A previous blog post talked about my love of random tables, and presented a series of such tables to create quick-to-build, easy-to-run NPCs for a broad range of fantasy games. In many cases, making a walk-on NPC memorable in your game can be accomplished by establishing their NPC lineage — and especially by paying attention to unusual lineages that will stick in the players’ imaginations and memories — along with a quick indicator of their personality, general appearance, and a quirk that lends itself to roleplaying.
Sometimes, though, an NPC sticks around for more than just a walk-on scene or a couple of interactions with the heroes. In that event, make use of the tools presented in this post to further build out your NPC into someone truly unique.
What’s In a Name?
In a lot of cases, the basic setup of an NPC generated using lineage and any combination of personality, appearance, and quirk is all you need if that NPC’s place in the story is limited. But for an NPC who you plan to have stick around — or who the players take a sudden unexpected interest in, telling you that NPC will be sticking around whether you planned it or not — the first step in expanding that NPC’s identity is a name.
Names in a fantasy game can cover a broad range of in-game origins across both lineage and culture, such that it can be really hard to think up a name in the moment that feels properly connected to the space in which names exist in your campaign. Even harder is coming up with a name in the moment that has the right feel for a particular NPC. Thankfully, creating good NPC names is easy with the right tools at hand.
Random Names
You can make use of random name generators to come up with lists of names that you can pick and choose from while you build or play your campaign. I’ve been using random name generators online since they first appeared online, and one of my current favorites is fantasynamegenerators.com. You’ll find an abundance of names there, categorized by fantasy worlds, fantasy folk and creatures, real-world languages, and more. But don’t use a random name generator during your game. Rather, use a generator to come up with a manageable list of names you really like, keep those names at hand during your games, and cross off names you’ve used so you’ll know when it’s time to grab some more. Plan on going through twenty or more names to get five or six that feel right for your game.
Using the generators at fantasynamegenerators.com, here’s a quick selection of names taken from the range of lineages I use in my CORE20 games — dwarf, gnome, elf, halfling, human, essaruk, orc, goblin, hobgoblin, bugbear, kobold, and lizardfolk.
Change It Up
One of the things all of us share as regards our ability to process language is an innate sense of when a word in a language we know sounds correct or not. We all understand certain rules of grammar, spelling, and usage, but language is built on thousands of other rules we know intuitively but have no conscious understanding of. For that reason, a lot of randomly generated fantasy names can grate when we first read or hear them, as a random generator is more than capable of kicking out names that follow the rules for spelling but ignore the greater complexities of phonics and the way that names are a product not just of linguistics but culture.
Thankfully, our innate understanding of language gives us a way to create our own fantasy names with ease. Just take an existing name, shaped by the unknown rules that tell us, “Yeah, that sounds like a name,” and change up enough of it to make it something new.
If you need a name in the moment, grab the first name that pops into your head and change up some small part of it. “Scott” might become “Shott.” “David” can become “Thavid.” “Ronald” makes an excellent starting point for “Cranald.” Not the best names, maybe, but sometimes when you need a name in a hurry, an okay name will do.
Three-Step Fantasy Name Conversion
With a little bit more time (like, six seconds), you can make use of a simple three-step rule for turning real-world names into fantasy names that feel like truly authentic names. I’ve used this process for years and it hasn’t steered me wrong yet.
Step 1) Turn any Y’s in the name into I’s.
Step 2) Swap any vowels for other vowels as you wish, including turning any one vowel into a Y. Alternatively, add an E to any vowel to make it a double vowel.
Step 3) (Optional) Throw in a silent H somewhere.
When you need a name in the moment, grab one from real life. Let’s use “Emily,” one of the most reliably common names in English. Step 1 turns “Emily” into “Emili.” Step 2 gives us all kinds of possibilities, from “Umali” to “Omieli” to “Emylo.” For kicks, invoke step 3 to polish the last option up to “Ehmylo,” and your named fantasy NPC is ready to go.
Profession
Depending on how they’ve entered the story, you might already know an NPC’s profession. When the characters interact with the barkeep at a shady tavern or seek obscure lore from a sage, they know who they’re dealing with up front. For other NPCs whose interactions with the characters are separate from what they do, it can be fun to figure out exactly what it is they do, then let that inflect your description of the character and how you roleplay them. And even with an NPC whose current vocation you and the characters know, maybe they have a past profession — or a secret sideline — that potentially gives them a more interesting place in the story than a stock tavernkeeper, researcher, alchemist, weaponsmith, or what have you.
Certain professions on the table break out to a subtable that has its own roll. Feel free to add your own subtables to any profession that feels as if it needs more distinct variations in your campaign.
Obviously, no table of professions can ever be exhaustive, even in a fantasy milieu. So feel free to roll on the table and let the result inspire a profession not listed. For example, “animal trainer” might feel a bit too pedestrian as a former vocation for the NPC leader of a mercenary company — but maybe they once trained flying mounts for the royal guard instead.
This table isn’t meant to represent all possible professions in a fantasy milieu, or the relative number of people in a settlement or land with a given profession. In areas where you know specific professions would be more or less common, ignore rolls that don’t make sense, or choose another option above or below the option you roll. For example, an NPC shipwright isn’t likely to be living in the remote mountain town the characters are passing through, so unless you’re rolling for a former profession, go with scribe or soldier.