Hey fellow GMs,

Would any of you care to introduce your favourite NPCs from your EOTE and AOR games? Perhaps say what they've done, how they've interacted with the player characters, and why in particular you've become fond of them?

As I now have permanent access to the AOR beta , I'm already planning how best to incorporate its information into my campaign. One of the areas that I'll be exploring is how to portray NPCs in the three major organisations that the crew has yet to encounter: the Empire, the Rebel Alliance, and the Black Sun.

Yay!

But... good topic. A lot of our AoR games have been flashbacks, and the most popular NPC is Yos Kolina, the Mon Cal former commander of Crimson Phoenix who dies before the game itself starts. They enjoyed him being by turns gruff, whimsical, fatherly, and a bit crazy. He took a chance on trying to turn a naive little Core kid into a Special Forces leader, and ended up dying for it. I kind of played him like a Mon Cal version of Sgt Apone from 'Aliens'

R2-X3 (Rival)

Br 2 Ag 2 In 4 Pe 1 WP 2 Cu 2

Astrogation 4†, Cool 5, Gunnery (2)†, Mechanical 4, Pilot (P) 1†, Pilot (S) 2†, Vigilance 1, Knowledge (Warfare) 2, Knowledge (underworld) 2, Knowledge (Alliance Repair Manuals) 4

Adversary 1, Solid Repairs 3, Force Rating 2, Droid*, Utility Belt

Def 1, Soak 5, WT 12

Built in Gear: Mechanical Tool Kit, Slicer Gear, Laminate Armor, built in 5 repair patch kits, standard voder, Jet Pack

R2-X3 isn't actually a proper droid. As with Vader and Grevious, he's a brain in a robotic body. But his robotic body was canibalized from a non-functional R2 unit. He was a Jedi Padawan, and nearly died, but was rescued by a mad tinkerer on Ord Mantell. He has no actual memory of his life as a padawan, nor, in fact, of anything prior to coming to in the robotic body. The brain box includes his brain, heart, and an artificial biosynthetic lung, plus a biosynthetic kidney/liver filter; a direct nutrition kit has a month's supply of nutrient, and a day's supply of oxygen. If scanned, he's clearly not got a standard logic unit. A lobotimized Intellex Verbo Brain allows him to speak in dozens of languages, including binary.

His armored chassis is a typical R2 astromech casing, white with purple highlights and gold-tone metal. He's been active since a month after Order 66 was issued. Much of his memory is offloaded into the verbobrain unit; a memory wipe will blot out a lot of details, but NOT the big sweep of things. He was found by Captain Antilles, and from there found his way into the Organa family's estate. He's met Bail and Leia, and is actively working for the Alliance to Restore the Republic from 5 BBY on. Bail knows X3's reality.

X3 has a number of force abilities, all tied to the increased attributes. If the force is suppressed, his soak is reduced by 3, and his defense goes away; his Brawn and Agility both drop by 1. He rolls his force dice with skills marked †. When in danger of suffocating, he enters a force trance; his longest "powerdown" period was a month.

He follows the Jedi code by ingrained reflex, not by conscious thought. And remember: He thinks he IS an R2 unit.

My favourite so far was a one-off, dreamed up on the fly: a blind Ithorian pan-handler that frequented the massive escalators separating the lower levels of a mesa-city complex on Ryloth. The players were looking for a location, weren't rolling well, but finally got two advantages on Streetwise and suggested there might be someone around they could ask for directions. As they approached...

"Hey there, can you spare a few credits?"

"Here you go," the "face" PC hands him one.

"Gee thanks. May the Force be with you." Slight sarcasm.

"Say, we're looking for a bar…"

"Lots of bars…"

"…goes by the name of The Swan's Gizzard."

"Hmm, I might have heard of that." Waves hand. The PC gives him 5 credits.

"Yep, take this escalator down."

"Uh, anything more specific? A street, address?"

"Maybe…," waves hand. PC gives him another 5 credits. The Ithorian feels it, hesitates. "We can do this all day," he says.

"Fine!" Another 5 credits. "That's all I have."

"Okay, here's where you go…"

The PCs move on, accomplish their mission of dumping a found stash of spice and dealing with the lowest of the low, and get in a nasty knife fight with associates of Trex (from the beginner box). Hobbling away from this chaos they meet a Zygerian who offers them aid and medicine if they just follow him down this alley…the PCs smell a rat and decline, with much shouting and injured pride and threats. By this time the players have been sufficiently stressed, creeped out, and worried about their PCs.

