While there may be plenty of NPC generators already in existence, I wanted one specifically for Cörpathium that I could use to make all of the characters ever. So, I made one?
Since the tables would be unforgivably ugly if I had to reformat them to fit here, head to Penny Pamphlets or click this link to download the NPC Birthing Sac in spreadsheet form. With the amount of tables I use, I’m really finding spreadsheets to be the best thing in the world. Instead of having multiple PDFs or text documents open I can have one spreadsheet with all of the pages I might need, and I can even freeze the headings so that no matter where I scroll I can still see the table name and number. For something absolutely free and easy to use download LibreOffice.
[Edit: everything besides the doubles and triples tables is now also automated here.]
Since my idea of fun does not include a cross-referenced 500 entry table of “Tempestuous, Has Kind Eyes”, “Will Betray You, Smells Like Cinnamon”, and “Hooked Nose, Was Once Bitten By a Sheep”, my generator has you drop a handful of dice for vague descriptors of different character aspects, then take a reaction roll and a random name and imagine the rest. I mean really, we can figure out if they have a weakness for cherry pie and fast women later.
Okay Shut Up Now and Tell Me How to Use This Thing
Step One: Every dice has its own table, so scoop all of them into your hot little womb of a hand and roll. If there are any doubles or triples re-roll them on those tables.
Step Two: I have made names for every race in Cörpathium. Every god damn one. Roll d100 once for a full name and occupation or a few times to mix it up. Add an elaborate title if you feel like it.
[There aren’t any demi-humans in Cörpathium, but there are four major ethnicities. The Moors are steeped in mysticism and have near pure-black skin, like polished ebony, with pupil-less white eyes and rich silk clothing dripping with jewellery. Urgoths/Saxons are the pale mongrel children of might-as-well-be-Europe. Francs are like their more effete olive-skinned cousins. The Morgen are pale to the point of ethereality with epicanthic eyes and bullshit Lovecraftian names, when born they’re anointed to the sect of one of their hundred gods instead of taking a family name. Anything deeper about their cultures can be made up mid-game I don’t got that kinda time.]
Step Three: Make a reaction roll. Some of the original rolls should be interpreted with this in mind.
Step Four: It’s alive.
OKAY LET’S MAKE OURSELVES A GIN & TONIC AND BIRTH SOME NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS
NPC #1:
3 (Franc), 6 (Old Female), 6 (Inconsistently), 5 (Alluring), 9 (Tall and Fat), 12 (Fame), 13 (Storyteller), re-rolled double (Hides their blindness well), reaction roll 10
Penelope Clairval is a Francish Cook, and while she may be pushing her sixties her constant food-tasting and activity has kept her tall frame plump, and her clean tight apron frames her pot belly in a way that you find oddly and compulsively attractive. She’s extremely happy to have you here but occasionally has spats of frustration while she’s running around the kitchen regaling you with stories of her culinary endeavours and how they’ll make her famous throughout all Cörpathium some day. You’d never guess that she’s blind and finds her way around the kitchen by smell and memory alone.
NPC #2:
1 (Moor), 2 (Young Male), 6 (Inconsistently), 10 (Utterly Absurd), 3 (Rotund), 3 (Power), 20 (Plans/Destiny), re-rolled double (Pathological liar), reaction roll 8
Harbungur Uruman, the Pastel Lord, is a young Moorish boy currently prenticed to the Sewerkeepers, where he is able to access nearly-closed pathways that the older and larger men cannot. He wears clothes too large for his portly little frame, likely passed down from his father, but the jewellery hanging from every available space is decidedly un-Moorish; things either washed into the sewers or long-forgotten, shimmering and strange. He found something down there in the places no one else can reach, something he believes will one day make him a lord of Cörpathium. He doesn’t know how to react to you, he isn’t sure if he can use you, and sways mid-conversation between joviality and disdain. Everything he tells you is a lie, and his young mind still has trouble keeping track of which lies are being told to who.
NPC #3:
4 (Morgen), 1 (Old Male), 1 (Overtly), 3 (Squalid), 2 (Impish), 8 (Sociopathy), 4 (Body Language), two re-rolled doubles (Unexpectedly knowledgeable, Overly perfumed), reaction roll 5
Cul-Ragaroth Magog is a near-decrepit Morgen Narcotic Chymist, the filth-stained vestments covering his bent, shrunken body are little better than burn-marked rag and he despises you, something he communicates quite clearly through venomous words and unmistakably malevolent movements. Persistence pays off though, because if you can talk your way around his hate and the overpowering scent of rose-water he uses to mask his chemical experimentation, you’ll discover that he knows about everything.
