...
please do not take these items.

An assertive, friendly merchant that tends shop in a bazaar in the city the heroes live in. While most of the city is under mystical embargo, she's proved to be an expert on getting the good stuff in stock. She talks euphemistically about shipments (no ships ever arrive) and occasionally pauses to scour identifying marks off of a sword before handing it over. We'll be honest - it's all stolen. All of it.

She's friendly with the heroes (they're good business!) and casual with pricing, giving discounts and overcharging at a whim, and occasionally aggressively, aggressively upselling, selling off expensive magical equipment that the heroes probably don't really need. (Not that it's useless...)

Her name's Jack. She wears a top hat. She's the only game in town.

(The players were a little saddened when she wasn't there to buy from after a snowstorm.)

Crap, I have a merchant too. These might be a theme, here...

Sane Abdul Alhazred, traveling purveyor of the mystical and eldrich.

Abdul Alhazred (he uses the "sane" moniker do distinguish himself from an infamous person from his homeland, in the same way that someone named Mike Jackson would refer to himself as "not a pedo freak") is a merchant from a middle-eastern-esque region, be it Calimport, Valenar, or Quadira. A widower, we travels with his young son and daughter in a large cart pulled by two mules. A wizard of modest skill, he buys and sells minor magic items in small towns, carrying anything worth less than 4000 gold, and buying whatever he can. He has also recently branched out into the food buisness, with various hot meats and cold treats available from elemental-bound devices in his cart.

Sort of a combo of Apu and the standard slightly-dodgy arab trader, he's as honest as merchants come, friendly, and offers good rates to repeat customers, fighting off the bound ice elemental to give them a free squishie with their purchase.

He's primary function is to be a colorful guy to sell loot to, as well as to provide the party with usefull minor items like Alchemics, charms, and Silver daggers and so forth I want them to have available (flashbombs & lock dissolvers and so forth). You can also buy small portable grills from him, but be warned, if you break them, the tiny elemental inside will be released, "and it will be soooo pissed off at you!"

In my last few campaigns there was a traveling Bard named Manuel of the Planes. He was of unknown level, unknown power, and unknown alignment. Also, he always seemed to show up whenever we needed him. He spoke with a bad Antonio Banderas accent, tried to seduce any females in the party, and would, for a price, give us hints, identify items, or put us in touch with one of his many contacts who had work to do. He usually charged a steep fee in the form of rare magic items or shitloads of gold, but he would reduce his price by half....for a kiss.

We couldn't rely on him too much though, because 1. his prices were steep, and 2. if we were unlucky, it might not be Manuel of the Planes who answers our call, but his evil twin brother....Monster Manuel.

So yeah. Every campaign kind of needs a friendly supplier. Heroes kind of like to have someone to rely on, you know?

Up on a dusty hill, there's a reclusive hermit who tells stories to the tiny forest sprites of the world. (Usually they wander the world, but at night they drop by.) When the heroes drop by, he's quite happy to see them, and asks them what sort of story they might here, though the sprites tend to chime in loudly with what THEY'D like to hear about. ("One with a dragon!" "One with kissin' in it!")

These stories are usually kind of nasty - for example, the first, and the most memorable, was about how once all the light in the world came from magic spirits, and these spirits wanted to play more than they wanted to sit around so work can get done. So the Queen said "okay, I just want to make this one thing" to a specific spirit, "and then we'll never bug you again."

This object was a cage, and the spirit was sealed inside it, and then they could use the light from that cage to make all sorts of things, and civilization flourished.

Shocked by that story, one of the heroes (who is typically pro-spirit) went "Wait, how could she do such a thing?"

The sage shrugged. "They're just stories!"

(The stories he tells aren't true by default. Some of them have a shred to them.)

>>5249858
>>monster manual

An internets to whoever came up with that, I liked it.

I had steve, he was pretty much an intelligent zombie slowly falling to pieces. tried to help some of the player characters and kill one of them. Finally he passed into a true death before being resurrected. with a new body he smiled, wished the group good luck and no hard feelings and went and lived a normal life.

The party was hired to be caravan guards for a buisness man heading back to a small town, a man known only as Antony. Tall, gaunt, wears a fedora and overcoat all the time. It eventually became clear that he was the equivalent of a middle-level mafioso, but the party took to him, and he became involved in the next leg of the campaign, in which his hometown (sicily-flavored) was invaded by a organization of tieflings & fiendtouched called the Blood Brothers. Talked in a mild italian accent, was soft-spoken and polite, still lived with his mother (invited the PCs over for dinner, lived in fear of her ire), and wielded a massive hasted repeating crossbow.

he had an entire little gang of buddies that he called in when shit got real. Mr Blue, a psychotic thug; Mr Orange, a punk sorceror; mr pink, back-alley supersticious cleric; mr black, a mild-mannered butler expert in improvised weapons; Antony was Mr White.

Together, they and the party kicked ass.

>>5249858

/thread

>>5249928
that sounds fucking awsome

>>5249928

So basically an entire fucking party of GMPCs.


Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

>>5249928
Otherwise ten stars, but the Reservoir Dogs reference was a little shitty.

>>5249950
The same campaign had a undead-infested town that was a perfect synthesis of Resident Evil, Ravenholm, and the Evil Dead. Spawn of Kyuss all over the place. Worm-filled dogs, fast screamy zombies, undead uber-bosses, and...one surviving resident:
Jeb the Gravedigger
Jeb is a tall, solid guy with dirty overalls, a shapeless felt hat, and a shovel always slung over his shoulder. He's a minor cleric of some good-aligned god or other, and wields a shovel as his weapon. He tends the local graveyard, dealing with any restless residents and dispensing advice to young adventurers. When the dead arise en-mass, he pulls out his old Wand of Divine Retribution, a long stick festooned with myriad holy symbols, shaped suspiciously like a wooden shotgun.

Father Grigori+Ash+The Janitor

>>5249774

I fucking love Noh.

Two of my favorites so far from the Changeling:the Lost game I run online.

Yet another merchant, a Hob to be precise. A player with Hob Kin merit (treated fairly by Hobs in deals) basically started a bidding war over his Hollow in the Goblin Market, and one of the Hobs got his attention and ushered the group into its shop. The Hob itself was like a short, portly man in build, only with the head of a vulture, and his beak was filled with dozens of razor-sharp teeth, neatly ordered in a vicious grin. However, he chatted amicably with the party, bantering back and forth about deals, events in the Hedge, etc. He pressured some deals onto them though, and here's where the two reasons I liked him come into play. One, he was a very subdued kind of sinister; only the one player knew he was getting a square deal, the other players weren't so sure. Second, his forms of payment were very odd. He drained "some of the fuel for your inner fires" (Glamour) out of the Flamekin for some ever-burning pitch that only functions in the Hedge, made some creepy allegories to the Hedge-leery Gremlin's durance, and accepted payment from the Hob Kin player by stealing his handprints for a day and an hour, by licking them off his hands and spitting onto his own. Sadly, Vulture-Hob met his end by being horribly eaten by a Devourer, a twisted form of Fetch, in revenge for aiding the player in hiding from him (unbeknownst to both Hob and PC).

The other NPC I like is Brad, the summer king, a Cyclops kith Ogre who is essentially a large, scary black man whose left eye is a gaping empty socket surrounded by scars. Long story short, he Hulked the fuck out with the Stone 5 contract and smashed a 1964 Corvette over the head of a True Fae so hard that it pinned the True Fae into the ground, the wreck of the car entangled around it. The PCs proceeded to saw its weapon-arm off with cold steel and make it flee back into the Hedge.

>>5249802
I don't get it.

>>5249984
>>5249986
Well, their appearance was brief, they mostly worked off-screen. They were just a funny bunch of guys who formed the supporting cast in the big fight scenes. I dont do GMPCs

And yeah, I do regret the blatant reference. I was co-DMing with this Art major girl with an over-inflated ego. She's the type who uses GMPCs. I make the GMPCs bearable. I handled dialog and detail, she handled plot.

>>5249853
Does he also carry Dead Sea Tupperware?

