NPCs · Minor · Mercantile
The Rest of the Cast - Extras and Minor Characters
This is the place for minor characters and extras. These are just personalities and some minor skills ready to be thrown into your campaign. They are not highly detailed becaue they are just extrasn in the game. They are useful to have a stack of just 'hanging around' should you need them. So use um all, we will make more.
This codex is mostly a reminder for some of us to keep making these characters. It is easy to forget to make 'extras' and 'minor' characters. However, if you link this to your favorite's list, you will always remember to plug one in when you are here.
For a reminder -Our definitions:
Extra: These are members of the background that fill the world behind the player characters. They are needed to give versimilitude and life to the game world the players are passing through. Any Extra character would be either a typical character or a nearly typical (just different to stand out slightly) character. The players might have a line or two of dialog with them. If the extra is interesting, there might be more interaction with them, and the extra becomes the springboard for minor subplots in the game.
Extra-Horde: These are groups where a single character sheet and description defines (nearly) every member of the group. This would be for dockside bandits, Ninjas, pitchfork and torch wielding peasants, BlackMoor Barbarians Riders, or some other loose group of near identical people. Hordes are almost always antagonistic.
Minor Character: These are characters that are of minor importance in this chapter of the character's existance. They are either minor villians (important minions, lieutenants, monsters of some note), minor allies (supporting characters), or Color characters (the local headman, a healer, soothsayer, the troll beneith the bridge) The line between Minor Color Characters and Extras is a little fuzzy. It all depends upon the character's presentation to the players.
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A great Idea Scroll from the forums... you can simply cut these small characters and paste them into your game.
This could be a great codex/scroll for minor characters. Why not make it an actual codex?
Because of the sheer number of minor NPCs - the page would be unbearably long and hard to read. This way you have them all nicely in one place, with short descriptions along.
Hmm, this is somewhat superceded by the plethora of '30's. Though now I need to go through my NPCs to see if any qualify.
Indeed, this ought to be updated with more examples which we surely have around.
We have a whole category marked 'Minor characters'. We need to make it a quest, critically, with a word count limit. One of my most useful characters as NPC in a game has the total notes of 'O'Shea's thug. New York-Irish. Tacturn, silent menace. Gestures a lot. Physical adept - speed & skill. Tonfa.' And really, that's all I need to know to make him a working cog in the backdrop to the players "heroism". That's what these are about. They're cogs to make the heroes heroes. Most of all, these are what DMs need.
And these guys don't need a codex. They're an entire category. Just click on NPC and click on 'minor' at the side. Or 'Extra'. Or whatever.