I’ve been struggling with crafting a cast of characters for a campaign start area. Then I realized I could approach it in a different fashion and suddenly the NPCs started springing up left and right. I’ve no idea why the change let the creative juices flow where the approach I’ve used for decades suddenly dried everything up. Ah, well, ideas are bubbling up and I figured it worth sharing.
I was thinking about a friend who has been an inspiration for an important NPC. I realized that I wasn’t really trying to put her into the setting, I was using her as an inspiration and it was much more like I was casting her to play that character on the world stage. That brought the epiphany — I’m a director casting people in parts for a play.
I found that this approach works well in two directions. That is, taking an NPC role and figuring out who I’d cast to play that part; and also considering a person I know in some fashion and figuring out what sort of role I’d cast them in. Note that I’m not considering basing the NPC on the person’s actual personality, I’m just considering how I’d cast them in a play based on how I think they’d play the NPC.
I’ve never overtly considered this as an approach to NPCs prior. I’ve rarely even thought of correlating a known person with an NPC in my games. I expect there are people who’ve taken this approach, though I’ve not encountered discussion of it anywhere.