Alice was an alchemist in a middling sized town. Besides minor alchemical potions and ointments from the books, she'd brew up various things for the party depending on what sorts of rare ingredients they'd bring in for her. It might be some rare plants from a sentient forest, or a barrel full of hydra blood.

The biggest hit with the party was when they'd won her friendship and then brought in a whole mess of valuable things for brewing. As she decanted the brew into flasks, she took some gleaming stones from a hidden box and dropped them in, one per flask.

The result were the potions of highly potent randomness. I had a big chart made up of possible results that put the Rod of Wonders chart to shame, with one positive result guaranteed per potion (or my players would have never ended up using them), and the remaining 3-5 results being rolled out by the player. Someone deciding to drink a potion got immediate attention from the rest of the table as the rolling for effects commenced.

>>5250017

She's not a joke, she's just a fun NPC. (Though, Sane Abdul is cooler. I'm basically a hair trigger away, at any given point, from running an Arabian-themed campaign.)

I will be honest, there is a GMPC in my campaign.

His story begins with a village threatened by a great panther (that they created to kill an army for them, but, you know, stayed hungry afterwards, since it's in his nature to be terrible and hungry and clever.)

He tricked it into a spike pit, but even that only weakened it enough for him to chain him down, and in the struggle he lost his liver, his heart, his lungs, all of his organs! The villagers, thankful for his sacrifice, gave him a great, honorable funeral.

Which he showed up to and asked "Who's that in the coffin?"

And, to this day, he remains - a tough old man, all his clothing stained eternally red from his incurable wounds, who sees "being a hero" as the only goal in life, and "being a hero" translates directly into "killing large dangerous things".

He competes directly with the heroes from time to time, and occasionally his brutal quests line up with theirs - when demons attacked a town during a festival, and a huge, terrifying one appeared, he said "I'm gonna count to ten, and if it's still alive by then, I'm killin' it."

Oh, yes, and he double-crossed both the heroes and a mad priest of the Moon in order to allow himself to A. Technically Fulfill a Quest and B. Get close enough to the moon to carve "Crimson was here" into it.

He carries a huge jug of liquor mixed with healing potion at all times, which he chugs from constantly. He's prone to going on long tirades about how heroes ain't like they used to be.

He is the only person in the entire universe who cusses.

(He's basically the fallen Great White Hunter - ancient depictions of him show him as being dressed in all white. Now it's stained, of course...)

>>5250069
Yes... and listen...

>*phhbt*

Still good.

an undead king that is maintained by sacrificing people to it. He is a great king and that's why people do it, but the King doesn't know it. when the party reveals the truth he joins the party's side and brings judgment on his subjects. As his power wanes due to the lack of ritual deaths he and the party discover that centuries of necromantic energy has permeated around him causing his subjects to grow dependent on it, when the king dies the people will die too, slowly, painfully, and hideously.

The king decides that his one moral compass cannot justify the death of his subjects, and accepts the continuing sacrifices.

I was running Pathfinder's Second Darkness AP. I like to toss in extra content, so I invented Rzonca Hemlock.

Rzonca is what happens when a street urchin grows up. A 14-year-old street kid (looks 16-17 because she's half-orc), the party met her in a tortuga-esque freebooter town. She made a good lookout and informant when they were trying to raid the casino run by the guy who double-crossed them. After the casino was their's she kind of attatched herself to the place. She sucked at waiting tables, so she took to mooching from the pantry, stealing small objects, and in general acting like a snotty teenage delinquent. Eventually the cunning half-orc fighter/rogue laid down the law, and she shaped up. made a pretty good stealth-bouncer, since she was ridiculously strong and had no qualms about going for the crotch.

Their other bouncer was a greatsword-wielding halfling barbarian called Mad Jack the Mad Halfling. Originally from Darkmoon Vale, he was extremely paranoid about werewolves, assuming that anyone who caused trouble was one. he caused lots of breakages, but he worked for beer and nuts, so it evened out in the end.

Their Chef was a killer sushi-monk from the local Asialand.

>>5250130

-and then the fact that you can achieve immortality through ritual sacrifice is made public knowledge. Poor king.

My campaign world features a network of identical bartenders, all of whom are red-scaled dragonborn who sound suspiciously like Jason Statham. Even the female ones. The first one the group meets is named Raviin, the second Crivasse, Gulli, etc. Each has some pet associated with the name of their bar - Raviin, operating the Red Dragon Inn, has no pet, while Crivasse at the Invisible Dog has a slightly loopy spectral panther that believes it's a dog, and so on.

The exact nature of the bartenders should remain mysterious and unobtrusive, but they're generally helpful as a source of jobs and hints as to what to do next.

Though not an NPC, my campaigns also feature an item partway in called the Box of Useful Things. It's a small mahogany box with its latch set with a small white pearl. When the box is first opened, it contains some useful item, such as a writable map or rings allowing communication across short distances. The pearl then turns black - once the lid is shut, it seems to start drawing in wisps of light into itself, gradually turning white again. Once fully recharged, opening the box again will produce something that will be useful in the situation. The longer the box is left shut, the more useful the item will be. For instance, faced with a pit, if the box has been left unused for only a day, it might provide a rope - a week, and it would instead provide a ritual scroll which constructs a stable rope bridge.

Some ancient dwarven gambler that we have to take on our quest. We fought 2 dragons and when we were done he was surrounded by Kobolds and they were all taking bets on who would win.

I had a fun dichotomy with two sisters once.

Imusa and Nayae were two elven sisters (though they can be substituted to human with absolute ease, or any other "snobby" race) who I used in a campaign once. Imusa was a Paladin, Nayae was a Warlock...

And a really sweet, dumb person. Nayae wasn't real bright- INT of 10, effectively- but she was real sweet, and had went Warlock because "it was fun and I like darkness!" She seriously just did- had a little Mindflayer doll, stuffed and everything. She went around whoring (slept with... EVERYONE, actually, except the PCs) and was basically a riot to roleplay.

Her sister? Imusa was a total asshole. See, she had zero social skills- powerful personality, but meaner than a rattlesnake. She wasn't really zealous, I wasn't going for that- hell, her religion was her only redeeming trait, since it had a powerful restraining influence on her- but she was a person who deeply, deeply hated her sister, because she was a chaotic little thing that Imusa didn't understand. Imusa wanted order, law, things to be set in stone- and she hated those who were anything but.

She eventually went mad and was my favorite boss fight, since all the PCs freaked out at fighting her.

Good times.

>>5250102
Yeah. Think that, plus Apu from the simpsons. It was only later that I realized where I had gotten the idea from (not the apu bit. that was obvious)

He did sell them an Aberrant Sphere once, and the party did him a favor by testing it out on a competitor across the market square. Dropped a Grick right onto the guy's magic sword booth (you know, those things you see in malls that sell crappy over-priced knives and shit)

Beyond the Supernatural mash up. Drake Lee (taken from an old vampire movie I saw).

He didn't sparkle, didn't do squat, other than run his warehouse sized dance club/bar/restaurant. Wanted nothing to do with fighting crime (outside of keeping the neighborhood safe for his customers), didn't rescue the PCs, none of that. Only weakness was holy water, due to his reformed lifestyle (animal blood instead of human, never killed). The players, even after finding out Drake Lee was Dracula, they still came to him with questions, and to hang out in his club. Was nothing more than a source of information/meeting place in all the games.

Raul is a cook.

Specifically, he is the head cook and "procurement officer" to a generally good aligned mercenary band in a nation locked in interminable war.

Consequently he is, in a word, resourceful. In more words, he is a sneaky bastard hell-bent on sniffing out good deals to keep his buddies fed and sheltered, and dishing out vicious retribution to merchants, innkeepers, and/or ex-employers who've stiffed their merry band. His strange brew of masterful subterfuge, vicious justice, and gumbo that can eat through a DC 40 lock in as many seconds have earned him an unwanted reputation among the world's savvier spies and low-life movers and shakers.

Once every two or three months when a feast scene gets boring or they've just infiltrated a smuggling operation and a PC rolls a 30 insight: "Hey. That servant over there with the funny accent and suspiciously bushy mustache. It's Raul." And shit is about to get real.

>>5250165
I like this. Stealing one, possibly two, of your ideas.

