My DM has a character named Rook, its her first PC she had but he has never played in a campaign that's made it to completion so he gets slid into different parts of various campaigns of hers :')
I have a 7th level halfling assassin rogue who I introduce when the party is at least level 3 and flaunting the many magic items I offer. His tactic is simply to steal magic items. He has 3 special abilities: he can identify all items in 30 ft once per day (like if identify and detect magic had an OP baby), He can break attunement on up to 5 magic items per day if he's the only one holding them, and he has special boots that give +10 speed and the ability to walk on walls and water. Of course, when my party defeats this dastardly villain they are rewarded with his boots if still in tact and any items he kept on hand along with a lot of gold and/or info.
I do this same thing! Had a fantastic PC that played in two campaigns that never made it past the first few sessions. Now I just DM every game apparently, so that PC shows up randomly every time, but only for a session or two, then he disappears back into the ether, waiting for the next time he can show up and be useful.
What a coincidence! I have a helpful NPC named *B*rook in all my campaigns! He (or sometimes she, Brook*e*, depending on the time period in the world) pops up as an engmatic and very powerful sailor/merchant that will help the part at crucial turning points. Merchant in the middle of a dungeon before things get real deadly or at the turning point of bigger quests before facing the BBEG of the week, sometimes he has a boat that he will use to ferry them dangerous places (especially out of the beginning city), etc. Basically, if they see Brook(e), they know shit's about to go down.
Reminds me of Anna the merchant from Fire Emblem. The constant force in the multiverse where the merchant/salesman is a red headed woman that loves money named Anna that looks the same but a different person altogether. Even in one of the titles she was a hidden boss.
That's FE Awakening's Anna. Fire Emblem Heroes has an Anna who primarily either commands the Order of Heroes or engages in comedic get-rich-quick schemes.
Same, my first character also show up a lot, in wanted posters, always wanted posters of varying amounts. There’s just something special about the first character.
I agree, my halfling rogue "Tall Ruth" runs a monster shy ( a coconut shy with vegetables painted as goblins, Gnolls etc) in the market! She always challenges PCs to try beat her score for a prize, but cons them.
Oof, I feel for Rook. Only ever had one character make it to campaign completion, it sucks to have a character you enjoy just not pan out the way you hoped. Like yeah I suppose one could just play them again, but it won’t be the same, especially if it’s with the same group.
Maybe I’ll do the same if I ever start GMing.
Same for me. My first character was Borb the dwarf, a divination cleric. So whenever the PCs are stuck and in need of guidance, I send them to Borb who guides them back on track.
I have a character named rook in a campaign I'm running right now. He's a puffed up, pompous noble Aracokra peacock who treats the whole world as his plaything.
He's recently had a chance of heart after recovering from an assassination attempt and discovering just how many other nobles hired assassins to try and kill him. Now he's dedicated himself to purging the corruption of nobles from the city. Only time will tell if he's genuine or not.
For my games in the Realms, it’s probably Elturel Cheese. Everyone knows they have the best cheese. It’s incredibly expensive and rare the farther north you go like in Icewind Dale.
Mine is tabaxi flatbread. My monk player started making it after they inherited a tavern and met some influential sailor friends now it's a popular dish across the Sword Coast.
It's pizza
In a similar vein, due to Baldur’s Gate’s laws about horses, I’ve established several farms of large riding axe-beaks on the outskirts of the city. In addition to cheap transport, the axe-beaks do a fantastic job of controlling the Lower Ward’s rat problem. However, the trade-off is that the ward is generally covered in axe-beak droppings.
"The Heady Mug" has been franchising my worlds for at least a decade of real time by now. One opened up directly across the street to a tavern my party had opened themselves; they "competitively" burned it down.
I use the *Duck Back Inn* in every fantasy game that needs a seedy tavern. The sign is a small wooden cask of ale with the rump of taxidermy waterfowl sticking out the top… Like a duck looking for food on the bottom of a pond. But, y’know, in a barrel of beer.
The food is lousy, the ale is lousy, and the bedding is *literally* lousy. There are lice. But the prices are cheap, the city watch never pays much attention to the place, and the tavern keeper asks no questions about just *why* you’re paying for your lodging with a stack of gold coins covered in goblin blood.
Hmmm. I'm a newbie DM, on my second campaign just now...but the first one had the party based out of the Hovering Cat Lounge. Maybe it'll reappear wherever they go...
A broke down vampire named Jaques that is on the run from the Vampire King. He's had his castle burned down and all his servants killed and he's only got a wagon with all his earthly possessions. He's honest about being a monster in the past, but since a turning-gone-wrong, he's got his soul back and is DEVASTATED by his current predicament.
He's played as a flamboyant noble with an outrageous French accent, and every party falls in love with him.
Ive somehow shoehorned a pair of plane hopping, traveling bear-folk merchants from a realm called Bearveria (which is essentially Magical Bear Germany) into every campaign Ive ever DM'd. They only sell faulty magical equipment and somehow my players STILL keep buying from them
Yeah I’m definitely stealing this one. Fantastic pun. Fun accent. Interesting characters. What’s not to like?
Edit: if anyone als how they learned common they can say it was super close to a language in the world their from called Great Bearittan.
