Anatomy of Failed Design: Enemies and Allies

[Lago PARANOIA]

The biggest question anyone would have of this book is 'is this even necessary?' I mean, first of all creating your own NPCs (unlike, say, magic items) is not only expected but practically required. There's no gravitas from using NPCs someone else printed unless they're famous characters like Drizzle or Gandalf. Furthermore a lot of NPCs are written up in such a way so that it's very hard to transplant them into your campaign. You may really like the tale of Gold Jack, the battle-scarred halfling who blanketed Synn City with a deep slumber spell and rescued the slaves, but that kind of character is really hard to use for most groups. So you either have to rewrite the character or ignore the entry, which amounts to a waste of peoples' money.

That said, I still think that an Enemies and Allies book has some merit to it. The biggest and probably only advantage to having a book of shared NPCs is that you give the DM and the players a gooey vibe when they realize that the villain behind the plot to contaminate a fort's water supply so they can get in good with the Eyes of Gruumsh is none other than Red Knobby Gilead. Because let's face it, Dungeons and Dragons is one of the biggest crossovers of all time. You've got your biblical mythology, you've got your Greek mythology, you've got your Lord of the Rings, you've got your Conan the Barbarian, you've got your Romance of the Three Kingdoms, all that. Once you've accepted the idea of matching wits with a sphinx and a frost giant in the same campaign you may as well admit that you're one of those crossover fanboys. We'll talk more about this later.

Now the E&A book doesn't get everything wrong. There are a couple of goodies in the book but for the most part NPCs fall into one of two categories: 'Why the hell do I need a detailed background on Dave the Bureaucrat if he can't advance the plot?' and 'This is a cool idea, but it's way too specific to be transplanted into the campaign'.

Before we start, let's talk about an unspoken rule. Don't put detailed NPCs in this book if they can't affect the plot on a large scale. While everyone loves Dennis the Peasant, for the love of Koresh we don't need to actually have stats for him. Characters like that can be made up the fly if need be. All of the characters listed here can be expected to kick ass or get the people who can kick ass.

NPC Archetype Master List
This should be the easiest step, but it's also pretty easy to jack up. If you cross-reference the campaign settings you'll come up with some common characters: the outsider who wants to reform their race, a villain that used to be a hero, ominous wizards' guilds, world-weary veterans, etc.. Now while they may seem cliche and you might want to go for something artsier, the fact is that these characters are cliche for a reason. So embrace them. But put a spin on them that makes them stand out from other characters.

But let's get back to the brainstorming. Now while in theory people should be able to come up with a hundred stock fantasy characters on the spot, it's actually pretty hard to do. So instead of coming up with individual characters, come up with broad categories and then fill them up. Don't go too much into detail, just do broad stereotypes. We need, for example:

Law Enforcement: NPCs that represent various stages of the law, from the captain of the guard in a large city to a clerical detective.
Outlaws: The NPCs who break the law in some fashions. You have your Robin Hoods but you also have your Artemis Enteris.
Overlords: The dark lords who make life miserable for the PCs. Don't just have the standard 'guy in platemail who sits on his throne and broods' (though certainly include him), also have a fanatic tribal leader, the mad scientist emperor who experiments on his subjects, the dark vizier who is making pacts with devils, etc.
Religious Leaders: You have your idiotic-but-heroic paladins, your cynical but humanitarian church leader, the Fist of Hextor Blackguard who promises to protect your city in return for religious subjugation, your cult leader who believes in human sacrifice, so on.
Ideologues: This is should be the biggest section. PCs have motivations and tweaking them is a good way to get involved. For example, you could have a great monk who believes exterminating all members of a usually (but not completely) evil race, you could have a woman who is prescient of capitalism, another person wants to end slavery by any means possible, so on.
Other Rulers: This is where you have the hard-but-fair king, the gang leader of the biggest slums on the planet, so-on.
Rival Adventurers: These would be the stats of the iconic characters. However, 3rd Edition D&D screwed up by making the iconics bland and overly generic and not taking an opportunity to flesh out their characters. Really, what's the difference between Tordek/Johan/Regdar? Nothing.
Wizard's Guild: All of these characters don't have to have a relation to each other though sometimes it's convenient. Regardless wizards are the instigators of a lot of plots in fantasy so a wizard that doesn't fit into any of the other categories should go here.
Fighter's Stable: Next to the Wizard's Guild this is probably the most common archetype. This is where you go when you want some muscle. This catemegory would include the snobby martial artist who is only 12 years old but punches out dragons, Seahawk who is an undefeated veteran of naval combat, John Prax the world's most famous bodyguard-for-hire who used to be a warrior king before his kingdom succumbed to disease, ...and Minsc. You gotta have a Minsc.
Famous Monsters: Dungeons and Dragons infamously has a 'kill on sight' policy for most monsters. So all of these monsters need to have a good reason for why they're both famous and alive. This means that they should have a lot of panache. Famous monsters would be characters like Dunkelzahn and Grendel.
Public Domain Characters: This one is so important that it will actually get a section.

