My local villain would be called "Johnny 12 Guns" on account of his 12 guns

Our GM solved the "every trader is the same" problem by... making every trader the same person, an eldritch deity of commerce called "Trader Joe", whose store would magically appear whenever we were in town and had to buy something.

"Local Villain" list *notices tax collectors* I see you're making your villains accurate to history

"How to Write an Interesting Character in 5 Minutes!" Is 13 minutes long me: 'You liar!' Turns out there's 6 NPC's that are made 13/6=2.2 me: 'You LIAR!'

I used this tips with an old lady npc and she ended up being the most powerfull entity in that universe

"The merchants can't all be the same guy" Clearly someone hasn't watched Avatar.

Good shit. A smart, concise way to create more believable characters. More stuff like this please.

Great video. Here's two tips to add to your own: 1. Be mindful of conflict between character weakness & role. A successful politician is unlikely to be bad with people; a 500yr old elven swordsman is unlikely to be clumsy; an Arch-Druid is unlikely to have a weak personality ETC. Role and weakness can still clash however; in which case it could be a small story, such as a city guard too afraid to actually do his job. 2. Some characters can genuinely lack a goal/desire. These are aimless characters who likely suffer from depression and can't find a purpose in life, and could happen if say Brent the Merchant lost his business and didn't know what to do with himself afterwards.

I just made all shop keepers part of a hivemind entity called the god of trade. A slight against one is a slight against all.

“Because they’re not that important.” DM flashbacks to when players keep going to the same character eventually giving them their own story arc and making them pivotal in the grand scheme of things. Yeaaa...

Dude are you a real life wizard. First, when one of my players wanted to suddenly be a cleric without me having a pantheon at hand you release your Forgotten Realms gods video an hour later, and now that my Players want to go shopping in the next session (in 4 days) you helped me speed up my NPC production from 2h to 10min. My man you definitely got yourself a fan!

While this is meant for making NPC’s, this actually works very well for making player characters. For example, maybe your Paladin needs an affective way to help people that extends beyond killing monsters, wants glory, maybe land too, and his enemy is his older brother who bullied him and knew him before he was the devout Paladin.

I'll have you know that I am an *extremely* remarkable farmer, thank you very much!

Voice inflection, mood, tone, melody and body language. Several things you can change periodically as a DM to make different characters physically. Next, you can make mannerisms or side characters who don't have much word but have the same inflections every time. Like Bob, bob is the merchant in the basement who works for Fred. Fred shouts at Bob all the time and Bob only replies with "What?!" Or "Whatcha Say?!" and it's a shout match between the two merchants. Comical baboonery is a good choice to make a character, or duo memorable. Also giving merchants memorable pets or quests to help them achieve better things in their shop or adventure will give the party memorable moments and recall on them when meeting with the NPC. this is just some things I've noticed while DMing.

this might be a video with a low viewer count in the first month. but this level of quality and fast precision will immortalize it man! Other DnD youtubers would take half an hour of boring rambling to explain what you casually said.

A 5e NPC building youtube tutorial that ACTUALLY HELPS? NANI?!?

Runesmith: has a problem with all of one type of character being the same character *The Swarm of Nurse Joys want to know your location*

A merchant I have owns every shop and runs to each one at the speed of light. He is a doppelganger so he changes his name and appearance depending on the shop. His flaw is that he fumbles his names alot.

I really want to emphasize the need for npc heros to interact with. Without them, the world feels empty. Its not nice, feeling like your group is the only one having to deal with all the problems, or that problems only seem to happen in the area the group is in. Just don't let them join the party, as the world needs them elsewhere.

I think you could also make a video on tying these chracters together it really makes the world (city) come to life. Especially with the characters you have made here. Brent the merchant had a rival who is selling stolen goods and johnny five strings is a merchant who is selling stolen goods. They fit together perfectly. The Baroness has problems with bandits, they might be the one giving Johnny his goods. And on top of that you can have a criminal organisation who is making johnny work for them and not chase his dreams of being a bard. Throw in Dennis who is also trying to deal with this organisation. Thomas who is maybe stolen from and sarah who knows something about them. And you got yourself story that involves people from all around the city.

