[Talk] Supporting Characters

[Eleanor]

A "Supporting Character" (or "non-playable character", so NPC) in this case would be a character that you, a player, create to accompany the one you've actually signed up as in a roleplay.

I suppose most of us have done this throughout their roleplaying adventures, even when we were not Game Masters: come up with at least one brand new character that either appears only in a specific place and for a very small number of posts, or that acts as a recurrent presence and follows your main character around. They can be used for something relatively trivial, such as adding participants to a Pokémon Tournament or selling you a special magic wand in that one city, or they can be truly powerful ways to guide your main character through the development arcs you've planned for them. They can be very simple and easy to create, or can be nearly as detailed and interesting as the main protagonists of a roleplay!

So the question is, which Support Character you created is the one you like the most, either yours or created by someone else? Is there anything interesting that happened with them or thanks to them? How do you feel about adding them to the world and contribute to your main character's story- do you prefer to have them help out or do you try to not rely on them as much?

For characters that were created by the game master of the roleplay, for plot or worldbuilding reasons, you can check out this thread instead!

 

[budube]

Perhaps the one that stands out the most for me is Maritza, and it's because she's been around Miranda for almost her entire journey so far. She's really patient, calm and really smart, also knows a lot and is not afraid of showing it, so she almost always seems to have the answer for all of Miranda's questions and rants. She's the perfect teacher for a explosively passionate girl like Miranda, and that's just half of why I think they complement each other well.

Another NPC I have for HS1 is Reed. He's one of Brawly's childhood friends, and also a Pokémon Ranger from Dewford Town. He's usually in charge of patrolling the off-limits part of Granite Cave and Dewford Beach, since those are the areas that have more trainers around, and he likes meeting strong trainers more than the average Dewford citizen. What's particularly interesting about him is that he has contacts around the entire region, and is aware of almost everything that happens in Hoenn because of it. The main contact is probably Gabby, who's possibly the same age as him and is just as passionate as him about meeting new talented trainers; he's helped her discover some, one of those being Jo who one of her reporters wrote an article about. I don't know if he knows Scott from the Battle Frontier, but if he doesn't it's because Reed is not a Professional Trainer himself and decided to stay as a Ranger in Dewford after Brawly became a Gym Leader.

And of course, because this is for recurring characters, Debbie gets an obligatory mention. She's Bruno's childhood friend, and is taking the same graduation journey the rest of the Trainers cast is, except she doesn't have a particular goal for doing it so other than taking it as a vacation and having fun (and being a pirate I guess), which is pretty much why she does everything she does. She's really carefree and friendly and likes being with anyone she likes, mainly Bruno, probably being too much to deal with at times.

 

[Aquacorde]

I love to populate a world, but I have had it in mind for a lot of RPs to try not to populate it with characters that stick with my MC for a lot of the story. Like absolutely nothing against duos- I genuinely love when people make a foil/rival/buddy for their MC and have them around a lot! Cube's Maritza+Miranda and Debbie+Bruno, Groc's Sunny+Edison- they're fantastic character pairings and create really fun stories and situations together! But I really try to limit how much time my MC spends with/on my own characters, otherwise I end up falling into just telling my own story and not paying as much attention to interacting with other players. Like, maybe this is a fallacy- I watch other people balance the same thing just fine, after all, and I'm sure I could as well! I just am wary of getting too invested in something I create on my own rather than taking the opportunity to allow my story to grow and change in a way that is dependant on others.

that said

Sorley has become very important to Casey over in Trainers. They work really well as someone to force him to face certain problems head-on: they are exclusively a Ghost-type trainer, and he is afraid of Ghost-types lmao. But they both are genuinely interested in the other and so they are both invested in getting Casey over this hangup! Sorley also serves as someone to point him to local events, kickstart some missions, be a willing ear for exposition... many uses for them, all while having Casey learn to actually maintain a friendship that isn't based on being in the same place consistently. He hasn't learned to do that yet; he's a very out of sight, out of mind kind of person. Helpfully, Sorley is keen on having friends and keeping friendships- deapite being a good-hearted person, they have little filter, not much awareness as to when to stop running their mouth, and tracking their thought process is a task and half sometimes. They have a tendency to cling to the people that are chill about all that- and now they've found Casey, who is def a good sport. So, good match!

Again, I try to use them sparingly. They don't show up in every location, though Casey does call them sometimes. I intersperse other characters as needed for other situations, who aren't always planned to show up again. But there are a few that will! Harper, my stoic spelunker/field scientist showed up to be our contact for a cave-exploring mission and ended up with a (future) girlfriend made by Groc lmao. Unexpected! Casey's cousin Kel was going to be the first of many unknown relations he was going to run into, but I scrapped that plan- now Kel is Casey's main contact for Plot Stuff as they are a police officer dealing with that side of the story. Also, they are Very Cool and serve as kind of a mentor figure~ That was also kind of a surprise! I like that. I like being surprised by my NPCs as much as I am by my MCs! Maybe that's more my style when it comes to recurring characters- ones that accidentally tangle themselves into the story and end up filling important roles, rather than ones I make with intent to fill those roles.

 

[machomuu]

Alright so I've always had this habit of creating like...ascended characters, basically. Characters that started out as NPCs that ended up becoming full on player characters, or at least close enough to them. Sometimes it's intended, sometimes it's planned in advance, and sometimes it's completely serendipitous, but in pretty much all of these cases it's usually because I end up liking them more than I thought I would.

As for which ones...I think my SAO ones are probably the ones I think of first because they were the ones I had for the longest. There was Kagome who was kinda this ticking time bomb sort of character, incredibly strong but somewhat mentally unhinged to the point that she'd often lose any semblance of moral if she got angry enough...which wasn't really that difficult considering she had major abandonment and anger issues. I think of all the NPCs that I ended up making in that RP she was probably the one I'd really say ended up ascending. And it was also probably the proudest of things I'd written because it was the first time I'd really tied things together. Kagome's narrative tied deeply into Godot's (my PC) backstory, with her brother being missing and presumably dead. And considering the reason that he died, Godot having a very similar playstyle with effectively none of the safety assurance made her overly protective of him, since she knew that she had the bark to match her bite, which in turn led to a lot of development on her part because, despite this, Godot ended up being the one to protect her due to how crazy her life is and those same ideologies of his that she was scared would lead to his death. It was all pretty basic and I like to think that I could do better now but combined with the pretty great cast of other PCs and the RP giving so much freedom it was just a really great place to develop this character. I had two other characters, her friend who turned out to be her estranged sister and a little girl who was essentially a Yui expy but was supposed to develop out of that, only really didn't because she was a late addition and at that point...well, 4 characters is kinda a lot.

Other than that, Gunpowder. I wasn't in this one for long, which is a shame because I really liked it, but there I had Joseph. I enjoyed my PC but her goal was kind of obtuse to the point that I wasn't really sure what her throughline to that goal actually was when I made her. Especially considering it, in effect, could never actually happen because it would mean the end of the setting proper. Enter Joseph, whose goals and motivations also became hers, in part. I really enjoyed writing the two together because Joseph was mature and confident for his age, and his smug arrogance bounced off of Amelia (my PC's) devil may care naivete in a way that I had a lot of fun with.

There were others but those are the ones that stand out to me. And I think my only real regret is that sometimes I'd use NPCs as a crutch. I always wished I'd made joint posts with others and interacted with them more but I was kinda timid and just ended up doing my own thing. NPCs were in some cases the result of that, and that's not to say I never interacted with others, I actually did more than I often remember and it was probably in my latter years that that actually changed. Either way, fun to look back sometimes.