As someone who's GMed for a few years already, I can't help but seek ways to facilitate my role in the game. I am talking specifically about managing the many NPCs we all have to deal with, improvising them and creating them in a way that won't consume so much time. Thankfully, I've played enough different game systems to just steal techniques from them.

Since this has been working rather well in my own games thus far, I thought I'd share my cannibalized method with the rest of the community, both to contribute to other GMs and to refine this method through discussion

If you have Disciples of the Dark Gods, go and look at the statline for the Inquisitors' in that book. That's... A lot, really. And makes sense, since they're such experienced individuals with a wide range of competences. But frankly, when making my own NPCs I don't have the patience to go through the skill lists. No, not even going to the jugular and picking up only the combat skills likely to be rolled.

Instead I've been using an idea outright stolen from the One-Roll Engine (and represented in other systems too). Namely the concept of Professional Skills, which, as the name implies, cover in a single skill a whole range of other skills.

For example, let's have a bounty hunter, we'll call him "One-Eyed Titus" so he won't feel so generic. He would have a skill list that went like this: Bounty-Hunter +10 .

Yeah, not much of a skill list. Or a list .

This means he would roll at +10 for any test that involved his... uh.. bounty-huntermanship. Logically it would contain skills such as shadowing, tracking, inquiry, dodge, concealment, barter, as well as anything else the GM considers appropriate to fill in this purview. This means Titus is pretty good with anything a bounty-hunter is supposed to be doing.

It doesn't mean you should pick only one professional skill for each character. Again, One-Eyed Titus might have more than one-dimension or area of competence. So we'll add in the skill of "Underhive Piano-Player" to cover not only his knowledge of the local region, but his ability as an artist and entertainer in his cover (and off-hours).

Be as specific or vague as needed. NPCs shouldn't really roll as much, or spend experience points, so there's little worry to balance it against the players. They are there to create conflict, and the skill list to remind you what they're capable off. Since this is such an abstract descriptor, feel free to go wild with this, as it might also add content to the character. Let's give Titus "This Charming Man" as another skill, which both describes his personality and adds another range of capacities.

So, just to sum it up:

One-Eyed Titus

Skills: Bounty-Hunter +10; This Charming Man; Underhive Piano-Player

And as an exercise, this would be the skill list of the erstwhile Inquisitor of our group.

Aleksander Justus

Skills: Hereticus Inquisitor; Adeptus Ministorum +20; Savvy Politician +10; Wartime Councillor +10

Which tells me that he's okay at Inquisitorily stuff (interrogation, investigation, variety of lores concerning the Inquisition and heretics, et al), is a kickass priest, knows how to play the political game and has seen his share of wars. At least until he was poisoned, sniped by a modified bolt rifle and had the platform under him detonated by a melta charge; but we won't hold that against him.

And again, because I've played Planescape way too much to disrespect the Rule of Three, the following is an Ordo Adrantis agent.

Thaddius

Skills: Military Black-Ops +10; Occult Knowledge +10; Inquisition Conspirator +20

And this tells us he's had military training and practice in matters better not-spoken of, knows plenty about occult practices (the skill should contain more than the Occult Forbidden Lore and Cyphers, but also plenty of other forbidden knowledges). Also he's neck deep in Inquisition politics, and knows a lot more than his rank suggests, which works to his advantage as a "mentor figure" for the PC Inquisitor.

Seems like a pretty simple idea, easy to manage. I might try it myself.

I must confess I prefer to give my NPC's a basic statline and then just fudge their skills and (indeed rolls) as I go along to make sure the results are cool. Just don't tell your PC's you are doing this.

I tend to just make up the NPCs skills as and when it comes up in the game. If it helps the story progress or would lead to something pretty cool then the npc has the needed skill, otherwise he won't have it. it also depends on how i am feeling towards the players at that particular moment.

Not a bad idea. It reminds me of Spirit of the Century a fair bit, where most of your character is defined by his/her Aspects which range from anything from "Bounty Hunter" to "Have you saved the Pontiff of Thrane?" Each Aspect embodies something (like your broad skill sets do) and you can invoke them to give a bonus on various actions. Of course, they can also be used against you, though you get fate points if your character goes along with his Aspect instead of resisting the GM's compulsions.

I don't know if I'd apply it to my players, given many of them enjoy the acquisition of skill and the sense that their characters are becoming more experienced and valuable to the Inquisiton, but for NPCs it could save alot of time.

Yeah, I wouldn't suggest that for player characters. At the very least it would require an overhaul of the experience system itself, which would play funny with the stats and... Well, just not a good idea, also, skill bloat is not a problem for the PCs who develop those gradually. The idea here is to turn an area of NPC's statline that is usually fudged (because who has the patience for listing everything they might have?), into something that serves as a good character reference and reminder.

Goddamn you for mentioning Spirit of the Century! I've only played a single one-shot of it and 'twas hysterical good fun (an undead native american indian trained by Tibetan monks paired with a mad scientist capable of incapacitating entire crowds with sugar intoxication, it can't go wrong!), but alas, never had the opportunity to try it again. Now that you mention it, Aspects as they exist in SotC would work great as skill descriptors AND background, even if the DH system doesn't have a means of compelling them.

Same method can be used for attributes.

First decided that he is "overall (number)", which means that all of his/her attributes will be (number) onless mentioned different.

A snitch could read like the following

Overall: 28
Combat: 18
Fellowship: 32

Which means besides his Fellowship (32) and Ballistic&Melee(18) he will have a 28

Read some of the given npc stats in the core and you will find out that a lot of them will have been made this way.

Gregorius21778 said:

I use the stat splat block from character gen towards that. Most people are average, which is what, 25 or so? If the roll fails by within 5 points I'll consider fudging the roll and letting him succeed if appropriate. If it's a bounty hunter, I might buff that up to the low 30's. IG veteran might have combat in the mid-30's to low 40's depending on the individual, and so on and so forth. Usually, a success is a clear pass/fail and the ones digit usually doesn't amount to much when rolling for NPCs.

For throw away NPCs I really don't worry about it. Statting out every minor NPC who needs to roll is a pain in the butt. Hell even most of my mid-range NPCs that you interact with aren't statted. I tend to stat combat characters and that's it.