Supernatural campaign. Drake Lee (the name taken from an old vampire film). Nightclub owner of Dante's Inferno, well known for its massive dance floor, restaurant (good food, not pricey either), and bar, a meeting place for all sorts, in a neighborhood relatively free of crime.

Drake Lee (Dracula), spent his time doing nothing but seeing to his business affairs, running the clubs (he had one almost everywhere), and, thanks to his reformed lifestyle (animal blood instead of human, not killing foes, etc.), was only vulnerable to holy water. Was a great source of information/answers for the players, but beyond running his clubs, and answering questions the players had, did nothing else. No sparkling, no emo bullshit, just a 'retired' vampire, running his clubs.

No Luck McGee. After hearing what he looked like, the players couldn't bring themselves to kill him during their counterboarding of Captain Morgan's airship when he assaulted the Hindenburg. No Luck McGee was the first mate, but they let him loose once they got into town.

Later, they were pursuing a lead on finding a missing NPC mad scientist from one character's backstory, and stayed at a hotel run by the mafia. They come downstairs to see that a mafia higher-up and his thugs heard about their questions, and a fight commences. The mafia lieutenant jumps out the window and hauls ass, whereupon the party figures the receptionist must have tipped the guy off as to their whereabouts. They head to the lobby to "question" the guy, and find that his shift ended. Behind the desk? McGee, now working for the Mafia. Again, the players decided the poor guy should be spared.

Then the hotel got burned down, and McGee had to find another job.

This happened time and again.

>>5250222

Stealing this idea.

>>5250215
>>5250181
...Unexpected player/DM matchup?

>>5250181
I'm guessing this was set in a time where he had already used the aliases Alucard and Dr. Acula.

I wish the actual PCs were half as interesting as these guys.

Lucan from the Whispers of the Vampire's Blade eberron adventure. I introduced him before the adventure started when he was still a human by framing the party for a murder and then saving them so that he could pump them for information. I somehow played him as a combination of Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible and James bond without being horribly cliche. I'm not sure how I managed it, but he was instantly the party's favorite NPC. They actually went out of their way to take him alive (so to speak) during the adventure. Afterwords, he made several appearances in the campaign as a "Good" vampire. It was a pretty awesome roleplaying scene when he finally admitted he framed them.

>>5250242
So he's a vampire, and a doctor?

As much as it pains me to say it, I dont hate it.

>>5249858
Ow. Ow. Ow. AGONIZINGLY BAD PUN.
>>5249996
If I had any skill in drawfaggortry, I'd draw this dude for you. He's awesome.
>>5250101
Hell yes. My uncle would love this guy.
>>5249853
Can I play in one of your games? Over IRC? I love desert campaigns, even better if they're low-leveled (Aladdin, anyone?)

I'm...not that good a GM. I had a grand total of one campaign, where the owner of the local tavernbar was an ex-adventurer who'd married a Cajun orc lass after they'd settled their differences in battle; his son bartended, his wife brewed and cooked, and he'd go out and hunt for game to keep the tavern up and about.

The tavern'd serve as a place for first-level characters to get simple tasks ("Get me a snek fer m' famous Snekbaht Brandy, an' I'll pay ya in return," fetching deer, etc) so they could get enough XP to go to the first-level dungeon I'd made with the expectation of four players instead of one. I ran one session and gave up when the one girl who was playing graduated.

It was for the best, I suppose. She made an elf wizard with an owl named Hedwig. *shudder*

I once ran a high fantasy pirate campaign where one of the pc's played a gnome mage. This guy was completely bonkers in a safe way. For example, he had a coat with many pockets that were actually pocket dimensions. The only problem was they all looped into each other so he always lost anything he put in there, only to find it again on the most inconvenient moments. Two exceptions being his automatic wind blower (a small fan) which he used when he needed dramatic effect, and a tuna sandwich which he had kept there for 43 years, always 'saving it for a rainy day.' He was also completely oblivious to the fact that he was traveling on a pirate ship. He simply paid the captain a large sum of his life savings to go hunt for his brothers long lost treasure, thinking he was on a merchant ship, dealing in exotic wares.
Well, this was a pc of-course, but eventually this guy needed a sidekick I thought. Enter his young apprentice, a human girl who was heir to a powerful wizarding family and possessed amazing magical powers for her age. The only problem was that she was accidentally a wild mage.
Anything the Gnome mage would teach her went completely wrong. I even used a chart to roll how much wrong it could go.Once, when asked to perform wizard mark, she accidentally turned it into an explosive rune. Gnome mage was launched out of a porthole.
Then the mage thought she might improve if she looked for a familiar. Unfortunately she accidentally opened a gate to the Abyss. Gnome mage barely managed to get his head chopped off by a balor before he closed the gate. The apprentice was distrought because she couldn't 'keep him.'
In short, she got her mentor into all sorts of trouble, and the funniest thing was that neither of them seemed to be very distressed about it. The crew however, were.... very much so. The Gnome mage, in his perpetual blissful ignorance found these little mistakes to be the flukes of a child. The apprentice... well she never stopped being overenthusiastic.

>>5250293
Sorry, but I doubt I'd be very good at IRC Dming.
And it wasnt a desert campaign. It was standard slightly-gritty setting (Pathfinder setting. yeah, I use APs alot. Sue me). Part of the guy's joke is that he's very out-of place, and a long way from home.

Dont sell yourself short, man. your tavern full of colorful NPCs is fairly good. Sorry you had a female potter fan as your sole player, though.

Alot of my skill is presentation and characters. I'm less good at plot and actual adventure design. That's why I use Adventure paths. All the nitty-gritty is already done for you, and done well, so you have some breathing room to experiment in, allow the party to spend some time off the rails, and breathe life into the characters.

One that got a lot of fun was Thune, the offscreen GMPC braggart adventurer. Everytime the PCs would come back into town, they'd see him in the tavern getting a drink. And as soon as he saw them he'd launch into a story of something awesome he'd accomplished, about the monster he'd killed or the wrong he'd righted, bragging up what he'd done. And then he'd ask what the PCs had been up to.

And every time, they'd be able to one up him. Even though he was going out there alone, he couldn't match up to the PCs. This happened time and again, always making him depressed and causing him to retreat into his drink. The PCs found this hilarious, what with the horrible DMPC of the previous DM.

Then one session, after the PCs did something truly amazing and fuckawesome, they were headed back into town and the rogue mentioned that he was headed to the bar first to see the look on Thune's face. But Thune wasn't there. They never heard from him again.

The rogue was so disappointed at his unmentioned death alone, depressed, and unheralded in the wilderness. After the campaign, he mentioned that treating Thune like shit was something he still felt bad about.

>>5250403
Wow. That's depressing...

>>5250403

Damn. That's a really cool, understated ending. Definitely a little heart-rending. (I mean, even if there's somebody better out there, it's still okay to brag, right?) The bleeding heart in me almost wants him to make a triumphant return!

i once had a BBGG Paladin who the PC's were going to fight any way. the rouge in the party decided to stay behind when the party when on the quest the Paladin gave them. he broke into the church and began doing rouge things... the Paladin walks around the corner begins to say something the first thing the rouge can think of is to use the rope and grappling hook he had. so he rolls and comes up with a 20 he fish hooks the Paladin. the Paladin is lvl 15 the rouge is lvl7. the Paladin grabs the rope and pulls the rouge to him and kills him in one turn. when the party returns they ask him about the rouge and the Paladin says he does not know where the rouge is. he fell in front of the party but they all failed their insight roll so they did not notice him falling

I have recurring dwarven berserker npc in my campaigns named Gootch. He's a chaotic neutral alchoholic who has a bad habbti of wrecking the bars he drinks at. Not just the people, the actual bars and buildings themselves. He was once great hero (well, he was with a bunch of great heroes when they did their thing, he just was swept along in the praise) and for the most part he's still kinda respected, but mostly he's just feared. He never does anything outright evil, but if someone pick s fight, spills their drink on him, eyeballs him, or steps on his toe, its on. He is best friends with a lawful nuetral mage who keeps him on as hired muscle who mostly pays for his destructive streaks. He's also a very strong berserk fighter that is almost impossible to subdue without outright killing him. He's mostly treated like the hulk- let him vent and he calms down and goes on his way.
Some pc's in my game got tons of renown for actually kicking him out of a bar- and keeping him out. The bar went from being a pit in the ground with a beer keg to a 4 star inn and pub, simply because Gootch wouldn't go back.