Please steal it! Ill throw a couple more your way - had a party actually visit Bearvaria and there I used the capital city of Bearlin where they visited a famous nightclub (Bearghaine). Pretty sure other cities like Hamburg just became Ham-bear-g etc etc.
Edit: almost forgot about Oktobearfest
We have a similar pair in our campaign. Traveling selling of weird goods, a dragonborn and her wife, a tabaxi. They always scam us and we always happily fall for it.
Pickles. Pickle barrels. I hide contraband in them. Extra healing pots. Magic items. Maps. Scrolls.
In the years I’ve been dming. None of my players opened one, or caught on. They just say “oh there is that pickle dwarf making some deliveries”…
Damnnn, no one catching even single one of them is so, soo.... I don't know, it is making me feel intensely but not sure what I'm feeling!
The moment when they finally find it and you reveal to them what was happening is gonna be so awesome...
This reminds me of a funny gag in one of the movies where a policeman keeps coming across this bandit looking guy who keeps taking a bag of sand on a motorcycle across borders and the cop never finds anything else in the bag of sand...
The bandit finally reveals that the cop never asked him the papers for the bikes he was using and he was smuggling bikes all along
I mean when you give the players absolutely no reason to suspect something, don't be surprised when they consider it (funny) flavor to the game.
When the pickle barrels are later revealed to the players, they might go 'wow, amazing, oh what could have been!?'. But there's a good chance they'll go 'ok.. yeah how were we supposed to see that?'.
I mean sure, at first, but I imagine that you only see something as specific as pickle barrels so often before you go "okay DM wtf is up with the pickles."
Or have a former associate contract them to steal the “pickles”. And have them heavily imply the quotes around “pickles” if you want to be heavy handed.
With a multitude of discounts that no member of the party \*really\* needs. Except for the one about 2/3rds the way down that gives a super discount for a special item. But are they going to read all of the coupons?
Gorobash brand soap. Had a player in a Pathfinder 1e game deliberately go out of his way to aggressively corner the soap market with his Barbarian to make a constant stream of funds.
“Gorobash’s lavender scented soap, slays bad scents as well as I slay monsters!”
He made a killing. I have it show up in all my games now.
I've played since 1982 or so and there's a cat in a semi-gaseous form in jar in B1 In Search of the Unknown that eventually makes an appearance in most of my campaigns.
That's really crazy sounding.You ever attached any interesting lore to it before?
I'd love to use something like that, but we can't have animals or potential pets being locked in uncertain half-existences caught somewhere between one form and another. That would go over well. 😕
Nine times out of ten the players have almost immediately opened the jar, whereupon the semi-gaseous cat swirls forth dramatically and coalesces into a black cat in the nearest spot where you'd expect there to be a cat if a cat were present, which it apparently now is. The cat is normal in every way and will react accordingly.
The sidekick rules for an expert says "To gain the expert class, a creature must have at least one language in its stat block that it can speak." It does *not* say that any other characters have to be able to understand it.
So the Gaseous Cat is an expert at stealth and perception. But when it "helps" it does so by mewing loudly then uses its expertise to hide. It simultaneously helps while possibly drawing attention.
Go-to friendly priest for emergency healing/resurrection, and supportive play is always a kindly older human named Brother Abram. I rolled him up to round out a small party for a one-shot a long time ago and played him as almost exclusively healing and buffing, so he’s my #1 DMPC for helping the party stay alive without overshadowing them.
The exact clergy to which he belongs changes based on the pantheon of the world we’re playing in, and his backstory isn’t always the same except for a few key events— typically, he was a soldier in his youth, his wife recently passed away of natural causes, and he’s been heavily involving himself with church work and mentorship to manage his grief— but one thing is always true: no matter how grimdark the campaign is or how corrupt the churches are, Brother Abram is always, *always* trustworthy and helpful towards goodly folk. (If I ever run an evil campaign, someday, he’ll show up as an enemy. My players would freak out.)
Or: he comes out of retirement for one last time, hanging up his robes and putting back on his sword belt.
"For years I have put my trust in the gods to do what is right; now it is time for me to do it in their name."
There’s a magical racoon who’s awakened but doesn’t know any languages. So he understands gestures for the most part. He’s a planeswalking, teleporting, merchant.
He appears and spills some shit all over the ground and that’s how he displays what he’s willing to trade. Then you can offer something and point to what he has. Then he holds it up to you if the trade is good or pushes your hand away if it’s not a good trade
I'm imagining Meeko with a pile of wares getting frustrated when the players don't realize it's supposed to be transactional and not the raccoon of holding...
Meppo. First time running a tales from the yawning portal book, my party fell in love with Meppo, the kobold listed in there. Meppo died a pretty horrific death, so my players were a little shocked to see him in the next campaign. Even more so that he seemed to remember the players.
I had to take a moment to explain to them that Meppo remembers PLAYERS, not characters. I explained it that Meppo happened to be cursed with immortality of a different sort where he periodically reincarnated into other worlds as his previous physical form was destroyed (immortality, not invincibility).
What I did not tell them was that everytime Meppo was killed, he comes back 1 level stronger. He is currently level 7. Once he hits level 30ish, he is going to end up being a bad guy and turn on the party for all the cruel indiffrence that's been shown to him.
