What are your usual habits when creating NPCs?

It's not that hard to write backstories.

GMs just beat themselves up over it. You can even just whip out a history book for inspiration.

yeah but, i like, enjoy that part more than probably playing the game. i should probably just write shitty fiction

usually an NPC gets a few indicators of personality, and the more the players like a PC, the more I flesh them out, if an NPC is not very liked I just drop them from the narrative, and introduce the template at another time

the most popular NPC my party met, was a ridiculous over the top parody of epic-level PCs who has multiple epic boons and an ego to match, and yet always managed to be absent during crucial moments

I WANT TO BULLY GUTS

Here, have an image of Bullied Guts

But that's not sexy bullying.

Cute girls

Sadly my players like to backstab or murder anyone that isn't a cute girl, while also pretty much wading hand and foot on them.

They're a very strange bunch.

>Sadly my players like to backstab or murder anyone that isn't a cute girl
Requesting stories!

And can't you just sick the most deranged of yandere cute girls on them?

Fit for purpose, then round out character.

Holy Fuck annon I love you. These are great. Have an internet high five on me.

Nearly all my NPCs turn into sarcastic jerks, because that's pretty much the only thing I can role-play decently. Which is a problem, because I don't want the world to be all smart-asses, and it makes it hard for the players to actually like any of my NPCs. Any tips? Deciding "this time it's not gonna be a sarcastic wise guy" hasn't worked.

Stop being yourself, Joss.

springhole.net/index.html

The character generating bits are useful, as are the "questions to fill out your character" for making major characters.

It can be rather left-wing in parts, so just be aware of that (for those of you would go REEEEE about it)

>choose class / role
>decide appearance and name
>decide personality
>write three paragraph backstory
Am I doing it right?

I can kind of see what you mean, but springhole does still have some useful stuff.

Are you and the players enjoying it?

Those seems to be less about storytelling, and more about bullshit self help garbage.

This link might be more directly useful.
springhole.net/writing_roleplaying_randomators/

>OC
Nope, still disgusted.

Alright, I'm not a linguist, so excuse me for not using the correct terms, but all my names following a specific naming convention:

1. All first names have only a single hard consant, and no more than four syllables. It just sounds better.

2. First names must always have a shortened version that makes for an obvious nickname. If you can't come up with the obvious nickname, your fellow players will. It also makes it more convenient when roleplaying action scenes for other players to have a monosyllabic name to use.

3. Last name usually start off with hard consonants, then trails to soft consonants. Not always though.

4. Account for all possible titles you might receive, whether noble or otherwise.

Examples:

Jaxtus d'Cannith
Nikolaus d'Deneith
Tomas Culver
Braxtus Stonesalter
Hadrak Vilkoven

I usually put down 4-5 bullet points per NPC and then work out form that. Those bullet points can be stuff like job, accent, gear, distinguishing marks, connection to other NPCs, current bounty etc.

Why not have your entire world populated by sarcastic fucks? It could work.

There's always practicing a cute anime voice by watching a bunch of hentai.

Show's cancelled, buddy.

>Why not have your entire world populated by sarcastic fucks? It could work.
Because it's boring and makes every npc feel the same. Also sarcastic jerk characters don't work if there's too many of them, then it just feels like a really poorly written noir parody or something.

But they can all be different! Grizzled sarcasm, smarmy sarcasm, cutesy sarcasm, etc!

Everyone in the world has extreme CHA, and uses it only for quips and one-liners.

But I mean, if you want different characters... it's just a matter of play-acting as different characters. Try some deredere crap, or read tvtropes for how to Become Inuyasha.

Always assume the players want to kill them and create deterrents to account for that.

SHUT UP GRIFFITH

You're missing my point. I want to play other personalities, but they all turn into sarcastic smart-asses by default once I get into role-playing them, no matter what personality I have written down.

That's why you fucking practice being a demure little bitch boy, so you're not tempted to sass people. Enjoy the "I deeply respect you adventurer-sensei, please may I serve you some tea?"

Pretend you're being sarcastic by pretending to not be sarcastic if it helps.

I have managed to play a few NPCs like that, but they're incredibly boring to play and my players don't give a shit about them. So there has to be some way to make that work.

>So there has to be some way to make that work.
Well they upgrade into insane yanderes. Or mindfucked sluts. Or secretly vain sorceresses. Or Akame ga JUSTICE. Or Social Combat mavens.

There's tons of options. Just stick with something with an appropriate level of non-sarcastic derangement. Beginner's stating level is probably raving about Justice constantly.

Is there some sort of dice roll mechanic here? 2d6 three times maybe?

I tend to take a motif and incorporate it into as many character aspects as I can.

Current character is a Tiefling with a Russian accent who wants to be a man of the people despite being nobility and has a distaste for the gods and those who follow them. His skin is cherry red.

Next charcter is a Yuan-Ti Pureblood monk with a pet blue racer. No, it could not be any other snake.

I tend to make a number of big guys as the party's employer

My NPCs all tend to be nice, understanding, patient people. Nobody wants to get into a fight, especially with a group of three to six well-armed, well-armored people. No one really wants to be the 'bad guy', so even the bandits and law breakers tend to well-structured justifications for their crimes (be they actually of sound logic or just strong emotional pleas).

It makes it difficult to present real conflict for the players since everyone they meet wants to avoid conflict (or at least avoid direct combat). Even with the purposely antagonist forces I write myself into a corner where the Bad Guys aren't seen or heard of and only talked about in rumors or second-hand sources. When the players do finally meet them its at a moment when conflict is unavoidable and talk is outright prevented for whatever reason.

>commie
I don't get what the second one is, though.

>I WANT TO BULLY GUTS
Pretty sure the literal manifestations of fate have already done that for his entire existence

>Habits of creating NPCs
Most of my NPCs have a combination of very accepting personalities and "I've seen some shit"

To the point where it became a joke with one of my regular groups that all NPCs I made came with the merit "I've seen worse" that makes them incapable of being scared or disgusted

I've gotten over that

Every NPC I make no matter how insignificant has some function within the setting if not story, to the point where I sometimes just make shit up on the fly if characters dig hard enough at their background.

Random guy selling rope? Woman reading in the park? Children walking their dogs? Every single one of them has a quest no matter how silly or superfluous.

I try to make simple characters with simple backgrounds, and then flesh them out as my players interact with them. I've had the fun time, of making a character with a concecpt, and then that concept being completly turned around on its head once players start interacting, and I start getting into the different npc roles. Like this one time i made this NPC pair of nobles who were very close, and my pcs decided to try and get them hitched, so they did it via rape.
Fun times.