>>5250403
>PCs feeling bad for treating npc like shit
can we trade players?

all my players want to do is kill, pillage and rape.

Professor Eustace Fleed. wizard in charge of Post-mortem communications at a local university. Pale, bald, wears black robes, and has 2 dark round lenses floating in front of his eyes, unsupported. Acts as occasional quest-giver, since he's used to getting his hands dirty, he handles all the school's shady back-door transactions; cursed items, cadavers, and so forth. (go and get me dead bodies. lots and lots of dead bodies. you're adventurers; this should be right up your alley).

When introduced, the party asked

"wait, dark sinister wizard guy? You're not some sort of demon-summoner, are you?"

"What? Oh, ho, ho, ho, no, no, of course not! I wouldn't touch the lower planes; dangerous stuff. No, no...I'm a necromancer!"

"yeah...that's so much better."

>>5250552

Why not make a game about pillaging and give them some pillaging buds to vike with, share tips about good targets, and laugh with about all the havoc they've wrought? If they wanna be nasty mothers, give them some other nasty mothers to chill with.

(Bonus points if one of them reacts to "I stab him." with "He punches you in the head, laughs, and says "Alright, let's go have a drink.")

>>5250574
Someone really likes hammy minor dark-lord types. I approve.

Old Ghoulie, a semi-sentient ghoul who came into a village one day and gradually won the hearts of the townsfolk. The people will acknowledge that his appearance and mannerisms are very strange but generally believe that he's fully alive and human, but think that he's just from a different country.
Can't speak properly? Most people have a hard time adjusting to a new language.
Long claw-like hands? His culture probably grows their nails out as a sign of age and wisdom.
Purple skin? Likely it's from all the wild fruit they eat over there.
Taste for raw meat? Well it's not like they have many pigs and cows 'round those parts. I'd say he thinks he's having a delectably every day, the lucky fellow.
Strange odor? We try not to dog him about it. They only take baths once a year where he's from... come to think of it, I'm not quite sure WHERE he's from.
If players ask enough people and make some good diplomacy rolls, the townsfolk may come to the conclusion that he's not just some foreigner. He must have some elvish in him. Elves are strange enough over here, imagine what they must be like over there.

>>5250574

It's funny because I'm listening to Black Sabbath.

One of my favorites is a very helpful tiefling named Natas. He always seems to be in the right place at the right time. He's a roguish adventurer type with a flare for the ladies, but he always seems to be alone. He's always looking for the next big deal, but always seems to be just missing his chance. His main purpose is to off handily drop some useful info to the pc's when they seem to need it the most. Most of the time he asks for small favors in return for the info, almost never asking for money or items. He might as for help building a shed next to the city wall to store his merchandise. If they pc's learn that the city was later invaded by troops that were allowed in by some using the shed for a perch, why that was just a horrible coincidence. And just because that shipment of chickens he asks the pc's to deliver for him had a rare disease that destroyed egg production for the entire country country for generations doesnt mean he knew about it. And if the pc's just never get too curious as to why all these random occurrences keep happening around them, well, so much the better. After all, Natas if just being helpful, to as many people as he can.

I had a recurring traveling merchant that occasionally showed up in towns as a convenient plot device. He started off with a traveling nun as a companion. My players expected there to be some kind of ongoing love story there, until the merchant showed up alone. They asked where his friend went, and he replied that he was pissed at her for spending all his money and eating all his food, and that loneliness was much preferable to putting up with the crap that she caused.

A male dark elf named Bahk'si, of House Braoun. He led an exodus from the Underdark for all of those dark elves who were sick of all the Lolth worship that was doing nothing while the two massive gateways to the Abyss and the Nine Hells on the surface continued to pour out demons and devils to the point that they were starting to find their way underground.

He had a massive white afro and a white goatee, and he called all of my players "bitch" in between making sexual innuendo (and then subsequently asking if they knew what he was talking about.) He lived with his wife in the main city, ruled over by a powerful elven wizard who erected an anti-Outsider shell of magic outside of the city walls. Also, his older brother (a drider) lived with them and sorf of acted as a guard dog since he was completely insane.

i've got a few, all for DH, Ive got a pretty big campaign written up, Its got three notable npcs that the pcs will run into. A random drifter who is nameless for now. Acts on a whim completely unreliable, like the pcs will be ready to attack a bandit camp or something, and he will just take off only to reappear when things go horribly wrong, crack shot with a stub pistol and carries home made grenades that sometimes go off at the worst times. also steals alot. I plan on him stealing a commissars uniform and hat during the final fight. Then therers the chaos cat. A random black alley cat the party will find. and the cat will follow them. but for some reason this cat is really unlucky... for those around it. A perils of the warp test will be taken once a day because of this cat. And it will always follow the party. Then theres a grot that will claim to be a loyal servant to the imperium because it doesn't steal from humans. will have two giant pistols and kinda of a crooked business man theme going. whatcha think?

>>5250667
And that's why traveling merchants should pick their tag-alongs wisely.

>>5250699

This is probably going to get used by me in the near future.

My favorite NPC right now is Lisa, who is only 3, or as she would say "twee." Scoundrel/rouge build, she will note on first meeting you that her mommy told her not to talk to strangers with candy, so therefore you need to give her all your candy and shiny toys before she can talk to you.

She's a great way to hint at backstory and other NPC motivations, she can put in hooks for side quests, and only the most obnoxious twits of powergaming combat players don't warm to her (and if they don't warm to her, you're not going to get them emotionally attached to anything in-game). Lisa pushes story without being too cliched, helpless, or badass.

Okay, I actually have more fun with her mother, but she isn't really portable to other games.

>>5250699

Reminds me of this recent story. In a good way.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/50_Copper_and_Ludi'drizz't

>>5250762
>>My favorite NPC right now is Lisa, who is only 3, or as she would say "twee." Scoundrel/rouge build, she will note on first meeting you that her mommy told her not to talk to strangers with candy, so therefore you need to give her all your candy and shiny toys before she can talk to you.

I d'awwwed. Then I read "rouge" and I raged.

Should this baby be Archived? Either way, I'm saving the page to my hard drive. Great stuff, everyone!

>>5250804
Yes it should. Also, we should post some more NPCs. I'll get writing on one, though I've posted three of my favorites already.

>>5250855
trying to archive...should it take this long? Is there some common mistake I should look out for? Sorry, never archived before.

>>5250941
Nah, you did fine. Just keep the tags more general next time, no need to put a tag for each story when there's a lot of them.

Bearbeard Bearfist

A bear monk who thinks he's a dwarf.

entertaining but not very useful

never mind, it's archived
>>http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5249757/

>>5250971
I forgot that he is also a pacifist and works as a Sherpa. he also raises yetis as his hobby.

The shopkeeper from Zelda:Link's Awakening. Sure he'll turn his back and you can get away with stolen goods. But you'd best not return.

I read on /tg/ about the player whose DM plagued them with a Ranger who'd pop up out of FUCKING NOWHERE (like, he'd hide in a barrel that the party would walk by hours later), no matter where they'd go, fire an arrow at the party, and haul ass.

Now, my players wanted a modern setting campaign. Then I saw this picture, remembered the Ranger story, and went with it. It's been a great success. Although the previous plotline has been forgotten, and the players are more interested in finding out who the person taking a shot at them every so often is and why they're doing it. In the process, hilarity has ensued as they've been sticking their noses into all sorts of criminal goings-on that have been completely unrelated to Jessica, the schoolgirl sniper. She's a mix of the crazed sniper from Dirty Harry and the jilted bride from Blues Brothers, fixated on one of the PCs. And every day after school, she goes to the top of some high building and watches for "her" PC as she works on her French homework. She's not the greatest shot, but one of these days...

>>5250667
Must be some nun.

A merchant and former adventuring bard. His name is Tom, and his voice sounds like he's been smoking for 50 years. He has a particularly creepy singsong way of pitching his wares.

