Never create NPCs like this (and what to do instead)

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This experience is a good laugh about NPCs... The party needed to travel a river, so they hired a barge. On the journey they spoke to the barge captain, asking his name. I never named him past barge captain, so I answered Harry Paratesticles (long e at the end there). After a few fights on the river and a safe arrival at the destination, they paid Capt Paratesticles to wait and give them a ride back home. A few river pirate encounters on the way home, and safe arrival. Later, they hired him again. And again. Every time they needed a river trip, they hired Harry Paratesticles. By his third hire, he was on retainer. Eventually he joined them on a few adventures. His barge business was booming so his son Long captained a second barge. His company grew to a fleet from the loot he got accompanying the players, when he did. Also his name grew because of his association to them. And now, a couple hundred years later, Paratesticles Shipping is a major company in the business of river trade. And the names Harry and Long Paratesticles have gone down in history as the greatest river captains to take the helm, and great heroes among the river trade. And I can't ever use those names again for NPCs.

My boyfriend summoned a cat familiar in the game named Aster, but eventually someone called him Assblaster and it was over 😂😂

Let me tell you something. I was in a campaign once where we had to clear out a zombie infested mine. Purely as color and scenery decoration, the DM decided to throw in a zombie mine canary fluttering around in a cage. Guess what, the party decided to adopt it. Fast forward a couple sessions and we get into a fight with a wild magic sorcerer. Now, the DM had decided to use a d10000 wild magic table. And one of the magic effects that came up was that the nearest nonsentient creature would be given human level intelligence. This was, of course, The zombie canary. Over the course of the next few sessions with us teaching it how to read talk and giving it our warlocks pact book, it eventually became a warlock. And it was a pretty good ally, until it decided that it wanted to make all of us "like him", that is to say, dead. In the resulting fight, we found that it had actually taken our warlock as its own familiar, so every time we hurt it our warlock would take damage. We eventually defeated it but with our warlock dying in the process. He was revived, but came back half undead. And on top of that, the bbeg of the campaign took interest in the canary's soul as it passed until the afterlife. Seizing upon it and making it a general in his army. So that ended up not being the last we heard of it.

The amount of time and energy it took me to make "Boblin the Goblin" is a feat I will never strive for again

Secrets that aren't necessarily bad! I love them! One of my favorite things was when an NPC was pregnant and hadn't told the party yet. They were in a war zone, and the Druid cast a healing spell that didn't require sightline. I told the Druid, listen, you can sense two creatures in the same space, which one are you healing? It took a moment, but the realization at the table was priceless.

My teenager players fell in love with a horse. One of them had “speak with animals”, so of course they spoke to their hired horses. GM (ie me): (in head) Oh Crap! Wasn’t ready for this! Horse1 - aloof and indifferent. PCs like. Horse2 - an idiot “Who dat talkin’ to me? Where are you?…Oh, you on my back.” Players LOVE the idiot horse. They plan on stealing him from the stables to take him on their adventures.

Here is the thing, you had 5 pages of backstory and a character sheet. You obviously can't show this when introducing the NPC, so the created material doesn't matter at that particular point. An introduction to the NPC needs to be a banger to be memorable. Meeting the coolest NPC sitting in the tavern and sipping beer will be boring. It doesn't matter if you have just "Boblin the Goblin" in your notes or an essay and custom character art. But maybe when you meet that NPC in the tavern sipping beer, the entire glassware explodes and then you learn he is a psychic with uncontrollable powers. I have a very simple method of creating NPCs: 3 character traits, 1 secret, 1 relationship with other NPCs, simple backstory and the most important thing, goals and achievements. It takes me approximately 10 to 30 minutes to make a cool NPC, so even if PCs don't care about them, no big deal.

I had an npc that the party tried to kill and literally the only reason they didn't is because I said "This is a literal child, if you kill them you will all become evil aligned."

I have a BBEG that I still try to casually reference by name, and my Fiancee is just like "Oh yeah, I freaking killed her and had NO intention of learning her name"

Have 2 villains. 1 bbeg and a second who is trying to take over, but isn't as powerful. This second one will help and hinder the party based on what the party does.