Public Domain characters
We discussed earlier that Dungeons and Dragons is a bigass fantasy crossover. So once you accept that, what's to stop people from meeting Hikari Genji and Lancelot? Answer: nothing at all, really. Yes, it's a little cheesy but D&D isn't exactly what people would call serious business in the first place. Now while I don't think that every campaign should have people meeting Enkidu down at Bloody Mountains a lot of people would like to have the option.

If you are going to go this route then you need to determine what spectrum of iconics you need to support so there isn't too much overlap (and thus wasted space). King Arthur and Dracula are pretty much always on the short list. So is Perseus and Hercules.

I'm not going to come up with a big list of iconic characters. I do think it would be fun to come up with a list of them and then pare it down to the minimum required but I don't think it's necessary.

Come up with a list of organizations.
One cool thing Enemies and Allies did was to group similarly-themed NPCs together. Unfortunately, the book both didn't go far enough and made the groupings too specific. The section for organizations should not be dependent on a certain team of NPCs working together. That's dumb and hard to transplant into your campaign. Rather, organizations should be built on the assumption that any or all of the archetypes are working together. For example:

Blackdagger Company: The Blackdaggers are the largest mercenary guild in the planet. They do will anything, no matter how crooked, if the price is right. They are extremely concerned with secrecy and work through agents so that if a chapter is discovered it will shield the rest of the group. They have members from the Fighter's Stable, Wizard's Guild, and Outlaws. Several Evil Overlords and Religious Leaders routinely use their services. They have the Hard-But-Fair king under blackmail.

Justice Knights: They're religious fanatics of the God of Justice and do whatever they can to fight evil. Some members are a bit more extreme than other but they're all basically good at heart. They have the Ideologues on speed-dial and a couple of Famous Monsters actually on service.

Firemason Crime Family: The Firemasons have but one objective: take over the world. They're all related by blood or by marriage and want to infiltrate all layers of every society. All of the top-ranking Firemasons are extremely trained diplomats, seducers, bribers, etc.. They come to the aid of their brethren unless the source of their troubles is gross incompetence or would reveal the identity of the others. They definitely have members from the Evil Overlord and Religious organizations in it but have some surprises in their ranks, too: their retainers are Lu Bu and Morgana le Fay and have a couple of Rival Adventurers on there. Not everyone who is actually part of the Firemasons agrees with their agenda 100%.

Write NPC-generation charts
Unfortunately, Enemies and Allies' work in this section is amazingly crummy. Their coolest idea is the halfling clean-up crew. There isn't much to criticize the book on this part mostly because they were completely remiss in not doing this section in the first place. But whatever.

Unlike the other sections, you don't actually need to write stats for these guys. Ideally you'll have a robust monster-creation system already for combat stuff and honestly you don't need to spend too much time coming up with detailed backstories for the mooks. At most, you'll need to roll a d20 on the chart to get rough person personality of the patrol's team leader chasing down your party. And here's a secret for NPC generation: all of these characters are based on pre-existing NPCs somewhere, but with appropriate tweaks.

