Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 284 - Better PCs & NPCs

Episode Date: September 20, 2026

Ever feel like you're spending too long coming up with  backstories or detailed NPC lore that your players completely ignore—or worse, that your characters end up feeling flat at the table? Give this a listen for some essential advice for both GMs and players on how to make your NPCs and PCs truly come alive.  Also, my apologies that the sound quality is a bit diminished this episode, I had a lot of hard “P” and “B” sounds to remove (called plosives) and didn’t have time to do a re-record. #rpg #ttrpg #dnd #pathfinder #gmtips #PC #NPC Resources: Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast www.taking20podcast.com  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/taking20podcast  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/taking20podcast 

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. When it comes to NPCs and PCs, don't go for memorable, go for a reason for them to exist. Give them a purpose. The best and most memorable NPCs I've ever role played are the ones that weren't quirky for quirky's sake. Nope, they had connections to the world. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 284. Giving my beloved DMs and players out there some tips on how to make their NPCs, and PCs better.

I want to thank this week's sponsor, Xbox controllers. I move from using a mouse keyboard to controllers. It's really a game changer. If you like this podcast, follow, like, subscribe, and take a few seconds to comment on an episode. Every time you do, it feeds back into the algorithm and hopefully helps somebody find it who might enjoy this podcast down the road.

Quick news this week. First of all, I got a preview copy of Paiso's new game 13. Omens. It's a horror-based game, and I'm in the process of digesting it right now. It's simple, and so far it's so clean. I'm going to give you a full review shortly, likely for Horror Month in October. Secondly, the new head of D&D at Wizards of the Coast, Dan, I'm going to mispronounce his last name, Ayub, I believe, had some very pointed statements this week that gave me a little hope. Bluntly, he said, we're recovering from a lot of missteps, very loud, very public,

missteps and we're not going to fix it in one year. I can talk till the cows come home, but we've got to show more than tell, and that is going to take some time. That sounds like a positive step, I think. Hopefully this means that their attempt to commoditize D&D, roll out a weird 3D tabletop software only to abandon it, and partnering with a wide variety of properties means that they are turning a corner and maybe they're heading somewhere slightly more customer-friendly, maybe. He continues. D&D is about for and by the fans. Over the course of several years, we lost sight of what was important and who our audience was. Yes, yes, Wizard, you did.

Now, please make D&D's future just a little brighter, please. You're the biggest and strongest TTRP in the world, and many of us are watching your decisions, and more importantly, your actions going forward. You are a giant in the industry, but as every D&D player knows out, there, even giants can be slain. On to the episode. Fair warning. I felt like structuring this episode a little different than normal. Normally I break episodes down into like a DM section and a player section, but this time it's all kind of woven together in this messy

tapestry of advice built around basic pieces of advice and one slightly more advanced at the end. Let's start with the common trap that people fall into and that's over-distance. designing both their PCs and NPCs. Don't get me wrong. As a DM, I am so happy that you're very into your character and you wrote a 10-page backstory detailing everything from the school she went to all the way to her favorite food. There's 99% chance that I only need a tiny fraction of what you wrote. I want to find a hook or two or maybe three where I can connect your character to the world. All I need is in an organization they belong to or maybe a famous relative or a family friend or something that can make an appearance in the adventure. GMs, by the way, I'm not giving

you a pass. You're guilty of this too. You start designing NPCs for your game world and you know that this one particular NPC is going to be important. So you wind up writing a one page, one and a half page backstory, something about this bartender that will be important for you. You're two sessions and then gone forever. By writing a long backstory for your PC or too much backstory for your NPCs, you have wasted some of your precious preparatory time, and a lot of that likely won't even be used in the game. Both players and GMs can fall into the trap of over-designing characters and NPCs. So that's my first piece of advice. Keep it very simple. I mentioned PCs should have just enough for some hooks into the world, and if you're designing a PC for one of my games, give me two paragraphs

