Sometimes, however, a game master’s imagination may abandon him. Even if that happens for just a minute, his or her players will find it hard to suspend their disbelief while their GM is thinking about what to do next. Also, PC’s may cross swords with the NPC’s they encounter, or interact with them in another way that necessitates the use of rules and statistics. In these cases, it helps if GM’s have a handy set of fully-fleshed out NPC’s available. Many GM’s can write down entire stat blocks in a matter of seconds, but this may seem a little arbitrary to some players and it often eases their minds if they know their game master is using a previously-prepared set of characteristics and skills. This is why publishers release NPC books, and this is why many gamers buy them.
You Gotta Have Character doesn’t present a list of generic NPC’s, though. The people in this book are taken from author Jason Walters’s Digital Hero column, and all of them have existed in real life. Thus, the book is similar to Who’s Who and Historicals, two supplements for the GURPS game, but the NPC’s described in these pages weren’t in Who’s Who.
Using real people has a number of advantages and disadvantages. First, all of them could be described in great detail without any possible discrepancies. Jason Walters presents his NPC’s exactly as we’ve become accustomed to (stat block, background/history, personality/motivation, quote, powers/tactics, campaign use and appearance) and also includes a grey bibliography box with each description. Even though there’s a lot of text (most of the backgrounds take up about 3 pages) here, the books, movies and – sometimes – websites listed in the bibliographies make it easy for GM’s to find out more about these people. Second, there’s a nice selection of (23) NPCs’s, spread out over 4 continents and many different time periods. All of the NPC’s have very distinctive personalities, making them very interesting to just about anyone in general and to history buffs in particular.
However, the choice for different time periods also means only a handful of NPC’s will be appropriate for any one campaign, except for time travelling campaigns. Because of the limited number of NPC’s, this means a lot of game masters may not want to pay so much money just to have three or four people available they can use in their gaming sessions. Also, the choice of NPC’s is somewhat arbitrary. Sure, Kenneth Hite does an excellent job to wet the appetites in his two-page foreword, exhibiting his interest in literature, and Jason Walters correctly states he has hand-picked a number of quirky and widely different people, but most of these NPC’s aren’t that well-known (which may be a good thing) and it seems the author has chosen characters he had an interest in himself. For example, while at GenCon SoCal, this reviewer went to a Lucha Libre game with the Hero Games staff, and, sure enough, El Santo (one of the staff’s favourites) is included here… and he’s been given SEVEN pages – just as many as Lord Byron and more than Calamity Jane, Miyamoto Musashi, Pytheas, and most of the other NPC’s. Again, this is not necessarily bad, but for an author who obviously is intrigued by the personalities he writes about, Walters’s descriptions are surprisingly ‘dry’. We could have used more lively, narrative texts, but on the other hand, this way of presenting these NPC’s does make sure objectivity is retained. Also, it makes it easy for readers to find the information they’re looking for.
In one review, the author mentioned he knew 3 NPC’s presented in the book. I knew quite a lot about 11 of them, but, to Jason’s credit, I discovered something I didn’t know yet about each of these people. Also, as mentioned, all of the NPC’s were well-chosen.
Let’s take a short look at the author’s pick.
Josephine Baker: a black diva who exploded onto the Paris stage in the 1920s, but who only found fame in her home country, the United States, in 1973. Men would stand in line for many hours just to catch a glimpse of her performance.
Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI): a criminal who used bribery, nepotism and murder to ascend to the most powerful position on Earth in the fifteenth century. Machiavelli used Pope Alexander VI as an inspiration for one of his most famous works, The Prince.
Lord Byron: this truly gifted but arrogant and egocentric poet and linguist wrote many works that are still prime examples of great English literature, but was widely condemned by many of his peers and contemporaries.
Alvar Nuńez Cabeza de Vaca: de Vaca was the first European to cross the North American continent. In 1537, this slightly-mad Spanish veteran arrived in what is now Mexico City after travelling across Florida, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Calamity Jane: a violent frontier woman whose exploits became the subject of countless dime novels during the twentieth century.
