EP 4: THE WHISPERING WIND : Creating compelling NPCs and characters.

good day folks and welcome to the channel my name is Matt and today we're going to be looking at how to make your NPCs feel more fleshed out and memorable to your party the way I'm going to do that is I'm going to go through a few vague ideas I start out with and then how I drill them down into three layers that the party encounter first layer is the strong impression second layer is if they meet the MPC for long enough to do a little digging and third layer is the key core that drives the MPC so the dungeon master can decide how the NPC is going to react to things what's its motivations what drives this MPC and then what I'm going to do is actually talk through the introduction where I introduce three of my NPCs and you guys can decide whether I've made them memorable or if I need to do something else K to hear your feedback on that so we'll go through a whole scenario where I do the NPC introduction and then finally I'll draw down into one of those NPCs showing all three of these layers and what makes her hopefully a compelling character so to start off with I usually have a few vague ideas that I want to drill down into I'll tell you about a few of these ideas that I threw out and the reasons why I really like the idea of the Hein monks being enlightened beings but also deeply flawed so I was going to put in some uh deep quirks and secrets in their background you see the heing folk they really celebrate individuality and don't want a societ to conform to the norm they believe that if you've got different viewpoints it makes for a stronger society when they have to tackle a problem they like to surround the basket as they say to see the floors and the weave so they really want to drill down into people embracing their uniqueness so for the monks I really wanted to lean into that and to start off with I had like a monk who had lost his wife to the swamp and had become a closet alcoholic now that became too heavy too fast and almost a major derailing of a campaign I mean alcoholism has impacted a lot of people in the real world and I don't think it's fair to throw that a DM and say hey deal with this and help the players solve this problem because it's not as simple as that um so I can that one another idea I had which I still like is an enlightened monk who steals from the party and it's not stealing because he's greedy or anything but it's actually that he's enlightened and wants to help other people achieve enlightenment by letting go of their attachment to material things but again that could totally Sidetrack a campaign and have the party trying to figure out who stole this stuff rather than getting out there in the swamp and saving Souls I still might bring him in if people want to play in the village of Roost for a while say over a few days and the dungeon master wants to provide a few side adventures and stuff stuff like that could be a lot of fun but yeah they were um basic ideas that I threw out and then I came up with a few that I thought I'm going to drill into these and create the three layers so first off strong impression we want the NPCs that we want the players to deal with to be memorable mainly so we don't have the players asking who was that again what was this person we want them to be clear and stuck in the player's brain so what I'm going to do is read out my three Masters introduction and you you guys can decide whether I've made a strong first impression all right let's get into the narration this has happened after the party has made their way into the small fishing Village of Roost met a few of the locals and then the following happens as you make your way across the rain slick wooden walkways of Roost a trio of unusual herin folk approach you one of them stands out immediately he is huge towering over the other two and his bamboo armor clicks and Clacks with each step a great bow was slung across his broad back and long arrows bristle from a quiver slung over his shoulder beside him moving like a FAL alleycat is a female here in folk her long black beak and face are a shadow and golden glittering eyes watch you coldly she lightly holds a spear in each hand on the other side of the huge heing folk is another male quite short for his kind with a vivid orange beak and bright blue feathers edged in red as he draws closer you know noticed the air shimmers and shifts around him he seems to be nodding to himself the trio step in front of you the Towering Heron gives you a friendly nod it is the female however who speaks first this is them she hisses with a snare just more souls to feed to the swamp no doubt the small blue herin male shrugs as something and substantial snakes across his face the spirits tell me they are capable the tall hearing folk nods with a smile better than sending out what's left of our students at any rate huh the female nods sharply yes no more students she turns to the party if you find the soul of a creature made of the dark and a thousand spares you bring him to me otherwise out there she hisses as she nods across to the Mist you stay out of my way there is a snap of wind and suddenly she is gone the big man sigh and says that was Whispering Wind she can be quite intense but when you get to know her well she gets more intense the small man beside them seems distracted head cocked to one side and this is Speaker weave continued the big Heron folk sorry he spends most of his time talking to the spirits that surround him speaker weave glances at the party briefly we welcome you he says with a small bow and I am Heavy Rain says the Towering Heron folk called so for my skill with the great bow and the many arrows I reain down on our enemies come Outsiders let us show you around okay so what do you think can you remember each of the three Masters and the general Vibe of each of them or did it lose you with the description of multiple characters let me know in the comments and let me know how you would improve on that it'll be good to hear so let's see how I went about trying to make a strong first impression I think one of the most important things to me a little bit out there but I think naming is very important to a character I've been playing rhyme of the frost Maiden at the moment and their names are very flamboyant long unfamiliar and as a party we often forget who we're dealing with what I really like is nicknames or part nicknames uh writers like um Steven Ericson or Joe abomi really use this technique really well to uh sell some of their characters to audiences who may struggle with the many Caster characters they use in their novels um so with nicknames and part nicknames I'm referring to say the dog man and a part nickname may be something they've assigned to the full name of the character to Short in it and assign a personality or trait to the character names like quick Ben or black Dow or old Tim uh excellent ways of