Welcome back to How to Be a Better DM. We have a great episode with Robert from Dungeons, Dragons & Psychology. Get Robert's Book Session 0!

Here are some of the questions we asked Robert:

• Is it necessary to make your NPC’s lifelike
• What makes a good NPC?
• What makes a good villain?
• What makes a good ally?
• How do you keep track of your NPC’s?

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all right to welcome back to how to be a better d m we have

with us robert here and well you'll hear a little bit more about him in

a second but first robert to help us all get warmed up what is your

done master avatar and kind of explain that a little bit if you had to

create a d and character that personifies how you d

a

m

oh

what would that character look

well

like

yeah

i would say it's going to have to be probably a bard

oh

because i do like to be a story teller

oh

oh

in my d ming but it's also probably going to be a trickster for sure

ah

because one of my very favorite

yeah

things to do is

m

a d m

yeah

m yeah

is to incorporate

yeah

a pretty brutal plot twist at some point so it's going to be a tricky

bard hopefully i would say

oh

it's carismatic i at least like to look

oh

in the mirror most of the time and say hey yeah you're doing pretty good

you know but

hm

oh

not always not every day

oh

if nothing else he at least is decent with void is

ah

and he can weave an interesting story now this is the type of bard that

is not great on an instrument but he definitely carries them around just to make

people think that he could be

i love

i

it

like it i

it's

like

also

it

very true

that's

to

awesome

most d ms where it's like the players don't realize

yeah

how much we

yeah

don't know what we're doing

oh

but they love it regardless

absolutely

oh

fake it till you make it is like the motto of every g

okay

m i think

exactly

yeah definitely you want to keep up that curtain and tell people don't pay attention

i've said

yeah

to the

that

man

many

behind

times

the curtain

at the table so i absolutely agree with that

yea

oh oh

i love it one quick follow up question on that but what would you say

has been one of the most brutal plot twists you've pulled

yeah

on your

so

players

i've actually talked about this recently with one of the players who was involved in

this game on my show and early on in a home brew game that i

ran that we call threads of the desert i had asked

oh

one of the other players

oh

to be the big bad evil guy but to play through the entire

oh

game with the party

oh

and we had this this one session

oh

where the three party members and there like there

oh

forever n p c who was traveling with them were in this room where they

figured it out and they figured

oh

it out right at the same time

my

as he stabbed the n p c in the back and murdered her

oh

and so all of a sudden

yeah

we went from four member party

yeah

to

uh

a two member party

uh

and they realized the person that they've been

yeah

sharing all of their plots with all of their plans with everything that they were

