NPCs

Hello brilliant coders!

A neat feature might be a way to differentiate between my NPCs and characters I have for other campaigns. I, like many others create characters so I can use an avatar to represent them when posting in my campaign. Now I have a zillion (well 5 or 6 because I delete them) characters.

You can mark them as NPCs in your character list, but that doesn't do anything. Would be neat if that would maybe sort them into a separate folder or something.

I do the same thing. And so does Adam, from what I've seen 😄

Yeah - I use a prefix, but there is that character type option too (that I never use).

I admittedly ​don't use NPCs much because they get included in my "Character Stats" in my Profile. And I like knowing how many "actual" PCs I've played and in what systems.

I do something similar, adding the game's initials in the front of the NPC name. So for my upcoming "Rise of Ran'Tassu" game, the NPCs I'll be using there will all have an RORT prefix. That's the only way I've been able to separate them.

On a related note, I've found creating them with the Custom sheet works best; all that the players should be able to learn about the PC would be description (easily contained in the text) and a picture; the Custom sheet provides for both of these.

I agree, the way the site allows a GM to create infinite NPCs is both a wonderful feature, but also a logistical nightmare after enough have been created.

Like others, I use a prefix to differentiate my NPCs into different games. Some way to do this more elegantly would be great!

I also find that it takes a lot of effort to make an NPC and add them to a game. Unless I'm missing something, the steps seem to be:

1) Click on "Characters" in the top menu.

2) Scroll down to the bottom. Add a "label" into the label field. Choose the system from the pull-down menu. Click "Create." (3 or 4 steps, but we'll call it one for the sake of brevity.)

3) On the character sheet, give my NPC a name at the very least. I always add an avatar, as well.

4) I can add other details, but at a minimum, I scroll to the bottom and click "save."

5) Now I click on Characters again at the top. Scroll down to "all characters."

6) I scroll down and find my new character. I click the gear icon. I change PC to NPC, and click the green check.

7) Now I click "Games" in the top menu, and either find the game this character will be an NPC for in the dropdown, or click on All Games and find it there.

8) From the game's page, I find the character in the "Submit a Character" box to the right, select it, and click "submit."


This is a lot of steps for just adding an NPC with a portrait to the game! As a suggestion, would it be feasible, from the Game page itself, to add an option of "Add an NPC to this game"? This option might be located below "Submit a Character." Doing this might automatically choose the correct character sheet type, make the character sheet an NPC by default (instead of me having to manually change it), and add the NPC to the game when I save it. It might also be nice if there were a way to sort NPCs by game from my Characters page, but that would be secondary to being able to just add an NPC to a game with a few clicks instead of all the steps listed above.

Again, I love being able to add NPCs to games on GP. It's one of the best features! I'm just wondering if the process might be streamlined.

Setting aside whether I think using NPC sheets is worth it. If you are mainly wanting a portrait to differentiate them, you can edit the portrait image and add an "NPC" marker to it, that way anyone seeing the portrait knows it is an NPC. Maybe you want to use a standardised background color, or a border, maybe you want to sepia tone NPCs or have their portraits in black and white (those last two are risky because you just know you will --eventually-- have that player who wants to use black and white for their portrait:).

If you are putting in the work already, this should only be a little extra work. Free image editors are available, online and downloadable.

A quick NPC sheet might be a great build where DMs can put in a stat block, including an attack profile (if relevant), and a way to store them in a separate folder or otherwise somehow differentiate between characters and NPCs. Maybe DMs should have an "Add NPC" option that only recognizes characters with the NPC tag?