Shemping: Using Recycled Characters

March 23, 2009 6 comments

To celebrate the inclusion of two of my articles on shemping in the Open Game Table anthology (on sale now!), I’ve written an all-new article on shemping for your gamemastering pleasure. Previously, we’ve talked about using the stas for one character or creature as stand-ins for completely different characters or creatures. Placing mechanics completely aside for the moment, I want to talk about the other side of shemping: dropping personalities onto those stock stat blocks to create three-dimensional characters practically from scratch.

This can by done by recycling characters you’re familiar with from movies, television, novels and comics. You can also use other peoples’ old, retired player characters, and even your own inactive PCs, as well. With no effort at all, these characters can do a lot of shemping for you. The advantage is that you already know them. You know their personalities, their motivations, and how they react under certain situations. That ground work has been done for you by other creators.

But wait, you say, it will be obvious to everyone when [WELL KNOWN CHARACTER] shows up in [YOUR SETTING]. It might even derail the game, because people will get wrapped around the [NOVELTY/JOKE/BIZARRE DISTURBANCE] of [WELL KNOWN CHARACTER] being introduced. And if I use my own player character as an NPC, won’t I be smited for invoking the specter of Mary Sue?

There’s an answer to this, my friends, and that answer is flair. File off the serial numbers. Change details. Race, hair color, eye color, even their name, it’s all flair. Let’s do a couple of exercises. Let’s take Jack Bauer from 24 and make him into an NPC for D&D. Jack’s dour. He’s grim. He’s the best at what he does in the Wolverine sense of the term. Let’s make him a dwarf, and name him Grimmbor. No one’s going to peg him for Jack Bauer; you just play him that way. When faced with a situation, ask “what would Jack Bauer do”. Then have Grimmbor spout some moral justification for torturing people and chopping off their heads.

Pick your favorite superhero. Take away their powers and their costume, and drop them into, say, a cop drama or a spy thriller. Peter Parker is a science wiz, he’d make a good junior Q-type, offering tech support in the field. Change his name to, say, Sam Hughes. Make him blonde. Or Hispanic. Or both. Give him a frail old Uncle Louis who raised him after his parents were killed and viola! You’re running NPC Sam Hughes, but you play him as Peter Parker.

You end up with more three-dimensional, lifelike NPCs, people that are interesting for the player characters to interact with. The players will think you’re brilliant for having these detailed NPCs that you’ve apparently spend hours thinking about and developing. They’re technically new characters, and no one but you needs to know what you’re actually doing.

Stock Shemps
You can also recycle certain types of archetype characters from one game to another. I’ve started a file of minor NPCs that are just descriptions of other characters their based on. I have a cop who’s based on Bruce Campbell (I avoided the obvious cliche of making him a store clerk; I always wanted to see Bruce play a uniformed cop for some reason). If I need a cop NPC, he’s my go-to for personality, motivation, and reactions. Almost every game has some generic stat block to use for a cop. In a supers setting, I name him, say, Bob Friedman, give him red hair and glasses, but play him as Bruce. In a Call of Cthulhu game, I name him Nathan Collins, make him blonde with a buzzcut. In Shadowrun, he’s a corporate security guard with a brown ponytail and a missing middle finger. In a pirate game, he’s a British Marine with an Essex accent and a duelling scar. In D&D, he’s a city watch, bald, and talks about his pet dog a lot. But in my head, they’re all Bruce. For his backstory, I simply translate what happened to the last iteration of this NPC into the current game setting.

Try it for yourself and let me know how it works. It will save you a lot of preparation time, allow you to create NPCs on the fly, and add new dimensions to the roleplaying aspects of your campaigns.