going to do to

oh

bring down the big bad evil guy was now invalid and yet they still had

oh

to go face him in his palace next session so

i love it

they were swearing at me a lot at the end of that

oh

but

oh

it ended up being probably one of our most memorable game moments ever

wow that that's huge

that

so

is

then

awesome

so so i'm very curious about that when you asked that player to essentially be

the big bad like did it take some convincing or a lot of like walking

throg or was he just a gun how

you know

yeah

like me he's a trickster um

m

and he was definitely in it a hundred percent and he was like well can

i you know can i build the character myself can i do all this and

i pretty much gave him like

yeah

blanche

m

permission to okay you're going

yeah

to be a twentieth level character by the time they finally face you at the

end you're going to have

yeah

two levels in divine rank we were using the three point five deities and demigod

so

yeah

you could actually build out characters that had divine rank and

now

then he took it and run with it he built it he built himself as

an avatar and that's what was playing with the characters

oh

was his avatar

m

and

yeah

oh

so then as they go to face

yeah

off him is he's an even more powerful version

yeah

of the character that had been traveling with them

that's awesome

wow that is that is super cool i bet you picked specifically him because he's

a trixter and that probably went very much in line with

you

what

need

you

a

look

trickster

for

and

right

somebody who's willing to you know stick to the story and keep a secret and

he's always kind of been that guy at the table who doesn't really like to

share too much about his character anyways

m

so it fit really well with him

ah

m so how long

ah

how many sessions

i love it

did he have to play

m

that role

quite

before

a while

was figured out

we we pretty much play a weekly game every week and i think it was

over a year into the game before the reveal

oh

finally happened

oh

that's that's

yeah

incredible

yahchesthat

love that

is amazing tanner do you want to ask the second warm up question and then

i will introduce

yes

our guest

um so aside from that awesome moment you just had right there do you have

um

any other favorite

yeah

d m moments just from your time

yeah for other d m moments i think one of the one of the coolest

things

okay

that i had done was i wrote this adventure path for my characters and it

was very much lowing along the lines of the pathfinder adventure paths it was like

a similar to a d and d moduale um

yeah

and i wrote this whole thing as a murder mystery um and that was like

probably one of the most difficult things in terms of writing because you have to

think about all the clues and making them

oh

obvious enough that the players will move

yeah

on to the next clue but also

ah

not so obvious that they're going to figure it out right from the very beginning

and having that last session of that where they finally figure out who the killer

was

yeah

and had that final confrontation was a really cool went for me just because it

was like oh yeah i wrote it properly and it didn't give it away before

the final moment and it still led them to where

yeah

i wanted

oh

them to end up

oh

the in the when i came up with the idea so seeing like that whole

big thing

oh

come together and work out the way that i wanted it to was like a

really proud personal moment

yeah

m

i would be proud of that too because mysteries are so hard i have

oh

no idea how people write them

it

let

is

alone

definitely the hardest

you know

hardest piece of writing i've had to do as a d m just because there

were so many moving parts

yeah and unlike a writer

yeah

of a book where you're like oh i can go through it a few times

to make sure it's could as a d m you're like okay i've got this

idea players are going

oh

to screw it up

hm

opera and with from that base line

oh

and then

m

yeah get on you snap

that's really interesting being a d m is kind of this balancing act because on

one hand it's writing but on the other hand it's experiential well it's like experienced

right

curation i guess it's it's similar to like event planning and that you know you

plan certain things but some things might go off without a hitch of other things

might go one

that's

way or

a good

the other

way to

so

look at it as

that that's really interesting

an event

and actually

planner

oh

never thought of that

yeah

like that love

yeah

that

yeah well my friend is like he was talking to me and he's like you

know i think i might be interested in event planning and i was like maybe

that's kind of how being a d m is because we're like hotel staff for

these

hm

players that come to our hotel and and then were like hear the activities and

you know maybe they don't like

i mean

it

i

or

guess

whatever

it's true

i know

like you're thinking about all the

but

different elements that go into what a player wants in a game and then you're

trying to figure out how to make all of those elements happen in

oh

the same game at the same time i mean bringing all of those components together

so i think it's a perfect analogy

h

well

m

thank you i'll have to write it down so i can seem

uh

smart some other time when i bring it back up

uh

but thank you adventurer for coming back and listening to how to be a better

d m like i said we're here with robert w who is one of the

hosts if i understood from the dungeons dragons and psychology podcast and we are lucky

to have him here with us talking today about n p cs and making life

like p c and how that is all done and i think you brought up

one particular topic kind of in your first experience that you shared with us that

of having an forever n p c with your group and i think that's probably

a really good place to start because if you have a forever n p c

with your group they naturally have to be somewhat life

hm

like in order to feel like another member of the party because they wouldn't be

there if you didn't want them to have some sort of emotional connection to all

the players so what are some things you do

m

to really make it so forever n pss aren't just someone

uh

that the party makes fun of like

m

happens

yeah

sometimes and certain people's group so m not i'm not saying mine but some some

i

groups

think

out there

excuse me i think those are important to like the m p s that can

play comic relief for tense moments in game but i

yeah

do think one of the most important things about having good mpcsis making them name