HELLS YES THAT WORKED EXACTLY LIKE I HOPED LET’S MAKE ALL OF THE CHARACTERS
Sweet mother of glob, this is incredible.
Thank you!
I live to please.
As you will, so it shall be.
An NPC crawls mewling into the world!
4 (Goblin), 4 (Female), 1 (Overtly), 10 (Utterly Absurd), 3 (Rotund), 8 (Sociopathy), 4 (Body Language), triple! (Openly enthusiastic worshipper of the Monolith in the Dark, welcomes you to join them at the next gathering), reaction roll 3. – Honorific “the Tepid”, job “Inherited-wealth Gadabout”
Gobrelda the Tepid is a plump female city-dwelling Goblin who inherited the vast fortune of her ancestors after adventurers slaughtered her entire hive.
Once half-mad, now ‘eccentric’, she spends vast sums of money on food and frippery and mocking high society with her presence among them.
She grew up, as city goblins do, on the streets under the heel of the upper classes, now she takes a sociopathic pleasure in mocking them from the inside. Her limbs are draped with absurd displays of sparkling gems and gleaming gold, she affects the sweeping mannerisms and accents of the cultured, and she is somehow always one step behind the fashions of the moment.
Knowing that the Cult of the Monolith in the Dark is one of the classier cults and is thus secretly filled with the rich and powerful, she takes great glee in inviting the grubby, rude and malcontent to meetings just to watch the cultists squirm under their hoods.
Haha YES that is what I want to see!
It really just fucking rolled off the page.
My NPCs are going to be SO interesting now! I’ll keep you posted when I start running again, especially if some random character off this table becomes a big name recurring character.
I finally got to use these. Rolled up a joint random encounter featuring a merchant’s small caravan (doth wagons two a caravan make…?) and a group of hunters. Notable NPCs created (Wilderlands of High Fantasy):
Hunting party:
A group of 6 people out hunting game for food. 5 basically ordinary people led by a Rgr2. She is Fri∂a, a female Skandik, thin as a reed, not bright at all, and not a pleasant person. If not threatening, then attempting to manipulate – in a very incompetent fashion. She is hopelessly in love in with a man in the village of Ferrogo and tries to threaten or manipulate people to put in a good word for her with him. Even going so far as to jump in their beds, man or woman.
Fri∂a’s love interest is Korgen Brobe. He is a bowyer by profession and has made her bow. But he is a terrible prude. He will berate and shun anyone who seems to have fun. So Fri∂a’s rather… uncomplicated… overtures have so far been met with shock if not outright disgust. Things are not looking good for Fri∂a’s courtship…
How will she attempt to use the party to further her goal?
Merchant party:
Leader: the merchant Zulif El-Abrah, a Ghishmesh, originally from the City State of Tarantis. A young male of impish build and inappropriate demeanor. He seems to be but a squalid merchant, perhaps fallen on bad times. He was tricked by a dishonourable competitor and is thus far from home and in (comparable) poverty. He is driven to regain his honor and everything he does is for this purpose.
1 lieutenant, a 2nd level fighter: signorina Fava. She’s from Antil or thereabouts looks like. She is short and solid, but you don’t say “built like a dwarf” to her face unless you want a bloody nose. Her biggest weak spot is her naivety concerning all things “civilized”. Act like that with sufficient conviction – which is not that much – and you can get her to believe anything.
The funny thing is, she is actually possessed by an entity calling itself Callos Vun Rhaga, and it really does not like to be ridiculed or trodden upon or insulted… When that happens to a sufficient degree, signorina Fava seems to become a different – and a lot scarier – person! And then people have been known to disappear. Or are found horribly killed…
Aaaaanyway, she is kinda cute in an ordinary sort of way and seems very competent in her work.
Will the party inadvertedly gain a dangerous enemy?
Oooooh, I am going to spend faaaaaar too much time coming up with NPCs!!!!
Amazing, I especially like Fri∂a.
I’m using this and your city crawling rules a lot these days. Not even the same system, but all this stuff is very useful for 17th century gaming in the English Civil War!
Glad you’re still getting use out of it!
Hello! Just dropping in to say this is one of the more immediately useful NPC generators on the net. It fills in enough detail to run an NPC without getting bogged down in minutia, and can easily be layered on what I “already know” when I have a rough character in mind and need to fill in details.
I’ve also been using generated results as Artflow.AI prompts to build a small library of portraits. That’s gotten some fun results.
RIP my players who are about to run into two “Inappropriately Unsettling” witch-ladies in a row though XD.