of a backstory. That should be plenty for me. And by the way, I run some role play heavy games, and so if it's not part of your backstory, you know what we can do? We can improvise it as we go. It will be just fine. And behind the screen, by the way, I have a page of NPC names with just one or two details about each, maybe where they can be found, or one to two things about maybe the way they look or maybe a potential adventure they can give to the PCs. From behind the screen, it is very tempting to use a massive NPC backstory to lore dump. Here, let me use the fact that Bob descends from one of the founders of the city to talk about the importance of logging to this small creek community. For the most part, the PCs don't care. They want to know what they

need to do to get to the next encounter, solve the next riddle, gain the next level, get the next treasure. And that brings me to my next tip for both players and GMs. Simplify, simplify, simplify. You don't need nearly as much detail as you think you might. I'm a huge believer in listening to experts in their field, by the way, and the way the amazing DM Deborah Ann Wall once explained it is that clarity, both about NPCs and PCs, is much more important than detail. What I think that means is that understanding the motivations, the intent, the role that they play in your game is much more important than knowing details down to the Natt's eyelash about the character's background. Don't get me wrong, I'm not absolving you of the requirement

to know your character's abilities and how to play them. What you don't necessarily need, though, is the trivia of the character backstory. For example, the fact that the PC wants to help take down the big bad because they killed part of their family, and that may be enough detail for your game. Hell, my Saturday Night group doesn't do a lot of role-playing. Because of that, my cleric Lara has a very loose backstory to find. War medic became a dispassionate provider of care to protect her feelings, saw the suffering of innocence, and now worships a god with protecting innocence as a core to.

tenant of the belief. Good enough for the game, we're done. If additional details needed, I'll improv it, write it down so I can refer to it later. I seriously doubt her sibling and parent names will ever come up in the game. I mean, before we started, I provided my GM Tom with a brief history, including where she's from and why she's adventuring with the party. And that's all he needed. Done and dusted. Writing a 10-and-a-half-page backstory about Laura would have been a titanic waste of time because it'll never come up in the game. And to augment on simplicity that leads into my next tip, focus on two things about PCs and NPCs. What makes them distinct and what are the hooks for the campaign?

What makes them distinct? What would stand out when someone sees them for the first time? For example, let's take me. What tends to stand out first to people is that I am six foot three and a little soft around the midsection. I crack jokes a lot. I have noticeable scars from a thyroidectomy and two brain surgeries. Bang, that's probably plenty enough to roleplay me in any game that you've got. I tend to dress to hide my scars, and when someone notices them, I tend to make a joke about them. Oh, the scar on my head? Oh, I was a javelin catcher in college. Or some people take larpering way too seriously and I had to go to the hospital.

Does your PC or NPC wear unusual clothes have a dismal? physical feature. Unnaturally high or low voice. Have affectations. Focus on those. Whether it's your PC or if you're acting as the world's NPCs, that's what will make them feel different, distinct, and a little more real. So one thing you can emphasize is the distinct nature of this character, NPC, is to change physical appearance when in character. Take on a physical characteristic. change your posture, your head position. Even something as small as changing where your eyebrows are when you talk can signify when you're talking in character or just around the table.

That change, even one so subtle, can provide a clear indication that you're talking as Grognar or Aloysius or El Tigre, the Cage Fighter. As an example, I recently role-played Dr. Mark Patterson, doctor at a regional hospital that had a research and medical assistance residency at Rutgers University. His voice is not that distinct from my own, but every time I spoke as him, I brought my hand up close to my mouth because he is somewhat timid and lacks confidence. That little foible, that little physical tell, that little action clearly denoted that it was Mark speaking, not Jeremy. So you don't need up a professional voice actor level of differentiation for your voices.