"Every villain is a hero in their own story"

"This can be a struggle in immersion if all the shopkeepers are the same person" Me: Challenge accepted. *Makes a character who runs all the shops in town and changes costumes for each shop*

I feel like this isn't only valuable when you're playing D&D but also when writing books or short stories

Really interesting and super helpful! Please do more like this!

4 Things - 0:26 Simple Merchant - 1:34 Local Villain - 4:09 Kings, Lords and Barrons - 5:46 Heroes and Adventurers - 7:55 Commoners - 9:55 Scholars and Cultists - 11:27

Quick idea for a local villain: an executioner. Due to the 'sinfulness' of the position, executioners were also in charge of other questionably legal things, like gambling houses or prostitution. They were basically legal mob bosses, and the title was passed down through families. They also had a specific symbol, which was worn on the person, and sometimes advanced into the nobility due to wealth and power, often incorporating this symbol into their crest.

This video is also very good for making the start of a player character that can be easily developed throughout the game

This video is terrible, everyone knows the best way to make an interesting character is just to copy paste Victor the Blackpowder Merchant from Critical Role for Every. Single. Character.

These videos have been great, keep it up my dude

So you're saying Thomas the farmer is the equivalent incel who is envious of the chad explorers, won't change themself to adapt and has a crush on someone way out of their league 😂

You should make a video on how you plan out your cities.

Clicked on this thinking it was just for general writing, and technically, I suppose it kind of is. Lol. Useful tip, though. Even if I don't make a character using that exact template, it is still a really good way to summarize a character in notes for quick reference, I'd imagine. Thank you for the video!

It helps that these tips can also be applied to just writing stories overall, not just DnD.

Bruh, as a new DM this is fantastic. I've also been enjoying your lessons on magic. I'll gladly listen to any tips on DMing you have to offer.

When I have a table of players staring at me expectantly, your stuff is for whatever reason stuff on which my panicked GM brain can actually execute. This puts you on an exceptionally short list indeed and experienced GMs will know of what I speak. As an aside I also love the philosophical nuggets embedded throughout your content. You sir are a scholar and gentleman.

Dennis the Vigilant: His Enemy, an Undead Overlord in a tower. Ainz Ooal Gown: I don't have a tower.

Just take a note from Zelda's book and have a 'Happy Mask Salesman' type character run all the stores and have everyone constantly question what the hell the guy is but never give an answer.

11:30 "Savant and Servant" sounds like a Powerwolf song.

