How Pro DnD DM's Create And Run Amazing NPCs

Best NPC advice ive ever heard: "Drive your NPCs like stolen cars"

Aabria’s NPCs being unlikeable and combative also grounds you into the world. Just because your party is heroic doesn’t mean everyone HAS to like you. These NPCs serve as a reminder that the party’s work is vastly important to some, but has no bearing on the lives of some others, so doing it for the fame is a shallow and pointless reason to adventure. In fact, the fewer people that know how your party defeated the BBEG, the bigger the impact on the world because you enabled people to just live their lives.

Characters make the world.

Aabria has an important point in putting unimportant NPCs into the game. Often players hang on every DM's word. By mentioning unimportant objects or characters in the game makes attention, involvement of players and checks more important. It freshens up the descriptive parts, and let the players guess which things are vital for the campaign and which not. --Players, the crates on the dock are not suspicious only because they are there, or are they?

Matt's most memorial npc imo has to be Victor the black powder merchant. I've heard that npc was improvised the first time he made an appearance. Its been my DM inspiration since.

Also tropes are tropes because they work ;-)

there is a fireside chat where the people made the suggestions for Orly's character (second in command in fjord ships) and you can see matt aplying the method you just described here

I really love you content and analysis of these great DMs! Also your thumbnails are great lol not clickbaity at all

needed this video! thank you so much!

It kind of helps he's a voice actor. I heard someone say that Mercer has damaged being a DM, setting the expectation of what a DM is supposed to do and be. I love what they (Critical Role) have done for the game, but the unrealistic expectation for regular humans who don't have access to tons of cool and free stuff, with great players that commit as equally. You'll find, these techniques are what he needs for his actual work.

I wholeheartily agree on the topic of unlikeble NPCs. What does a competent friendly NPC do? They do the players job for them, probably better. They are willing and able to help and probably even do all that before the players even arrive to notice the problem. Now I am playing against myself instead of the players (in the tactical sense. Roleplay still is a cooperative thing.) But when I take out the naive and ignorant, my players instantly have the goal of protecting them and opening their eyes. (Or using them.^^) When I play them grumpy and introvert, it makes the players work for receiving information and help. Rightout agressive NPCs will cost the players time and other resources to get information out of them. I don't want my players to look up to NPCs for the solution (which is just the logical choice, when they are competent). I want THEM to save the day. With an environment, that does not need the PCs I don't have a story. So if I am constantly playing an unlikable bastard with incompetence 3000, so be it. Actually it is more fun than playing nice guys even. But when the first person in power they meet is so uncooperative they go "That must be the BBEG.", but there is still doubt, so they do not confront until the last act, nearly forgetting about him. And how great they feel after then looting his dead body only to find out he was merely a puppet of the real BBEG. Man, that's just great.

This was such a great topic!

I think Aabria Iyengar's antagonistic NPCs are (in part) her commentary on normal people: they suck. Hear me out. Most human interactions we have with people we don't already know and care about increasingly feels either pointless or like an obstacle. The social fabric is fraying. If someone approached you today on the street and said, "Excuse me, can I ask you a question?" your reaction would likely be one of visceral dread. This guy is either a solicitor, a proselytizer, a scammer, or a fool. In other words: an obstacle. This isn't everyone, of course! But when was the last time you answered a call from a number you didn't know?

fantastic video thanks for the great break down woots :D)

Love the change of removing ancestry stat increased.

Character idea 💡 "Kyle Drywall-Foe" the open hand monk 😂

Currently working on a Warforged Juggernaut, Artificer: Armorer, Guardian (15levels) with 5 levels in Wizard.

Hey @BonusAction any thoughts on how you would run a year long class on D&D for 35 middle schoolers?

The more I see of Aabria the more I realise what an unsung genius she is. The way her npcs engage the players and the way she can actually get the whole table shitting themselves is incredible. Burrows End is a masterpiece! Misfits and Magic is amazing too! I can see there.is so much to learn from her!

Season 1 of Oxventure is a good example of what PCs can do to totally change the characterisation of NPCs. Poor Alfred Strangetide got turned from an adult archeologist scholar that "fancied himself somewhat of an adventurer" into a toddling child that got put in a papoose (and was somehow still an archeologist scholar with 2 PHDs) and no one in world questioned it.