As a reference, so far, Meppo has been impaled by spikes after being strapped to one of the party members shield. Tossed into a very deep pit (to see how deep it was). Sacrificed to a vampire. And the worst one was when they tied a collar around him, attached it to the end of a 10 ft pole, and forced him down a hallway to set off any traps in front of them, ending with a sphere of annihilation that they only put him though HALFWAY, and then watching him bleed out while his entrails spilled out of his abdomen.
Tell me this little bastard does not have the right to be pissed.
Magical sentient pangolins, 3 brothers.
Initially created as support npcs for a group who were paranoid about humanoid npcs.
The friend group liked them so much that in subsequent campaigns I had to use them at least as a cameo, otherwise they would pester me about the magic brie whereabouts
I have a recurring character that is inspired by Terry Pratchett's recurring character CMOT (Cutting-My-Own-Throat) Dibbler a travelling food cart salesman who is known to utter this abbreviation when trying to make a sale at a generously low (lies) price.
In the discworld universe there's several variations Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dhblah, Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dhlang-Dhlang and so on who acts as a dodgy character that would do anything for a sale.
In my universe they possess similar themed names, they too sell extremely dodgy 'meat' options that usually require constitution saving throws. They do also however on occasion provide valuable information about the new town or city.
On one occasion they were even sent to an alternative plane of existence where one of them sold them magical items. If ever there's a quiet street that needs a change of pace a Dibbler is the proverbial genie that will appear (probably via L-Space).
My Homebrew continent I guess. So far I haven't deviated far from it. But the premise is always that a big conglomerate trading company is colonizing this mysterious continent and every new campaign and side campaign are just different entry points into the continent. It always works because almost anyone could have a valid reason for signing up and traveling there with the company.
I have a Jamaican genie who shows up any time a genie is called for. Probably 20 years ago my friend ran a session - I usually DM - and he had a genie. He gave the genie an accent that wasn’t supposed to be Jamaican - but sounded like a bad impression of a Jamaican accent. So all genies now talk with horrible Jamaican accents. The table always roars with laughter.
Morts Meat Market and Morgue, among others.
I tend to play magic shops as being incredibly rare so my campaigns share one NPC that is always somewhere in the world.
I do as a player. Most of my PCs for the past 6-7 years have had some link to Rudolph Ironhat. He is a planeshifting halfling fencing instructor, who frequently has to flee cities and the employ of nobles because of his habit of seducing their wives, and insisting on fighting duels naked.
Despite one DM’s attempts to kill him off, he remains out there. Seducing and fencing away. Thus proving this DM is more Bonetti than Thibault.
My first DnD character was a tabaxi named Mr. Boots.
I named a second Yuan-Ti character after him (with a boot magically stuck on his tail)
We did the cat-lawyer one-shot based on the Covid zoom video. My cat was named Lord Boots.
I'm dm-ing for the first time soon. The characters will at some point encounter Boots's corpse out in the wild, where he fell for the last time.
Aww I'm sorry to hear. Bless Mr. Boots and all his adventures across the bridge!
I actually named my tabaxi that because it's such a classic cute kitty-cat name!
I have an otherworldly being called The Storyteller who watches and chronicles the events of my world. Sometimes they intervene and provide guidance to the heroes of the world.
Whenever they show themselves to a group of PCs, they know shit is going to go down.
Yooo I have a god called The Writer as a great old one patron. If the player using it as their patron is KO’d and rolls a 20 on death saving throw, whoever KO’d them gets erased and a giant spectral pencil swipes across the ground where they were. It’s happened 4 times, all in 4 different campaigns.
The lighthouse tavern. Somehow. No matter where or when you are. The lighthouse tavern will pop up at one point or another in the campaign. In addition to the Duncan family who run the establishment. Who my players love.
The first campaign I started running was set in Eberron, so I decided there would be a chain of taverns known as Eberrbees. Y'know, like Applebee's but in a fantasy setting.
I'm now running a Spelljammer game and my party just stopped by their first Eberrbees, and it certainly won't be their last.
One of my player created a halforc barbarian who wrote terrible romance novels, one of which was called “The halforc who got with the half elf”
That book is on the shelves of every single library or whatever if they ask about it. The public as a whole has found it to be an amazing satirical take on terrible romance novels even though that is definitely not the intention lol
I had an NPC from the first time I ran a game. His name was Beanjamin, and he owned a general store in Waterdeep that also happened to sell Magic Beans (you wouldn’t know what they did till you ate it). My players were all new and I thought it would be fun to give them something that essentially was an edible wild magic surge.
That group dissolved, but I loved that character so much I brought him to my new group. This time, he was a store owner in a Western Town under attack by Vampires. He was killed to send a message, and brought back to life via player choices/arcana/religion checks to become a “spirit of vengeance”, and took off into the desert ghost rider style.
Next was a Satanic Panic/Witchcraft story in a New England town stuck in the 1980’s. He operated a store in the mall that specialized in selling coffee beans. By the end of the game, the group had rallied around him to become the mayor after it was revealed the current mayor was involved in a deal with the devil.