m

you're your players come to

oh

the table with back stories and ideas of what their life was before and i

think that's a really important piece

m

of an m p c like if they are just

oh

very too dimensional maybe you have a voice for them and a place for them

to exist that doesn't really give your players a lot

oh

of depth into

ah

what that character is and it doesn't really make them that interesting to engage in

if they have quirks and personality traits and they have a back story and they

can tell you stories about their past and things that they've experienced if they feel

like a real person in the way that you would engage with a real person

that's going to be what makes them very interesting and also

oh

if they have something that they something that is important to the party that they

provide so be it a service like it's somebody that they come to

oh

for magical exchanges or even if

oh

it is just a little bit of brevity

ah

and they've had a hard time and like oh let's go kick it

oh

with you know our good friend the bug bear down at the tavern who always

you know buys us around and makes us laugh around the table i think those

kind

a

of things are also really important to

yeah yeah i

oh

like that and especially

yeah

what you were kind of saying about they need to have something

oh

to offer i haven't thought

yeah

about it before

ye

but even with interactions with other people to some extent there is that thing where

you're

mhm

you're interacting with them with the idea that oh they fit the specific role in

my life

right

um and if somebody just doesn't have a role that they fill

yeah

and most often times we don't talk with

oh

those people at all right so it's like it makes it very different if you're

talking to an n p c who's just the guy on the side of the

road versus someone you're actually like oh ever time we talk with him there's a

chance i could get something good

right

and so it just adds a lot more energy to the conversation

when i'm when i'm writing an m p c i always try and think of

several things like what

oh

is something like a speech pattern that they have or

ah

i mean not just in the way that they sound like i might give them

an accent but what

yeah

are things that they frequently say like i have one mpcveron in several games and

he always says well you did hear it from me

m

but and you know that's always like okay we know he's going to be our

our source for rumors right because he's always he's always got that little catch phrase

that oh you didn't hear it from me but here's what i've been hearing on

the streets you know and

xactly

but i

oh

think things like that things that give them a little bit of

h

depth and uniqueness

m oh

and you know each of your m p c it has something that specifically them

they'll always stand out as though they're an individual rather than just oh it's the

same bartender we've always ever had every time we come into a tavern right

m

yeah

h a faceless bartender number two on every tavern right

exactly

well well that's great so

that's funny

here's my question though justin and i were talking about this earlier in preparation and

the original

yeah

concept for this kind of discussion

yeah

was okay how do you make your npcs feel like like my question was do

we do you feel like every n p c needs to feel life like in

a campaign or even just like most of them

i don't think that every n p c needs to feel life like but i

do think every important n p c needs to feel

oh

life like so if they are just you know serving the character a drink it's

i think it's

oh

perfectly fine just to be just to say oh yeah the bartender drops off your

drinks and sets it on your table and ask for his coin whatever you don't

even need to interact with him let the character be ground just like they are

in the movies right but think

yeah

of it in terms of the movies if they're giving plot if they're giving purpose

if they're adding to a character's back

yeah

story if they're if they have

oh

written lines in the

oh

script of the movie then yeah they need to feel like they have that moment

to speak they need that

yeah

that uniqueness so that they are actually a character

that's great

that's really insightful if i can add um the way you phrased it kind of

it made me kind of put myself in the play of

m

the players as if you know i go to a restaurant and the waiter sometimes

they come up an they're like what do you have today and then we order

and and then that's at other times they are super interactive

hm

and it probably based on the place they're at or other times the people i'm

with are very interactive with the waiter and things like that so i think one

thing to add to that kind of conversation is that maybe if you're struggling talking

to the listener here if you're struggling with figuring out how to make your p

cs feel life like which ones need to kind of think about your own life

and the interactions you have with your own plot as it were

oh

you know interact with the people at work a whole lot

hm

more versus people at rest ants are people driving on the side of the road

right and i think another kind of little trick that i use before i worry

about if i'm going to give them a voice or a cork or personality trades

or all this is do the players even need to remember this

oh

person's name and if the answer is no then i probably don't need to put

that much information

oh

or that much work into making that that character dynamic so i want to put

my energy more towards the ones that are important and do have a piece of

the story that's part of their back story

yeah exactly like i find that with one shot sessions

m

i learned the most about making enpcs because they're essentially all throw aways but you're