One of my favorites

Walsh Micah is a captain of a mercenary ship in a universe created by a website I frequent…

At the age of 8, Walsh was an orphan. His parents were killed in a major mining accident, which also left his entire colony in ruins. He was left stranded to fend for himself for two years. By age 10 Walsh was taken in by a group of weapons smugglers, and he spent seven years as one of them. This is where he learned daring space tactics that goes against the mold of what is seen as “accepted” and “rudimentary” tactics. During that time he became involved with a traders daughter. They had a flourishing relationship, and Walsh was love struck. He left the smugglers after rising to become their top "runner".

He began to work for the trader as a security officer. Using the combined knowledge that he had acquired from the past couple years, Walsh kept the trader's business safe. However, about two years into his relationship his girlfriend was killed when a rival trading convoy attacked her father’s station. Saddened and hopeless he joined a group of rebels (as a Civil War was tearing his home Quadrant apart) in an attempt to escape his past. For a couple years he fought on the ground and in the sky, and racked in many kills. Mentally strained, Walsh eventually cracked and deserted their ranks. Still depressed and enraged, Walsh put his skills to the test. In a little under half a decade, Walsh individually tracked down and killed every person involved with his girl friend’s death. In these years he became an expert at hunting anyone down, even with almost no information. He chose to become a bounty hunter, and quickly became a top figure in his Quadrant’s underworld.

cunt-tinued
>>5251117
In his criminal prime Walsh disappeared from the underworld, and broke all his ties with anyone he had ever known. He traveled across the Galaxy to begin life again.

That’s his back story; he’s about 34 years old when I begin to use him.

Walsh is many things. He is stubborn, but patient; this also follows suit with his tactics. He is angry, but horribly depressed (if you can make him happy, you are a great friend). He has unmatched hunting skills, can pilot very well, and is a trained killer.

He stands at 6’tall. He has very messy light brown hair, and blue eyes. He wears futuristic vinyl armor, covered by a white and green shirt bearing a glyph which represents the company which made his ship; this is covered by a brown jacket… and he wears Black pants.

In this package is the most humorous, but human character I’ve made.

>>5251123
>>5251117
>>In this package is the most humorous, but human character I’ve made.

I'm not seeing humor, awesome, or believability here. Not to worry, my first NPCs were pretty bad too. Keep trying.

>>5251117
>>5251123

Gary Stu detected.

>>5251030
Genius, my friend.

I love this thread. Why can't we have threads like this every day?

>>5251172

40k takes up all the space for good threads. The rest ends up mostly EDITION WARS EDITION WARS EDITION WARS

>>5251148
>>5251164
Fuck.

Well, take away my god mode and he's just a depressed alcoholic.

>>5251194
I was going to suggest fixes, but I can't really think of any.

It's best to just start out with a well-adjusted character and let story happen to them; good or bad.

This thread...

>>5251194
>>Well, take away my god mode and he's just a depressed alcoholic.

NOW I'm seeing the character potential. I'm going to go so far as to say you've probably got good GM material in you; several GMs I know would get up in arms about someone disparaging their character. It's the desire to improve and either tell a great story or provide the players with the most fun that's essential, and there's too many GMs who don't realize that.

Don't beat yourself up over things you could have done better in the past; besides, you may be a good enough actor to make the players enjoy interacting with this character despite the god mode.

>>5251184
Be nice if Moot made a /40k/. I like Orks as much as the next red-blooded man, but the arguments get tiresome atimes.

I seldom share this shit, but what the hell?

Ven Brooks:
He's a survivor... Specifically of a Post-Apocalyptic world; not specifically a survivor of loneliness, dog bites, malaria, and back-country natives.

No military background. All he had for a background was a deadbeat dad, and a whore mother. His dad had three other children with two other women, and his mom fucked their neighbor every other Sunday.

Ven was a High School athlete. He drank when he won, and was beat by his father if he lost.

His initiation into the real world was when he knew he could beat the living hell out of his dad for his relentlessly scary childhood. When that day did come, Ven set off on a cross-the-globe enlightenment tour, to flip his parents the bird by turning down Athletic Scholarships and disappearing and never returning.

After a extremely deadly virus wiped the globe of 85% of it's inhabitants. Ven's five years of traveling where ever his heart took him payed off: he knows how to survive without the world... He's a great asset to any P.A. wandering group.

Begin campaign...

>>5251221

I don't think you know what Mary Sue means.

>>5250403
This reminds me of my favorite NPC, Nathan the Brave.

He was a straight fighter who happened to be 3 lvls higher then the party. Whenever the party got back to town he was there to recite his valorous deeds that he accomplished "BY MYSELF!". Occasionally the party would meet him in a dungeon. They would argue who had rights to be there, and then go there separate ways.

By the time the party reached the BBEGs fortress, Nathan was already there trying to brake down one of the outer walls. After arguing with him once again they agreed "Whoever takes down Notwen first wins!".
Continuing on, the party reaches the BBEG's final chamber with no sign of Nathan when, all of a sudden, Nathan bursts through one of the chambers side doors to groans from the PC's.

Now, this is the funny part, after such a brilliant entrance you expect this now DMPC to join up with the PC's right? BBEG basically force pushes Nathan through a wall just to get him out of the way.
After the battle, the PC's find whats left of Nathan two rooms over in a treasure vault.

The comments ran along the line of "That was an awful lot of work for a Red-Shirt." I thought it was mildly entertaining.

There's Umberto, the merchant who looks like an arab but talks like a Frenchman. He travels around on a magic carpet from city to city selling the most random things. When they first met him, he was a silk vendor. Since then, he's sold meats, jewelry, furs, and the occasional magic item. The party face has him as a primary contact, but nobody in the party actually knows his name.

Any modules I run contain "the goddamn mercane". Pretty much a clone of The Merchant from RE4, he teleports in, opens his cloak to reveal dozens of Leomund's Chests, and asks "Whaddya buyin, STRANga?"
Also, any purchase made from him comes with a free draw from the Deck of Many Things.

>>5251418
>>The comments ran along the line of "That was an awful lot of work for a Red-Shirt."

Damn genre-savvy players ruining all our GMing fun.

>>5251438
>>Also, any purchase made from him comes with a free draw from the Deck of Many Things.

I take it you don't mind game-breaking events taking place.

Danny the Dorf.

Danny is an insane former slave who was originally raised without any contact with dorf culture. When he finally discovered dorf culture, it was in the form ofa highly racist book that painted dorfs with a broad, stereotypical brush. Not realizing this, Danny slowly went mad (-4 Wis, +4 Cha, uses Cha for Will Saves) and changed his personality to fit that of his "proud, lost heritage". He escaped and now makes a living mining valuable metals from underneath the structure of a major metropolis, endangering the stability of several city blocks. While he has vast stores of raw ore of many kinds of precious and rare metals, he is unable to identify them, causing people looking for mithral to be offered gold, iron seekers are offered silver (or platinum, or adamantine, of even iron on the rare chance that Danny gets it right).

Danny presents as a rambling, dishevelled dorf with an unkempt, long beard, moldering teeth, and a mad glint in his eye. He constantly reeks of booze and insists on spending every waking moment underground digging. He is a Rogue/Barbarian who wields an adamantine heavy pick with devastating and manic ferocity.

>>5251497
I'm semi-responsible about it. I wait until they're level 10, at least.
And one of my players refuses to draw from The Deck under any circumstance.

>>5251498
That's pretty awesome.

>>5251497

The deck is always the good kind of game-breaking. We lost 1 1/2 party members to it last week and as a result ended up blowing off the main quest and telling the questgiver to FOAD.

>>5251438

>The Merchant from RE4, he teleports in, opens his cloak to reveal dozens of Leomund's Chests, and asks "Whaddya buyin, STRANga?"

Well, it looks like I'm not alone then.

>>5251580
The funny thing is, I didn't design him to be a Merchant clone. I just needed a way for my players to re-equip themselves in the middle of nowhere. So I read up on Mercanes. One of my players then got a hold of the Planar Handbook, and yelled "He's the goddamned merchant!"
And I was all like "oh shit! You're right!"