So this section should focus mainly on tables and tweaks. Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

Random Murderers
14: Savagers- A group of heavily scarred, half-naked outlaws who believe in causing as much violence and terror as possible. In battle, they have little regard for their targets, preferring to mow down the defenseless unless directly threatened by someone stronger. All of them have the Power Attack and Cleave feats.
15: Disease Cult- Cultists driven mad by disease, want to take as many people down with them as possible. They do whatever they can to try to infect people in battle with their plague. If they hit with a natural attack or a grapple you risk contracting filth fever.
16: Clean-Up Crew- Someone saw too much and some paranoid secret-holder decided that there's no kill like overkill. They're professional and use good tactics but loathe to leave survivors. They're easily distracted by people fleeing. All of them have significant ranks in Stealth and Track.
17: Deserters- The penalty for deserting the army is death and these people know it, so they're living each day as if it was their last. Since they tend to be conscripts, military training is low but they tend to be well-armed. Preferring to prey on the weak, they don't have much stomach for a pitched battle unless they're cornered. They have the tweaks of the army they're supposed to be in.

Military Legions
6: Blue Dwarven Guard- Fearless, jingoistic dwarves with a deep sense of honor. They wear stone armor with semi-precious gemstones in it, denoting their status as elite redshirts. All of them use glaives, tower shields, and shortswords and prefer to fix in a phalanx formation. They get a +1 bonus to AC and attack for each military-trained and equipped dwarf adjacent to them or in front or behind them.
7: Goblin Outriders- Goblins on worgs! The goblins themselves tend to be lightly armored, carrying only a shield and a wooden lance. The worgs have a spiked faceplate which gives them a +1 bonus to AC. After the goblin charges the worg tries to grapple and pin their prey; the goblin then stabs them from above.
8: Warmages- Low-ranking apprentice mages who have just enough firepower to be better than conscripts. They are dressed in grey robes with black tiger stripes and mostly use long-range blaster spells like Magic Missile. They have high discipline and morale but are not built for protracted combat, tending to follow the lead of their buddies. Every third Warmage carries a scroll of some powerful spell like Lightning Bolt.

And so on.

If you want to come up with a random personality and trait generator (and it's strongly recommend that you do, they're pretty easy and don't take up much space) here is where you would do it, too.

Fleshing out the NPCs
Now remember earlier when we brainstormed a list of NPCs that you might want to transplant into your campaign? Here comes the worst part, actually writing up traits for the NPCs.

Enemies and Allies' best work is in this part of the design process. Though that's not saying a whole lot. They do have a couple of cool ideas so we'll discuss what they did right and what they did wrong.

A: Now our dragon needs a name! Every NPC that is going into this book should either have an easy-to-remember name or a nickname. You should do that for any campaign anyway as a courtesy, but it's especially important here because we know our product is working right when people go 'and then our party got ambushed by Blood Spider and her mercenaries' and other gamers respond 'oh yeah, her, she's a real pain in the neck'. King Ander is an easy name to remember. Blood Spider is also easy to remember. Jara Selarin is not.

B: You have two ways to do stats. You can either tweak pre-existing NPCs like you would do with the mooks or come up with your unique statblock. If you're going to do a unique statblock then it better be unique: as in, can't be easily extrapolated from pre-existing books. Otherwise it's just wasting space. A wizard that specializes in lightning spells (assuming that you don't have an elementalist statblock) is a good enough reason to stat. A gladiator that focuses in smashing things is not. A halfling paladin who fights in tandem with their blink dog is worth statting. A cleric that specializes in healing and radiant energy is not.

C: Now that you have a good statblock, this would be the point where you sexxed it up a little. This is the part where you give the NPC unique magic items, custom feats and powers, or just invest some points in a direction where it wouldn't be obvious. A barbarian-king who dabbled in summoning magic is just more memorable than a barbarian who wields a bigass sword. Even if you decided to generate NPCs by the tweaking method you would still want to load up on your unique spoon here.

D: The hardest but most rewarding part, coming up with motivations and personality. I was going to post some sample descriptions and backstories from the book itself to analyze what the book did right, but you know what? These things tend to be four to six paragraphs long. So that should tell you where the book went wrong already. So here are some guidelines to this thing.

First of all, try as hard as you can not to tie the character down to a specific feature of a campaign. A little bit unfortunately is necessary; if you're going to have Dracula as an NPC you're going to need a hidey-hole. But you do not need to specify that the stronghold is located deep in the forest or that it is in catacombs deep underneath the city or that he prefers temperate climates. Do not describe your character as a 'gladiator', since if the campaign doesn't have bloodsports then the NPC is useless. Describe your character as a 'warrior showboat', which means that this character could be a gladiator but also a skald, a swashbuckler, or even a jester.