like okay at least two

oh

of the people need to be memorable

right

right most often right

yeah

and so like the last session that i ran on saturday you know i was

having the same issue were as like okay do i do a weird voice

uh

or something

uh yeah

now and and for the most part i found that i didn't need to and

right

the story went well i think that there's because there's so

yeah

many excellent podcasts

ye

streams out there where you know these are professionals who put a lot of a

lot of work and every n p c feels amazing

yeah

i think that sometimes for us the more layman you know d ms or g

ms we we feel like we need the same it's like no you know just

put as much effort as you're able to and make a certain number of n

p c is memorable the other ones it's okay if it's filler

and like in in one shot game like you're talking about you're right there's only

really a few mpcs that really need to have that but those are going to

be like your quest

ah

givers right or your people who are giving you hints to the plot um or

or a plot hook or something like that but yeah on your other point

yeah

like the professional voice actors like matt mercer and critical role and

yah

one of the things that just constantly amazes me when i listen to that show

is how matt can have an entire

h

race of creatures like like when they're in their dwarf in city everyone of his

dwarfs sounds a little bit different than and so you can pick up like that's

that's incredible to not just okay here's the accident i use for dwarfs he's got

like twenty accents

yeah

that he uses for dwarfs so they still also in similar but still unique and

that's a very very difficult ask for a person who is not a professional voice

actor but at the same you can do that same kind of thing without using

voices just by giving them patterns of speech or catch phrases that they use that

are different from anyone else so as you're making your notes for you m p

c is instead of saying okay this can have my my typical dwarf in voice

that i use but they can take a lot of long pauses in between answers

where they can sit there and always tap their face or rub their beer you

know that can have something quirky about them that you don't necessarily have to know

twenty different darvan voices you can just have one or two different inflections and different

things that make them look like different characters you know is just little stuff like

that i think an can go a long

um

way

yeah

h one thing that might help the listeners if you're struggling thinking about some of

these things to add to your characters i would say the best thing is to

start looking at your interactions with people like it's kind of a joke between me

and my wife that whenever we go over to my family's house my mom and

my sisters always say it will be good for some reason that's just like their

thing

yeah

like when they're done talk an they're like yeah we're going to go here we're

gonna go do this it'll be good

right

and we kind of make fun of them for that until i started noticing in

my interactions with my dad i have a catch phrase apparently where he says something

very dadjokish and then i say oh dad

uh

and he actually loves it now because he thinks it's really funny but if or

an m p c that would essentially be my catch ray so i found it

useful to start looking at interactions with people and start seeing some of these commonalities

but i mean you do have to kind of step back from the conversation wild

present which is somewhat difficult

hm

but that might be of use

yeah i mean you definitely bring up a good point because in all your interactions

with people you find that everybody has patterns of speech and everybody has little things

that they say to especially in terms of like if they're feeling nervous don't know

what to say the kind of fall back into those habitual patterns speaking

ah

yeah exactly and

for

i think

sure

that that's

m

that's the nice thing is that if you have no experience with it don't worry

about accents don't worry about anything

hm

like that just worry like hey

yeah

treat yourself and your many

yeah

different facets as different people you know

right

because we're all much more real and these npcs don't need to be as real

as one of us

oh

so we can kind of like almost take a little part ourselves and kind of

turned them

yeah

into

oh

the different linguistic or other aspects of them but

kay

so i had a question i find that you know when we're talking about making

realistic or memorable n p cs

yeah

i find that they get very

m

like in terms of motivations they can feel very one to like villains can feel

like oh they're just they're just destroying towns because why the heck not

right

and good people are like oh i apparently

uh

okay

just spend every men of my day thinking about how to help people

right

h

you know it's like how do you

oh

how do you make them not as one toned

so one thing that i've that i've done

oh

and i mentioned this in my book as well is i like to think of

my heroes as though they believe that my villains as though

yah

they believe they are the hero

h

our own story and i think that goes a long

oh

way in flashing out a good villain because i think the best villains

oh

usually in some way or another are right about what they're doing they're just probably