Eliath the Dragon's Bane

Eliath is a... somewhat dim witted Paladin, who really would end up more of a bard, maybe. He rids a horse, wields a long, souped up spell-storing (normally Inflict Serious Wounds) flaming lance, and can't take a hit worth shit.

He tells incredible tales of the bravery that he and his friends have had; the powerful creatures, terrible villains, and relived saved townsfolk.

Much of it is, perhaps, tall tales and myths, but there is just enough truth in each one that make it seem credible. There is one, for example, where the PC's fought a cockatrice. The players knew it was a cockatrice. But the character's didn't, and thought it was a dire chicken or something. So they lied, and TOLD everyone that it was a cockatrice, knowing that they knew it wasn't, when it actually was. The fight ended with the cleric strangling the poor thing to death with his bare hands, as it wouldn't stand still long enough to get it's head cut off.

I haven't used it yet, but I have an idea for a merchant who buys artifacts from traders, gets influenced and almost controlled by several dozen of them, and basically contracts the magical equivalent of Tourette's.

The best thing about running a game, I think, is that you can make a character of your own to play alongside the group. What's neat though, is that you can make her whatever you want. Even things that aren't technically allowed by the rules. It's fun for the GM to be able to play something too, and it helps keep everyone on track with your story too, since you can have your character talk to the other important NPCs or lead them around to make sure they see the major things you want them to and so on.

Oswald Mandius. Crazy powerful but completely nice and hilarious wizard. Owner of shop named "Ozzy's Oddities". There is an Ozzy's Oddities in every town and he is apparently running every single one. What the players don't know is that Ozzy created a ton of effigies of himself to run the franchises of his shop. They are all telepathically connected and have all the knowledge and personality of the others. They are all, for all intents and purposes, Ozzy himself. No one in the world knows which is the real Ozzy, or whether they're all effigies and Ozzy has been dead for years.

>>5249757
Is... Is that Sierra Petrovita?

FUCK YES, ART OF OBSCURE VIDEOGAME NPCS.

>>5251809
Fuck you

>>5251809
>Even things that aren't technically allowed by the rules.
Don't break the fucking rules to give your special DMPC fancy shit because the players HATE IT. You already get special treatment, you're the fucking DM. Don't rub it in.
>you can have your character talk to the other important NPCs
oh hey thanks for the fucking puppet show, really appreciate it
>lead them around to make sure they see the major things you want them to and so on.
>lead them around
R-R-R-RAILROADING

You are a fucking awful DM.

>>5251841 here, in before ";__; i troll u"

>>5251830
There's a mod that let's you fuck her.

>>5251809
SO. MUCH. RAGE.

>>5251846
I want that mod, and all other like it. I'm bored, and need something to do until Mothership Zero arrives.

Steampunk "airships and floating cities" style setting. Players needed a contact-style NPC.

Enter Puck. Elven mechanist, and the only daughter of a ludicrously wealthy shipping magnate. Eccentric, laid back, very mellow; think Lebowski with tits. She basically just sat around all day tinkering with machines and getting high.

Used her primarily as a fence for the party's ill-gotten gains as they were of the pirate sort. She also secured what goods they may need, repaired things for them, and kept her ear to the grapevine for choice bits of information.

The catch? While Daddy was largely corrupt, he didn't approve of his Little Girl doing "the dope" so the only way she'd help the party out was if they kept her supplied with weed.

>>5251892
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2341

You get to fuck her as part of the wasteland reproduction guide quest you get after convincing Moira to fuck you FOR SCIENCE.

>>5251892

>Mothership Zero
>Mothership Zeta

Man I can't wait to lay down the Emperor's Fury on the wretched xenos.

>>5251841
Sounds like my old DM.

Huh, his DMPCs fit every single one of those.

Begi the Greatest;

An undead hero of the ages (the long past age most likely, his war stories were of mythical battles from ancient times) we found deep in a forest. Undead only in the sense that it was an animated suit of armor, his excuse for being alive was that "dying is for little girls". His help was needed in killing a dragon who he had once fought, however first we needed to help him finish the quest he was on when he died; diplomacy with the greatest Orc warlord of the day. His day that is, and by now said Orc was long dead, so we needed to find a Necromancer and the remains of the famous Orc to stage a diplomatic meeting that consisted of ten minutes of yelling and a declaration of war.

Said undead great Orc escaped, rounded up the orc tribes and went about waging his war, while we along with the undead Hero rallied the free peoples to fight back. All over a tract of forest that was by now inhabited by elves. Eventually the war ended and we set about going after the dragon who in the end turned out to be one different from the one our Hero fought, so essentially we didn't need his help at all. Regardless, all our travelings and questings added onto his reputation and he became a hero of the ages for this age, and was tasked with all manner of new quests. It would have been annoying if it were not for the fact that he was completely incompetent and couldn't do jack shit without us. All the while he never forgot to remind us that he wasn't 'Begi the Great' but instead 'Begi the Greatest'.

>>5251956

More or less he was the DM's character (who we happened to run into frequently), but his horrific incompetence, ridiculously gentleman-like nature, and inability to actually die made him a wonderful catalyst for quests and whatnot. One of my favorite parts was when he spent all night lecturing a bunch of whores outside the tavern about how their behavior was 'unbecoming of young ladies', the whores in turn called their pimps who subdued him and sold him off to slavers as a warforged bard (incessant talking led to suspicion).

lotta merchants...

>>5251962
>>5251956

This is awesome. Moar Begi stories.

Running a MM game and I plan on having this NPC that I use to have a staple in any game I played. He's a blundering wannabe BBEG, In DH he was a cult leader who was trying to summon daemons buy having the cultists throw large amounts of money into a lake thinking this would appease the gods. In all Flesh Must be Eaten, he was a regular zombie who thought he was a large hulking brute, you would find him banging his arms on cars trying to flip them, trying to strike a menacing pose to intimidate the group or wrapping his arms around them in an attempt to crush them to death.

>>5251981

I would like to, but there's allot.

Such as the one about having to infiltrate a vampire lord's winter ball, where he obviously had to pose as a suit of armor and be wheeled in.

Come the night of, when the music starts playing all the guests are mortified (well, for vampires at least) when one of the decorative suits of armor starts bobbing it's head with the beat, and eventually jumps off the stand and does an odd combination of the Charleston Chew and the electric slide.

When questioned what the hell he was doing, guests received the answer of "THE RHYTHM... IT FLOWS THROUGH ME! It's like there's... there's a party. A rave party... in my pants..."

>>5251956
That is awesome and you may have just given me my next campaign.

This entire thread is full of awesome ideas that I hope to be able to use at some point in the future.

>>5251841
I ran a DMPC once. Gestalt Fighter/Cleric in a gestalt game.

"The animated statue charges with his halberd. He swings... *dice roll*. Hmmm. *dice roll*. Alright, *rolls d10*. Alright guys, Halberd catches Charity in the neck, he's at negatives. it is now your *points at Rogue/Druid* turn."

"Wait, the tank just got one-shotted?"

"He's made of meat, ain't he?"

Fuck invinci-DMPCs.

>>5252029
You could be the next Wasteland Warrior, bringing epic campaign tales to /tg/. Write up the accumulated stories of Begi the Greatest, you know you want to!

an unhelpful receptionist with a boston accent who is constantly blowing bubble gum and filling her nails. just so happens to be the receptionist at ever Order my nMages go to.

>>5252060

Oh God that would take forever. It was like one in three quests we did that he showed up in, mainly because he was a god-awful failure who agreed to take on some impossible feat, gave up and ended up crying in a muddy pigpen he rented with his cooking monies. Taking pity we usually ended up helping him which would start the quest.

What was more pervasive was that he showed up in games that other players DM'd, while his creator actually played a character. After awhile we just sort of came to accept him as a running joke, and all used him every so often.

I'd like to note that the range of interesting/entertaining I know of isn't limited to one character. I just felt like describing the first that came to mind.

I once had a halfling doctor in one of my games. When he was young man, he lost a leg in an accident, and didn't have enough money to pay the cleric to heal his leg. He was so pissed at the money-grubbing servants of the gods that he decided to figure out how to heal without clerical magic, and actually got to be pretty good at it.

