43. Name everyone, make everyone human.

We are at the 6th principle, and this one is all about NPCs, every character the MC controls. The three paragraphs of this principle cover everything you need to know about bringing NPCs to life in an RPG. They are, I think, one of the best sections in any book about NPCs. They boil down the essence what makes NPCs compelling in play and how to make a character you just created seem multi-dimensional.

So what’s it doing in a section about MC principles?

NPCs are the A-number-one tools available to MCs to accomplish all the agenda items. Want to make Apocalypse World seem real? Populate it with characters who seam real. Want to make the players’ characters’ lives not boring? Give them driven NPCs who want something different from each character to poke and prod at their lives. What to play to find out what happens? Bring those triangulated relationships together and watch it all boil and roil. 9 times out of 10 when an MC goes to make a move in the Fiction, she is going to use an NPC to make it happen. When characters are getting separated, it’s more often than not a set of NPCs you use to separate them. When you are responding with fuckery and intermittent rewards, you are probably wielding a problematic NPC to fuck with the players.

So how do we make that happen?

There are three paragraphs in this section and each one discusses a different aspect of NPCs in Apocalypse World. The first paragraph is about making the NPCs “seem real”:

The first step toward making your NPCs seem real is to name them. There’s a list of good NPC names on the 1st session worksheet, and feel free to scavenge unused names from the character playbooks too. Every NPC who gets even a single line or a single significant on-screen action, give a name (84).

Naming NPCs is about two things. The first, as stated here, is to make them “seem real” (which shouldn’t surprise us since three of the principles so far are about making the fiction seem real). Giving an NPC a name turns her from being some woman to that woman. That’s a lot of bang for your buck. What isn’t stated here is that when you have a game whose Fiction can go anywhere the players point their characters, you never know which NPCs will become important and return in future scenes. If you name “every NPC who gets even a single line or . . . action” then the game is prepared to go wherever the tale leads.

The second paragraph is all about portraying the NPCs to give them life within the fiction:

Make your NPCs human by giving them straightforward, sensible self-interests. Take Roark, one of my favorite NPCs. Roark comes back from burning down the neighboring hold, unleashing chaos upon us all, and he’s beaming because he’s really just not that complicated. He wanted to burn it down, so he did, and now he wants a bubble bath because he’s all sooty, and that’s his entire deal. In your game, make all your NPCs just not that complicated. They do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and if something gets in their way, well, they deal with that now. What they do in life is follow their parts around—their noses, their stomachs, their hearts, their clits & dicks, their guts, their ears, their inner children, their visions.

This is brilliant stuff. Like naming them, giving the NPCs “straightforward, sensible self-interests” also serves two purposes. The first is, once again, to make them seem “human,” real. This helps the conversation stay grounded in the Fiction and it gives the player characters focused NPCs to bounce off of. The second is equally critical to the way Apocalypse World is run. By making the NPC straightforward and “just not that complicated,” you are giving them an internal logic by which you can know how they will react to whatever the player characters dish out. If you know which body part controls them, then you can say what honesty demands. If you know what their self-interest is, then you can disclaim decision-making. If you know what they want to do, then you can say what you prep demands. If you haven’t figured them out, then you can’t follow the internal logic of the world, which the game demands in the name of fairness for the players. You can’t make Roark do what you want for the sake of the plot if you know damn well that Roark would never do that. Focus on the internal logic, and the “plot” will take care of itself.

Then, you can make PC–NPC–PC triangles—and make your NPCs even more human—just by making sure that their uncomplicated self-interests involve the players’ characters individually, not as a group. Show different sides of their personalities to the players’ different characters. Roark loves Marie, who has ambitions, but he serves Uncle, who wants people in their places. Roark goes to Uncle to boast, to Bish to feel superior, to Marie for bubble baths. Foster wants to overthrow Uncle and take his holding, but would prefer everyone else—Bish, Marie, Damson, Dune—to stay on under her rule. These are the kinds of triangles that give the players’ characters something to talk about.

This secret is what the best scriptwriters know. You can’t show a character being “complicated” or “complex” in a single action. It is the aggregate of that character’s actions that communicate their complexity. And the best way to reveal that complexity is through interaction with different characters. The key, as the text says, is to make sure “that their uncomplicated self-interests involve the players’ characters individually, not as a group.” If an NPC has a unique relationship with each character - and desires something particular from each character - those relationships and desires will exist at cross purposes. This setup not only makes the NPCs seem “even more human,” it also creates a rich and textured Fiction for the characters to chew on and work with. This is a surefire way to “make the players’ characters’ lives not boring.”