Here’s another tip. When your players want to get to know a local NPC, have some scenario ready involving them, something like a side quest. Players like to be rewarded when they go off the main path, and I see so many DMs not realizing that having a few side quests prepared can help you be ready for players derailing the campaign and help you get back on the main path quicker with the players feeling satisfied with themselves. As a bonus, Players often think that it’s their own idea to go do these things, and will praise you for good improv when you really were prepared for them. I’ll give an example using some of the characters from this video. When the players enter a shop, give them a description that hints at something being off, but not so obvious that it couldn’t just be part of the character. For example, “When you step into the small shop, you are struck by how tidy it is. The merchandise lining the shelves is neatly organized, nearby items are labeled with names and prices, and not a single speck of dust coats the stone floor tiles. The shopkeeper, a man dressed in simple, but neat clothing appears to be just as spick and span as the rest of his shop, but on closer inspection you can see the man is anxious about something. He dismisses you with a mumble that you barely make out as his name, Brent and a greeting that could clearly use some work, and as soon as he has done so, he goes back to rifling through papers behind the counter. He mutters something angrily while a bead of sweat makes its way down from his brow as he hurriedly stuff something beneath the counter. When you turn to the walls, the merchandise is high quality, but perhaps not as great a selection as it could be” Small details like this that take a few minutes to think of and jot down can do wonders for the player immersion into the setting. You’ll notice I didn’t give any details about the shopkeeper other than a vague description of his clothing, but I’ll bet you probably pictured him and his shop while reading that short passage. If the players decide to spend some money and talk to him, he’ll let slip that a shipment of his was stolen just outside the town, and he’s worried he won’t be able to stay in business. If the players want to help, he’ll tell them that a local mercenary has a lead on some bandits he thinks might have stolen the shipment, and the mercenary hangs out a local tavern. If they go there, they’ll meet a local hero of some renown named Dennis The Vigilant. He’ll grudgingly tell the players that he has a lead on a group of bandits connected to a local fence, and he’ll give the players the info if they agree to do the job for him. He’ll give them the location of a hideout on the edge of town, which will hold the bandits who took the shipment. The players can negotiate with them for the identity of the fence they sold to, or beat the shit out of them and take the info off their corpses. (The, “You find a suspicious note” trick works well here.) The part can them set up a meeting with the fence, Johnny Five-Strings, a former musician who is rumored to have dealings with the criminal underworld of the city. Again, have the choice to negotiate or beat the shit out of him for the name of the client he sells his stolen goods to. After them they’ll get the name of a competitor of Brent’s, who has been stealing Brent’s shipments as a way to drive him out of business. When they arrive at his shop however, he’s hired Dennis to protect him from you. This gives the players an engaging miniboss fight where they can try to talk Dennis down or take him down. If they kill him, maybe they get some animosity from the town who considered him a hero. An alternative way to end is that Johnny’s client is none other than Brent himself. He convinced the players to go on a quest he knew would lead you to Johnny because he wanted Johnny dead for some reason, maybe to take over his dealings. Brent then hired Dennis to kill the players to dispose of the evidence. This gives the players a good minor antagonist to hate, because he screwed them over. This also makes for some good interparty role play as it will give all the characters are directly achievable goal that all players have a reason to work together for. Good players because, criminal, and neutral and evil characters because “he screwed me over”. I personally ran the second ending for my table and got three sessions over the initial side quest and the following quest of revenge on Brent that included breaking into a meeting of the criminal lords of the city and assasinating Brent there. It took me about 15 minutes of prep for that first sidequest and about 45 more for the whole thing. If the players never did it, I could’ve just moved the quest somewhere else, or just scrapped it because I’ve scrapped way more than 15 minutes of work in the past I could live with it. It’s very easy to turn a few loosely connected NPC concepts into a basic quest that, at least in the case of my party, ended up in some of the most memorable sessions I’ve ever run. TLDR: USE SIDEQUESTS. I know they feel boring but they can add more fun to your campaign while also filling your players derailing quota,

*"What's his last name?"*

1.weakness: sex 2.need: sex 3.desire: sex 4.ennemy: ex

This is amazing. It really is all you need to be able to role play variety and make the world seem large. Builds side quest ideas too in the background of your thoughts. I’m using this and love it. Fun thing I added is a movie actor that I assigned to them as a voice or accent to use. It’s really helps me remember the voices and characters at a moments glance. Thanks man! I love your channel.

I love this channel more than I love my left foot :) Also the artstyle you have going on is great! Keep it up!

I played a Dwarf Solarian who, prior to the campaign, had spent the past 100 years as, effectively, a guard protecting the starfinder version of disaster relief missions on planets deemed dangerous enough to warrant extra firepower (dangerous wildlife, etc). With his tour of duty over, he quasi-unintentionally missed his flight home because he couldn't stand the thought of settling down.

This was perfect. Thanks. I have started being a DM for my kids. I have started some very simple characters, but this will elevate my game. Thanks again!

Thanks this helps me a lot,I am still pretty new to being a DM and npc creation has been kinda hard(not making them generic).

So give them an ideal, a bond, and a flaw?

I dig this, good resources for interesting NPC and Villain creation are hard to find.

I really like this channel, and Im super happy that you branched out to do this. Its already been super helpful to me!

I like this video :DDD I've been developing a Rpg sistem, and there's a characteristic called drama divided in four sections that should be related to something those four sections are "vice, motivation, means and personality" and it really brings spark to the play. also a thing that helps a lot to flesh out a npc is to give him an emotion when he encounters the PC's

What I do without really thinking about it when I portray characters is shift my posture, my tone, the kind of language I use, the speed at which I talk, and the pitch to some extent. I knew from the start I wasn't going to do "voices" because I don't feel comfortable doing it and I fear it may sap the character's credibility. In the end the subtle changes were more than enough to distinguish most characters. Also I ended up doing it when they met goblins and it was pretty fun.