suddenly combining a key aspect of the character to the name to help the party remember it I'm quite big on that you could also add titles like speaker weave or Lord th to suddenly let the players remember oh this guy was important in this role the heren folk work out really well for this since all their names kind of reflect their personality and they're named after adolescence to summarize who they are also on a strong first impression their personality should be really clear like I've got Whispering Wind being cold and distant Heavy Rain being friendly and welcoming and speak a weave being distracted as though he's talking to all these spirits around him of course other ways to make a strong first impression is to use voices to convey a character or a personality and also to use visual cues in your descriptions like I'm describing Whispering Wind having two Spears which is quite unusual or heavy rain being a powerful heing folk towering over the others while he wears bamboo armor that clicks and Clacks and even in strong winds it's going to sound like pan pipes all of this evoking imagery in the player's head now importantly you don't want all your NPCs to leave a strong impression I had a campaign where I foolishly gave one of my background NPCs a nickname he collected corks so I called him Corks And the party actually latched on to him found out about his cork collection and my entire campaign became them helping him complete his cork collection which was really cool because it was like a open world sort of campaign that I wanted the players to drive but if you got an set Adventure like say swamp of souls you really want the party Hing in a certain direction now the next layer I like to add is what I call the digging a little deeper and this is if the party asks about it certain NPC or spends a bit of time with the NPC and learns a few more things about them to make their personality feel more rounded and fleshed out as if hey we're asking questions and there is more depth to this character speaker weave for example is going to be an interesting one for the party because though he claims to talk to the spirits and pass on their messages often the rumor is that he just makes stuff up and he is pushing his own agenda so when he ignores the spirits and passes on his own wisdom it's cuz he thinks he's the smartest guy in the block and he has got an agenda where he wants to be the next Grandmas so it would be interesting if one of the players has the ability to speak to spirits and figure out that hey these Spirits are trying to pass on advice but speaker we is ignoring it and just making up his own stuff as he sees fit that will take a little bit of digging but once the players find that out then it's going to make them revise everything they've ever had to do with this guy and what he said before and then I like to add core which I treat as their inner motivations things that have happened to them that cause them to act the way they are and will cause them to act the way they feel like in the future as certain events impact them it's a way to give the DM a tool that the players might not have uncovered yet but it still drives this NPC um and it might confuse the players like why would he do this decision or why would he act like this but as long as a DM knows hey there's an actual Foundation to this uh that makes the character feel more grounded more believable so I'm going to go through Whispering Wind and uh talk a bit about her going a little deeper and her core and that will sort of round out this character and show you how I drill down to give a three-step believable character all right so I'm just going to read some parts out here after a little digging wind wasn't always like this she had close friends a family and even shared jokes with her students that was until her sister was lost to the swamp on a hunting Expedition and was never seen again wind is certain that her sister's soul is trapped in the misery of the swamp and every night the master travels deep into the marshlands searching for her it has become her Obsession and all that she lives for when she isn't in the swamp she trains relentlessly mastering the too spare technique preparing herself to overcome the many dangers the swamp holds wind works alone and finds working with others restricting especially those that are slow and noisy she holds a special disdain for heavy armor wearers seeing them as cowards hiding in their own small fortresses not trusting their skills she does see adventurers as a tool to bring back lost souls from the swamp perhaps even her sister's soul but she understands the risk of sending untested adventurers out there and potentially adding to the lost souls trapped in its misery this is a big reason for wind's distance only those who have proven themselves might catch a glint of approval from her eye so it gives you one layer but there's a deeper layer than that and I'll go into that which I call the core wind has lost people first her sister and then later through her Obsession her own students her dark secret is she knows she pushed students too far and too early to join her on her foray into the swamp there they encountered the terrifying hungering dark a blight soul that hunts only at night and traps Souls into its shadowy Embrace wind has lost her closest students to the Hunter and the hungering dark grows stronger with each Soul it traps now wind will only travel alone seeking The elusive blight Soul by herself she pushes herself every day to be stronger hoping to match the powerful blight Soul when she finally Corners it she has fought it before and seen something in the way it fights and moves wind has become convinced the hunger dark is in fact powered by the soul of her sister okay so that's a glimpse into Whispering Wind one of the many NPCs that's going to be in my upcoming Adventure the swamp of souls uh I'll go into more depth in that adventure for heavy rain and speaker weave so check it out if you want to know more about those guys thank you for watching the next episode should be a fun one I'm going to design the hungering dark which is the arch nemesis of Whispering Wind it's going to have traps sols in it Shadows uh constructed parts that it's made of itself so it should be a very interesting character design and a game mechanic that I've got to design as well so we're going to go through that in the next episode if you want to see that one subscribe to be notified when I get that one out which shouldn't be long thanks for sticking around and listening to me talk and I'll catch you all later lots of details in the description below on how you can follow the swamp of souls Adventure or join our website for our emails as we do updates catch you guys later later bye

Channel: Worldbuilder Matt

Views: 1,468

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Id: SjoWc7o5gUU

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2024