OpenQuest Quick NPCs

One of the enviable features of old versions of The Most Popular Role-Playing Game is its ability to specify monsters and NPCs in about a line of text. The designers of the game upon which OpenQuest is modeled prioritized treating all creatures equally, so that if you wanted to play an elf, dwarf, or intelligent tapir you could. That makes creating NPCs and creatures quickly difficult, never mind improvising one during a game.

Below I consider a few techniques that allows a GM to summarize an OpenQuest creature or minor NPC in their notes, or invent one quickly.

Characteristics

The first lesson I learned, from SimpleQuest in fact, is to not bother with characteristics. If a creature or NPC shows up in one scene, usually as sword fodder for the heroes, you only need to know their skills and base attributes: Hit Points, Magic Points, Armor Points, Movement Rate, and Damage Modifier. (Plus any treasure).

Attributes

How do you get Hit Points, Magic Points, Damage Modifier, and default skills if you don’t have characteristics? Short answer: you make them up.

HP and MP

Making up the numbers off the top of your head is perfectly reasonable, but I like to rate HP and MP on a scale with the “average human” at 0.

Optional: DX, IN, and CH

I also like to have an idea of the creature’s DEX (abbreviated DX here) for working out reasonable skill defaults. INT (abbreviated IN) and CHA (abbreviated CH) are less useful, but they can be significant for certain characters or creatures.

If you skip this step, assume DX, CH, and INT are 11 in the section on Skills.

MR

Movement Rate for a human is 15m. Generally I use “theater of the mind” and grid-less movement, so I use this value for creatures unless I want to make them dramatically faster, for example if they have wings. In that case I’ll use 30m, or even 45m. In cases where the creature is only somewhat faster (or slower), I tend to handle chases as opposed Athletics checks with the faster party having a +20% or even +50% to skill.

AP

Armor comes from either what a humanoid (or non-humanoid) wears, or the thickness of their skin. In the latter case I’ll give the creature an AP of 1 to 3, more or less equivalent to leather armor, unless their skin is something more exotic like bone, dragon-scale, stone or iron.

DM and Damage

Damage Modifier is based on HP×2, as a substitute for STR+SIZ:

At this point I also consider what weapons the NPC or creature has. For creatures I simply look up the damage from a comparable natural animal or supernatural creature. Humanoids tend to use weapons, so I’d look up the weapon damage. I then record the weapon damage plus the Damage Modifier under a single entry, Attacks, since Damage Modifier is only useful in this context.

Skills

OpenQuest creatures and NPCs interact with PCs mainly through Skills. Skills and spells are listed on one or more lines as suggested in the “Creatures” chapter, with a few abbreviations of my own.

Less Common Skills: Craft (IN+10), Driving (DX+IN), Engineering (IN+10), Mechanisms (DX+IN), Performance (CH+10), Riding (DX+MP), Sailing (DX+IN).

I tend to list all skills alphabetically. Others may want to put the Resistances (Dodge, Persistence, Resilience) at the front.

For simplicity I round all skills to the nearest 5%, with none lower than 20%, the default for most skills if no skill is given. Lore (all) and Sorcery Casting default to IN, or 10% or 15% if not given. You may want to set a lower default, like 20% or (in certain cases) 15% or 10%.

Tags

The skill or magic sections may also contain “tags”, free-form phrases without percentiles. Common tags include the following:

• Divine Magic

  • Cultist / cult²
  • Initiate / religion
  • Holy Warrior / religion
  • Unholy Warrior / cult²
  • Warrior-Priest / cult²
  • Priest / religion_or_cult
  • other_title / cult²

• Languages

  • Fluent / language
  • Literate / language

• Sorcery

  • Apprentice
  • Adept
  • Magus

• Other

  • Wise

Magic

Creatures and minor NPCs tend to use no magic in my games. A rare minor NPC may have some Personal Magic. NPCs (or creatures!) that use Divine Magic or Sorcery are rarer as “minor” NPCs, but perhaps they’re initiates or apprentices supporting a priest or adept. In such a rare case I tend to give them all the same spells; tracking spell use and MP consumption per individual is hard enough.

Special Rules

Creatures and NPCs with special rules or variant magic tend to have a major role to play in the game, in which case I write up the NPC, or at least their species, more fully.

Examples

Below are what I might transcribe in a notebook or adventure text.

Human NPCs

Craftsman: HP 12, MP 11, AP 0, ATK fists 1d4; Craft 50%, Trade 30%

Mercenary: HP 14, MP 11, AP 5 (chainmail), ATK sword 40% 1d6+1d4 or shield 40% 1d6+1d4; Athletics 30%, Dodge 30%, Persistence 28%, Resilience 33%.

Shaman’s Apprentice: HP 11, MP 14, AP 2 (leather), ATK quarterstaff 30% 1d8, shortbow 30% 1d8; Culture (Central Plains) 40%, Dodge 30%, Healing 40%, Fluent (First Speech), Persistence 50%, Resilience 30%; Personal Magic 44%: Firearrow, Heal 2, Spirit Shield 2

Non-Human NPCs

This method works less well for non-humans, especially Creatures, since their average STR, CON, SIZ, and DEX may be significantly different from each other and the normal human range. In those cases I draw the averages directly from the Creatures chapter in OpenQuest.

Beastling Priestess: see Beastling, plus Divine Magic Priestess / Earth Mother: Berserk, Dismiss Magic, Heal Body.

Dwarf Craftsman: see Dwarf, plus Craft 85%