Harold Davidson (The Prostitutes’ Padre): Reverend Davidson was found guilty of consorting with prostitutes after what would prove to be the most sensational English church trial of the twentieth century. This professional actor and child prodigy used his celebrity to become a sideshow attraction, and died in 1932, after being mauled by a lion during one of his publicity stunts.
Andrew Jackson Davis: one of the best-known American occultists of the nineteenth century, who influenced, amongst other things, Spiritualism, New Age culture and people such as Edgar Allan Poe.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Eleanor of Aquitaine may very well have been one of the most influential women of the Middle Ages. Her court was known for its sophistication and luxury, and Eleanor was the first woman ever to become both queen of England and of France. Eleanor was the mother of Richard “the Lionheart” and John “Lackland” of England. After ascertaining her family’s control over Western Europe, she became known as “the Grandmother of Europe”.
Arthur ‘Weegee’ Fellig: an eccentric, fearless, man who became the greatest freelance crime photographer in the history of New York.
Reverend George Hensley: an fanatical preacher who established the now-infamous Appalachian Snake Cult.
Robert Hooke: this brilliant artist, linguist, astronomer, alchemist, mechanic, architect, civil engineer, chemist, optician, inventor, physician, philosopher, botanist and anatomist invented, amongst other things, the iris diaphragm in cameras and the respirator. He also introduced the word “cell” in biology and left his legacy in many other sciences.
El Santo: this legendary Lucha Libre wrestler starred in dozens of films and coming books. All through his 40-plus year career, he was a national symbol for the country of Mexico.
‘Liver-Eating’ Johnson: the most feared mountain man of the Old West. After finding the corpse of his Flathead wife and her unborn child upon returning to his cabin one morning, Johnson started his own personal war against the entire Crow Indian nation. He scalped his victims and ate their livers, but later made peace with the Crow, after single-handedly killing about 300 of them.
Robert Johnson: a handsome drifter and musician who changed the face of blues music forever.
Colonel Alexander McClung: this editor and attorney was one of the most skilled duelists of 1840s America. After a duel involving six members of the same family, he went into the military and soon distinguished himself during the Mexican War.
Aimee Semple McPherson: McPherson was the first internationally famous Pentecostal evangelist, but she achieved immortality only after the L.A. press revealed that a kidnapping was only a cover for an amorous encounter with one of her parishioners.
Miyamoto Musashi: Miyamoto was one of the greatest swordsmen of feudal Japan. This ronin wandered through medieval Japan in search of spiritual and physical perfection and only retired after proving himself worthy with over sixty kills.
Mungo Park: a Scottish adventurer whose exploration of the African continent influenced generations of subsequent adventure writers.
William Poole (Bill the Butcher): a study in opposites, this gambler, mercenary fireman, loving father, violent racketeer, political enforcer, generous benefactor, vicious racist, black-tempered, womanising family man inspired the character appearing in the ‘Gang of New York’ novel and film.
Pytheas: this geographer, explorer and merchant left his home city of Massalia (now Marseille) in 350 BC and slipped past the Phoenician blockade to explore northern Europe.
Jim Savage (the King of Tulares): after the death of his family, Savage was taken in by the native inhabitants of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, who taught him their ways. He tried to prevent conflict between the natives and gold diggers, but eventually died trying.
Tomás de Torquemada: this Spanish patriot was the first Grand Inquisitor, but his bad reputation doesn’t reflect the truth accurately.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautred: a malformed aristocrat, no other Parisian artist of nineteenth to twentieth century was able to capture the zeitgeist of the Parisian nightlife as well as this prolific painter.
You Gotta Have Character is an interesting NPC book, with very detailed backgrounds provided for each of the characters presented, but its limited selection and unwillingness to focus on one time period limits its usability in a campaign that doesn’t include time-travelling. As for the art, every NPC has been provided with a portrait, with the art ranging from passable to rather good.
Dirk Vandereyken
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