Now for personality. This is where you want to get as weird as possible while still making the character plausible, if not relatable on some level. That's why people shelled out money for this book. It's fine to make a character's role in the story archetypical, but making their personality archetypical is just inexcusable. Here's an example of a bad NPC:

Brilliant by minotaur standards, Draganoth is a rarity in the world. Being superior to other creatures of his breed, he feels that he has been chosen for greatness. He is angered by the way minotaurs are treated but at the same time is frustrated by the loutish nature of his own kin. They are little more than brutes to him, to be used as servants, but he distrusts the humanoid races.

...

He wishes to increase his magical ability, with the goal of commanding his people against those who would otherwise eradicate them. He trades magic items for spells to add to his spellbook, altohough he does not fully trust non-minotaurs. He respects strength and power of others, however.

Holy cow (heh heh) that is a waste. Now while it's short and punchy unlike a lot of characters' in that miserable book, it's also not very descriptive. There's a grain of a good story in there, that of a monster who wants to be more than his stereotype, but that's all there is to the character. Here's how I would rewrite it.

Draganoth's self-loathing of his brutish kind gives him a complex towards them and non-minotaurs. Draganath hamhandedly imitates upper-class culture, down to his infamous lust for non-minotaur women. He is motormouthed and overly loquacious, though his booming voice counteracts this effect. Draganoth's familiar is a severed troll hand with a playful, mischievous personality. Very bad with money; Draganath is in deep with criminal elements and this causes him a lot of grief both with said elements and with associates.

E: Artwork. You actually really want artwork in the book. If done right it saves space and gets people into the mood. You don't really need to spend a lot of time describing stuff if you can just show people a nice sketch or, better yet, a color picture.

Come up with a list of plot hooks.

The last but certainly not least of the missed opportunities by Enemies and Allies. Yes, they do introduce some ways for NPCs to get involved but they're not exactly compelling. The plot hooks are buried within NPC descriptions; they should be completely neutral to the printed NPCs altogether.

For example:

Gartha is likely to be hired by someone seeking vengeance against the PCs. That someone has to make it worth her while, though.

That is dumb. There is no need to put that in there. Instead, it should be a plot hook like this.

Assassination: Standard motivations can include money, but more personal ones are preferred; for example, they want to stave off a prophecy by the PCs or they are the relative of a mook the PCs killed. The assassin can be the one directly wanting the PCs' death or they can be a proxy for someone else, who may have motivations of their own. For example, Draganoth is forced to perform a hit attempt on the PCs because Duke Goldd is threatening his family. Duke Goldd wants to prey on a PC's wife.

It's generic enough to be applicable to most games but also has the ability for some customization. Instead of Draganath performing the assassination, it could just as easily be Grinning Gwenwyn, a beautiful young necromancer who killed off a PC's family long ago for sport and she is chomping at the bit to finish the job.

[K]

I agree that DnD succeeds because of the the IP crossovers.

I mean, the best episode in Thundercats is when Lion-o meets the samurai (who actually causes the Sword of Thundara to shatter because it cannot be used unjustly).

I mean, Rifts is like the worse system ever and everyone I know has played it at least once, and I think its all because of the crossover BS.

By the same token, I have never wanted to touch GURPS even though they have done badass stuff like Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri. Not sure why that fails so badly. I think the system is so bad at power levels that it just skeeves me.

I guess the only lesson is "figure out a system to put as much under your tent as possible without forcing square pegs into round holes."


--------------------

That being said, I have never had problems rubbing the serial numbers off NPCs. Its why I like campaign books so much is that having an extra 60 NPCs already statted is pretty awesome for a person who is adverse to number-crunching.

I mean, background info and creative ideas are easy. I once bet Frank I could come up with 10 better ideas for epic dragons in 10 mins.... I lost, but only in that it took me 12 mins. Frank and I once came up with a badass campaign involving kenku and the Greyhawk gods of death having a religious war, and it took us like 30 mins.

I seriously can contract out the creative parts to any 13-year old who has played more than a few DnD sessions and read a few dozen fantasy books. The stat blocks are the part that take me 60 mins to do.

[PhoneLobster]

I always thought it was the enemies and allies type source books that WOTC (and others) fell down on really badly over the years.