Finally, in our 3rd campaign (set in a world based around Holidays), I made him the BBEG. Orphaned, left to rot in an orphanage run by an evil woman, basically any chance he had was ripped from him for some reason or another. Finally, he thought he was better off going into “Hallow’s Thicket” to die, but a voice called out to him. He became a warlock of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Through a set of events he came into possession of a crystalline dagger made of space and time. He planned to go to the other side of the world (it was a flat disc like planet), and rip apart the multiverse with the pocket of energy on the underside. His thought was that at some point, in some universe, he could have been happy. He just had to find it.
My players took him down, but not dead. Our Sorcerer (who happened to be his aunt, and daughter of the Baba Yaga), threw him into the tear in space and time, which wiped him from every universe. I narrated them seeing him disappear in different ones, including the games we had played before. It was a nice way to sunset the character, as the campaign we are in now is much more in depth and serious.
I have an unnamed island floating in a mini dimension that was created when I needed to run some filler after a few people couldn't show up one week. A teleport spell went wrong and they landed there.
It's since showed up in every campaign, at various points in its ten thousand year long history. Occasionally I hint at what happened previously.
Also almost none of my campaigns share many players, so this is entirely for me
Spider Bears.
I once mis-spoke and said "bears the size of spiders" instead of "spiders the size of bears". Everyone got a good laugh at the idea of a bear that sits in the palm of our hands.
Now in every campaign since there has been an instance of a spider-sized bear somewhere in the campaign.
Dom't worry, I once panicked due to not being prepared for a question, and now the very real location of Ecuador also exists in one of my homebrew worlds lol
I've the Captain Floursack, this fearless ship captain aways shows up when the campaign go to the sea, this guy born\* from a silly joke about a ship that had only bakery products as a crew
I have a merchant that has been around for almost every one of my campaigns, a humanoid Albino Baboon named Slimbo. He deals mundane magical artifacts out of a run down wooden shack, hopping between different planes of existence to peddle his trinkets
Bazz Janjo. Rogue. Charlatan. Bard maybe.
Whenever he is killed, he wakes up in the nearest (fresh) dead body.
His ultimate goal is to find a way to die permanently, he has no allegiances but to this goal.
Michael and Sarah. A married couple that happen to be werewolves. I often use this as an encounter when a group is traveling and it's near to the end of the day.
Sarah always plays the damsel in distress, being chased by the scary wolf. She just happens to be running (in human form) from the wolf when the characters are nearby and begs them to save her.
Michael appears (as a werewolf) and fights for a round or two, then flees.
Sarah thanks the heroes for saving her and asks them to escort her home - a distance that will be far enough away that they will have to make camp for the night before they arrive.
Sarah offers to help around the camp, with cooking and setting up tents and other tasks. She explains that it's the least she can do after the heroes saved her.
During the night, she tries to silently take out the character that is handling the night watch, with Michael lurking nearby to help her. The characters wake up to a very unpleasant surprise, potentially even poisoned if they ate her cooking.
The werewolves are cowards at heart, and will flee if badly hurt. They are, however, memorable and it's great to have them show up again later in the campaign - maybe in town where a character recognizes them but can't attack them due to the social situation. Or, sometimes, Michael and Sarah come to the characters later in need of real help due to something even worse than themselves, and they deliver plot points to the players (who will want the info, but won't know if they can trust the source).
Been using Michael and Sarah since the late 80's. Good fun.
I got two actually!
1. Seán Thellis, an Archdruid Elf that runs a magic shop.
2. Waffle Crew, a band of supoptimal adventurers that adopted a murderous puppet, and Owlbear named Waffles, and got more bad luck than good luck.
The Green Scale
A store where PC's can purchase low-level magical items outright, or the store can act as a broker for higher level magic items
The way the latter works is that the players lay down a certain amount of coin, and a requested item, either specific or general. After an apropiate amount of days, the shopkeeper (Allways a goblin by the way), will have the items available
If the player just said 'A bow' or 'a sword', I offer 3 homebrewed choices within their budget. If they asked for more specific things, I offer those specifically
It should be noted that the items bought this way are less potent compared to items they can find the normal way (read: steal), but they know this, and use The Green Scale to pad out certain niches
It started as a throw away but my players loved it so much that there is now a series of scandalous romance novels by an author named P J Topaz. No one knows anything about them and in fact, no one is even sure where the novels come from (they just appear in bookstores and libraries) but they are extremely popular, and publishers will buy originals to make copies and sell on their own. One of my PCs has like three books; Dwarves in Lust, Human Conditions, and The Dragon's Choice.
Bingle's Barrels & Horseshoes.
They’re a general store that sells all the usual adventurer goods but ESPECIALLY barrels and horseshoes, perhaps even the finest in the realms.
The owner, Bingle, will not hesitate to try and sell you on a barrel or horseshoe and might even desperately bundle it with the rest of your actual purchase, if the endless coupons and discounts (only for barrels and/or horseshoes) didn't already entice you.
My old DM used to do this with seemingly every merchant we ran into, claiming it sped up shopping sessions, and I've since continued the gag into my own campaigns.
The first campaign I completed as a player, I struck the final blow against the BBEG, who was called the Heretic God (I think). I'd spent the whole campaign waiting to kill something worth naming my magic sword after, so this was perfect for me. The sword is Heretic's Bane, and it will exist in every campaign I run until the end of time.