He's a peg-legged, pipe smoking halfling who wears (essentially) a lab coat all the time and hobbles around on his cane. His procedures aren't as fast acting or consistent as clerics, but they're provided on the basis of a donation.

In his spare time, he studies bugs. He has a small collection of live moths, because he thinks they're cool.

>>5252107
house X Gil grissom?

Brandon Willhelm, savior of the pasture.

Brandon was a wandering magic user who came across a farming comunity with a major problem. Between a band of raiders and a wave the of the plague, almost every man in the village has died. The women and children are doing their best to prepare for the winter, but things look bleak. Enter Brandon.

Using his knack for necromancy, he reanimates the fallen men into harvesting their own crops and saving their surviving families, then they dig their own graves and are laid to rest. The village is uneasy, but grateful.

Brandon used this as the basis of his new business venture. He travels in a large wagon full of boxes, each box contains a set of bones. He animates the skeletons as a source of cheap labor. He wear white robes; has short, sandy hair, and a bright smile. He doesn't like to work with zombies as he thinks they are 'unclean'. His inventory contains 8 bars of soap and he washes his hands a lot.

>>5251387
>>thatsthejoke.jpg

>>5252106
>>That would take forever
But it would be amazing and epic.

At least give us a few more stories, because this is a seriously awesome character. Or heck, tell us about some of the other great characters from your games.

>>5252117
Oh god now I want to make a germaphobic necromancer.

>>5252155
That's where the character got started. I saw that there were bars of soap in misc equipment, and I knew I had to make a character who had need for them.

>>5252152

Well my all time favorite was actually a player character. Not so much entertaining, but much more sentimental and on a grander scale.

For NPC's there's the dung-farmer turned demon-hunter, or the baker who got magically merged with a pie, or the werehuman wolf who turned into a human at nights. I dunno, just a wide collection.

As for stories, maybe another time. It's rather late now.

Graveth the White, rogue Necromancer.

Accused party leader of being gay, helpfully stabbed him with a magical relic in order to teach him how to use it. Party leader was wearing armour made of flesh and bone, and when he asked for more help, Graveth reanimated his armour.
Said armour spent the rest of the game weeping softly.
Leader asked Graveth to activate a Necromantic amulet found during an earlier quest - Graveth does so, party leader now has a lich living in his head because the dumb fuck was wearing a phylactery.
Got sick of the party leader asking questions, and threw him off the tower.

Gave the party a Boo-zooka - a gun that fires exploding ghosts, and told them to save the world from a Lovecraftian nightmare.

>>5252190
>>As for stories, maybe another time. It's rather late now.

Dang. So it goes.

>>Well my all time favorite was actually a player character. Not so much entertaining, but much more sentimental and on a grander scale.

Dammit why must you be vague.

The Croat - oWoD Technocracy campaign, online: Born in a chicken coop in the former yugoslav republic, fixer and sociopath. Addressed party as 'youse fucking guys'. When in possession of co ordinates of a lost Horizon Realm construct, would only give them to the party if the only female member consented to pegging him, which she did, albeit fully clothed. 'You pig me now, yes? Fucking pigging?'

>>5252192
I WANT A BOO-ZUKA!

Urlacher, Invoker of Pelor.

pic related.

D6 Star Wars, Galactic Civil War era.

I had a smuggler who provided passage for the PCs a few times. He was a former imperial TIE pilot who had been dishonorably discharged because be became so fat that he couldn't fit in the cockpit any longer. His copilot was a Verpine. The TIE pilot said he picked the Verpine up because he was the first species he'd seen that was thin enough to fit into the cockpit next to him.

His ship was shitty as hell, but he was one of the most talented and skilled pilots there was--and flying with him meant magnificent 3-course meals every evening, and sometimes for lunch as well.

Of course, in exchange, you had to listen to him talk...

...and talk...

...and talk.

>>5252341

Jek Porkins' imperial twin?

>>5252354

...never thought of that, actually. =O

in my call of cthulhu game, set in 1984, the players had gone off on a tangent which involved flying from new york to utah in search of lost carcosa. while in a town near where they thought it used to be, they started asked the locals questions

enter hazel. Hazel Cassilda Jacobs is a doddering old bad lady who claims to be 172 years old, born during the war against "those terrible canadians". Hazel could quote "the king in yellow" from memory, and lived in an abandoned house on a hill near a lake. the house was a tesseract with a major time dilation effect.

she insisted one of the PCs (a german psychiatrist) was the kaiser, but thought he was a delightful fellow. she repeatedly asked the other PCs if the kaiser had sent them whenever they spoke to her.

two weeks later, they've roadtripped back to new york, and what's in the doctor's mailbox? a manilla envelope addressed to "the kaiser" containing three and a half tickets to an off broadway musical production of "the king in yellow". postmarked 1954. the stamp was a scrap of paper with a hazelnut scrawled on it in crayon, and the postmark was drawn on with a pen, but there it was.

no other NPC has made my players as paranoid, confused, and outright worried, as Hazel.

>>5252513
err, bag lady. damn my clumsy fingers

Pippin is an overly melodramatic and thoroughly insane wizard. He is the owner of Pippin's Poppers, a shop that provides divination, magical assistance. Has an aversion to doors, windows, or other firm things that close, like chest lids.

Throughout his melodramatic speeches where he informs the party of a mystic background and magical happenings, he periodically sets common objects on fire for dramatic effect. Once he realizes they are on fire, he panics and tries to put them out before the fire gets out of control.

Makes the majority of his money working children's birthday parties.

Is that Sierra Petrovita? I love Sierra. She's so hillariously hyper.

Bran "Backlash" Cleric of Mystra
Bran is a low to mid level human cleric in his mid thirties who frequently travels with adventuring parties traveling rural areas. While he is a fair warrior and unflinchingly brave, his real talent is as an ambassador. Bran's easy humor, square-jawed good lucks, and generous smile are disarming to all but the most jaded or suspicious.

While Bran frequently serves as a strong arm for his goddess, there are always unruly monsters butting up against civilization, his real joy comes in preaching to children. What sets him apart from other wandering missionaries, however, is that he earnestly believes in the propagation of magic as an art first and a religion second. Thus his sermons are more lessons in the fundamentals of divine casting then dusty history lessons or zealous dogma. He takes particular delight in teaching gifted youngsters orisons and, with parental approval, occasionally takes such people under his wing for personal tutoring until he returns to temple where they can start their proper training. He refuses, with a light laugh and a wry grin, to explain how he got his epitaph, saying that some lessons are only learned through experience.

i had a monarch based on mel brooks' king louis from history of the world...i also threw in the Rue de Merde

Anytime I have an opportunity to have a watchman/stationary guard/armed desk clerk (whether guarding gates or working at the front desk of a police department) I have Carl.

He has an adversarial demeanor, though rarely makes actions on it, other than passively reminding you that he is armed. In modern campaigns he always had a pump shotty. Heavy crossbow for fantasy.

Additionally, he would be helpful with any and all questions, but would be a condescending prick about it. And would invariably refer to a player or players as they left (or other triggers such as saying dumb things) as 'fag(s)'

Not in a homophobic way. Just that was the word that was used. Just a general helpful-but-oh-so-not-nice guy.

>>5251830

She's not that obscure, she just has a fucking hard to remember nam.

I looked at her and thought "ah, psycho nuka cola lady"

One NPC that accompanied the PCs for a fair amount of time in my Planescape game was basically a giant beetle. It used telepathy to communicate, was extremely friendly and intelligent, but also incredibly naive. He co-ran a Planar newspaper in Sigil. The PCs were hired as "assistants", but really the partner just wanted them around to keep him out of trouble. The beetle, whose name was Chelitoth, was a level 14 Archivist, but he always assumed that everyone was essentially reasonable and decent. So he figured that if anyone just stopped and *TALKED* then there wouldn't need to be any violence.

Yeah, it doesn't work that way all the time. He ended up sacrificing himself to save the PCs

Which brings us to his business partner, a LN Mind Flayer who manages to make the decisions that Chelitoth either didn't want to make or didn't even realize were necessary. He was alright, as Mind Flayers go, but he was still completely convinced of his superiority to "lesser beings"

Okay, so this is what politics are like in my campaign.

