Personality Profile Cards – NPCs at a glance?

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We all know that giving NPCs some character can be difficult, and so I wondered if a set of cards (or booklet) of personality profiles might be a helpful start.

Something like this:

Peronality Cards 1

These ‘Tree Charts’ group thing by biggest contribution – left to right (or top to bottom).

The idea is that the DM uses the big bars/parts to give the dominant characteristics of the NPC, but for example if the PCs ask the NPC something logical (orange bar), the DM can see how good the NPC is that. 

Obviously, layout options are possible (text, no text, numbers, legend at bottom or side, bigger set of traits etc):

Peronality Cards 2

Here’s an example with portrait cards, with Personality Traits in a vertical layout (used with my Face Folio deck of cards):

Peronality Cards 8

The idea is that you can draw a random NPC portrait card and a random Personality Trait card.
I’ve messed with a few options and think these ‘Tree Charts’ can convey they biggest info first and if need be, the DM can tunnel down into these other qualities if they come up.

Here are some of the other options I experimented with:

Peronality Cards 7

It needs more work, but just wanted to get a vibe … but is this something you might be interested in? 

And, yes there are other ways to do this – e.g. D100 list of personality traits etc.

1 thought on “Personality Profile Cards – NPCs at a glance?”

  1. Jason

    Hi,

    I like the idea of NPC profile cards, with stats on the front and personality guides on the back (I remember the old GW Golden Heroes profile cards with great fondness). My feelings on the examples above are that, for the average GM, they need a very quick pointer as to how to play an NPC, and sliding scales are more useful than area maps of colour.

    So a character’s standing on a scale between logical and irrational is a clearer indication of how to play them than the same info presented as 85% logical, 15% irrational IMHO.

    Profile cards should reduce the cognitive load for the GM, not add to it, so sliding scales over area colour maps for me, personally. Besides, I’d never remember what each colour represents.

    Love the character portraits though – a picture tells a thousand words and you can often roleplay a character just off their likeness. My only other addition would be character goals – if you have a good indication of what three things the NPC wants, then it’s always easier to portray them.

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