yeah

doing it in the wrong way i think you know like than

yeah

as from the marvel

yeah

world is a great example of that he's not wrong about you know the number

of resources being limited in the universe and people consuming them in the way that

humans you know kind of like ants destroyed the world that we're living on he's

not he's not wrong about that he's just

oh

going about it in the wrong way and so i think that

yeah

that's a good way to flash out a villain is to have them make a

point that is right make their their drive something that they could see themselves

yah

being heroic in doing

okay

but make it kind of obvious that if you're lacking some of the classic hero

traits of like empathy and understanding and concern for other people

yeah

you're obviously going to go about it the wrong way

so like two or three steps from being a hero that's like a pretty good

villain how do you kind of i guess the best way to say this is

how do you make heroes that aren't the players that like tana was saying don't

seem too good to show but don't also seem corrupt like how do you walk

that

i

balance

think it's just remembering that you know there's light and dark in everything and nobody

is like this perfect shining

yeah

example of goodness i think it's really one of the things i

oh

like to refer back to a lot is i don't

oh

know if you remember the old book of vile darkness from from dungeons and dragons

three point five but there's this really great image in there of

yeah

paladin standing over two female succubuses who are in an embrace of love and he's

standing over them with his sword and the caption underneath it reads something like paladin

must choose between honoring love and destroying evil and i think those kind of things

where you understand that

oh

all morality is is a spectrum and that even if you

oh

are a paladin it doesn't mean that you can't struggle with darkness even if you're

evil it doesn't mean you can't struggle with light kilo ren is a great example

of that he knows he's a villain and he's trying to extinguish being good from

himself because he thinks that villainy is the only way it's going to bring you

oh

know the entire universe together in peace so i think

oh

just like

oh

thinking

yeah

of things like that where

ah oh

they're like cleverly done and you can see both the good and the evil inside

a person and find ways to show case that as m p c is don't

oh

just make him be all like oh yeah ah i follow my goddess and i'm

like the perfect virtue of harmony and everything that she says i do m just

give them a little bit of humanity make them struggle with

yeah

my goddesses asking this of me or the priests are asking this of

oh

me but i just don't know if it's really what i should be doing is

person i think that kind of thing adds a lot of depth to an n

p c is seeing that they struggle with their own morality

oh

if it's okay i'd like to kind of dove tail the

oh

conversation um thus far

ah

we've kind of been talking mostly about preparing pss what strategies or techniques do you

use when you have to essentially create

yeah

an m p c on the fly

yeah

because the group decided to go a completely different way and now

yeah

they're super interested in guard at the town wall for no reason and you have

to essentially create everything you just said up on the spot what's your what's your

take

so that

on that

that's always the celis heel of every d m right is you have all these

oh

plans

yeah

and they only last until your characters have ideas

yeah oh

so i think

yeah

for me just practice like practice improvisation and i think

yeah

one of the best things to practice is coming up

a

with a name on

oh

the spot because that's what

ah

players always asked

yeah

like cool cool what's your

yeah

name and then you're away tuck in that like hold on let me look at

my name generator or something like this so a trick

yeah

i have always

oh

used and i'm sitting next to one of the

h

people who play in one of my games right now is and

m

i'm gonna give away one of my

ah

greatest

my

d tricks right now is i like scan the room really quick and piece

to

names of things together to come

yeah

up with a name

oh

like o oh there's a hammer over there and die okay well he's like that's

a so he's cube hammer he's lord cubehyou know just some something ridiculous like that

