Saturday, September 14, 2013

30 Day D&D Challenge: Day 14-Favorite NPC

I gotta go with the Scottish/Irish Bartender for Favorite NPC.  You know the guy, every DM everywhere uses him.  99% of the time the players never ask his name so he rarely ever needs one.  And every single DM can do the voice.  Its a cross between an angry Sean Connery and that one Blacksmith from Diablo 2.

"Whut can I do fer ya?!"


Sometimes he's a dwarf, sometimes he's a human, but he's definitely always bald, and always at least has a mustache (if not full beard).  Depending on how much I want to move the players along, and how creative I'm feeling, he could also run the Inn, the Blacksmith shop, and the General Store.  Basically, this guy can be found wherever things need to be purchased in a town.  One-stop shop merchant for every lazy DM everywhere.



5 comments:

brando said...

In my Undermountian game the bartender's name is Barleman Butterbean.

Lazy.

brando said...

My favorite NPC was Monkey.

I always felt that potions were too expensive in D&D, and there should be a lot of junior varsity "potions" that kinda/sorta work. They're in the holistic and herbal isle. So in the rolling hills south of the Neverwinter Woods, lived an old, super-crotchity man, named Monkey. He didn't actually sell potions, and his stock would sort of rotate between, snake oil, cough syrup, toe fungus removal paste and whatever approximation of requested potion he currently had the ingredients for.

The general idea was that his "potions" would barely work (or not work at all), do a tiny amount of damage, and be really cheap. His cough syrup was pretty awesome though. Super fun character to play. His favorite thing to call his customers was "Whippersnapper" and "Wise-acre".

When he wasn't home, one of the characters broke in and smashed up all of his bottles, and vandalized the whole place. He had to move to a less hostile location to sell his chigger lotion.

Cory said...

Monkey/creepy-Alchemist was a close second when I was thinking of my favorite NPC. But you just can't beat the ubiquity of the Scottish Bartender guy. Plus you can do a really bad scottish impression and it doesn't matter, because everyone already knows exactly who they're talking to so they aren't even really listening to the nuance of your tone, other than just waiting for him to say keywords like "missing daughter," "reward," or "rat problem."

brando said...

Is that a pic from Army of Darkness?

"And my bow!... And my hammer!..."

Cory said...

"You can count on my schteel!"