I feel you should add one more thing: disposition. How the character acts towards you can effect how they will act in moments where there is character growth, and it's a part of a character that doesn't change.

I just found your channel and instantly fell in love with it. Dude, I search a lot about worldbuilding/writing on KZfaq and you are one of the most helpful BY FAR. Your videos are part of what cured my writer's block. Insta sub and like

My DM set all of the shop keepers sorta like Officer Jenny or Nurse Joys. There all different variations of Bob, Bobby, Roberto ext... Its a good time.

I can tell I'm going to come back to this again and again when I need to make hordes of NPCs, so imma drop a favorite on this. And I literally only have 8 videos in my favs, including this now, so great job!

This was loads of awesome info on characterbuilding and fleshing out personalities. Thanks for sharing! :)

This video is just beautifull. Im only a player, but I'll share this with my DM and I think he'll like it, cause I as a player would love to encounter these characters. Keep it up!

I'm only four minutes in and this is already more helpful than all other NPC character creation tutorials I've seen combined. An actual, solid method which is easy to use. I made Jaroslav the town guard along with the video, and I totally understand who he is and how to play him. You've saved me so much time and worry! I'm two sessions into my first time (properly) DMing, in a huge 'new world' style homebrew scenario. This will take it to the next level.

Thanks! I really enjoy, and definitely need, these DM tips and world building. Keep on keeping on!

This was very useful and clever. I would like to see more videos along these lines. Great job. Thanks.

This is a great video! Expanding on this, I'd like to see someone create a chart of 100 different ideas for each category that DMs can roll on the fly. I really enjoy taking random prompts and seeing what I can build with them!

Id like to thank you for making all your DM help videos because of you I've managed to make a decent interesting campaign in a short amount of time

this is useful for players too, who are just starting on roleplaying.

Great video! I will definitely use this to create a few characters in a play I'm writing.

Logan, you are a legend. Jesus Christ, I'm taking every note possible from this video

I can relate to Brent: cold, blunt, aspirations of wealth, craves companionship but won't do the work the improve his personality. Good video.

This helped me in just a quick and easy way to come up with side characters for novel, short story or comic medium as well.

Loving these GM help / notes videos!

This inspired me to make a character creation template on a spreadsheet. When you get stuck meandering on how to get to details it takes the fun out of writing; having systems like what's been introduced in this video fixes that!

A very nice and helpful video especially for new DMs (like me). The thing I luck, is some source that will make my gears of creativity working so I can create weaknesses, needs, desires, etc. for my NPCs as easily as you can in thins video.

This is a great system. Very useful, thank you!

This is perfect even for writing outside from roleplay and d&d

This video is great for people who are trying to get into being a DM and haven't yet figured out how to introduce the players to interesting characters without stealing other people's ideas 😊 You should definitely make more about making being a DM a lot easier for new people wanting to learn how to make a good story for others to play

Tbh i wouldnt just use this for dnd npc id say this is a fantastic guide for character creation subsequentially and worldbuilding thatd be great for game development, movies, series etc as well as dnd as said. So thank you fpr this!

This video is a staple of my character creation process now - whether that’s for worldbuilding or storywriting!

How to make an interesting merchant npc: 1. Make them based on email spams 2. Give them a boss battle

This is really good, getting ready to build my first town and I feel a good ten to fifteen npcs is good. This changed my hours long work into minutes. Making npcs on the fly too is going to be easy, thanks.

About to GM for the first time coming up in a few weeks, this video really helped me out. Thanks so much!

This is incredibly helpful and much simpler than I expected, which is good because I'm often overwhelmed with things

This was really good man, lots of things to think about. I tend to enjoy making my NPC's feel more real and human when the party encounters them.

Found this very useful! Not that I play D&D anymore, but super useful for writing in general.

You just helped me give my character a need and weakness which they lacked because im new to DnD and writing characters. Thank you very much! Genial.

