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RPG Trickster Character NPCs: When and Where to Use Them

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Out of the Box D&D Encounters, Series 2, #11 - "Building Bridges"
NPC trickster

John de Lancie portrayed Q in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Salutations, nerds.

I’m willing to bet, at one point or another, a lot of you have come into contact with a roleplaying game nonplayer character who played a little bit like Q from Star Trek.

The trickster NPC sweeps into your RPG, snaps their fingers, causes a boatload of trouble for the player characters and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

If it happened with a good Game Master, you were probably able to kick their butt afterward, but most of the time that isn’t the case and the only person who has fun is the GM sitting behind the screen going “haha look how frustrated you guys are.”

Yeah, it pretty much sucks. Except for when it doesn’t.

Enter: the trickster NPC

There’s a time and a place for this kind of NPC. I’ve seen it done well and I’ve seen it done poorly. Personally, this kind of character is my favorite trope. My favorite DVD set on the shelf in my living room are basically a set of all the Q episodes of Star Trek and I go back and watch them on a fairly regular basis. I just enjoy the way it shakes things up.

The thing is, there’s a difference between using an extremely powerful mischievous trickster character to shake your RPG up, and using that sort of character to go on a power trip as a GM. So, I am going to share with you my personal rules for using a trickster NPC.

1 – Use them sparingly

RPG trickster

Is this really the sort of trickster entity you want showing up all the time?

You cannot build an entire RPG campaign around a trickster NPC screwing with the party. One or two sessions every once in a long while is good. There’s a reason there are so few Q episodes in Star Trek. After a while you start to feel like you’re being ragdolled around and no one wants that in their game.

If you are the kind of GM who likes to do a campaign for three or four months and then stop and start a new one, then once per campaign is a good rule of thumb. If you are the kind of GM who likes to run an RPG for as long as humanly possible, once an arc is probably okay.

This kind of NPC can very quickly overstay their welcome if you aren’t careful. They are great for lolsy situations, but they shouldn’t be attached to the party at the hip. Use them, have them do their thing, and then let them leave because I promise you they’ve got better things to do than poke at some lowly adventurers.

2 – Make sure they have a weakness; the PCs should be able to win even if it’s hard

My trickster character is a jester named Sleeve. I’ve made it perfectly clear she’s some kind of fey. She pops up once in a while, throws the PCs into chaos, and leaves. They have managed to catch her and imprison her exactly once, and that was because somebody realized fey have a thing about cold iron.

My players were really cool about it. They realized quickly if they killed her she was probably just going to come back so they threw her in a dungeon until she told them how to fix the mess she made. And then she raspberried them, called them spoil sports and teleported out.

I think that was a great RPG session. One of the best things about an NPC like this is what happens when you see them brought down to normal.

Another good example I’ve seen of this being done was a completely different fey by the name of Ringmaster who my fiancé GM’d in one of our hot seat campaigns years ago. He ran a circus, sent us through a bunch of crazy nonsense disguised as circus games and rides, and then we kicked his jaebrin hiney.

3 – Trickster characters are not a “railroad for free” card

Yes, once in a while the fun part is to go into a situation and throw the PCs there. Ask your players if they’re okay with you doing that to them first. One of Sleeve’s go-to things when it’s a new group that hasn’t been initiated to my GM stylings yet is to throw them into a fairy tale situation.

How does your party druid handle being told to spin straw into gold? What about a tower with no doors and just one very high up window? It’s entertaining, but you can do this to them once at best before they get peeved and want to actually have a real story.

I was talking a little bit last week about how my player had a really boosted NPC that was railroading the PCs. I think a big part of the reason why it was so frustrating was that he kept saying “if I hadn’t pulled you here you were going to die.” Even the bard who before he got pulled into the weird scenario that was this game session was just sitting by a river playing soothing music for some fish.

If your reason for using a trickster NPC is “this is how I’m going to make the PCs do the plot,” do yourself a favor and don’t do that.

4 – It’s okay to have them be helpful once in a while — at a price

It isn’t completely unknown for my players to call down Sleeve once in a while and ask for a hand. They are well aware of the fact that if they do they’re going to owe her a favor and the things she asks for in return are never easy on any level. I love those moments. One of the PCs brings it up and I can just see them and the pained looks on their faces as they debate whether or not it’s worth it.

Here’s the thing. The point of being the GM is to create conflict for the other players. There should never be a free easy button, everything comes with a price. That said, the great thing about a trickster NPC is that they don’t always have to be an antagonist, they just can’t be an easy “I win” button because that takes all of the tension out of the RPG.

“Yes,” they might say, “I will help you but I’m going to need to borrow your voice for a year and a day.”

Make it tempting but don’t make it an obvious solution.

5 – The resulting game should be interesting and fun for the players

RPG trickster

What’s more trickster than a wand of wonder?

Ringmaster did pop up a few more times after the circus. Once he’d cast this really complicated spell to send us through this scenario where we got on a boat, got the name of an NPC and were supposed to go kill that person. It turns out nobody actually died it was all an illusionary game that he charged a bunch of nobles to play and the prize was a stick (that turned out to be a wand of wonder). We all had fun, and nobody got mad.

It was actually a really great break from the slog of totally serious political drama we’d been into before it happened. We all loved it. Actually if I’m being honest I just loved him as an NPC. Enough that my tiefling psion married him later but that is neither here nor there.

The point is, I did say earlier not to use these characters as an excuse to make the PCs do the plot?

If your reason is “this would be a fun little thing that I am having trouble justifying otherwise and I think my players will enjoy” that is the reason to do it.

“I want to have a battle on a giant cake,” for example. Heck yes, giant cake.

6 – Whatever you’re planning on doing, ask yourself again if it’s a good idea

Acknowledge this is a shaky thing to do. Trickster NPCs can so easily fall off the deep end into total boost territory, and your players might not be okay with that. Actually stop and think about it.

Then think about it twice.

Because it can absolutely be done well in your RPG but you want to make sure, and if you aren’t sure, ask for a second opinion.

It’s risky business, my friends, but it’s totally worth it when it goes over well.

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Robin Miller

Speculative fiction writer and part-time Dungeon Master Robin Miller lives in southern Ohio where they keep mostly nocturnal hours and enjoys life’s quiet moments. They have a deep love for occult things, antiques, herbalism, big floppy hats and the wonders of the small world (such as insects and arachnids), and they are happy to be owned by the beloved ghost of a black cat. Their fiction, such as The Chronicles of Drasule and the Nimbus Mysteries, can be found on Amazon.

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