The genuine value of a nice big book of town guards and other junk is so blatantly obvious. It could be right up there with the Monstrous Manual for usefulness any day of the week. But instead you'd get these really stupid little half arsed efforts of NPC books which contained not one usable NPC in them, if that. It was pathetic.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The genuine value of a nice big book of town guards and other junk is so blatantly obvious. It could be right up there with the Monstrous Manual for usefulness any day of the week. But instead you'd get these really stupid little half arsed efforts of NPC books which contained not one usable NPC in them, if that. It was pathetic.

The NPC descriptions is one of the saving graces of the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings. It's also something Oriental Adventures, otherwise an excellent book, was lacking in. They did the organizational things correctly in design but they're not particularly compelling. The Scorpion and Crab clans are kind of cool. The rest? Kind of a waste.

Enemies and Allies shows why the current and previous staff of WotC can't really shoot straight. That goddamn book has four authors on its front page and is only 64 pages. And it still sucks. That minotaur I posted is actually one of the more interesting characters and if I was writing him he'd be a minor NPC of note. Seriously, there are characters in there that are all 'she is a fire mage that likes to blow stuff up' or 'he is a dottering old wizard who is enjoying his retirement'.

I really think that the Den can do better than that.

[Blicero]

Amusing (but unsurprising) note: Based on those Sibling Rivalry columns the Collins brothers did before 4E, I believe that that minotaur is actually a character from a planescape campaign they did.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Dracula: I don't have to justify his inclusion. He rocks your face off, end of story.
Miyamoto Musashi: This list needs more wandering swordsman who freely dispenses wisdom and discipline.
Hercules: I don't have to justify his inclusion. He rocks your face off, end of story.
Don Quixote: Though instead of making him comically inept, make him comically inept and capable.
Theseus: This guy is a low-level badass; whupping up on the Minotaur, raping Amazons, and founding city-states.
Lu Bu: Another low-level badass. He's the perfect example of a warlord who is kind of dumb and inept (like most good fantasy warlords) but will kick your little ass and make you scream for mama. Plus he's a horse archer.
Hikaru Genji: This guy... totally should be a bard.
Morgana Le Fay: We need a seductress magic-user. We also need a woman because this is becoming a sausage-fest.
Anansi: He's a trickster whose pranks frequently backfire on him but usuatlly pulls through in the end, knows a fuckload of stories, and has weather-controlling powers. That's perfect.
Elijah: You know what this list needs? More fanatical, genocidal priests who are covered in dung and foam at the mouth.
Robin Hood: Since ass-kicking was prized more for a hero than morals, we need to have him. Also see the note for King Arthur if you want to do the Merry Men thing.
King Arthur: Oh hell yes King Arthur. Of course, King Arthur needs his Round Table. Though honestly, aside from Lancelot, Galahad, and Gawain who can remember most of the Knights off of the top of their head? I do think that the others can have a short stat block and summary. But honestly, the Knights of the Round Table should be filled up with other characters. Imagine if you will, Knights of the Round Table with Musashi, Lu Bu, and Anansi in the ranks. I think I just creamed myself.
Moses: This list needs more mass-murdering warlords with superpowers who are driving a once advanced/just people into ruin with fanaticism. Imagine him and Elijah teaming up to rock some faces. Brrr.
Oda Nobunaga: This man has been (mostly fairly) demonized in literature to a ridiculous extent, to the point of people actually accusing him of being a demon. That works out great for us.
Ashoka: There's definitely some drama to be had in a warrior-king who was once evil but became disgusted at himself and became an altruistic monk. We can even give him ridiculous Buddhist powers to boot.

I know that there are some time paradox issues especially with Don Quixote and Nobunaga, but I think we can smooth it over.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Also notice how I left out Achilles and Beowulf. They have too much overlap with pre-existing characters. Orpheus also has no reason to exist since his most famous deeds are recording stories and poems; a role which is superceded by Anansi.

I would throw Odysseus up there but a lot of his appeal gets lost if you don't have his detailed backstory and there just isn't enough room in the book to include him.

[K]

Dracula has already by DnDized: Strahd von Zarovich of Ravenloft.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Dracula has already by DnDized: Strahd von Zarovich of Ravenloft.

Fuck that noise. I want Dracula. Why can't we get Dracula?

[Username17]

Dracula has already by DnDized: Strahd von Zarovich of Ravenloft.

Fuck that noise. I want Dracula. Why can't we get Dracula?

