#ttrpg npcs

[gr3y-heron-art]

City of Mist NPCs (comic book style study)

(open the image for higher quality)

[vulcanaizawa]

ID in Alt

Today on The GM Makes His Players Cry:

local 10 yr old outcast bullied lonely Firbolg not-quite-adopted but not-quite-NOT-adopted “help me round the animals a bit, and you can eat breakfast with us and have a little coin to take back to yer deadbeat-“ “Prudence! Not in front of the kid!” “-uh… out-of-town-a-lot folks, and sleep in that warm spot in the barn loft whenever ya need to” farmhand meets his bosses new son and immediately pack bonds hi yes this is my brother now can’t you tell look we’re The Same.

[acidhydraart]

Sketches of random members of the United Resistance, a covert rebel faction working against the assimilative Benefactor Empire, for a Lancer campaign in the works.

also a special preview of a song for said campaign I have yet to get to uploading due to having to make the art for it!

[alexissara]

My Favorite NPCs

We're at it again talking about my OCs. We've talked about Current OCs and my favorite OCs who never really got to see play so today we're talking NPCS. I GM a lot, more than I play. So of course, over that time I've made some characters whom I just love so much and have become some of my favorite OCs despite them never really being PCs or only being PCs very briefly. Honorable Mention to Jillian Owlnight whom I have already wrote about when I wrote about The Iconic Matriarch from TSL.

Grifta Scamsly

System: Anyone I can fit them in

[ https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/296093 ]

Grifta Scamsly first appeared as a one off joke NPC who was intended to divert the players in my Fellowship campaign just a little. However, Griffta Scasmsly, They/Them, as in THEY got THEM deals but seriously please use the right pronouns was a big hit with the players. Since they were well liked I had them show up in little bit roles again and fleshed out a backstory from jokes I told during appearances that actually lead to them being a big part near the end of the campaign establishing firmly The Scamaly and their backstory of being part of a group of Orphans who were abused by the adults running the orphanage and managed to take over the joint and get all of them out of their lives by conning everyone they could in an elaborate scream proudly taking on the Scamsly name they formed for themselves.

Griftta would appear in multiple worlds since then with the consistent beats, They/them, is from a found family of orphans and actually a very helpful friend who just also happens to be a con artist. They even went on to inspire me to make the playbook for Thirsty Sword Lesbians The Swindler which also started as a joke that I could make the Griffta playbook since they didn't fit any of the playbooks perfectly.

Celeste

System: Fellowship

[ https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/332600 ]

In the same campaign that Griffta appeared we had our Overlord Celeste. A chaotic being who altered areas to make them strange, fun and weird wishing to alter the whole world to her amusement altering reality wherever she went. In truth the woman was possessed by an evil force who simply wished to ruin the world and had attempted to burn the world before and was sealed away in a Crystal the girl found. She was a weirdo who just had her crush and best friend in a very uptight community of light mages. She wanted to make the world break through all the norms and everything for her beloved taking it too far.

She was really fun to play because she had a very fun voice to do and a very strange manner of thinking and doing things while being rooted in one of the PCs in a positive way and in a negative way with the other two. Celeste was a house of mysteries for the players to crack and a force of chaos that was hard to get pinned down. Then getting to play a touch of her without the force inside of her at the very end was very rewarding and her being united with her mutual crush and them getting together was just very sweet. It was overall really great to have this very recurring villain that the game itself put under protection and the effects of could be felt every single step of their adventure.

Altia

System: Thirsty Sword Lesbians and King Is Dead

[ https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/227881 ]

Altia was "Her Holiness" the voice of the goddess of The Pure Light was another villain that was just an utter blast to chew up as a GM. She is really special becuase she was really fun on multiple layers. There was her while she was possessed by the Pure Light both as mostly herself but swayef and more of a direct take over. Then there was her post being free of The Holy Lady fully herself but trying to make up for past wrong doing. Then her more exploring herself phase but equally fun was showing the counter balance to her. Altia always posed herself as a reformer, progressive, to The genocidal churches left and improving monster relationships. Since her personality was mostly involved in most choices she really had made some strong reforms and having The Holy Lady move to her more conservative counter part and war errupting right away and policies shifitng to further fash then the existing bad fash was fun and only had the impact because Altia set up varying degrees of awful for us.