oh

but i mean even like i know i've made a character his name like ritz

before because there was a writ cracker box in the corner of the room

yeah

and so just like things like that pull from whatever you have available

oh

and then take notes like that's the biggest part of it if you are going

to create an n p up on the

oh

spot you got to make some notes as soon as you do it because if

you happen to create that smash in p

yah

c that they all love they're going to keep

yah

coming back to him and you're like why this guy was just something

yeah

i

yes

made up on the spot and they just want to keep hanging out with him

so you want to remember all of those things that they really

oh

thought were cool about him in the first place so that you're able to bring

him back and have them

yeah

still be as as influential to the party as they were the first time that

you played them

on one thing that i actually do another secret is i have often taken the

names of my players first or last and just put them backwards

nice

so

m

katon ottley who used to e used to do stuff on this podcast we have

a character who is katon's last name in the thing and i find that's really

easy because they don't they don't put together but super easy because you just pick

some one and say what's your name backwards the unfortunate thing is we have a

character player whose name is hannah you know it's

ah

the same front wards backwards so that

yeah

that doesn't work so actually on the on the topic of keeping track you know

van notes that was actually a question we were planning on asking because for me

that is super difficult so so what methods if any do you have for kind

of keeping track of these mpcs do you just kind of jot things down and

then come back or

you

how

know

do you go

i'm

about

actually

that

actually love that you ask me this question because

yeah

actually built

oh

a d m tool that is available on amazon for

oh

just a couple but it's just

oh

a book

oh

of n p c notes it's called the n p c compendium and you just

fill it in it's got like stat blocks and notes about character background

oh

the quirks that they use phrases that they use tattoos like it just

oh

gives you it's each one's a single page and there's a hundred to the book

and so that's what i like to use and i give it to any of

the d ms who

oh

run games for me um just as like a tool for them to have because

it is really useful and there's a table of contents in the front that you

can put the names of all the characters and what pages they're listed on so

that then

oh

you can go back and flip

kay

through and find s p

m

c is really easy and i think

oh

just even if you don't use that tool something like that is really helpful like

just having a notebook dedicated to your npcs is going to be really useful but

also get in the habit of making the same

oh

notes about each m p c so like you're always going to list how do

they sound how do they look how do they act around the players and

ah

i think always like

oh

listening are they a or foe of the party and do they have any secret

motivations that the party don't know

a

doesn't

yah

know about and i think those kind of things are really important to keep

h

track of

yeah that's great it's great advice especially the idea of just kind of keeping it

a similar format

yah

you know so

hm

you can almost have a rollo dex

h

kind of

yeah

dilio

exactly

for that because i think some people just don't realize it's like hey just because

you use n p cs in different ways it doesn't mean that you know it

wouldn't be helpful they know the same thing about them especially your accents my goodness

right yeah

you know

and that's a big one too because you might

yeah

pull off an accent when you first

oh

introduce an m p c if you don't write that down when

oh

you come back to it you can be like what voice was that

oh

using for this person and just

ah

not be able to give the same experience if you don't have it notated somewhere

yeah and in cases like that honestly what i'd recommend i have a friend who

is very good with accents

ah

and he says

oh

that for him he kind of needs a phrase to work his into it

i do the same thing absolutely

exactly

yeah

right so like when you're writing down the accent don't

yeah

just say oh it's this kind of accent be like phrase this

yep

is how you work your way into it

yea for the longest time whenever i

yeah

had a dwarf

yeah

i would have to start their conversation by saying great because that was the only

way that could get me into like oh that's great you know like it had

yeah

to it had to have that word in there somewhere like it's a

classic

great day out here you know and then then i can roll into it

yah

after that but i had to start

yeah

every interaction with a dwarf early on with that word because it was my

yeah

key word to get

yeah

into the accident i think that works really well

oh

exactly

that's awesome one actually one other i guess hack that you could probably use with

that roledecx in conjunction with your compendium is you know in different situations you could

probab take some of these npcs obviously from campaign to campaign or session of session

or whatever um and take the same n p c change the name and maybe

the accent keep the character six i guess obviously any you know identifying features but