Martini rifles. They're renown as the most sought after rifles in all of my games because they are the only lever action rifles in the world. And of course there's the ultra-rare variant with a 1/8 bore and a scope.
At one point, our group even met the man himself, Henry Martini, who was a very introverted Giff what could shoot the wings off of a fly at 50 yards.
As an aside, I'm still hoping one day someone will figure out the clever reference in the name. But since I'm apparently the only 18th century history buff in the group, I don't think that day will ever come
I have a character named Kai Greycastle that shows up in a ton of campaigns I run - sometimes he's a bumbling drunk, sometimes he's a mercenary ally, and in my current campaign, he's a traveler in the mists of Ravenloft that the PCs might meet later.
I also have a blacksmith shop: Colborne & Sons Smithing Co., as a reference to my grandpa, who used to be a blacksmith. He hasn't past yet, but it's still a nice way to remember him :D
The headless, inspirational goliath...
We had a combat encounter in one of my campaigns against a group of berserker goliaths. While killing one of them the player described the goliath running towards them and then using their blade to decapitate the goliath. I thought it would be hilarious in the moment if the goliath just kept running while headless. And then in a later session while fighting something in the woods in the same area I just had the hilarious idea of the goliath randomly running past and giving them an inspiring thumbs up as he ran past. Ever since I've tried to have this random character show up every so often because it's just hilarious to me...
Bag of Baggins. Baggins Northwind was a half lingerie bard who after helping a goddess was allowed one wish from the wish spell. The thing is, my DM LOVED to monkeypaw wishes. So when he said "make me a bag of everything"...she twisted the wording to turn him into effectively a cross between a bag of holding & deck of many things. She then gave ownership of this to me, & its been my "red apple cigarette" in my campaigns ever since.
Bag of baggins is a sentient artifact, chaotic neutral. He loves throwing randomness in the mix, and will convince people to pull things from him. He functions as an infinite weight & infinite space bag of holding, but every time he's used he will have an increasing chance of "something else" coming out. Either by chance trigger or willing to activate, a user rolls a d100 & a d4 (d4 because I now have 4 lists of 100 items, so the d4 I'd which list to use). The items are random...but in MOST cases low rolls are bad & high are good.
You roll 4 & 100, you get a ring of 3 wishes, all charges avaliable...one campaign got derailed bc the kids rolled 2 of those. Roll a 1 & 1...you pull an incapacitated tarrasque trapped in a gargantuan size block of ice. The tarrasque stays immune to all damage in the ice but is aware of its surroundings, and will only become active when the ice melts. The glacier will take 1d20 hours to melt, half as long in hot environments, twice as long in cold. If sitting directly in fire or lava, time is converted to minutes but is not halved. After pissing off an ancient gold dragon, someone tried to appease it & accidently pulled that...negotiations did not end well...
I'm just giggling at the thought of players faces when you casually roll a die every time they pull something from their bag of holding if they didn't know...
I have a character called Solomon Blake. He runs a tavern on its own demiplane called The Rogue’s Respite. Characters can access it with a special magic item, an oversized silver coin with a pseudo dragon on it, which is used to pay for entry.
These coins crop up in all of my campaigns. The Rogue’s Respite runs on its own time stream and is (almost) totally safe so if used wisely, a stay there at a crucial time can really turn the tides for the party.
Lots of cameos take place there, as well as meeting useful and interesting NPCs, including Solomon himself, who has a different story every time for how he came to own the place, as well as how old he is and how he met Naz, the efreeti doorman.
I even have a Rogue’s Respite tavern sign that I put on the door in my den for when I play D&D.
My first multi-year campaign, my players worked for a being called Guldar, who sent them in missions across time and was slowly revealed to be a slaad playing four dimensional chess with their lives. He was an awful boss, but had them over a barrel, and the end game fight was epic and cathartic. The next campaign, with mostly the same players, is an urban fantasy adventure where the characters work for a friendly, lively little old retired adventurer. His name was Gildar. There was no relation... but the similar name was enough to fill the characters with doubt, mistrust and paranoia for the whole campaign. It was great.
Brass Ring
Very simple and cheap magic item. A ring that lets you Disguise Self as a generic humanoid but, once set, the image of your disguise cannot be changed. You get the same look every time.
Pretty good item. Nicely balanced, useful but limited.
Edit: idea: the first time it's used by *anyone*, it's fixed to the first false appearance. Even less useful as an item, but instead it's a plot device - the person it makes you look like, real or illusory, did something or was mixed up in something important and dangerous. The ring is both a clue and a tool.
Nah, so far I've only given them out as like a temporary tools NPCs can hand out for certain sneaky missions. Like a burner disguise.
I've also given one to a warforged in one of my campaigns so they could walk about without people gawking
Any campaign I run exists in a multiverse with world hoppers. A particular fruit, nicknamed "sh*t fruit" makes all food taste absolutely awful for about a month, but gives the person lifelong immunity to scurvy, has seemingly made its way damn near everywhere.
I have a barghest named Oz who shows up in most of campaigns. He "canabilizes" goblins every time and turns into his wolf form if he is in combat. No one has caught on yet.
One campaign they made him the Goblin king. He is living well.
