Monday Musings #135 🤬
Why the Most Dangerous NPCs Are Player-Generated
Good Monday, Gamer!
“'Cause I'm Rob Base, the one who knows about things that make ya get weary” — Rob Base
Back in “N is for Notorious NPCs”, I wrote about crafting NPCs your players love to hate. Carefully designed antagonists. Long-term rivals. Faces meant to linger.
But the table truth is: some of my best NPCs don’t come from careful planning at all.
They come from failed rolls and player choices.
Let me tell you about Bennie.
In my Occulted KC Monster of the Week game, Bennie was born from a miss. Eleanor (The Flake) rolled a failed NetFriends move—and Burned Bridges was the outcome. If I remember right, the player named him Bennie on the spot. It was session one. Nobody had feelings about Bennie yet. He had no real history in the fiction, just a thin backstory and a reason not to help. But having done this dance before, I knew something important: a player-generated, player-named NPC is GM gold, and I know how to spend it!
In session two, Bennie started showing up again—but only in small ways. Cameos. Side glances. A name dropped here, a complication there. He appeared as 7–9 downsides, misses, and MC moves. Nothing overt. Just enough to build presence. I didn’t stop play to explain why Bennie was there. I trusted that future fiction would justify it. And it never fails.
Session three brought a new mystery. A Frogman had attacked law enforcement. Digging deeper, the characters learned that a couple of street toughs had crossed paths with a “fancy backpacker” in their territory—and that backpacker had turned two thugs into one frog monster.
Using scrying magic, the characters discovered that the backpacker was Bennie.
Bennie stopped being “that guy Eleanor burned.” He became a Player in the occult game of Kansas City.
Don’t Put All Your Villain Eggs in One Basket
I didn’t want Bennie to be the only long-term threat. He’s a possible BBV. So I leaned into another NPC the players had already given me. As part of character history in session zero, Blake (the Curse-Eater) had once saved Michael Lewis (the Mundane) from a siren. The group decided they hadn’t killed her—only chased her off.
Which means she’s still in the city.
Bennie is ambitious. The siren is patient. Their goals don’t overlap cleanly, and that’s cool. I don’t have any solid plans yet...we’re playing to find out.
Face Cards at the Table
Years ago, when I was running an unreasonable amount of Urban Shadows 1E, I made a deck of NPC cards. Just images cut from magazines and catalogs, slid into card sleeves.
I’d put the deck on the table and encourage players to flip through it, or prompt them to pull one for an NPC. It’s my “name everyone” variant.
This week, I grabbed a photo of Titus Welliver (Bosch) and dropped it in the center of the table. “That’s Bennie.” As play continued, players picked images for off-duty cops, transient folks, Disciple members—building a shared occult corkboard in real time.
“We’re pretty sure Danni’s a mage—look at that robe.”
“Disciple lieutenants probably get a clothing allowance.”
It’s a small thing, but it works. The visual reference does a ton of heavy lifting. Players remember faces better than names. When they choose the image, I know they’re In! That’s material I can grab, remix, and repurpose later.
Everyone ends up on the same page about who’s who—and what their characters think about them. That’s gold.
Muses of Play
I recently started watching The Invaders, that 1960s sci-fi show about a man trying to convince the world that aliens are among us. It’s incredible OSR sci-fi fuel: paranoia, investigation, and slow-burn revelation.
Structurally, every episode is basically a one-shot:
Someone notices something wrong, investigates, gathers evidence, tries to convince others, and either succeeds or fails before the threat moves on.
I’m still early in the first season. Also: lots of very young old actors.
I’m also reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel that eventually became Blade Runner. It’s scratching a lot of itches as I work on sci-fi game design. The movie hints at a huge amount of lore, and I’m enjoying seeing what’s actually on the page—and what got left behind.
What NPCs have grown out of your failed rolls?
What techniques do you use to make NPCs stick once they’re on the table?
Those accidents might be doing more work for you than your prep ever could.