2:40 Bungie touched on this in a similar vein in a 2022 GDC conference (what follows is a paraphrasing because i'm too lazy to find the slide online) - Anger is - not - the opposite of loving a game. Loving and Hating are only like 2 degrees removed from each other, and they both come from passionate, engaged players. The opposite of loving a game - the thing that will absolutely kill your game - is Apathy

The players tend to do that They latch on to an NPC that you created in that session on the fly.

For NPCs I always just come up with a name and a personality quirk. If the players latch on to that then I'll work on filling it out more down the line. My two greatest examples: 1) Alchemist that insists on correcting people on how to say his name even though they're saying it right. As the DM I roleplay him correcting them at least twice before finally saying they got it right even though in all instances they've said the name the same way, lol. They loved it, latched on to it, and now I've got him in the pocket for a reoccurring encounter. 2) Three siblings that started off as bandits but have a fondness for green beans; their mother's green beans specifically. The party decided to bribe them with food, the siblings asked if they had any green beans, and the party decided that for some inexplicable reason the majority of their rations were green beans, lol. They loved the situation and so later on they ran into a restaurant the siblings decided to open that served exclusively green beans; but with fancy, 5 star style service, and every single item is made entirely of green beans.

i played a rogue named Francis in a deadlands game that ran a "2nd hand store" in the campaign. the a DM liked it so much in many of his campaigns their is an NPC called Francis that helps PCs with supplies.

I could tell a couple of stories about npcs I made as a DM, but probably the funniest is about an NPC I made as a player. I'm currently playing a battle smith artificer, no tech, rather flavoring it as a magic item crafter, using bones or discarded pieces of armor for his gizmos and then echanting them. He is a rather scrawny and grim looking fellow called Mr. Gloom, tax collector and adventurer extraordinaire (see, he used to live in the feywild and has been depressed since he moved by accident to the material plane). His partner in this venture is Mr. Marrow, a giant of a man, clad in armor, always silent, imposing and vigilant. Mr. Marrow is a steel defender, fashioned as a living armor with a skeleton inside, fit with cogs and enchanted machinery. My party treats Mr. Gloom well, but they friggin LOVE Mr. Marrow. He has the personality of an average great dane, silent strong type but loyal and friendly (although there are little ways he can show that friendliness). The contrast of the party trying to play with him or talking with him and him only answering with "..." are gold, and I'm enjoying every second of it.

One of my DM's recently decided to infuse the party with 3 DM NPCs. His theory was that rather than creating the encounters for a party of 3, he'd include his DMPCs also. One character was somewhat amusing, a dwarf that talked like an Italian "made guy" from Brooklyn. Another was a wizard with all sorts of cool stuff. The third was a swashbuckler. ALL 3 of them were so uber powerful, and the DM was constantly having them save the day. The rest of the party was SO under impressed. When the adventure finally ended, and we were supposed to go into the NEXT chapter, where the swashbuckler was going to introduce us to his ultra rich family who would take us in while we explored in their city, my only question was, "Can't we just kill him off and go on our own adventure?" Despite how COOL the DM thought the NPC was, he was actually annoying as heck, and taking away from party agency.

I had a junk encounter where the players were supposed to come across zombies fighting an evil group of npc's. The group was supposed to die to the zombies and then some lore stuff was supposed to happen that would intrigue the players to figure some stuff out. Well... The players stepped in to help kill the zombies, with one evil character still alive after the quick fight. That evil junk npc is now an important "necromancer-like" woman quest giver who is going to be a main part of the progression of the campaign. One of the players hates her, two of the players have had some very interesting interactions with her and are weary but friendly so far. First time DMing, btw.

Who else thought the PCs killed Luke’s precious NPC? I’m kinda disappointed they didn’t 😂

Was playing a pokemon ttrpg. We got to the pokemart, and what my poor dm was unaware of, was that i personally love the store clerks in the games. Unlike the nurse Joys and officer Jennies, the store clerks dont get names. So as soon as we met one, i needed to know everything. And unfortunately for the dm, my speech about how the store clerk isnt a random nobody boosting jis moral while also completely taking advantage of him (becuase store) just became a great running gag. Lifting up these poor identical male merchants who never got the fame of the Joy and Jenny leniage. In my head all the clerks in games are named Justin, to match with the Joys and Jennys. But i did not bring up anything about that when the GM said his name was Clark. Clark is cool too.