I'll only be staying the one night.
Seriously, they're basically this guy with the ability to not need to shower.
But what about when they’re not murderous hobos, and they have a home and a family (who aren't evil and they don't hate)?
You need to flesh out these characters, obviously, and this is how I do it.
Step 1) What / Where / Who
What is there home and where is it? For my upcoming Rogue Trader game it’ll be their ship, the Starrunner, and it will be moving around the Expanse stopping occasionally at various ports and planets. The ship needs a population in the region of 2,000 souls, but I’m not naming them all. Instead I need to figure out who the primary NPCs the players will be interacting with are, and work them out.
To do that I make a list of the bridge crew (Navigator, 1st Officer, Helmsman, Comms Tech etc) and decide who will be an ‘important’ NPC and who won’t. This isn’t an exact science and is based around both gut feeling on character creation and what roles aboard ship the players will be filling – for instance if one player decides to be the helmsman, I’ll simply have some named Redshirts to take the helm when he’s not doing it. On the flip side if nobody takes the helm I’ll need to flesh out the Chief Helmsman NPC as they have a fairly significant role.
Other roles include crew chiefs, medics, yeomen and land based minions of various types. I make a list in Word using a table so I can list out all the major positions and fill information as necessary. Information I include is a brief description (age, appearance, manner) and history, as well as a general personality note. The Captain’s Yeoman, Mister Cider, has the following notes:
“Young (mid-late teens), slightly built and nervously eager. Loves his mam, joined the crew after getting in trouble on home of Port Wander for drinking. Crush on junior bridge crewmember (Milly), female PC? Guided by Captain into adulthood. See also: Mrs Cider, Vds Takker.”
That little snapshot shows how he’ll interact with the PCs to start with (slightly awed), and how he’ll develop. One possible minor adventure hook is him getting into trouble with having a few too many drinks and winding up in trouble with the Arbites on Port Wander. Keen eyed readers may note young Johnny from the new series of Upstairs, Downstairs – don’t just look to action / adventure series when fleshing out the PC’s ‘home’ life, it’ll come across flat if everyone is a cynical, wisecracking hardass with a secret heart of gold.
Yes, she only costs 25 gold a day to hire, but what does she think about the geopolitical rammifications of the Orc/Elf war?
Mapping out the relationships between the NPCs is also important, especially if the PCs are in a command role. Does the senior Navigator get on with the senior Astropath? If not, why not? Does one of the junior Navigators, eager to advance his position within his house, try to leverage the situation for his own benefit?
Imagine the chaos caused by the Astropath and junior Navigator deliberately messing with a communique containing co-ordinates to discredit the senior Navigator. When it all goes horribly wrong, what do the PCs do? Both are highly valuable (and connected) individuals, but they did almost kill everyone…. plot hooks abound if you take the time to sharpen them!
The players will also need hangouts at the major ports to meet contacts, relax, tell tall tales and get well and truly hammered after a rip-roaring adventure. There’s this handy Random Tavern Generator for other occasion, but these home-away-from-homes need some prep-work. It’s essentially the same process, coming up with the proprietor, his family and regulars.
Having these solid points really filled out and detailed, even if some of it never comes up, will make it feel much more real. I’ve always found that a very detailed and well thought out world encourages better role-play rather than a totally on the fly world, which is more prone to random acts of stupidity.
Where everybody knows your name.
One resource, which should be mandatory for any PCs, is to put major NPCs through the 100 Questions to Ask About Your Role Playing Character quiz. Plot hooks abound, and it’ll even lead to the creation of minor NPCs and little background details you can use to make people feel more real.
Step 2) The Rest
Obviously it would be prohibitive to write up an entire Imperial starship and several space stations. My method to cheat this is simple, I have three lists:
Jobs, as worked out in Step 1. This is the ‘primary’ list.
Names, randomly generated. Some sample name resources include 20000 Names (can search via meaning or geographical location), Random Name Generator (derived from US census data) and Behind the Name (can filter via location/gender).
Descriptions. These are like the ones for major NPCs, but shorter, perhaps more exaggerated.
So when a new character is introduced I select a random name and description. This is now who he or she is.
Example: The PCs decide to go down to the cargo hold to check on something. They talk to the Loadmaster. As this is a recurring role I’ll take my ‘Jobs’ list and then select a random name – ‘Lovetta Schoenhard’, via the Random Name Generator on 70 – and a (semi) random description: “Calm, verging on icy, with well-kept clothes and hair. Muscular build, with an augmetic leg.”
So, using that I’ll play her as a straight to the point, minimal conversation type. It provides an easy base to work from using some Abductive Reasoning to flesh out the character if they become more important. One thing to be prepared for is the PCs taking an often bizarre shine to those characters who were to have one or two lines then disappear down a plot hole never to be seen again.
This methodology can be applied to almost any ‘home’ situation, such as a small village or a bustling city. Regardless of the size there will always be a core cast of characters the players interact with, but it doesn’t mean the background should be left bare. Giving the PCs their very own below decks episode could be rather fun – I’m immediately thinking the PCs having to hide out in their own ship at some point in disguise and live the life of a menial aboard it for a while.
Another idea I’m toying with is a ‘meanwhile…’ type thing. It’s a little difficult to explain, but it would be a form of cutscene for the players. The best example I can think of is in a videogame we’ll sometimes see a cutscene showing what some NPCs are up to, to give the game more background texture and context. Similar to that I was thinking of having a short story series linked to the player’s exploits, showing how they have an effect on their crew – a story following the life of one of the gun crews or some such. Someone they’ll likely never meet, but whose life they basically control through their actions.
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