DnD 5e NPC Generator — 160 people who want something and hide something else

The party talks to somebody you had not planned for. You roll once, and the person who walks in already wants something and is already hiding something.

That is the whole difference between this and a list of names. A name cannot be played. Ferris Quaile, who keeps the room list in his head and has never written one down, who wants the carter who owes him eleven nights to come back through, and who has been writing the list down for a month because he has started forgetting — that can be played, immediately, by anybody, with no preparation at all.

WHAT YOU GET

160 people on 8 tables, twenty to a table, one d20 each.

Every one of them in three parts: a name and the one thing you do when you play them, what they want from the party out loud tonight, and the thing they will not say that changes the scene if it comes out.

480 written lines, and no line is repeated anywhere in the book.

Eight kinds of place rather than named ones: Behind the counter. In uniform. On the road. On holy ground. On the water. Hired hands. Somebody above you. Nobody you noticed.

18 pages. 4 PDFs: A4 and US Letter, each in colour and in an ink-saver build.

HOW IT WORKS

Pick the table for whoever the party is about to meet. Roll a d20.

Read the first line as a description and let the players ask their own questions. The want gives you the whole conversation without a single note, because it is something they will ask for. The secret is the reason the conversation is not as simple as it looks, and it is already written down.

Roll four from one table and you have staffed a street. They do not know each other yet. Deciding how they do is half an hour of prep that pays for a whole evening.

A NOTE ON THE NAMES

No two people in this book share a name, and none of them appears in anything else we publish. That was checked against every named character in our own adventures before this went to print, so a name you use here will not turn up somewhere else wearing a different face.

WHAT IS NOT IN IT

No stat blocks. No portraits. No map. No named setting. These are people in kinds of places, so they drop into the campaign you are already running tonight, without a single thing being renamed.

Compatible with Fifth Edition and anything close to it. Instant digital download — nothing is posted to you.