Building NPCs with Mythic Bastionland
Why It's Important to Know If Your Seer Has Poor Self-Esteem
Last summer on Gnomestones we built a map using Mythic Bastionland tools and it was a big hit. Sixth months later my home table has a chance to run it, thanks to a hiatus in the main campaign. The players are preparing to join a tournament at Longmace Castle for their next gaming session. We need to build a cast of NPCs, and we’re going to use Mythic Bastionland tools to do it.
The Toolkit
The TTRPG blogging community contains a staggering number of NPC creation systems. Murkdice just came out with this one associated with Inkvein, Elmcat has this appealing flowchart that reminds me of the Three-Clue Theorem, the list goes on. The majority of these systems focus on certain traits that make your NPCs more memorable, interactive, and intertwined with each other. You could give the NPC a funny hat, a specific accent, a quest to offer, or a faction to lead. We’ll start with the Mythic Bastionland People rules on page 24.
It would be alright to create NPCs using the nine charts on this page alone, but I want to ensure an extra degree of interactivity with the players and map, so I’m going to add other traits to the mix from a variety of online sources. The Cairn2e Warden’s Guide has a great table for factional advantages. It improves our game when an NPC has a gift to give the players, or a secret to protect. The NPCs should also represent gateways to other landmarks and omens scattered around the map, supporting the overall connectivity of the region. We’re going to shove everything we can think of into one cauldron.
With this table we’ll assign traits to NPCs. The MB Dominion page suggests one Lord, one Steward/Advisor, one Marshall, one Sheriff, and one Envoy. We’ll also have a circle of four knights, a retainer, a courtier, a petitioner, and three seers (extra to support the Wraith omen, in which a council of seers is challenged by the Fallen Seer). Because we’re planning a tournament celebration, we’ll also have to make sure there are enough challenger knights. Finally, we add a couple of free spaces in order to absorb excess creativity.
There are a few ways to use these resources to make characters. We can roll a d20 on the trait table, and apply the result to the first NPC, then go down the line. We could roll a d20 on NPC sheet instead to choose which character gets which trait. We could roll a d20 for both the trait and the NPC, or we could do an array-like approach, placing traits where they fit best as we roll. I tend to use a combination of all of the above.
Results
I start by rolling up the Knights and Seers, who usually have traits of their own on their MB page. I go down the line of NPCs one at a time, rolling d20s to choose which traits they get. I use the Spark items listed at the bottom of each Knight page for additional flavor like names and objects. Here’s the sheet nearing completion:
What a wild cast of characters! I’m especially keen on Sprune the Horseboy, and it adds flow to our game when the NPCs are linked to landmarks and omens. They don’t all have the same types of traits, but that’s alright. We don’t need to know everything, we just have to check to make sure each NPC has some form of description and some way to interact with the players. It’s also important to know where the players can actually find the NPCs in terms of location. That aspect will be covered in the future, when I create the Sitemap for Longmace Castle.
This list is filled with flavor, but it’s a bit chaotic. I want to find another way to evaluate and ground the NPCs. We could organize them by faction, but this arc is more about individuals, with only one ring of evil conspirators. We also don’t need to worry about the intricate details of a villain’s final plot, as we’ll be letting the narrative emerge around the Myths. In this scenario the Dominion setting is driven by the interplay between NPCs at the royal court, so I’m going to make a Master Relationship Matrix!
The Relationship Matrix
A relationship matrix is a framework for analyzing the interpersonal relationships between NPCs. It’s especially helpful when interpreting TTRPGs locations with complex social structures, in this case the Lord’s court. With this tool we can reason out the nuances between NPC, giving insight into power balances, ideological grudges, and unlikely alliances. Here’s the tool:
For each NPC on the y-axis, we’ll determine how they feel about each NPC on the x-axis, then indicate the sentiment with a ‘+’ for positive, ‘0’ for neutral, and ‘-’ for negative. It takes some time, but before you know it the matrix is complete.
It’s a big table! When I resolved to undertake this mission, I wasn’t sure how useful it would be to record 400 relationship indicators, but I have to say that it was extremely helpful. Filling out the matrix improved several NPCs:
The Horde Knight was not well defined in his role, less relevant than other warriors and more of a nuisance than a threat. I switched the spot to The Gallows Knight, and I think she will shine in this cast.
Adding The Gallows Knight allowed me to reevaluate other roles. I was considering making Sheriff Ellery Flann a mysterious ghost, but now that Gallows is there to provide a tragic heroine arc, I realized that Flann was great in her original role as one of the only helpful NPCs around.
I had more of an opportunity to consider the relationship between the Seers, the Knights, and the rest of the characters. How do the Circle of Knights operate? Are the Seers respected or feared? Most importantly, do the Seers attend supper?
For each nefarious plot, I determined co-conspirators, and then picked one do-gooder to suspect them. Courtier Gow has been tracking The Thunder Knight and Advisor Wenawit as they plan to summon a demon. Sheriff Ellery is snooping around the embezzlement scheme between the capricious Envoy and the corrupt Petitioner. The War Knight mistrusts the advice given to young Ulflord Komo by The Damned Seer and the Buespari Nomad, for good reason.
Hilarious background gags emerge, like the fact that Sprune does 90% of the manual labor in this castle, but no one can remember who he is.
Lots of subtle connections we wouldn’t see otherwise. Komo likes to watch Father Loaf and Monk Braye debate theology. Marshall Marchbore is pathetic but Ellery has a soft spot for him as a father figure. The Forge Knight is only concerned for his antique shield collection. The Temple and War Knights are seen as too strict but The Thunder Knight is undeniably hilarious. The Envoy and The Pigeon Knight hooked up. No one has a bad thing to say about Gow.
Conclusion
This turned out to be a great exercise! The Matrix boxes are big enough that I can replace the plusses and minuses with one-sentence blurbs if more specificity is needed, but the signs are great for jogging my memory. For future efforts, I might suggest developing an NPC creation method that leans more heavily on the Mythic Bastionland People Tables for inspiration and also in the way the NPC information is displayed. But on this side, we’ll be moving ahead with these tables in hand, doing things the Gnomestones way. In conclusion, here are some of the NPCs from Longmace Court in the Realm of the Greyflower.
What do you use to make and format the matrix?