Sorry, but giving people new names you can copyright is part and parcel of having your own setting. You can have a recognizable Louis XIV, but he needs a new name in addition to being an Elf. You need to file the serial numbers off of your religions too.

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

Hmm.... Lago.... this gives me an idea, for a campaign.... set "In an age, where the grip of civilization has slipped on the world, and darkness covers the land... however there are both heroes, and an heroes that have risen to stake a claim on the world; and more, long-dead legends and champions of old have also returned, eager to set their mark upon the world."

Basically Krogoth of Barbaria, meets Earth (long post apocalyptic); and basically every hero you can think of, from Samson, to Gilgamesh, to Sir Bors, or Hrothgar, and the terrible Grendel that plauges his hall.

The PCs play people who want to make their mark; although some players 'may' be allowed to play a character from legend. No power level disparity, they just have to act like the character they want to be. The Campaign Organizer (CO) has to approve, and may veto any such ideas.

Fanboys of whatever, are not what is desired. Just the same way that "the only person allowed to play a Kender, is the one that really doesn't give a shit about playing one or not, but knows how they're supposed to act like, and will do it because they're a good roleplayer".

Is that a setting that people could agree to? Earth? I mean, seriously.

As for copyrighting the setting.... we give these people a special name "the Reborn" or some bullshit. Bang. We name them stuff like "Lu Bu the Reborn", that's a fairly new name; and we copyright the info for each "Reborn" character.

That way characters are both recognizable, and given a set-apart bit of information that we don't want people to have.

[K]

Dracula has already by DnDized: Strahd von Zarovich of Ravenloft.

Fuck that noise. I want Dracula. Why can't we get Dracula?

Because this is Fantasy Setting Design 101 and everything is stolen from somewhere and there is no such thing as a "unique concept".

I mean, Forgotten Realms has King Arthur. His name is Azoun and his Merlin is Vangerdahast. But sometimes Merlin is also Eliminster.

And in Dragonlance Merlin is Fizban.

"Having versions of mythic characters from Earth history" is not even decent design plan because you honestly only get to steal like 40 character concepts before hitting overlap. Once you steal from Fantasy literature, other RPGs, movies, other genres and the like you realize that making up character concepts and backstory is stupid easy and can be honestly be done by any 13-year old with an afternoon free.

So seriously, I don't care about your write up of Dracula..... if I'm running a campaign where undead are heavily used I'll have six versions of Dracula and any backstory you wrote might get used in one of those (if at all).

Good NPC design is about fitting the NPC into your setting in a realistic way. Any write-up of Dracula is just stupid if you can't tell me where he is exactly in your setting and what he does and how he interacts with it.

Strahd von Zarovich lives in Ravenloft and is a Darklord and his story is about how the Mists keep reincarnating the girl who never loved him to torture him with unrequited love and occasionally he wars with other Darklords, and that backstory doesn't work at all if he gets transplanted into any other setting.

But, his stat block of "NPC vampire necromancer" can get reused a dozen times before anyone would notice it.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Sorry, but giving people new names you can copyright is part and parcel of having your own setting. You can have a recognizable Louis XIV, but he needs a new name in addition to being an Elf. You need to file the serial numbers off of your religions too.

-Username17

Good NPC design is about fitting the NPC into your setting in a realistic way. Any write-up of Dracula is just stupid if you can't tell me where he is exactly in your setting and what he does and how he interacts with it.

It's not a setting book; it's an NPC book. It works in the same way as a good class book should. Dracula is supposed to (ideally) just as easily be transplanted into a Dark Sun campaign as he is in a Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft campaign.

For K's von Zarovich example, the character loses a great deal of his angst (and is thus mostly pointless) if there aren't the Mists to reincarnate his love. If you're going to do that then you can't actually fit your Dracula expy into any specific campaign. And if you're going to go that far then why not actually grab Dracula instead of the 2-bit version of him?

And if you are just going to edit Zarovich's backstory so that some other force tortures him with unrequited love then why do you need an NPC book?

Anyway, once a DM is committed towards using Dracula in the setting it's up to them to determine things like the location of the homebase and his current evil plan and his legend and the existence (of any) vampire hunter groups that oppose him. It's the job of the book designers to actually stat Dracula out and then give him enough 'Dracula-ness' to make it feel like the character.

[MGuy]

Where are you gonna post the numbers on these famous names?