On the way back up the escalator, there is the Ithorian. He gives a sniff, recognizes them and asks:

"So, how was it?"

Maybe you had to be there, but I never had a group of players howl with laughter, and yet be speechless for a response, which, after a moment of looking at each other with a "what the heck do we say to that?", put it into their roleplay.

In terms of amusement value, the one NPC that I've encountered in an EotE game has been Cupcake the Hutt. A female (looking at least) Hutt that was quite pleasant and sociable when we encountered her after investigating some ancient ruins on the planet we were on.

For a while, I had to recurring NPCs in my Star Wars games. The first of these was a Wookiee that appeared in just about every cantina the PCs walked into, often sitting at the bar and chugging down a mug of something highly alcoholic with several empty mugs around him (running joke was that he was slamming down Tatooine Sunburns ( link ) like they were going out of style. He never really had any importance to the plot, but was just a fun element of background color. Though when one of the PCs bought him a free drink (she just simply enjoyed seeing him there), he did pitch in when the PCs wound up caught in a bar fight, making expert use of bar stools and bar patrons to wallop the Hutt lackeys that had started the mess (and had caused him to spill his drink all over his fur).

The other was a crusty old Duros cabbie. Name was never the same, but as long as there was some element of civilization on whatever world the PCs were on, if they hailed a speeder-taxi, the driver was a crusty old Duros cabbie with piloting skills that would leave professional pod/swoop racers awestruck in appreciation. Since he mostly showed up in d20 games and none of my PCs every took Durese as a spoken language, I could have him jaw on in his native language with nobody the wiser as to what he was babbling about. Again, never really served a major plot purpose, but he was a fun NPC to run.

As I now have permanent access to the AOR beta ,

Yay!

But... good topic. A lot of our AoR games have been flashbacks, and the most popular NPC is Yos Kolina, the Mon Cal former commander of Crimson Phoenix who dies before the game itself starts. They enjoyed him being by turns gruff, whimsical, fatherly, and a bit crazy. He took a chance on trying to turn a naive little Core kid into a Special Forces leader, and ended up dying for it. I kind of played him like a Mon Cal version of Sgt Apone from 'Aliens'

Nice! Especially if he is like Sjt Apone. I loved that character.

And I'm loving the sound of all of these NPCs. As a (infrequent) player, I loved coming across intelligently written, unique individuals - you're bound to get stock, background hordes of Twi'leks, Aqualishes, Wookiees, Humans, etc. But you can have some common-as-muck Sullustan wander in and say one cunning line which turns him into one of the most memorable individuals in your galaxy.

I've pitted my player characters twice so far against a group of Rodian triplets who first held up a bank on Pirin, then a convenience store on Donovia. Omai, Onno, and Ogees from the Oh-clan of Rodians. One of my players suggested making them more significant to the story and I have it in the wings... maybe a confrontation with their father, Ohgohd. They also want an explaination of how they could travel that fast between planets and get out of jail that quickly...

Ro Falfa, the Rodian girl who is searching the Outer Rim for her parents. As she is encountered several times in the Minos Cluster, it becomes apparent that she really gets around and that her parents may have meant to leave her behind.

"Bombad" Boolee Bigs and his bloodthirsty companion Clubba Choppa. These are Gungan mercenaries (by trade, not necessarily by career type) who are found engaging in various conflicts. Sometimes they fight for the Imperials and sometimes for the Rebellion.

The Bannix brothers ( Maroo, Merev, and Arlo (their father)) have yet to be encountered directly by the crew but in their first adventure together, the group stole Maroo's ship while he was serving hard time on Shesharile 5. His father and brother have been causing trouble indirectly by sending bounty hunters and thugs after the party when their position on the Obligation chart come up.

"Pegleg" Ploo the dug saloonkeeper who took the party under her wing when they first got together.

Madnon Danteet is a mystery to the characters. They met him, saw him die, met him later, then met two of him in our last session. He is an important curiosity in the unfolding quest.

I do not have stats for them yet. If the characters engage them in battle at this point, I will use or slightly modify published stats. If they grow to be major contributors to the party or major adversaries, I will add stats at that point.

A couple of seasons ago on Face Off on SyFy, a challenge was to make characters for the Cantina scene. RobShanti and I posted stats over on d20 Radio in the Saga forums. I plan to in the not too distant future stat them out for Edge.