooped in a small space with nothing to do) Jaida was all in. upon leaving my player asked me if she would stay i said only if you(rolling in the background). i got a crit(houserule). facepalm

she was way to powerful for combat(lvl9 pyscher) so i modified her behavior to be that of someone who knows they could beat up everyone in the galaxy but just chooses not to. so she sat around the ship and sent info back to her boss, which was fun during the faction turn but i digress.

a new player entered the group (alot had actually so i had tons of extra charachter sheets) but i knew this player would stick around. so instead of giving them one of those i said here you play Jaida shes…

they took it, and my little seed of jaida blossomed into a glorious mob boss killing fashionista who doesn’t care about anyone but cecilia.

[VyRe40]

I struggle with all-time favorites, but definitely my “fave of the month” is something I’m working on for an incoming campaign.

His name is “Bob”… well, in Galactic Common. He’s an unholy hybrid amalgamation of space cockroach and spider alien that shouldn’t have been born. Daddy-roach was a notorious smuggler and spider-momma was a fugitive war criminal and assassin. A strikingly stereotypical pair, so really just a match made in heaven(hell). Eventually mommy ate daddy over some domestic dispute, then, as mother so with son, “Bob” killed and devoured mommy when he came of age.

“Bob” was an infamous bounty hunter once-upon-a-time, but time and lost limbs took their toll on “Bob”. Now he’s a black market cyborg middle-monster, arranging odd jobs for scrappy crews of the usual scoundrels, rejects, and ruffians. Just don’t cross him and he won’t hunt you down and eat you.

As with many of the galactic peoples of arthropoid persuasion, “Bob’s” hissing, clacking mandibles make it difficult for him to talk with the fleshy meatbags of the universe, so he employs a wonderfully awful translation device that utters everything he speaks in the tone of an over-bearing authoritatively-friendly commercial car salesman. The disturbingly-upbeat translator comm is a distinct aspect of his flair when he’s threatening to gut you and drink your innards.

[Peluche_]

Murphy’s GM Law: The time you spend crafting a NPC is inversely proportionate to the time they are going to get screen time. I imagine your players are going to kill this one after a single sentence

[VyRe40]

Oh yeah, that’s super likely. But he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve…

Luckily it only took me a few minutes to come up with the character while I was at work. Thought process: “Let’s make an alien pastiche of sci fi horror and comic relief merchant… So, a disgusting super-bug, and a car salesman. Got it!”

My character creation process is really simple for NPCs. I come up with an interesting voice, pair it with a fun gimmick, fill an obvious trope, and add a crazy twist (I could practically make a random tables sheet for this, but that would take more time than I spend creating characters). Backstory kinda builds itself from there, and luckily my backstories usually end up fleshing out the world building process inadvertently. Like the idea of Bob’s mom, from which I spun out another faction in the campaign, which generated another setting thread, etc. Most of this boils down to short key word notes on my phone.

[Peluche_]

Cool ^^

I don’t have too many favorite NPC that I encountered as a player yet, I’ve been playing with either meh or beginner GMs so nothing stood out too much. And I’m only GMing right now

There was this one obnoxious fire wizard that I enjoyed during a 5th ED campaign, I was playing a no-bullshit halfling monk that broke the kneecaps of people he found bothersome (or at least he threatened to, he was an ex-pirate )!
So it was fun interacting with this powerful, but prideful and annoying wizard that I couldn’t just punch, because he was helping us! (I mean, I could have, but I’m not really the kind of player ^^ )

Less interesting interactions but still a fun note: in the same high-magic campaign we bought lowgrade magic stuff from a gnome magic dealer around lvl 3. Circa level 9 (on another character) we come to a big city and spend our hard-earned gold on some pimping high level magic weapons, and after sealing the deal I’m like “wait a minute, that rude and annoying gnome sounds familiar”. Sure enough, it was the same vendor, and turns out he had numerous magic shops across the land and was projecting illusions of himself to be in all of them at once! And he was still annoying!

One of the rare non-annoying NPCs we encountered in this campaign (beginner GM ^^) was in a northern mountainous village, were hardy viking-like folks and the village chief kinda greeted us but also tested my halfling in a thinly-veiled drinking contest: thankfully as an ex-pirate, and with a high Constitution modifier to resist the effects of alcohol (I rolled insane stats), I ended up befriending the village chief and faking meerily drinking (this character wasn’t merry AT ALL ^^)

Good times.