Day 22 Main Prompt: Notable Non-player Character

Three NPCs that have no doubt gained a following far exceeding the expectations of the authors at time of creation are Aleena and Bargle from the 1983 D&D Basic Set & Jackson Elias from the 1984 Call of Cthulhu campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep.

How many of us began our D&D journey meeting the kindly cleric Aleena just to have her murdered shortly there after by the infamous magic user Bargle? We barely learn anything about them but they have remained etched in the minds of millions of gamers. Adventures have even been written to let players attempt to bring Bargle to justice.

Jackson Elias is even more interesting as he was already dead when he was introduced to gamers in 1984 but he these days he has a podcast named after him and a prequel written so players can interact with him. Lee Hoffman, an old acquaintance of the player character’s in the Fu Sung’s Secret introductory scenario for Fantasy Games Unlimited’s Daredevil’s RPG no doubt wishes he was remembered so well…

Day 22 Alternate Prompt: Interdimensional Space and my d10 roll is a 2, Create a NPC

“I’ve seen things.”

Sergeant First Class John Dante is career military man who may have been on one mission too many. He not only an excellent soldier but he also has low level psychic powers that manifest as a danger sense which have allowed him to escape scraps he had no right surviving. SFC Dante is a great asset in a fight up to the point he gets that strange tingle down his spine, once that happens it is best to just follow his lead and pray even if his suggestions make no sense. He usually brings his team back alive. The problem is that he is becoming increasingly unstable which manifests itself in short tempered, angry outbursts that can be a real problem when the team is in the middle of diplomatic relations with an alien species.

That’s all for today, until tomorrow be excellent to each other!

August is #RPGaDay2024 and I am going to posting daily responses to the prompts. You can find more information about #RPGaDAY2024 here: https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html

There are two sets of prompts this year and since I have room to do so on the blog I will answer both. In episode S2E6 of my podcast titled RPGaDAY2024 Panel Discussion I assemble an esteemed panel and we go through the main prompts for the entire month’s so I will try to give different answers here on the blog but may end up repeating myself occasionally.  

On their podcast Mirke the Meek suggested using the alternate prompts to create a setting and that is a great idea so I’m going to steal that. The setting I am going to craft for this month will be a modern, conspiracy style setting. Nominally I think we’ll set it in the 1970’s to avoid the problems cell phones and the internet can cause if player characters have access to them.

Here are the main prompts:

And here are a set of alternative prompts suggested by Skala Wyzwania, look at the day on the left, pick the theme, then roll d10.