D&D Heroes Forums

[Glammo]

Michael Shurtleff wrote a good book, Audition, on prepping actors for auditions, building a more realistic attachment of a character in a short amount of time. I was thinking this sort of material would work just as well for a quick NPC with more depth. Say a player wants to meet such and such and this so-and-so is pretty important to the gamd world or your story arc but you haven't really fleshed him out yet. Work this kinda stuff into your improvisation.

For that matter, Uta Hagen's Six Steps, which are intended to be more intensive on an actor's character building, can also be run through quickly to get a good result as well. Taking more time with them would be good with planing NPCs beforehand as well aiding PC making. Shurtleff's method takes a lot of these steps in fact, it's just that he orders their importance differently. I'm sure there is an even better order for NPCs than there is for auditions.