NPCs
The heroes are not alone in their world. Give them interesting people and creatures to interact with. The NPCs can help heroes achieve their goals, put obstacles in their path, or just stand on the sidelines looking pretty. But all have a function in the story. Every NPC has a use, even a spear- carrier that the hero defeats in a couple of blows.
In your adventure, think about the characters the heroes will meet while pursuing their goal. Try to make the most important ones interesting and memorable. Make this one funny looking, that one talk with a lisp or an accent, the one over there a tourist from some foreign land.
Each important NPC has beliefs and objectives in his or her own right. Nasty NPCs have motives and methods like those of the scenario's master villain, but on a smaller scale. Friendly NPCs may share the same emotional involvement in the adventure that the players have. Neutrals just want to make a buck, observe, or be left alone. Perhaps they're just acting as inadvertent conduits for information.
Your players enjoy interacting with these various personalities, and you'll have fun impersonating them. Just as important, you can use the NPCs as tools for your story. They provide many functions:
Information sources, as with a captured thug or stoolie;
Skilled people, such as a cryptographer who can break coded messages for a price;
Incentives, as with the rich movie star who offers a huge donation to charity if your heroes will serve as his bodyguards on a trip through dangerous territory;
Humour or atmosphere, as with the street urchin who won't leave your gruff hero alone;
Or conflict. Sometimes the players just want to pound on something. That's fine. Throw them a minor villain or a gang of his henchmen and let them blow off a little steam. But bring in these foes for a reason, in a plausible manner, and adjust their strength to that of the player characters.
These "random" encounters should not produce serious damage or otherwise obstruct the plot. Remember the earlier advice about not letting the dice mess up your story.
Following are a few general roles NPCs often play in super-hero adventures:
| The Authority Figure |
| Heroes usually loathe, but
often respect, the NPC who has some kind of power over them. This NPC
serves as an information source, an obstacle in touchy situations
(meaning all those that expose the NPC's own agency), and in some cases
a genuinely useful contact.
But try to restrict a useful NPC's role. If the NPC always cooperates and has plenty of pull, adventures could move along much too easily for the PCs. And where is the heroism in that? Here are several time-honoured authority figures: Government observer: Usually a royal pain, this man (it is practically always a man) insists on adequate supervision of all the heroes' activities. Otherwise, they lose their government clearance, and probably a lot of nifty devices like satellite communication links, jets, and even their headquarters. Whatever it may say about our society, in practice government observers are often hostile and troublesome. Law enforcement official. These include officers on the beat, plainclothes detectives, precinct captains, commissioners, and FBI and CIA men (again, they are nearly always male). An international adventure could feature agents of Interpol or intelligence services of other countries. Any of them can be friendly or hostile. Friendly officials bring heroes into troublesome cases, provide deep background information, and alert heroes to actions by hostile officials. Often a friendly official is impatient with the usual law- enforcement channels and wants to see justice done, even if not "by the book." A friendly official is a likely NPC target for a villain's plot, providing a strong adventure hook to involve the PCs. Hostile officials harass the heroes and stonewall PCs who want information. If you include a hostile official in the story or campaign, establish a reason why the official doesn't make the heroes' lives even harder (for instance, by arresting suspect PCs on the spot). Perhaps the official's superior is friendly to the PCs, or the PCs have official government jurisdiction to investigate cases. Lawyer. Heroes may run afoul of the law, or at least the fringes of the law, whenever they haul someone to the police station, accidentally destroy property, break into a criminal's off ice, or fail to heed the summons of a police officer. All of these things happen all the time. Other lawyers can be mere nuisances. These ambulance-chasers may try to harass the heroes into settling out of court for "molesting" their clients, who are innocent until proven guilty of bank robbery, muggings, or whatever the heroes caught them doing. Then there is the truly crooked lawyer, who springs villains on technicalities and casually commits perjury to frame a hero. For example, Caesar "Big C" Cicero has become so successful as a mob lawyer that he is the probable successor to leadership of the of the Maggia. |
| The Friend with a Dark Secret |
| Here are two general
varieties:
Childhood friend. This NPC, usually not a recurring cast member, knew one of the PCs in the old days, usually before the hero began his or her heroic career. You and a player can establish some retroactive reason why the PC cares about the NPC, no doubt rooted in some childhood event. Perhaps one saved the other's life. The childhood friend returns suddenly, possibly in suspicious circumstances. Though still friendly at first, the old acquaintance soon betrays the heroes, steals something vital, harms an informant, or otherwise shows that the friend is working for a bad guy. The friend might really be evil, or the master villain might be extorting the friend's cooperation. The bad guy holds a hostage, or the friend is just weak-kneed and buckles under to the villain's orders. Inevitably, the interested hero must confront the childhood friend, perhaps in battle. The friend can be converted to the good guys' side or may be irredeemably treacherous. Either way, the friend usually dies at the end, at the hands of the master villain another good way to develop personal animosity between a hero and villain. Relative or romantic interest. Functionally much the same as the childhood friend, but this variety of NPC can easily be a regular member of the campaign's supporting cast. A hero cares deeply about the NPC and would go to great lengths to protect him or her. This kind of NPC never turns out to be evil, but is often temporarily mind controlled or coerced into betraying the hero group. When the villain's plan is smashed, the NPC begs forgiveness. Depending on the circumstances, the heroes may welcome him or her back, or abandon the NPC to a solitary life outside the campaign. Note that in a campaign, NPC relatives or lovers should have some useful role in addition to the emotional tie to a PC. |
| The Guest Star Hero |
| Although guest stars work in the comics, because a reader finds all the heroes equally interesting, in a game the guest hero is just another NPC. And above all, NPCs must never make the PCs look bad! Note that the guest hero should not solve the adventure's main problem, rescue the PCs from a deathtrap before they've tried to rescue themselves, or otherwise steal the PCs' thunder. |
| The Hero Worshipper |
| Publicly known heroes may have fan clubs, or just one or two groupies. A groupie can be a fun way to stroke a player's ego, or the NPC can be a pest who demands autographs at inopportune times, hangs around the headquarters, and interferes during battles with villains. Worst of all, the hero-worshiper can be emotionally disturbed. |
| The Lunatic |
| The NPC could be crazy. There is ample precedent for this in the comics. Often the loony knows something significant to the adventure, and the heroes have to put up with his or her babbling to get the clue. |
| The Scientist |
| This NPC type is often not
far removed from the previous one, but the expert doesn't froth at the
mouth-at least not publicly. The heroes must humour this NPC's
eccentricities because of his or her valuable knowledge.
Beware of making the NPC an expert in one of the PCs' chosen fields. If this is so, the NPC should be less qualified than the hero, or not given to hogging the stage and showing up the PC. Alternatively, a scientist's researches may have gotten him or her into really deep trouble, and it's up to the PCs to extricate the "expert." |
| The Snoopy Reporter |
| A classic NPC. This journalist knows that uncovering a secret identity or a skeleton in the closet would be the scoop of the decade. In modern times newspaper reporters are being supplanted by hair- sprayed TV "reporters" who slept through their Ethics in Journalism classes. But media outlets can always serve as a source for the more traditional type of snoop. |
| The Stoolie |
| Every streetwise hero maintains a network of informants. Those who don't may meet stoolies through the police department, or the stoolie may seek out the heroes to deliver some especially hot information. These characters are all different, often have very colourful personalities, and can be either tough guys or comic relief. If they come across some really dangerous information, they can end up dead-or, that is, start an adventure by dying in a hero's arms. |