Is Your D&D Character Just an NPC Villager?

Adventurers Wanted: Wimps Need Not Apply.

Welcome to D&D for Beginners. Join Professor Lump (but I prefer "Richard") Crackfang, the learned scholar and wizard, in exploring the most common questions of new and early D&D players. If you haven't yet, subscribe here:

Adventurers are just normal people who looked at a safe, comfortable life and said, "Nah." Normal people avoid deadly monsters. Adventurers? We see an ancient dragon and think, "That thing's probably got loot out the friggin’ wazoo."

An adventurer isn’t just someone with a class and a character sheet. They’re the kind of person who runs toward danger instead of away from it.

But why? What makes someone trade comfort for chaos, stability for risk, and a warm bed for a good chance of getting eaten?

I came across an article by Carefulrogue that argued adventurers shouldn’t just be plopped into a setting for convenience; they should be necessary to it.

This got me thinking about player characters in our D&D campaigns. Specifically, what turns a character from just another workaday bard, ranger, or cleric into a true adventurer? Whatever the distinction, you (the player) should know it, and it should color all the choices your character makes in the game.

Carefulrogue mentions three necessary conditions for an adventure setting to support having adventurers: wilderness, danger, and opportunity. From the D&D player point of view, that means our character should crave all three of those — or believe they crave them at the beginning of the campaign, which creates openings for great story twists later in the game.

A character who only craves one of those three isn’t an adventurer at all. They’re just another villager waiting for the real heroes to show up.

Characters who crave two out of the three almost make the cut. Almost. They might have great stories to tell... but they’re telling them from the safety of a barstool.

• Wilderness + Danger = Settler, outlaw. Just trying to survive the elements, not seeking adventure.

• Wilderness + Opportunity = Prospector, explorer, nomad. Opportunists, sure, but not the kind who slay dragons.

• Danger + Opportunity = Mercenary, criminal. They’ll risk their lives, but not without a contract or a fee.

But our characters are adventurers. They crave wilderness and danger and opportunity. They aren’t looking for safety; they’re looking for glory, treasure, and a story worth telling.

So what separates an adventurer from just another villager? What makes them take up the sword instead of the shovel?

• A Need for More. The village was too small. The rules too restrictive. They were meant for something bigger.

• A Disruptive Event. Exiled, orphaned, betrayed. Or maybe they learned something they shouldn't have. Either way, there's no going back.

• A Drive to Test Themselves. Good isn’t enough. They need to be legendary.

Your goal in creating a backstory is to answer one simple question: What made your character pick the life of an adventurer instead of just becoming another NPC nobody? Once you know this, it is much easier to imagine how your character will react to any in-game event.

And, yes, you do want your character to be an adventurer. As an example (and I, of course, am not biased at all) let's say you play a wizard because wizards are, as we all know, the best class in the game.

A "normal" socially acceptable wizard spends decades studying safe spells in a library, writing a dissertation on Advanced Applications of Prestidigitation. Probably has tenure and office hours.

But the “adventurer” wizard? We read cursed tomes aloud during short rests— because "Hey, what's the worst that could happen?" —set things on fire just to see if they’ll burn, and keep our spellbook booby-trapped... for science, of course.

Adventurers want the thrill, the chaos, and the glory. So if your character isn’t making choices that would make an NPC sweat <*fakecough*> maybe they are one.

Until next time, try not to die.
-- Professor Richard Crackfang

P.S. It's D&D night, and I'll be heading out to discover the point of the random button-pressing from last session. If anything adventurey happens, I’ll write about it. If not, well, I’ll make something up.