Physical characteristics can do the same thing for you and make your PCs and NPCs better. Similarly, the language that you use in character can help accentuate and differentiate that character from others you may play. Dr. Patterson had a different way of speaking than I do. Yes, we could dispatch this cultist, but without finding the least. or merely treading water on a palliative basis rather than remedying their underlying root cause. Another tip is that, and this is more to GMs, by the way, is that if you're voicing multiple NPCs in quick succession, like at a high society luncheon and if you struggle finding different voices for all of them, have a prop that you can pick up that will clearly denote who is speaking.

Whenever you're holding the small scepter, it's the king, and maybe if you pick up a small money purse, It's the head of the merchants guild. This can be a bit ridiculous, by the way, if you're having multiple NBCs and you're trying to shuffle things back and forth between your hands, but in some situations, it can provide a visual cue as to who's talking to the party at any given moment. Most importantly, though, don't stress about it, especially your home games. Chances are your players are just happy to be gaming. And if you screw up the voice, like I have more times than I can count,

they're probably going to be very forgiving and understanding and just enjoy the fact that they're in a game at all. Okay, another thing you can do to make your NPCs or PCs a little bit better is to lean into some of the non-harmful tropes. Now, hold, no, hang on. Non-harmful tropes. This is not an excuse for racism or sexism

or anything like that. But there are some common situations, almost all of us understand. The tavern server is perpetually exhausted. The traveling bard tries to have sex with everything that moves. the rookie cop on the beat of the rookie soldier on the front line. Here's a picture of my best girl back home.

Oh yeah, he's taking a bullet. It's just a matter of time. Tell Irene back home. I love her. Storytelling tropes like these spring from a shared suite of knowledge. A shortcut of understanding, I mean, so that we know somebody quickly. These are stories or variants thereof that every one of us has heard, remember and can probably recite an example of.

The reluctant hero, the odd couple, the untrapped, unlocked door, obviously there to be a source for the future TPK. That kind of thing. When the young farmhand finds their mother's sword and decides to escape the dreary farm life for adventure, we understand. Similarly, if they only go on an adventure because Uncle Owen and Aunt Brew look like beef jerky,

then yeah, we understand that character as well. That being said, there are times when tropes can cross an invisible line from helpful storytelling to being genuinely harmful. Troops that are rooted in real world race, gender, culture, or disability, such as the always evil fantasy race, or the helpless damsel in distress, or the savage outsider, they don't just feel lazy. they can actually import real-world prejudices into your fantasy world. When used carelessly, these caricatures can break the unwritten social contract around the table, can break the trust required for this collaborative storytelling that we're doing. You can make other players feel uncomfortable, excluded, or maybe even targeted at the table. Ultimately, players and DMs should take the responsibility to strip out these harmful patterns,

before they bring them to the table. Now, identifying harmful tropes is a complicated topic. I think a lot of them boil down to either overly broad brush or mockery. If the trope paints an entire... Anything. Species, gender, culture, by a single narrative that can be summed up as all blanks are blank. It's probably harmful. You're talking about intelligent humanoids and creatures

then that trope is definitely harmful, especially in the light of modern sensibilities. All orcs are savage, all goblins are insane, all elves are snooty, aloof assholes. Whatever it is, no matter the intention behind it, generally all blanks are blank, is a harmful stereotype because there are always exceptions. The troll who seeks wisdom, the dwarf who loves sunshine,

the succubus who seeks redemption. The other type of harmful trope are those that come from mockery. They are attempts to use stereotypes to punch down at someone that you're trying to portray as less than. All princesses need to be saved. A neurodivergent NPC that spends their spare time counting matches, or portraying gender fluid or non-binary characters as something to be ridiculed or shunned. These harmful tropes can cause genuine, bad feelings around the table and should be avoided at all costs.

