What are the most important things to keep in mind for making NPCs?
Have a general outline of what you want the character to be like and define his porpoise within the story .
Build the rest of the character in relation to how pc interact with him/her.
>>46451135
Don't let them overshadow the PCs.
Everyone wants something.
Everyone does everything for a reason, sometimes that reason is they're stupid and make bad decisions.
>>46451135
Always keep in mind, no matter how important an NPC is to the plot, no matter what you have planned in your head for them, no matter what plothooks they're part of... the players may not show any interest in them at all or actively dislike them and avoid them. Whatever you do, do NOT keep trying to shove that NPC in the player's faces, they WILL accuse you of railroading. Make a different NPC who serves the same narrative role if you have to.
Keep the story about the players, not the NPCs. I was recently in a game where the party was working for the king of empire and so much of the RP was about what a badass the King and his family was that us players started to feel like we really had no reason to be there. Like, he wasn't a GM self-insert or anything, but he had so much power and influence that us fucking up didn't really matter cos he'd just fix it somehow every time. There was no tension or fear of failure.
I know alot of people say not to let the NPCs overshadow the players, but the reverse is also true. The NPCs shouldn't all be helpless level 2 peasants that the players can kill without consequence. There should be NPCs that can kick the party's asses if they get on their bad side, especially if said NPCs are wealthy or important people who can afford body guards.
If an NPC is in the party, they should cover a role nobody else in the party can cover. If you've got a party full of melee fighters, for example, and you;re investigating ruins with magical traps... yeah, fine, let them ask the local mage's guild for one of their students as an escort.
That being said, never make this NPCs unique roll SO important that all decision-making and choice in the story falls to them. The players should always be the ones making decisions, until they CHOOSE to ask the NPC to do it.
If a player's character has a particular skill or hobby, thrown an NPC at them with similar interests, aspiring alchemist, smith, ect.. Player's like being mentors.
>>46453855
This is all gold.
As for me personally, I tend to copy characters from movies or manga I like. Never main characters, but sometimes side-characters. Actually, the guy I linked back to, posting a Fire Emblem character... that would be an OK inspiration for NPC party members or even rivals for the party. FE:Awakening and FE:Fates both have some pretty good NPCs that end up joining the player. They're a little tropey, sure, but it's a good place to start and a good GM can trim off some of the weeaboo'ness.
>>46453855
how do you even write a story based on the players instead of NPCs?
i mean, of course you could do that if you know the player characters actually before playing the game, because they already showed them to you beforehand or something. But if i bought an actual campaign book for pathfinder or something, they can't possibly written about the player characters. how does that work?
>>46456819
The story is a framework that's driven by the pcs-their choices, not npcs, ultimately dictate the outcome. Typically this means the story starts with a status quo that the players will disrupt through their actions or a force that would disrupt the status quo that the players can decide how to react against.
To give an example, the Sunless Citadel is a 3.5 module. It starts with the PCs coming to a town that has an annual festival around an apple that grows once a year that is rumored to cure any ailment. At the same time, the town has come under attack by these nasty twig monsters and the apple has not been received by the villagers yet. The PCs along the way learn that a conflict between invading kobolds and local goblins in a nearby dungeon is holding up the apple, which itself comes from a tree that has a malignant will of its own. While the townspeople, goblins, kobolds, and even the tree's keepers are all active participants, the PCs are the ones who drive things-do they side with the goblins or kobolds or neither? do they keep the tree and festival alive or make this year the last year of a magical cure all? or do they fuck off and say they have better things to do in the Underdark, such as get maimed horribly?
One of the gm's jobs is to help the players fit within that framework outside of being random murderhobos-a pc could have a family member they want the apple for, a pc was invited to the festival, the pcs were reached out to and hired by the mayor. Suddenly what was a story about a small town's festival becomes a story about a desperate adventurer and his friends trying to get the one thing that can cure his little sister or a group of fresh mercenaries dealing with their first blood in a situation far more complicated than they were led to believe.
This will probably vary depending on your players, but I generally think the most important thing to keep in mind is that true murderhobos can and will murder any and all NPCs you make for loot and xp, so don't get too attached and hope you have a few players who will listen to character motivations BEFORE initiating combat
>>46451135
The PCs are the main characters, NPCs are side characters. Make them accordingly, and don't get too attached to them. If the PCs like them you can give them bigger roles, but if not then don't give them any bigger parts than necessary.
>>46456819
See like... every RPG videogame ever?
>>46457408
If this is your mindset, you need a new group of players. Hell, I'm stuck with a group who absolutely refuses to kill anyone without a good reason first and treats murder like it's actually something horrible and only to be used for self defense or a last resort... and it's kinda awesome.
>>46457750
Thankfully I haven't GM'd for a group like this, but I have been exposed to one such party as a sort of observer while a friend ran. It wasn't pretty. My players are pretty middle-of-the-road, but I envy you, anon. You sound like you've got a party of actual Role Players
>>46457778
To be fair, I think it's because we started out with "slice of life" RPs originally. Our very first game was us being drunk and bored one night and sick of Vidya, so one of our weeb friends convinced us to play Maid RPG as a joke and it actually ended up being alot of fun >__>
Point is, in slice-of-life games, you don't have the option to kill everyone to solve your problems. I mean, you can try, but it's usually going to either not work or blow up horribly in your face. Anyway, playing those sorts of games may have trained them not to think of murder as the first solution to every problem they face, even in games where it IS a viable option.
>>46457936
That's actually pretty cool.
A lot of my players approach rpgs similarly to whatever video games they like or grew up with. I have one who loves JRPGs, so he wants the over the top dramatics with complicated characters but also expects lots of random encounters/mooks and climatic boss battles and plays accordingly-villains aren't there to be reasoned with, they're there to monologue then be vanquished. Another player always makes a Sam Fisher clone, yet another expects the Obsidian/Bioware dialogue option, and the last likes going a bit unhinged to add that Trevor Philips flavor. It's actually pretty interesting and fun to gm for since no one is quite expecting the same thing.
>>46451135
Your players will at some point, without a doubt, fall in love with some inconsequential, one-off NPC. They'll go out of their way to make him their party mascot or pet, probably.
They're also going to be completely apathetic if not downright hostile to a major character who's critical to the story.
I don't have much advice for dealing with it that hasn't been said, but you should be aware of it