All the senators are Commedia Del Arte characters, and all congress is actually just a really, really silly farce. And there are enough stock lines that they do that the big fans sit in the balconies and shout rejoinders at them Rocky-Horror Style.

There are five senators. One of which is really evil and has blue skin, one of which is kind of dumb but strong, one of which is beautiful and vain, one of which is a silly, but clever clown, and the fourth of which actually gets things done through manipulation. (And longs after a man she cannot have.)

The most popular senator is a horse. His name is Barbaro. "Every day is Barbaro Day!" is a common shout from his fans.

Senator Malevolo (who is evil, and does not have a name that is very good at hiding it) is outraged at the fact that there is a horse in senate, and constantly tries to prove that Barbaro is, in fact, a horse. Arlekino, the clown, then, say, gets Sen. Malevolo to say "Neigh", or hides hay in his desk, or something of the sort, suggesting that he is, in fact, the horse. ("Of course, it would be preposterous that there could be a horse in the senate, my esteemed, given our rigorous elections. But we must entertain due process! Oh, curse these checks and these balances!")

Senator Malevolo then gets flustered and, without error, gets kicked by a horse and the whole audience laughs.

(There's a sixth senator, but she's never seen.)

I've got a few.
3.5: Red and Diemos. One of the few sets of characters I wrote only a single sentence for in my notes on them. It simply reads "A D&D version of Jay and Silent Bob" They caused a facepalm but quickly became crowd favorites. They reappear frequently.

Flauros, based on Casca from "Berzerk". Recurring shopkeeper/love interest for one of the characters. Named for an object in Silent Hill since I suck at naming things.

Orthos Mentok, named for Mentok, see above. He is probably immortal or maybe he isn't. He might be a very vague childhood friend of one of my PCs or I may just have misplaced the sheet that discribes him. Sometimes he's very important, but it turns out he's just there for comic relief. In short, he's more a name than a character, but he has a supernatural ability to pop up EVERYWHERE. If I can come up with an excuse for how Mentok got there then he often fills the side roll that I needed someone for. Which lead to the in joke: "I swear to god if he turns out to be Orthos Mentok..."

>>5254996
Me here:
Dark Heresy:
Dorthi (named for Dorthy from Big O, though she didn't start with a name when I created her (oddly enough it was one of my players who gave it to her, not me)). Was a servitor built by a tech-priest being held hostage by an insane Slaneesh serving noble devoted to creating the perfect sex toy. She was meant to get broken because that's how my PCs usually do things but a natural one allowed the tech-priest to reprogram her well enough to become a faithful servant. Seeing as she's built to be a sex toy she's a good bit more presentable than your average servitor. Also, she has a pair of steel blue cybernetic eyes that our one eyed scum is gunning for. Incidentally, she is entirely inspired by and her descriptions (particularly the eyes) are stolen from the Iron Savior song "Cybernatic Queen"

I wish that the NPCs in FO3 were as good as the NPCs in FO2/BG2/PST...

I wanted to run through the Wasteland with Nova at my side... ;_____;

we once had a munchkin with the name munchkin door guard #64 and all he would ever stay is 64!!!!! and stare at the party every door in this castle seemed to have him guarding it

>>5254996
>Flauros, based on Casca from "Berzerk"

It's "Berserk". "Berzerk" has nothing to do with a japanese comic.

I have a Illithid bartender that seems to know everything, and most the players enjoy the 23 will save fermented thought alchole he serves.

>>5258643
Does he, when they pass out, BRAINRAPE them for MORE DELICIOUS ALCOHOL?

never party members, that bar is usally where my players start.

MESSAGE

bump for epic

I love this thread. You are all brilliant motherfuckers.

My DM has some great stuff floating around our WoD games. Murray comes to mind.

Murray works for the local newspaper in the city, and he pretty much hates his job, because of the endless tedium. He monitors footage and photos, takes stills, cleans them up, and submits them for use in the paper. He's a gruff guy in his early 50s with a smoking habit and a mug full of something that's a fair bit more Irish than coffee, if you take my meaning.

Murray pretty much has no oversight for his job, as he's the only photo editor they really have, so if he submits it, it gets in. The paper he works for, despite being the major one in town, is still pretty much a shitrag.

So Murray makes his own fun. He shops stuff into photos and stills for the paper all the time. Most notoriously, he shops explosions into whatever is going to be on the front page. It could be something as mundane as a local leash law story, and a picture of a german shepard, and there'll be an explosion behind it.

Pretty much, he's our excuse for having silly newspapers.

>>5258831
That's some awesome spam.
MESSAGE.

One npc that stands out for me is Olaf. Olaf was a tall fat hairy chef, that was obsessed with making new kinds of food.

He became bored working with the same ingredients. So he would occasionally follow the party around, or give them jobs hunting down rare monsters and plants for his new recipes.

Essentially he was a tool so that the players wouldn't have to worry about food while they were out on quests. But every once in a while he would get the party to try his new dish, and it would randomly give them bonuses or penalties for a while.

>>5251753
here, I've expanded on my idea a bit.
Basically, he has a set of cursed gloves that are occupied by a demon.
It's pretty low level, so it can't quite possess him, but it does cause him to swear at, insult, threaten, and generally be a dick to anyone he meets.
As such, not only is his business an abject failure, but there's also a quest where the PCs have to smuggle him out of town in the middle of the night because he inadvertently swore at a mob boss when he stopped to buy some throwing knives.

>>5254227
As a student of Roman History, I am amused and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

The odd tavern bar keep. He is loud, obnoxious and fat, sporting a curly, pencil-thin mustache and top hat with an equally out of place monocle. He always seems to be sticking his nose in the party's business and when he does, it's very awkward. he has a way of making things awkward. he acts very inappropriately toward female characters and makes raunchy jokes with bad timing. he talks about his bodily functions and which hookers from the slums are the best (pardon me) bang for the buck. the party doesn't really dislike him, he's just annoying. He also smells bad.

Wait for the party to finally say something bad about him when he leaves the room. then he will bring the their drinks. When the characters all drink, have them roll constitution saves. have them all fail and pass out. they wake up bound and gagged to see a naked tavern keep sitting on a stool crying. their naked too. he talks about how betrayed he feels and blah blah blah, nervous breakdown. He gets really worked up, but let the party calm him down. then as he is about to let them out, in mid apology, he has a hear attack.

>>5260803
that's just... not right... and unpleasant.

I once had a magical hag (think Baba Yaga) and her prophecies would only come true the moment you denied it. Thus nobody listened to her untill it was too late. She's been labeled a nutjob, phony, cursed, and worse. When the party comes back for a second reading (maybe even an apology) she is dying in front of them in misery telling that she has tried to do here best at guiding people, the party says that she has indeed helped them, she denies it as a white lie and passes away.

Let's see... Bell, Book and Candle have had their turn already, so instead here's someone whom the players mentioned as a highlight of an otherwise mediocre session I ran yesterday.

A redheaded woman wearing flashy outfits, most recently something similar to a Final Fantasy red mage (except with detachable sleeves due to their tendency to catch fire), Dana is the rocketry specialist of the fantasy army the PCs belong to, with an emphasis on excessive firepower combined with equally excessive showmanship. Apart from her real name, she goes by the moniker "Angel of Destruction" - although it was intended by her compatriots to refer to the vast amounts of collateral damage she tends to inflict (she's blown up the city barracks three times), she's enthusiastically adopted the nickname since.

Along with the PCs, she's participating in a tournament intended to showcase the army's capabilities. True to her style, every one of her matches has included not only an impressive entrance (complete with pyrotechnics, no less!) but also a variety of ridiculous rocket-related "special moves" including, but certainly not limited to the classic rocket punch. While the reaction from the more experienced fighters was basically a collective facepalm, some of the younger, more impressionable types (including one of the PCs) have started a fan club. Which is located right next to the "Concerned Citizens Against Irresponsible Rocketry" offices.

For her theme music, I used Forte's theme from one of the Galaxy Angel games, since she (or, more precisely, the exaggerated anime version) was the original inspiration.