After a brief detour through a sandbox made with my city creation procedures and tables, it's finally time to dive into NPC creation! As with part 1, this involves a lot of tables, so much so that I even made some Perchance generators to help facilitate the process. You'll find those at the end of the post, but to be honest, I feel like they might actually be the main course. That's how happy I am with them.
Without further ado, let's Embrace some Kindred!
KNOW THYSELF
I'm thoroughly biased towards Vampire: The Requiem's virtues and vices, so much so that I made a table inspired by those a big part of my city creation process. While working on NPC creation, however, I noticed 12 virtues and 12 vices weren't enough, so I added a few more and rounded both up at 20.
This part of the process is meant to imbue each character with an admirable trait and a fatal flaw, something that the players can easily pick up on, and can act as a guide when you're unsure of what a certain character would do.
So, yeah, let's start by rolling (or choosing) a virtue and a vice for your NPC!
One big complaint a lot of people had regarding virtues and vices, though, was that they were a lesser form of the Archetypes (used for Nature and Demeanor) from Vampire: The Masquerade. While I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment (as those could be quite restrictive), I think they can be complimentary to each other.
It's up to you how important these are gonna be to your NPC's personality and whether you're gonna use the Nature/Demeanor mechanics, but I'd personally rather keep Archetypes as the "face" the characters present to the world and the way they interact with it, rather than a mechanical thing or an intrinsic, deep part of who they are. Virtues and vices work better in that regard, IMO.
In any case, let's pick or roll an Archetype on the d66 table below.
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| You can find full descriptions for these on V20, but you don't really need to, as they're all evocative enough. |
BECOMING
Virtues, vices and Archetypes are plenty useful even when you're not creating vampires, but we should get the specifics out of the way before we go any further. Two of the most important facets of Kindred existence are age and the status that comes with it, and, you guessed it, there's a table for that.
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| This table can also be used with a d4 or a d6, ensuring lower power levels. |
Another key aspect of Kindred society is lineage, and it's time to find out what clan chose your NPC. We're gonna determine the reason behind their Embrace later on, but for now, let's roll or pick a clan. The table below can also be found in part 1 of the series, but it's included here for ease of access.
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| To narrow the results down to the main clans, roll a d12 instead of a d20. |
So far, we know the character's biggest virtue, their darkest vice, how they present themselves outwards through their Archetype, how old they are and what clan they belong to. What we don't yet know is what their place in the world used to be before the Embrace, but we're gonna fix that. First, roll or pick a flavour for their concept.
Then, if your character is a fledgling, a fresh neonate, a neonate or a young ancilla, determine their concept with the d66 table below.
If your character is too old for those concepts (that is, if they're an older ancilla, a pretender elder, an elder or a methuselah), determine their concept with the d66 table below.
I tried to make both the flavours and the concepts as dynamic as possible, because let's face it, boring concepts aren't usually the best ingredients for cool NPCs. Stuff like a respected activist or an inexperienced assassin should be immediately gameable, and that's always the goal!
It's as good a time as any to uncover what motivated the character's Embrace, which brings us to yet another d66 table. You know the drill.
And with that, there's only one table left before we move on to the last part of this NPC creation process: appetites. These are essential for Vampire: The Masquerade, as each and every NPC needs to want something, and those needs and wants will form the crux of conflict in many a chronicle. Note that they're deliberately vague, and leaving them for last was a conscious decision, as the other results can help you interpret what exactly your NPC's appetite means for them.
STYLE WITH SUBSTANCE
At this point, you already have a pretty well rounded character, but what's substance without a little style? The fashion table below should help your NPCs stand out a bit. Some combinations can be admittedly hilarious, but the famed Banu Haqim methuselah who fancies Disco a little too much is an instantly recognizable character. It's your choice whether to lean on that or not, though, and re-rolling is always an option.
I also made some d20 appearance tables (six, in fact), but I'm not gonna plaster them here, as this blogpost is already overstuffed with images. You can find them here. Personally, though, I wouldn't use all six for every NPC. I'd roll two or three for each (which is why the tables themselves are numbered 1 to 6), so that your players will get some interesting visual cues to go with the NPC's fashion choices, but not enough to overwhelm them.
That's all, folks! We're done with NPC creation.
CHANCE AND CHOICE
It's important to consider the pros and cons of manually rolling and choosing everything instead of just using the Perchance generators I came up with. If you're in a pinch and need an instant NPC, nothing beats a good generator, no doubt, and if you need to make a lot of Kindred at once, doing everything manually would be a royal pain. But there's a kind of art to curating results, one that can lead to some pretty remarkable NPCs. Personally, when time isn't of the essence, I will always choose to do everything myself. And yet, there's a certain joy to being surprised by the complete randomness created by Perchance.
VAMPIRE MAKING FACTORY 3000
So far, I have created three different Perchance generators for Vampire: The Masquerade, two to automate the process of NPC creation (one for younger vampires, one for older licks) and one for creating Domains and their rulers (a key aspect of the city creation process). You can find the NPC generator for younger NPCs here, while the one for older Kindred is available here. Lastly, the Domain generator is found here.
Fair warning: this was my first time working with Perchance, so you might stumble into some funky issues. If that happens, please let me know so I can fix it! <3
Anyway, I hope the results speak to you as much as they speak to me.
Up next: Court creation procedures and fleshing out Hallelujah's court!
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