[K]

The essential problem is: why would you need an NPC book?

The answer is: you don't.

Writing up the stats to fit a backstory is time-consuming and I'd like that work done for me. Backstory is wicked easy and I don't need that.

Since any potential backstory needs unique stats, there cannot be such a thing as a useful NPC book. At best you can give generic stat blocks that can be reused and tweaked to fit a specific story. For example, a Dark Sun Dracula is going to be so different in stats from a Ravenloft Dracula that if I told you they had the same backstory you'd be amazed despite the fact that both are based on a "vampire necromancer" model.

Right now your project looks like a "stat out my favorite NPCs" thing. I understand how that is useful to you, but it is delusion to think it's even remotely useful to anyone else.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Writing up the stats to fit a backstory is time-consuming and I'd like that work done for me. Backstory is wicked easy and I don't need that.

That's why a good NPC book would intentionally avoid giving characters a detailed backstory.

All you need to know about Dracula in the book is that he sucks blood, has crazy stealth powers, is on a lot of peoples' shitlists, and seduces women. Anything else should be created by the DM.

The hard part comes from stats and ideas. A good NPC book will have a bunch of archetypes that you can plop down and room to adjust things as needed. Such as: you want a rival for the party's fighter down to matched weapons. Only the example fighter uses a broadsword. No problem, they now have a battleaxe.

For example, a Dark Sun Dracula is going to be so different in stats from a Ravenloft Dracula

Um, why? Now while I do believe that there should definitely be some tweaking to the stats for these two Draculas, the important features about Dracula is that he drinks blood and has a lot of ridiculous vampire power. Anything other than that is negotiable and should be left up to the DM. And you know what? The things that would be in common to the Dark Sun and Ravenloft Dracula would obviously be what gives the character a 'Dracula' feel. Dracula would not cease to become Dracula because he set up shop in Babylon or he carried a katana and wore wicker armor.

Lu Bu for example should be a kickass archer, kickass with a blade on a stick, ride a horse like no one's business, and command tiny men. Frippery like what kind of armor he wears or if his bag of tricks has grizzly bears instead of pandas in it is ultimately unimportant to get your feeling of 'Lu Bu'ness.

[Josh_Kablack]

Actually I found E&A useful solely for the Iconic PC-by-level stats in the back. Sur they were non-optimised, single-class core only, but they serve as a large and varied set of benchmarks.

Having a ready answer to "What attack bonus/AC/HP, etc did the designers expect a Level X <Class> to have" is frequently really helpful.

[CatharzGodfoot]

The essential problem is: why would you need an NPC book?

The answer is: you don't.

No, K, the answer is you don't. The fact that you and Frank are campaign design virtuosos does not mean that most gamers are similarly gifted. What Lago is talking about is something that I could really use.

[RandomCasualty2]

Writing up the stats to fit a backstory is time-consuming and I'd like that work done for me. Backstory is wicked easy and I don't need that.

Since any potential backstory needs unique stats, there cannot be such a thing as a useful NPC book. At best you can give generic stat blocks that can be reused and tweaked to fit a specific story. For example, a Dark Sun Dracula is going to be so different in stats from a Ravenloft Dracula that if I told you they had the same backstory you'd be amazed despite the fact that both are based on a "vampire necromancer" model.

Right now your project looks like a "stat out my favorite NPCs" thing. I understand how that is useful to you, but it is delusion to think it's even remotely useful to anyone else.

Yeah NPC books are generally totally useless.

Really, The system needs an easier method of NPC generation. That would have actually made the book worthwhile if they just used it to make an alternate NPC/monster creation method.

The book of statting your favorite NPCs is generally a waste of time for anything except a direct campaign setting book, and even then it's going to be relatively trivial, since you probably aren't going to run into Drizz't too often when you're playing FR anyway.

Aside from that, statting up famous fantasy characters like Dracula or whatever is only useful from a system testing standpoint if you want to see if your system can simulate a wide variety of concepts.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah NPC books are generally totally useless.

Really, The system needs an easier method of NPC generation. That would have actually made the book worthwhile if they just used it to make an alternate NPC/monster creation method.

Dude, I just gave the two reasons why you would want an NPC book. Quick monster generation has absolutely nothing to do with those reasons.

