NPC Paradigm Shift
With a new mental model, NPCs can transform your Dungeons & Dragons experience.
Non-player characters (NPCs) can transform your Dungeons & Dragons experience. But we often treat them as containers for quests or plot information and nothing more. We need to shift the paradigm on one of the most underrated aspects of our campaigns. With a new mental model, we can change the game and have more fun.
“Dragonfish restaurant” by David Revoy − CC-BY 4.0
Video game NPCs are bound to a limited set of dialogue options. We aren’t bound by that in tabletop roleplaying games but we often restrict ourselves in much the same way. We need a tool that can change our mental model when it comes to NPCs. That tool is sonder.
Sonder is “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.”1
But designing NPCs with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, etc. is a lot of work. The good news is that we don’t need to do all of that work up front for every NPC. Entering a state of sonder as you create your NPCs is enough. The realization alone will help guide you to creating better NPCs without having to define their life’s complexity. Create them in whatever way suits you and your process but appreciate that they’re more than what you prepare. Next, add a single connection.
“You want to feel connected. You want to feel relevant. You want to feel like you are a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. That’s precisely what we are just by being alive.”
-Neil deGrasse Tyson2
Connect your NPC to a story, location, item, goal, faction, or anything else you can think of. A single sentence or phrase is enough. It might come up in play and it might not. But having the connection will help bring the NPC to life in your mind. Each time the NPC shows up again in your campaign, add another connection. Like real social interaction, time spent with the NPC will slowly begin to reveal more of who they are in the world.
A connection to the world gives you better tools to realize and improvise the NPC’s social interactions. Take a look at the following examples. With a single connection, you can more easily imagine their motivations, routines, secrets, and more.
- They planted the trees that provide shade in the nearby park.
- They never stopped loving the mayor’s spouse.
- They daydream of being a brave adventurer.
- Their grandfather was a member of a secret cult.
- They were born in the next town over.
In a state of sonder, we can connect our NPCs to the world with little effort. This helps bring our worlds to life and makes our games more fun.
Game on.