Quick NPC

When you DM, questions come at you fast

My longest-running hobby is running and playing tabletop roleplaying games. My first introduction to it was through my older brother, who used to play the 80s–90s precursor to Dragonbane. I mostly found it fun to play around with the small, unpainted tin figures of wizards and warriors of all kinds that came with the box my brother had bought. I still have that box, although it is somewhat more beat up than when I was a kid. I was never invited to play with my brother and his friends — probably because they were much older than I was — and in retrospect, I might have turned into a hassle for the much older players.

A couple of years later — I was probably around 12 at the time — I was invited to be a dungeon master for a group of friends my age, by the little brother of my brother's friend. “You've got good imagination, so you would probably be a great DM!” was the motivation, and I threw myself into the task with the self-confidence of someone way in over his head. I showed up to the first session with only one preparation made: I had made a map.

The map had all the hallmarks of what could have been a good time. There were mountains, a couple of coastal towns, roads between them, bandit ambushes planned; there was even a lighthouse with some quest — probably. I'd figure that out when we got there. Safe to say, the session sucked. I had no idea of the rules, which I only had like 30 minutes to skim over when I was at this friend's house. I knew absolutely nothing about how to DM. But my friends at the time persevered, and even if the first session didn't turn out the way we planned — and if those two ever read this page, Sebastian, Christoffer, thank you for putting up with my shortcomings. It made me into a better DM over the years, and I wouldn't be here writing this if it weren't for that one awful session with no planning that went nowhere.

Now, this isn't supposed to be some sort of soppy story about old friends and growing apart and all that. Early on I came to a brutal realisation: DM-ing is hard. You have to know a lot of stuff; you have to be able to improvise all manner of things. The DM has to have an answer for all manner of questions the players could throw at them — everything from what's on the menu at the inn, to the amount of water in an average orc's body, to whether an action is even possible without breaking the laws of physics or human decency, or both.

Interactions with NPCs always top the list of things that I had — or have — an issue with as a DM. They all have to be interesting, distinct, or memorable. Or, well, they don't have to be, but it helps to achieve that perfect session. I needed to create a way to make NPCs satisfy one or more of those three criteria. It got me thinking about what makes an NPC. What I arrived at after a bit of reading was that NPCs are not a collection of stats for how hard they are to kill; they are an emulation of a real, living person, with their own story and quirks and dreams. Probably not news to experienced DMs, but it's something that the beginners of this hobby might need to hear. My idea was to present NPCs with three distinct attributes: Description, Behaviour, and Motivation. And with that plan I got to coding. The Quick NPC app was released on Google Play in March of 2013.

Quick NPC has since been discontinued by the Google Play Store in 2024, since I kinda forgot to update my profile on the developer console. At that time I had already migrated the app to a website, available to all users with an internet connection.

As I am a cheapskate when it comes to IT solutions, I didn't renew the monthly subscription fee with my hosting company after the very generous first-year deal was up, and decided to move it all to Blogger.

Quick NPC in its current form is available as a link near the top of this page. It can generate tens of thousands of unique combinations, with explanations that try to leave room for your imagination to fill in any gaps.

I hope you find the tool as useful as I do.

Best regards,

Sithun