While I admit that if you have a cumbersome creation method you'll find more value out of an NPC book, that's not why I made this thread nor is it why I gave Enemies and Allies such a low mark. But this thread was made on the assumption that you did have a good NPC-generation system.

But to reiterate, the point of having an NPC book IMO is to assist DMs with coming up with ideas/facelifts for any pre-existing NPC generation system in place (which should be beyond the scope of any well-written DMG/MM) and also to give people the gooey feeling of having famous NPCs pop up in their campaign.

[RandomCasualty2]

Dude, I just gave the two reasons why you would want an NPC book. Quick monster generation has absolutely nothing to do with those reasons.

Whenever you talk about NPCs, quick generation is always an issue. Lets face it, pregens are never going to fit your campaign better than an NPC you wrote up yourself. Generally, the only reason you'd ever want to use pregens is because your NPC generation system is slow and cumbersome and you don't want to waste time writing up the NPC yourself.

If you have a quick NPC generation system, then you don't need a book of NPCs.

[Spaghetti Western]

It's funny to me when people think they are the Quentin Tarantino of campaign design. You see this in every single genre where there are fans, go to any sports forum and you'll see thousands of wanna be GM's, movie forums have their bedroom directors, etc etc.

Bottom line 99.9% of people do not possess the skills or talent needed to even paid for doing this stuff and most those that do still end up failing a good deal of the time. Translation, tools that help a DM generate ideas, provide material or otherwise save time have A LOT of value and should not be dismissed out of hand because odds are you need it as well.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you have a quick NPC generation system, then you don't need a book of NPCs.

Let's take a very basic example from the 4E Monster Manual. The human guardsman. He has an acceptable range of schticks for a guardsman, but this character is supposed to fill the roles of Bane temple guardian, a marshal for a frontier town on the edge of civilization, and a henchman for some rich, snobby merchant. But really, they're the same fucking guard and anyone would recognize this after more than one encounter.

This NPC book would ideally have ways for you to tweak said guard with minimal effort so that while they are still recognizable L3 Human Guards they are still noticably different from each other. He's a mook so doesn't need to be run through the monster generation system nor does the DM have to spend more than 20 seconds thinking of ways to differentiate his mook.

Putting all of this in the Monster Manual or DMG is just a waste of time and space that could've been used for actually statting-up monsters rather than coming up with motivations for the pack of bandits you find in the forest or the specific outfits you find on the zombie horde rising out of the haunted battlefield.

[NativeJovian]

It sounds like what you want is the Monster Manual, only mostly humanoids instead of, y'know, monsters. Stuff that's statted out for you already so you can drop it wholesale into your campaign. Something with entries like "mid level general arcane caster" and "high level heavy melee specialist" instead of "bugbear" and "gnoll".

Plus maybe a bunch of tables of mix-n-match names/motivations/quirks/etc.

But I'm not sure where you're going with this. I can see its use for filling in some blanks as far as generic guards and henchmen and the like go (so if your PCs are chatting up an NPC in the pub and they start asking personal questions and the like that you don't have answers for, you can check a table or list for an appropriate response rather than having to invent something on the spot), and if the PCs get bored chatting you'd have stats there in case they decide to stab him in the face for whatever reason. But you're talking about famous public domain characters like Dracula and Robin Hood -- character archetypes who should really be main characters, if not the focus of the whole campaign. Those kinds of characters you should really be willing to put in the time to build custom versions, so you have exactly what you want, because they're important enough that "almost right" probably won't cut it, and they're not likely to stumble across the PCs by accident so you should have plenty of time to stat them out beforehand.

[Lago PARANOIA]

NJ: No to the first motivation, yes to the second one.

But you're talking about famous public domain characters like Dracula and Robin Hood -- character archetypes who should really be main characters, if not the focus of the whole campaign.

Why?

because they're important enough that "almost right" probably won't cut it,

Robin Hood in a Dark Sun campaign is going to have a difference inn appearance, backstory, and hopefully behavior than one in a Forgotten Realms campaign. There's no way you can do better than an 'almost right'. This applies to any NPC not specifically designed for your setting. But a good Enemies and Allies shouldn't be a setting book. It should have enough blanks in it so that a DM can insert King Arthur into the campaign with minimal fuss.

and they're not likely to stumble across the PCs by accident so you should have plenty of time to stat them out beforehand.

Why?