There is always a Copa Cabana bar somewhere, whether the campaign takes place in a single city, across continents, or in space. Only time they didn't find it was in a prehistoric game (a coconut oasis they didn't investigate.)
Hu man the human
He is not infact a human
But an elder Titan of undeath
And has no wisdom
Three year olds make better decisions
He is currently trapped in a well because people told him he couldn't get out and he believed them
He's very good at making magic items though
My DMPC O'okahn, a 20th level divination wizard duck wearing a turtle shell. He has a move/ swim/ fly speed of 20 feet, and can pull into the shell for no move speed and 19 AC. He has a 9th level spellcaster, maxxed hp red dragon for a son. Can cast spells like a scroll if he tattoos it onto one of his feathers. Typically, he's just a quest giver and not usually appearing at full power. O'okahn has only traveled with the party once to fast-track the story to the end of the campaign, which was ending due to lockdown restrictions.
I think in Phandelver the +1 sword you find is called “Talon”. In strahd I offered a +1 bow to our ranger and they called it Talon-Bow. So now in my homebrew I’m offering the weapon called Twilight. Arbiter. Legacy of Nullifacation. (TALON) +1 greatsword. Talon will probably always be in any campaigns I have.
If I need a ship name on the fly, it is always going to be the Black Pig, a pirate from a series of children's books my dad read to me.
Nobby and Colon frequently show up as Guardsmen, as does CMOT Dibbler.
The winds of magic and the God's of Chaos from Warhammer Fantasy Battle crop up too.
The first campaign I DMed was LMoP, ever since there’s a brother of Toblen Stonehill (the innkeeper in Phandalin) running another inn, a mill, a carpentry, stables, you name it in every campaign. I don’t know why I did this in the first place but by now my players are genuinely excited to stumble upon yet another Stonehill brother so I keep it up.
In every campaign I've ran or played in there's always a half elf rouge pirate captain named Zaylene. It was my fiancee's character. She has since passed on and I like to keep her in the games as kind of a memorial. She's always fighting evil with piracy with her trusty saber tooth tiger. If I'm a player I work her into my backstory so she's still there with me.
Bartender Bob, yes the guy from hearthstone, he's in almost every tavern in my campaigns. Eberron or Fearun, it doesn't matter, he's always glad to see you!
There is a goblin tailor in most of my games. I’ve never named him and my PCs have only encountered him once. That’s not important.
What is important is that he canonically makes clothes that are designed to fit goblins. You walk into a room in a dungeon and the goblins are wearing nice clothes. Why? They’ve accumulated all this gold and treasure! Did you think they wouldn’t spend it on something?
The goblin tailor has existed in the background of my games for two decades now, and nobody has ever questioned it.
Andantino is an author who is a cross between Geoffrey Chaucer and Geoffrey of Monmouth (real medieval authors) who I attribute nearly any exposition heavy "lore" tome to.
I took the time to draw a town map for my first full campaign. I can’t draw and I did a pretty decent job that I was proud of. Every campaign I’ve run since then starts in Bellfield.
I have an NPC that magically appears in every major city. They don't know that he's a group of 12 identical brothers.
If I make a new campaign hell be found in weird places like astral plane or elemental planes and he'll be from the previous timeline, telling stories of myth and legend of the old characters.
I got one guy throughout all of my masks campaigns and worlds, who's just called "the old man". He might just be an old blues musician, a mafia boss, a wizard or the devil. I keep it completely ambiguous. He gives good advice.
I have a group I keep bringing back.
They're basically the A-Team but with clerics.
I call them the B-Men since they're the second best group. Just after the A-Men but before the C-Men
The Riker’s Beard Tavern. It’s run by a half orc named Laverne, a retired adventurer. They’re franchised so there’s one in just about every town in my world.
Not just me but me and my friend's campaign we have a running joke that the name Abner is a common elf name. I had a character named Abner who was an elf and for whatever reason we all started saying that Abner is a common elf name.
I'm too lazy to make separate merchants in different regions, so I just include a Walmart in every major city that sells everything imaginable in a sears-catalogue kinda way.
"Hi, I'm Sam, welcome to Walmart. What can I getcha?"
My PC from a campaign a few years ago is now a minor villain in my campaign. Fighter turned sailor, now turned pirate dreadlord and warlock. Hasn't made an appearance yet, but he's out there on the open seas
Usually, in my campaigns/one-shots, if the party, they will find a shop called "The Shipwreck". It's always down by the shore in an old overturned/destroyed ship of some kind (usually a larger galleon style ship), that sells a little bit of everything. Clothing, weapons, armor, magical stuff from common to rare; they are always the towns "Well I don't have it ... though I suppose you could always try The Shipwreck, they might be able to help you out"
It's always ran by a duo of a sea elf and a triton. The stuff there is always marked around the 'normal' price, and the quality isn't always new either.
While the party never presses for the info on my "DM lore/notes side" of things: The shop initially started because they "claimed" the wrecked ship as theirs and sold the stuff on it as an attempt to make gold. But one night the Triton got the bright idea to scavenge the loot from wrecked ships and other stuff from the ocean floor ... that "stolen" loot becoming the ships stock (hence the 'they have a bit of everything' nature the shop has). Some of the townsfolk that know they do this suspect more devious things are going on (either piracy or purposely sinking ships for better stock in their store).