It was fun to have this religious and political agent, the ways she changed the world when she was evil and the ways she wanted to actually change the world, the ways she was twisted and the ways she resisted. Altia was just a really fun character and as a shared NPC in a CO-GM campaign she was really fun to build on with others and go through varying twists I'd never have made myself but loved.

Queen Azure

System: Masks: A New Generation

Art by Littleinksheep

Another Villain and this time one that didn't get to see too much spotlight but even found herself in lore in a future campaign so one I have a ton of fondness for. This NPC was a little bit different in that it was an NPC I designed from a PC perspective with the Masks Playbook, The Innocent. The playbook has you make a future version of yourself that is a big time baddy or otherwise messed up and have that be the main focus of conflict for you.

Azure was the princess of a Fire Emblem land on Earth that was taken from earth and into a space collector of abnormally magical and powerful places to "protect the universe". When this tech was being used to move it Azure was hit between a pivotal moment in time and space duplicating herself one being shot through time far into the future 1418 years into the future and the other, Queen Azure remaining in her place in time but in a new universe captured by the man.

Her farther killed before her and her people and culture being wiped out while she was captured by him to remain part of his "preservation of history" lead to her getting angrier and more aggressive, she had fought in a war before always with the power of friendship and with hope to reach every opponent, now she wanted death for her enemy no path to redemption or understanding. Azure managed to lead other captured cultures that hadn't resisted and therefore still had numbers left to rise up against the man who captured them and kill him and sized his operation. With his tech she took her old castle and turned into into an intergalactic spaceship and reality traveling ship. Azure then went to start conquering worlds with the intention of using her domain over them to protect them from a force as powerful as that man and threats that might grow to his level gathering the strongest warriors to work under her directly.

Over time Azure also learned the dark secrets of her own culture and embraced all sides of her abilities to become more powerful in order to protect the multiverse. After so many years she finally found her home reality and home world returning to find her first and truest love was still alive and had become a vampire in her absence but rejected the path she had taken and fought back against her. I GMed the first encounter session as a set up for my character coming into the campaign as I switched characters and I was in tears as she fought her beloved and they reached that moment of impasse where she realized the only thing left from what she knew, the woman she loved most, all of that were no longer compatible with her but refusing to let go of her role as the protector of The Multiverse and Queen of The Arondite Kingdoms.

I can't help myself but ramble about her as you just saw, I got so much more to say but she is such a tragic villain who isn't like mind controlled or corrupted just brought to a radical position by radical trauma but genuinely doing her best and what she thinks is the kindest option. She worked really well as a natives foil to Princess Azure and this looming threat of the kind of person she could become, she would become if she saw what she saw. Azure doesn't deny that if she suffered the same trauma she would have been different, she knows they are the same exact person she is simply a younger version of her but she wants to remind her of why she fought, why what they fought for matters but she also had to come to terms with the reality her life was fucked up too and that part of what was going on with Azure started well before "that man".

Mona

System: "Masks: A New Generation"

[ https://picrew.me/ja/image_maker/86774 ]

Mona was from my very first dedicated TTRPG campaign that actually had consistent games. There was a session I made specifically to present a bunch of hot NPCs to the players and attempt to get them to hook up with someone. Our Alien Stoner Pizza Delivery girl fell head over heels for one of the most silly of my silly sexy characters Mona. She has a magic staff that can do anything but it's totally random and triggers off her saying magic. One day Mona found it on the ground, she brought it to The Lost And Found and they ended up returning it to her when no one claimed it. Since then she has used it and her super power to jump really high [above average] to work as a part time gig hero on apps.

This bisexual dork fell head over heels for the cute alien girl being mutually considered fuck ups but both seeing only the amazing things about one another. Over time they stood up for each other and fought for each other and time and time again despite how wild, scary or out of this world things got Mona was there to provide magic.

I had a really funny little voice I did for her and to this day randomly I'll just say "Magic!" in her voice and get a giggle out of my fiancé or my girlfriends who were in the campaign.