essentially play them the same way so that way you don't have to necessarily come

up with a completely new character maybe all the bartenders are exactly the same they

all you know one one serves vodka versus

m

one serves ale primarily and you know um just so that way d ms who

don't have as much time they don't they don't feel as pressured too create you

know a full world that they still have these resources and you know i guess

the idea is you don't have to create completely new m

right

p s every time you can just maybe take one change one or two things

and then move

and

forward

in a pinch

you know

you know you can always rely on a generator to pull that up i

yeah

mean there's ones that have just like m

sure

p c description generators are very useful in just coming up like with quick back

stories or quirks

ah

m

at some he has and i've definitely used those in a pinch especially when characters

are running off on their own and just like hey we want to interact with

another m p c and you're like okay

oh

yeah

yep

you're like sure whatever um well robert we are coming down to the end of

our time together unfortunately we will definitely have to do this again so well we'll

re connect figure out another time because i'm actually really interested specifically in creating a

murder mystery but

awesome

we'll have to schedule that another time m final words for our audience from tanner

myself you robert and then we'll give you a chance to talk to them about

how they can reach out to you support you see what you're up to m

tanner

yeah

d you want to go first that way robert

absolutely

can have some time to think

with n p

oh

c s i think the biggest thing is just making sure

a

quality kind of trumps quantity it's better to have

oh

one uh character that you've really worked on that's like really funny versus a few

that's like semi funny and same for like one character that you really connect with

oh

versus

m

a few that's like oh they're just generally people i guess you can sympathize with

you know just put in the time um and then do filler for the rest

people expect filler what they don't expect is for you to just knock them off

your off

m

their

yeah

feet

m

well just a really good character

hm

and then i'll go next robert

ah

just so you have just as much time as you want to think and really

prepare one thing i would say is kind of thinking about this all today there's

nothing wrong with just pick people you know in real life and fashioning pss after

those people now that i think about it i think that's something that i really

want to try moving forward for the next little bit just

yeah

to really focus in on what are their call real life corks how do those

come across you know even in small interactions how can i you know put my

dad into you know into d and d with some of his small little quirks

and just kind of personify and i think that will hopefully make me better at

ah

creating npcs and picking up on those those nuances but also making a little bit

more interesting in life like so that's that's one thing i'm going to try and

i would recommend that the listener also try so robert final words for

i would

our

just say

adventurers

one idea that i've played with a few times in the past and has been

really fun that i would suggest maybe giving a shot is when you're having like

your session zero or your characters are building there stores let each one of your

players write an

oh

n p c as well and then give that to you to just put into

the game somewhere later on it can be really fun and it makes that n

p c ver meaningful to the

oh

players when they were like oh

yes

that's that's crazy farmer joe that's the one that i wrote

yeah

you know and and then they get

yeah

to

yes

see that and interact with it and it just

a

kind of

m

brings their attention

yeah

right to the table so i just think that kind of a fun and unique

way that

yeah

you guys might want to try it it's been

ye

pretty interesting when i've done it in the past

oh

i love that

i love that anything to help our d ms save time and save money and

i think outsourcing the work to the players is like top

agreed

of the list on that but thank you so much for being here with us

robert how can our audience reach out to you support you and see what

yeah

you're doing

thanks for asking you can definitely check out my book session zero the m g

to writing great campaigns

ah

in any system you can

ah

find that on amazon also check out my pod as it's the dungeons dragons and

psychology podcast and you can find that wherever you find any podcast it's on all

the platforms

yeah

and the best place to get in touch with me personally is v email dungeon

dragon psychology at email dot com or on instagram and it's at dungeons underscore dragons

underscore psychology

m oh

perfect

excellent we will get all those up in the show notes as well as the

link to your n p c compendium we don't want o forget that but thank

you so much robert thanks tanner for being here listener adventurer will be here next

week for another great show until then let's go ahead and roll initiative

thank you

some

guys

thanks so much robert i guess i should stop recording

uh

um

h