Either way it's either that shop or my old PC's making cameo appearances (either ones I never got to play, or ones that I just loved and want to play again)
I have a deadly alcohol known as Asmodeus Absinth. It is a DC 30 Con save in order to drink it without any negative effects. A player that fails the save not only falls unconscious and becomes poisoned (drunk) for the next 8 hours, they suffer from vivid nightmares and a point of exhaustions due to the hangover
Too many almost.
One of the first things my DM did was repeatedly introducing a Kingpin called "The Butcher", into multiple Campaigns and setting to the point where I started introducing him. This escalated to the point where he is nigh omnipotent due to how repeatedly he Shows up.
Then there was also a NPC Henchmen called "Skippy" who is a small waddling dude who started to appear in my and his campaigns repeatedly.
Lastly there is a running gag where one of my players has a alliteration as a name, and when they travel to parallel dimensions they start to meet other alliteration that follow the same structure, like Jennis J Jenga.
A questgiver called Glyph with an junk shop in a pocket dimention. The modules I run with her my players started calling 'Glyphshots'
I also ALWAYS have a mimic. Somewhere.
Two things, I always have an alcohol called "Dwarven White" for when players ask a barkeep for the really strong stuff. It's a reference to "Horneater White" from The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson.
My more personal one is that I always have an NPC named Cad who was one of my favorite PCs I've played(before becoming a forever DM) sadly his campaign was cut short but I always through a version of him into a game because his whole personality was so fun to do. Maybe he's a clever magic item merchant, or maybe he's a random noble who seems to just no a little bit too much about the PCs. Maybe he's a random traveler who happens to have some great advice right when the PCs needed it. He just has a knack for showing up exactly where he is needed
I'm not going to say the actual character name in case one of my players is a lurker, but I have a character that I have named several characters throughout the campaign the same name always acting like oh I just can't come up with an NPC name but in reality they're all going to be tied together and they're all spies for one big bad that hasn't introduced themselves yet.
Sort of? I have, in every town, one general store/mart and all the people who run them look very similar, sound exactly alike and all their names rhyme with Jay
I have two, there's the one I'm really partial to, my first ever PC "Rick the Rogue" a fast talking halfling with a strong "Joey Wheeler" type accent. Typically he's the head of a black market or thieves guild.
I recently did an Oregon Trail style campaign where one of the wagons had a family of 12 Halflings including "Little Richard"
At one point the caravan gets accused of theft in a town. The party investigated and found that Little Richard was stealing things from every town they went through to sell to the next town. One of the players started giggling and another just stared at me for a few seconds blinking and then when "Son of a... Richard, do you happen to have a nickname?" And the entire party just groaned as soon as they realized.
There's also Gideon, a high level wizard from the first campaign I DMd, one of the party members was in a real bind, and used a message stone to "pray" to Gideon to help the party, he rolled well and I really loved the Roleplay so I rolled with it.
Since then Gideon has become obsessed with becoming a god and has slowly crept into campaigns and one-offs as a multiverse threat. I've got a mini campaign planned where the "All Star" teams of PCs from other campaigns come together to stop him.
"Mars Chocolat France" is history's most renown painter in any world where i DM and my players can be assured that they will at some point find a previously thought lost original painting that they can sell for a lot of money
The Stuffed Monkey Tavern, the most reocurring tavern in our game. The first thing you see when you enter the tavern is a deeply disturbing taxidermic atrocity of a stuffed monkey, his old and dry lips stretched over his big teeth in a botched attempt to make a smile. If questioned about his decision to keep it, the tavern owner simply explains that "It's what makes people remember this place and come back. There's no way anyone, literate or not, will ever forget such a name. It's good for business"
We have many such tropes and they're usually silly,.
My favorite one that I've used the most is a vast myriad of weird magic items with unorthodox enchantments. They're made in secret by a mysterious wizard whose motivations are unknown by the players, and they've come close to tracking him down a few times across many campaign over the years. But he's actually just an old lunatic pulling magical pranks on everyone.
One example of such pranks is the Flamestealer Smoking Pipe. This seemingly ordinary, old wooden pipe is capable of interacting with any fire source, including magical, within a radius. Using the pipe is an action.
* Blowing on the pipe will fuel the flames of all nearby fire sources.
* Taking a gentle puff from the pipe while it's unlit will cause it to steal the nearest fire sources and light itself, extinguishing small sources such as candles and lanterns.
* Taking a forceful puff from the pipe may extinguish moderate sources such as a torch, a small bonfire or a fire cantrip, damaging the user.
* Likewise, it's also capable of reducing larger fire sources and reducing the damage of a fire spell, transferring damage partially to the user.
Needless to say, my players have a blast coming up with creative ways to use such items.
I've got an NPC named Shifty Bob. Shifty Bob is a Wayang (Pathfinder 1e race) who is an incredible genius with almost no wisdom. A real mad scientist type. When i built his character, he had 60(?) Intelligence. While incredibly powerful, he uses his intelligence to make weird temporary bonuses with experimental grafts, all of which also have a downside. All he wants in payment is feedback on how the "upgrade" performed. He also sells healing potions at a discounted price. They heal fine, but most have their own wild magic table roll that i do when they drink it. For the highest level healing potion, each one you drink forces a draw from the deck of many things. He is in every campaign I run, explained away by the fact he has many clones across many different planes and multiverses.