Sapphire Riches

System: Masks: A New Generation/Thirsty Sword Lesbians

[ https://meiker.io/play/11994/online.html ]

Sapphire Riches actually started out as PC in a Thirsty Sword Lesbians One Shot I did on stream. I started a Masks Campaign shortly after that stream and in the first session of the shared GM campaign I ran I decided to put Sapphire in as a bit NPC still in her rich bitch era with none of the introspection I gave her for the TSL game. She was a rich girl super hero using tech she mostly just bought along with maybe a few of her own mods added in and part of a corporations super hero department. She ended up with a romance with one of the PCs and she did in fact manage to fix her, mostly, kinda, she improved a lot.

I really enjoy playing a terrible rich girl but typically those characters can not be fun to have around long term but here everyone knew where I was taking her so it was even more fun to be able to lean into it and show that development. She remained a fairly minor character even after the time skip where we switched to Thirsty Sword Lesbians. Sapphire is just one of those really fun characters to have show up and be a little cute or sassy or out of touch and remained a high light any time I brought her in. Most recently I used her in a private RP as a main character but leaning more into the toxic elements for spice and that was a really fun take too.

If you enjoyed hearing about my OCs then you can support me on Patreon or Ko-fi or you can just tell me you liked them. Sharing this stuff probably helps in theory someone hire me to GM something so rebloging helps a lot too.

[pluralsword]

So we got 500 likes on here today :3 thank you for all the love y’all. For that we want to share the npc Arcees (IDW, Prime, and Cyberverse, all a bit with our own fanfic homage flavor and a bit in the spirit of the ttrpg) we made for the transformers ttrpg, feel free to use them in your games! They are high level characters- They could make great ally sages to a lower level party or companions to a higher level one, and are certainly very dangerous enemies! You can find the PDF here. we have a spelling error and will fix https://drive.google.com/file/d/18jVGkNP8cCaKAu7pbCeGFtob7oZyv2iC/view?usp=sharing and here’s an example portion of one of the npc sheets:

[party-gilmore]

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my monster of the week game?

[szkin-art]

NON-HUMAN PERSONS

Technophile / Unstable / Sisyphus / Athena

[heybiji]

[markuami]

My Archfey design for my campaign.

(I really wanted to give emphasis that its not human, there are no human qualities other than the fact its humanoid shape)

[barilleon]

One thing that I've noticed about Baldur's Gate 3 is that sometimes it really does feel like your companions are being piloted by other players. Sure, there's the standard approval system that most CRPGs have nowadays, but there is an even more powerful mechanic at play here: giving the player the option to shut the fuck up.

There are tons of moments when your companions are forced to confront parts of their past they can't shake. You always have the option to speak up for them if you like, but most times you also have the option to say nothing (sometimes the prompt is literally "say nothing," sometimes it's "let [character] handle this."

And this is such an important tactic of playing at the table: turning the spotlight onto to another player and letting them handle it. Because the story isn't just about your player character, it's about all of you.

When you do choose that option, I've noticed more often than not that the character approves of you letting them take the wheel. When you try to speak up for them, they may not express disapproval, but it comes up in the fiction. I tried to defend Astarion once and an NPC was like, "You're letting swine speak for you now?" and Astarion shouted, "I don't need anyone to speak for me!" He's right! This is his moment! Why did I say anything?

Baldur's Gate doesn't have to do this! There's no actual person piloting your companions. And in games a lot of people will say it's usually best practice to keep the spotlight on the players. But BG3 is a video game based on a tabletop game, and I think this is one of the main differences between the two. Maybe it's a tiny detail, but giving the player the option to relinquish the spotlight (and oftentimes encouraging and rewarding it) is such an incredible detail, and faithful to the medium the game is trying to emulate.

It's also a great lesson for everyone who wants to be a good player at the table: if it's not your scene, consider shutting up and letting the spotlit player handle it.

[namarikonda]

🃏 Casimir Casanova (he/they), the Muse

A Starbearer of the Arcanist Order, the Muse is a renowned entertainer & the faceless leader of the Revelers.

[zephyrbug]

The Revenant Bride 🥀⚜️🕷️

Here’s a piece I did for @trucbiduleschouettes of their character ‘The Revenant Bride’!! I absolutely love an spooky bride so I HAD to draw her!

[dingodoodles]

Some concept art of the NPC's from the latest episode of Fool's Gold Sands >:3

[tasiakosh]

Tolerance

[ydteus]

Forgot I had an art blog for a sec LMAO look at this little church guy

[genpitre]

night roamer