KISMET'S NPC CAST LIST

• The City of Thandell
• The Thandell Academy
• History & Lore of Thandell
• House Rules
• Leadership in my Game
• A Cast List of NPCs
• A Sample of the Story
• The Faerunian Calendar

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      When I first started gaming, my DM took care of a lot of things in his head and other things he took care of on his own.  He didn't work on the game in front of me because he didn't want to lose the element of surprise.  That was good for the game overall, but it left me with very little idea of how a game could be run.  From my limited point of view, it was something like watching television or being at the theater - the cast was already fleshed out, the backdrop was in place, and nothing backstage was visible.  I didn't know how my DM created or kept track of so many different NPCs, let alone their personalities, details, and relationships.  For a while I really didn't care; I was only interested in playing and had no desire to run.  One day, though, I got to see a bit of how he set up some of his notes.  He showed me some of his methods and they left such an impression on me that I follow his basic example all these years later.  He could do a lot by the seat of his pants, with little or no preparation, but he did require a way to help keep things straight.  I have never been the sort of storyteller that he was but I have always been able to rely on the NPC chart, and I know other DMs have similar styles of note-taking.

      For a short-term game with few NPCs, keeping track of the cast isn't that much of a problem.  I did not intend for my first campaign to be a short one so I started keeping detailed NPC notes pretty early on.  I started out with some well defined NPCs and the list of NPCs grew steadily.  At that time, there were five player characters in my game; in each town, they met anywhere from 2 to 5 people, sometimes more.  I needed not only to keep track of mechanical details like race and class, but also details of personality and sometimes plot.  I also needed to know who the group had met and where, if the NPCs were still residing in the same area, and I needed to remember if NPCs were dead.  The longer our game became, the longer and more important my notes.  Not only did I make a spreadsheet for myself, but I also made one for the players.  I took out any information their characters didn't know and printed it out for their reference.

      My NPC spreadsheet records the basics: gender, name, and type (including, race, class, and sometimes level).  Since fantasy names can be all across the board, it can be difficult to tell the gender of some NPCs just by their names.  My sheet also has a catch-all description field.  I might record bits of physical description if it's important and if I think I'll be likely to forget.  I might record an age or age-range, relations to other people, or profession.  I sometimes record personality traits and deeds.  I try to keep my notes short and to record those things that are most important.  I also try to record the things that will jog my memory about everything else.  Some NPCs are quite easy to remember from very brief descriptions, like Jhaldrym of Calimport.  Other NPCs require more detailed notes.  Other DMs no doubt have different setups but this one has served me pretty well through different games.

      The NPC list below is just the first hundred of the NPCs my player characters have met during the course of our main campaign.  The full list stands somewhere around 500 right now.  This is a good sample of the entire document, showing living and dead NPCs, some with more in-depth descriptions than others.  It shows characters that I have taken and used from different gaming supplements, like Skelli Wildfoot of Beorunna's Well.  She's not my creation but I used her basic information from the Silver Marches book.  The list also shows characters that I portrayed from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, since my PCs took a short trip to that universe.

Legend
* The asterisk means that the character has moved on from the area where the PCs met them, and the PCs have reasonable knowledge about the move
[unknown] This entry means that we could not recall where the NPCs were met
Entries in italics indicate that the NPC is known to be dead