NPCs with Purpose

Quick tools to build NPC motivation

In my first post I talked about Motivation as levers to use in your game design. I got a few comments from people saying they wanted a bit more elaboration so here we go. Here is a quick method for NPC motivation generation to help create more hooks for your players.

The best characters come from friction or contradiction. Having two concepts that interact with each other, either through contradiction or transformation, can generate a whole lot of soul for a character quickly. There are tons of different motivations for characters, but I made this quick table of ten to cover a lot of bases.

Motivations - d10

1. To gain wealth

2. Increase Social Standing

3. Protect someone or something

4. Nihilistic Hedonism

5. Finding hidden knowledge

6. Revenge for a past wrong

7. Living/Defending their Faith

8. Fame And Glory

9. Escaping a person or a past mistake

10. Create a legacy

This table covers larger long term motivations but what about how the NPC feels right now. For this I put together a table of dispositions, moods, or just a general state to find your NPC in.

Disposition - d8

1. Sleepy

2. Bored

3. Lovelorn

4. Annoyed

5. Seeking

6. Jovial

7. Sad

8. Jumpy

Where the magic starts to happens is when you combine them. So let’s say I have my players run into a shopkeeper but I want them to be a little more interesting. First I roll a 10 on the motivation table and get Create a Legacy. Then I roll a 4 and find he is annoyed. Hmmm how can I use that. Perhaps the shopkeeper is trying to pass on the shop to a child. A son or daughter and they are annoyed that their child is off running around with a bard.

This could just be some flavor to the character, or it could even be a hook for a quick quest. Can the players convince the child to come back to the shopkeeper? Do the players convince the child to skip town with the bard and get away from the stuffy parent? Maybe the bard is part of a con to eventually steal from the shopkeeper. All this from 2 quick rolls.

You also don’t have to roll, you could just choose from the list any options that maybe are funny. Maybe you want to have a character motivated by revenge but they are just so tired when they meet the characters. They have been up all night on a stake out trying to catch someone who wronged them. Could be a comedic scene.

My tables are not exhaustive by any means and there are a lot of systems out there with such tables. I actually created mine by looking at some tables from the Stars Without Number and Cities Without Number worldbuilding and adventure creation sections. Those are both by Kevin Crawford and I highly recommend you read them because it has a lot of tools for random generation of worlds and NPCs that have easy hooks for your players. So I encourage you to look at a bunch of tables out there and pick from your favorites. Just make sure there are two things that can bounce off each other to cause some alchemy to happen.

What are your favorite NPC motivations? What table would you make? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!