Now, that being said, all tropes, even harmful ones, can be subverted, turned on their head, sometimes in dramatic or humorous fashion. The one I always think of is from, of all places, the first Deadpool movie. Marina Baccaran plays a sex worker, but she is no tragic victim, nor is she any kind of damsel in distress, at least in the first two acts. She isn't a victim. Hell, the scene that always jumps to mind is when a guy slaps her butt in the bar, she turns it around on him pretty quickly, grabs him by somewhere very sensitive and says,

Say the magic words, fat, Gandalf. I'm sorry. She is just as intelligent as Wade Wilson, has a strong character, makes a genuine connection she is strong in her own right. And that being said, I'll grant you the third act of that movie reverts her back to a damsel in distress as she gets kidnapped by the Big Bad, and that falls into that damsel in distress trope. But they do subvert it a little bit

because she winds up, you know, getting free, hurting herself in the process to get free, and even stabs the Big Bad at least once. Anyway, the point being, tropes can be subverted. The damsel's keeping the dragon hostage. The presumed hero is the first to die. By the way, I love that one. A knight in shining armor and white horse

at the head of an army banner and luxurious hair flowing in the wind, only to have the first cannon shot just rip his upper body off. And he's left with a lower torso strapped to the horse, and the horse bolts from fear. So yes, feel free to use or subvert tropes with your PCs or NPCs, but don't lean into harmful ones, or you might make someone else around the table feel small. One thing that I'm working on improving in myself is making the occasional NPC disagreeable.

This can make them better, by the way. It could be hard to do as a PC, so players, I wouldn't jump into that until you have a tight set of players who understand the difference between player and character attitude, but DMs, don't be afraid to have the occasional NPC just not like the characters. People have a wide variety of personalities, and maybe this particular NPC thinks adventurers do nothing but bring trouble to the town or maybe their spouse ran off to be an adventurer sometime in the past.

One trap I fall into sometimes is that all the NPCs are kind of helpful to the party with the right roles. Sometimes, you know what? Someone just doesn't like your character and that's okay. Make sure the party has a way forward around the obstinate NPC

and let those brief disagreements add spice and believability to your world. Last tip for this episode. When it comes to NPCs and PCs. Don't go for memorable. Go for a reason for them to exist. Give them a purpose. The best and most memorable NPCs I've ever role played are the ones that weren't quirky for quirky's sake. Nope. Or they're not eccentricly random. Oh my gosh, he has a lamp on his head. No. They had connections to the world, goals they wanted to achieve, and a path by which they could

achieve them. They had a reason to exist. That makes them stand out. They don't feel like cardboard cutouts that exist just to interact with the party or other NPCs and then fade out of existence. Tina isn't going to be a bartender forever. She's studying ballistic forensics. Callie is the child of a PC from a different campaign. Robert knows where you can get those good black market IDs, that type of thing. These reasons for the NPCs or the characters to be there, you can role play them. It brings them into the world. And I mean, yes, you don't have to hold onto them forever.

Maybe they fade out later until they're needed again. And if they do show up later, maybe they've progressed somewhat or regressed. They're more capable or less capable. They have more knowledge. They're closer to their goals or maybe somehow further away. This shows their evolution over time that the world does not just go into stasis when the PCs aren't around. Yeah, Robert knows where to get those black market IDs and, Maybe later also knows where to get unregistered weapons can be found,

or maybe Robert now owes too much money to the wrong people, and that becomes a source of a quest. Improving your NPCs and PCs comes down to keeping character designs simple, focusing on the distinct traits and story hooks, avoiding any of those harmful tropes that may come up, and ensuring every character and NPC has a meaningful reason to exist. Use those tips to craft your PCs and NPCs. Your world will feel alive and safe,

and I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Thank you for listening. If you have the topic idea, by the way, feel free to submit them with a donation to my coffee, k-o-fi.com slash taking20 podcast, or email me. Feedback at taking20podcast.com or find me on social media. Links are in the description. Tune in the next episode where I'm going to give you some advice for mentoring new DM. and players.

But before I go, I want to thank their sponsor, Xbox controllers. My controller always gets so mad at me, but you know what? I can't blame it. I do push its buttons. This has been episode 284, giving you some tips for NPCs and PCs. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is Copyright 2026 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own,

and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers.