Wow Your Party with Quick NPCs

The John in the Room

Everyone has had it happen. Party enters a town and heads to the inn. You are all ready to drop the quest hook, when suddenly you get the following.  

“I walk up to the bartender. What does he look like?” 

“What is he wearing?”

“What is his name?”

You are suddenly scrambling to come up with a name on the fly, and you throw out the first thing that comes to mind. John the bartender is born. But disaster strikes.

“Wasn’t the town guard named John? Do they look alike?”. And it derailed your session. You scramble to explain that yes, everyone in this town is, in fact, named John.

The Name Game

In all seriousness, sometimes your players can throw a curveball like this. Players can become focused on minor details you have in your world, and this occurrence is not necessarily bad. Some of the most fun I have had at the table is when the party becomes enthralled with a side character and crazy table antics follow. But I dislike having to think up NPCs on the spot. These names might come off as silly, or repetitive. To me, it detracts from the story I am telling. So I have developed some methods to ease this problem when it arises. It takes these moments of panic and turns them into great opportunities.

What’s in a name?

When deciding on how to approach naming, the culture of your world should be taken into consideration. Think about the naming convention. Everyone having a surname, while common nowadays, might not be in the setting you are using. Some might use titles instead of names “Giantkiller”, “Wolfsplitter”, etc. Some last night names might have a male and female version to them (reference Barovia’s family name setup because its cool). There are many examples of cultures in the real world doing this. 

This might not be the case for your world. Your world might be a mixing pot, and names might come from areas with both a first name and surname. In that case, you can take whatever. However, sometimes sticking with particular themes makes the most sense.

Making Names, Three Ways

Now that we know we want to fix this problem, the questions is how. I have altered and strengthened my method over my experience of playing. Starting simple and moving to a more complex, detailed approach, I have gotten to a point where I feel that my method satisfies what I need. I go through all of my methods below, starting with the simplest and ending where I am now.

1: Making a List

Just having a list of fantasy names can easily take care of this problem. I started off by doing this and had a few resources that I would reach out to for names. Websites like Fantasy Name Generator and Don.Jon provide easy to click lists of names. You can add additional filters such as race and location. Both Websites can even provide names for non standard NPCs, such as celestials and monsters. 

Alternatively, both the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything have extensive tables for all races, as well as a few different races. All are set up on rollable tables. You can either roll dice for a random offer.

This method is easy to do, and you can do it moments before a session. One of my preps for DnD night used to consist of me writing 10 male names and 10 female names into my notebook. Whenever the party needed a name, I'd take one, writing where the character came up alongside the name (so I can remember in the future). At the end of the night, that would get transcribed to my notes.

While this is incredibly easy to do, this method has some limitations. While you can have a large amount of names at your disposal, it's all balanced on remembering to write and refresh those names on a somewhat regular basis. I have enough to remember during session prep, and sometimes something like writing names can fall through the cracks during prep. You also might not have the right type of name at the ready. Maybe you want a genuine halfling or gnome sounding name, but none of your recorded names have that. Or a Goblin name.

I ran into this a few times, so I took a different, more active approach to how I came up with my names.

2: Making Some Tables

If you DM virtually, or have some sort of mobile device handy while you play (laptop, tablet, phone) consider creating rollable tables using either Excel or Sheets. Some simple formulas can be used to randomly pull from a set of cells and present you with an ever refreshing list of random character names.

Fancy way, import into sheets/excel and have it randomly pull from the various tables. A few simple formulas can easily create a document that, when refreshed, will give you different random names. You will only be limited by the amount of names that you add, and finding those names is incredibly easy. Besides the official 5e material having lists of names that you can pull, a lot of websites exist with baby names. 

You control what goes into this list, and because of that can easily customize the names you are using. If you want to stick to a particular type of name, you can easily only include that information. You can also include titles or custom surnames easily enough. The limits of this method come down to how much you want to do.

This is the direction that I went after using the list of names method, and I preferred it. I did not have to worry about transcribing any names into a notebook. Instead, I would have a document or webpage open that I just refresh whenever I needed a new name. I had multiple formulas to set up to output different names based on criteria. My names, mostly pulled from the official 5e material, were sorted out so that I could mix and match as needed, with just a key press to get alternative names.

This does, however, also have its downsides. While it is real-time name generating, you will need access to the document. Since I am a virtual DM I always have access to my PC, and when I play IRL I usually have a laptop. However, some people find too much technology distracting. Too many open windows can become tricky to navigate. You may end up having to refresh a few times in order to come up with the name you want, whereas a written list would be all visible to you at once. Setting up and customizing a name generator takes time and energy. If you are proficient in Excel or Sheets, this might be a minimal investment, but it can add up all the same. 

Once I got to this point, I realized that the possibilities for this table were endless, and I wondered what else I could add to the table. I ultimately decided that I wanted to take my standard name generator and expand it to create full NPCs at the same time.

3: Making a Detailed NPC Generator

While a name, with the possibility of a title, can be satisfactory, sometimes as a DM, you really want to go above and beyond. Not just naming the bartender, but letting your party know that they have a noticeable tattoo, or have a missing pinky finger. Maybe this bartender has a brawny build, or comes across as incredibly dull in conversation (very much against the stereotype). By having a fully developed character, you can go from being prepared to preserving the verisimilitude of the world by having all the NPCs feel unique and thought out. I felt this way and knew exactly where to find the information I needed.

Chapter 4 of the DMG talks about designing NPCs. It describes some methods to create both “Quick” and “Detailed” NPCs and then gives a few tables. Areas such as Appearance, noting something that stands out about the character, and Interaction Traits, which give an adjective in how an NPC might be described when interacting with others. A true trove of resources.

Seeing this, I knew I was going to want to have access to this information while I was playing. Instead of John the bartender, I could give them Alric, the gruff bartender who, when describing something, often uses the wrong word. You can truly wow your players with the depth of the description you have for this character.

Now you can easily just roll a few of these options alongside the names you are writing. Just have a few “blocks” of NPC traits thrown together and ready to be referenced. But for me, who already went the route of creating excel spreadsheets, I wanted this to populate alongside my names. So following my original methods, I added them to my spreadsheet, creating a full NPC spreadsheet that would allow me to generate names and a fully detailed list of traits that I could use.

Something to remember, however, is to know your players before unleashing such a powerful weapon. Some players might assume that because you are describing the bartender so much, they must be an important NPC. So your plan to take care of your players' queries could suddenly lead them off chasing a red herring, assuming that this Chekov’s Gun will lead them to a new adventure, when you just wanted to make your bartender seem real. The DMG has some advice on how to avoid this in the “Quick NPC Section”, advising that an NPC can be made to stand out with just one or two qualities. 

My recommendation is to ration your descriptions. For most unimportant NPCs that the party will either see rarely or will not have a large impact, stick to one or two traits from the tables. Appearance can make the most sense, followed by how they interact with the party. As the character becomes more frequently seen, reference more of the traits you have prepared. This mimics what naturally occurs when you get to know someone, picking up on more of them. It also helps you shine a brighter and brighter spotlight on the NPC, making sure that your players really take notice of them.

Final Thoughts

With any of the methods I presented above, you too can prevent the John-town syndrome from occurring at your table, and never get caught unprepared again. You can take a quick and simple approach by writing a list of names and keeping them in front of you while running your session, using them down the list when you need one. You can also create your own spreadsheet, allowing you to generate names at random whenever you need them. Then, if you really want to excel, you can add other information to that to give a quick snapshot about your NPCs, changing that random individual to a living, breathing member of your world. But it will all depend on what works best for you.

I talked a lot about spreadsheets in this post today. Some of you might have some already that you like, but this might be something entirely new for you! So I have made copies of the spreadsheets that I am using currently, which are below.

In order to have your own copy, click on the link. Then go to File and choose “Make a Copy”. It will then be saved on your Google Drive for later use. The tabs are labeled, and you should be able to see the formulas that I am using.

Either use the tables as they are, or use the included formulas as a structure for your own spreadsheet! If you come up with something new, let me know. I am always looking for ways to improve what I’m doing, and appreciate new ideas.

Barovian NPC Generator

Bjarke's NPC Generator

The sources used are noted in each Generator. Something to note, especially with the general name generator, is that some of the real world Ethnic or Language Groups do not have family names as we would see them now. These family names were made using a few different methods. These methods are outlined in Xanathar's Missing Pages v1.6 .

How do you handle random names at your table, and NPC generation?
Do you have a method different from what I use?

Let me know in the comments below! Thank you for reading!