I wasn't going to make any. There is more to me than being a brony you know. My NPCs thus far mainly consist of my crew. The crew of Accelarando Returns! First and foremost is my First Officer Jimini. He came out of the idea of someone who I would quickly bond with on a long trip. The fast friend, someone friendly, sarcastic, and a bit hyper. Not quite "all there" but in an endearingly funny way rather than an annoying way. (Most of the time.) The nature of such a character just seemed to scream Raven Uplift for some reason. Now Jimini is my loyal second in command, and also adds to the atmosphere by perching on my shoulder when we are feeling especially "piratey." Secondly is our navigator See What May, an uplifted octopus. He came out of the idea that, when giving a tour of the place, there's always one guy who is the butt of a joke. In this case, I thought it would be funny if most of us referred to our navigator with the shorthand "May." To which he would respond with a rude tentacle gesture. Irritable and introverted, he could sort of be described as Worf, if he was the navigator and didn't suck at his job. (Seriously, how many times did that Klingon get his ass kicked?!) Thirdly is Alden Cernan, who actually was inspired from the sample character on pg. 229 of Transhuman. He was a bit different from my usual scheme of defining the character after their role is decided and rather inserted a character because I like the concept and assigned them a role. Alden in this case, acts as a mentor. He is a private judge or arbiter, making him well versed in Extropian ideology and policy. (His motivation on the page supports this! I didn't make it up.) The novacrab morph fascinated me, because it didn't seem that suited to being a judge, making it more of his personal statement about himself rather than a utilitarian choice. Which, of course, I would appreciate. Alden sees August as his Shining Prince. Someone who may not be equipped to organize things at a higher level (personal admittance. XD) but the sheer sincerity by which he takes up his causes makes him a walking rallying point. That isn't to say August is being stupidly misled or that Alden doesn't appreciate him. They just share the warm, quiet respect that a mentor and learner have for each other. Lastly is a character I have yet to name. For now, let's call him Dr. Burroghs. He works for a Consortium R&D lab on Mars. His focus is on morph design and is conducting extensive research on rusters and similar martian tailored morphs. The Barsoomian Movement wants you to kill him, fearing that his experiments will make people more vulnerable to Hypercorps. control. When the players finally meet him, they find . . . he's actually not a bad guy. Not even that he's just nice, but he actually wants to help those who depend on gene supplements. He's trying to make a more efficient morph for those who are indentured. Ruster 2.0 if you will. He thinks that having a completely free and independent work force, will both increase the profit of his superiors in the long run, and give the Barsoomian Movement less reason to fight. As Dr. Burroghs is a pacifist. In fact . . . that's exactly why the Movement wanted him dead! The players were tricked. They knew that if people weren't dependent on the Consortium's gene supplements, they wouldn't have reason to resent them. Thus, there recruitment rates would suffer. Okay, that last one was more of a plot hook than a character, but you get my point. The good doctor was meant to show that not everyone who grows up with everything, resents those with nothing. All in all, I love archetypes. What makes a character, is motivation and personality. Just because they seem familiar doesn't mean they aren't good characters. So for me, I write a scenario with essentially a bunch of disembodied blobs with the labels of "Conspiracy theorist", "Adventure archeologist", "Red Shirt" *BANG* . . . and just fill in the blanks with specifics as the character's personality and history come into focus.

I try to figure out the role I want them to play and develop a personality around that. For stats I develop a very loose set of overarching stats, and thats works out okay. So my NPCs will usually read something like "Physical 60, Social 60, Combat 6o, Hacking 30" or similar. Tracking all the various bonuses and upgrades for dozens of characters is for the birds.

Lilith wrote:

Honestly, I almost never stat out NPCs in any game I run, Eclipse Phase or otherwise, unless I explicitly intend for them to be antagonists. Not that I don't anticipate my PCs occasionally getting into trouble with random people, but even if a character is going to be recurring I just don't have the patience to bother writing down statblocks when I can just as easily come up with something on the fly, should it be needed. Perhaps it's the writer in me, but I always lean heavier on the personality side of things to make my NPCs stand out in the player's memory. I do voices now and then, but more than that I try to emulate certain patterns of speech; not just regional accents, but repeating certain phrases (ya know?), always cutting off the ends of other people's sentences, stuttering, rolling Rs, etc. etc. The main key to making NPCs memorable is to make they [i]people[/i] in their own right, after all. The neo-orangutan who always has a cigar in his mouth (lit or unlit) and speaks in a gravely Ron Perlman-esque voice is much more likely to stick in a player's mind than just another uplift.

Proof of your concept? That image will remain with me forever and never cease to produce a giggle from me. That's just so . . . I don't know, genius!

Had the same idea concerning a chain-smoking Orangutan, inspired by a picture in Rimward (oh, the goggles!). In general, art can be a very interesting inspiration - I always have trouble coming up with NPCs' appearance, so things like Deviantart, Cyberpunk Pinterests etc. can come in handy quite often. I look at the picture and imagine what kind of a person (or non-person, for all you uplift/AGI haters out there) they are, just trying to infer it from the picture. Also, card games. Lately, I've got into playing Netrunner and some of the card art/card flavour are quite inspiring, mainly the Runner identity cards, although pieces of ICE also make for memorable AI/infomorph network supervisors with various tactics and attitude (Viktor 1.0 focused on tracking the trespasser and scorching their brain, Eli 1.0 modeled after a child, notoriously hitting the panic button to sever the wireless connections etc)

On the topic of tarot for use in random NPCs: http://serennu.com/tarot/celtic.php is pretty good, combined with a cursory knowledge of what they mean (which I find the keen.com tarot explanations help with if you don't know any of the meanings). It really is an awesome way to build NPCs, especially because it's easy to think of a lot of different ways it can apply, or even go back and re-assess as the cards in the spread reveal more and more about this fictive person you're dreaming up. And this way you don't have to shuffle any cards! :)

Smokeskin wrote:

I tend to find it difficult to go from a personality description to behavior, so instead I just write up their behavioral reaction to relevant PC actions by filling out the below form (the list at the bottom is for inspiration). I think it is much easier, faster, and it gets you out of the "endless rational NPCs" trap.

I am going to use this. Thanks!