Super nice video! I laughed at the comment about taking notes at the end, because right around the Hero portion I ran up to restart the video and take notes xD. And I love the idea for Sarah! My next campaign involves the party getting a task from a wizard, and I think I'm going to make an apprentice off of Sarah's mold.

I love your videos and love this type too. You should do more like this

I feel like i personally know these characters

Keep making content like this and I shall return with undying exuberance.

I've already been doing something kinda similar, but I like your format and so I'll probably adapt it. Thanks for the tips! I do agree it is more fun to make NPCs a bit more human, even though that sometimes leads to them being a bit difficult to interact with at first.

Enjoyed this and so easy to understand and apply, would love to see more.

This was really handy, gonna use this system from now on, thanks!

You don, you've only done, gone and did it! Own channel. Solid pieces of work dude

Excellent work! I think I can apply this to create my own character.

This helped out a lot tonight I'm going to be implementing this for future uses for the foreseeable future

One thing I like to add if the npc is selling goods of their own make is I like to add a selling point and flaw in the product. Example, I had an armoursmith named Bellmont who was a very extravagant guy so his work often looked way cooler but was a bit less functional.

AD&D first edition had full tables for this. Just roll the reqs and bam! You have an in depth character. I used to use the tables any time an intelligent item was found.

This was super informative, thank you for this amazing video!

I really enjoyed this! It'd be great to see see more stuff like this

I came here for books and got D&D. Didn’t regret watching. Nice.

Hey, just wanted to say this video is really helping me with my campaign and making better characters. My campaign is supposed to be like a Slasher movie from the 70's/80's and that's kinda hard to do for DnD, but it's a lot of fun to write! So thanks a bunch

Thanks. I will definitely be using this.

Incredibly useful simple list!! My method of adding compelling depth (PC or NPC) is by asking what is the *characters values & motivation? Re-phrased, what is their decision flips? What would make flip from the normal expected decision to something else?* Example: A person may be a coward in the day to day, shirking away from hard things they might fail. But, their value might be hatred of abuse toward the helpless. If they see someone, not just being hurt, but helplessly hurt, they might flip out and grab for their cudgel and maybe lose control a bit (rage), spend their own money to help the person, then go right back to their cowardly life taking advantage of people. To me, this helps the PC's the most. Don't just make a barbarian who always charges headlong into battle. In fact, a barbarian who is reluctant to do battle might be more interesting and more human. He just wanted (past tense) a quiet life. Sigh. If you force him to have enough reason to fight, then he's going to make ___ sure you won't be capable of doing so again. Imagine playing a warlock that feels guilty about giving his patron service. Maybe he took that in a dire moment of desperation in his youth (without understanding, or even more tearing apart: with understanding but a decision to do it anyway). Now that he's older and the moment of crises has passed, he isn't distracted enough to not start to feel the weight of what he's done. Everyone is all excited about multi-classing. Instead of max-min-ing, how about a character who slowly stops using his powers, most especially the high power ones, coming to a climax where he ultimately leaves his patron, losing his powers... So he has to start the journey late or un-optimized. (work with the GM for a way to balance this with the campaign and maybe have some lingering effects good and bad from his prior service). You can bet people will remember the character who rejoice in the moment of party success in a great battle, then quickly disappears and is found the next day in a moping or self destructing or in drunken stupor trying to bury his guilt of his power use. The party will remember the character who astonishingly gave up his super-power while everyone else greedily scoops up new abilities. Maybe have him play weak for a session or 2, so that weight sets in... then have him earn the blessings of something powerful, such as a paladin - have him start each day weak and weary, because he is so determined to make up for his old life that he stays up late and gets up early practicing until he drops. or maybe a deity puts a piece of their self into him, instantly bestowing divine sorcery - something he can feel prowd/blessed to be able to use. Now he has a motivation of destroying the very things he used to serve, or maybe he just wants to show everyone that there is a better way than the bad choices. or have him struggle as bad stats frequently drunken now barbarian or fighter. (and plan some way he can catch up to being properly useful to the party within a 2-4 sessions) I'll definitely add your method as a go to and pre-prep a few character card of different classes that I can pull out and add to a picture on the fly (as if I had pre-planned the whole character, when it's really just mix & match, grab and go)