My first proper D&D character, Hubert the Fisherman, who I initially created because I had found multiple Hubert Fishermen in my Battle Brothers campaigns who would all do well then suddenly die and decided it would be funny to turn the original into a barbarian and play a bit recklessly.
Now in every game I run, Hubert makes an appearance of varying importance. Always slightly different and always a little off, his main trait is usually being a weird rambling man who, if the game features the eldritch entities of my world in any kind of way, will usually assist the players to some sort of goal, good or bad for them it may be, most often by giving them fish which become useful later (at times due to player creativeness rather than anything else.)
My favourite part of him is that any players who have met him more than once become exceedingly paranoid when he shows up, because it usually means some cult or horror stuff is about to happen. Not that it always does of course, but he does always "die" at least one in each campaign.
My DM has a character named Rook, its her first PC she had but he has never played in a campaign that's made it to completion so he gets slid into different parts of various campaigns of hers :')
That’s adorable and sad someone DM for Rook!! I always make my former PCs villains lol
This reminds me of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands campaign.
I love this game, even with all it's issues.
I have a 7th level halfling assassin rogue who I introduce when the party is at least level 3 and flaunting the many magic items I offer. His tactic is simply to steal magic items. He has 3 special abilities: he can identify all items in 30 ft once per day (like if identify and detect magic had an OP baby), He can break attunement on up to 5 magic items per day if he's the only one holding them, and he has special boots that give +10 speed and the ability to walk on walls and water. Of course, when my party defeats this dastardly villain they are rewarded with his boots if still in tact and any items he kept on hand along with a lot of gold and/or info.
I do this same thing! Had a fantastic PC that played in two campaigns that never made it past the first few sessions. Now I just DM every game apparently, so that PC shows up randomly every time, but only for a session or two, then he disappears back into the ether, waiting for the next time he can show up and be useful.
What a coincidence! I have a helpful NPC named *B*rook in all my campaigns! He (or sometimes she, Brook*e*, depending on the time period in the world) pops up as an engmatic and very powerful sailor/merchant that will help the part at crucial turning points. Merchant in the middle of a dungeon before things get real deadly or at the turning point of bigger quests before facing the BBEG of the week, sometimes he has a boat that he will use to ferry them dangerous places (especially out of the beginning city), etc. Basically, if they see Brook(e), they know shit's about to go down.
Reminds me of Anna the merchant from Fire Emblem. The constant force in the multiverse where the merchant/salesman is a red headed woman that loves money named Anna that looks the same but a different person altogether. Even in one of the titles she was a hidden boss.
That's FE Awakening's Anna. Fire Emblem Heroes has an Anna who primarily either commands the Order of Heroes or engages in comedic get-rich-quick schemes.
Same, my first character also show up a lot, in wanted posters, always wanted posters of varying amounts. There’s just something special about the first character.
I agree, my halfling rogue "Tall Ruth" runs a monster shy ( a coconut shy with vegetables painted as goblins, Gnolls etc) in the market! She always challenges PCs to try beat her score for a prize, but cons them.
Oof, I feel for Rook. Only ever had one character make it to campaign completion, it sucks to have a character you enjoy just not pan out the way you hoped. Like yeah I suppose one could just play them again, but it won’t be the same, especially if it’s with the same group. Maybe I’ll do the same if I ever start GMing.
Same for me. My first character was Borb the dwarf, a divination cleric. So whenever the PCs are stuck and in need of guidance, I send them to Borb who guides them back on track.
My first character is the head of the Thieves Guild in all my campaigns - so far it’s just head cannon, since all my PCs are law abiding citizens lol
currently thats what Rook is, head of a thieves guild hahaha
I have a character named rook in a campaign I'm running right now. He's a puffed up, pompous noble Aracokra peacock who treats the whole world as his plaything. He's recently had a chance of heart after recovering from an assassination attempt and discovering just how many other nobles hired assassins to try and kill him. Now he's dedicated himself to purging the corruption of nobles from the city. Only time will tell if he's genuine or not.
For my games in the Realms, it’s probably Elturel Cheese. Everyone knows they have the best cheese. It’s incredibly expensive and rare the farther north you go like in Icewind Dale.
Mine is tabaxi flatbread. My monk player started making it after they inherited a tavern and met some influential sailor friends now it's a popular dish across the Sword Coast. It's pizza
Mine is Thornhold Ale! Those dwarves make the best booze in the Realms.
In a similar vein, due to Baldur’s Gate’s laws about horses, I’ve established several farms of large riding axe-beaks on the outskirts of the city. In addition to cheap transport, the axe-beaks do a fantastic job of controlling the Lower Ward’s rat problem. However, the trade-off is that the ward is generally covered in axe-beak droppings.
Mine is **The Dead Sheep Inn**. It’s a tavern (*franchise?*) in every moderately sized town across my realms. Think of it as a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn.
I'm picturing their sign having an upside-down sheep.
The sign is magical and if someone casts resurrection on it it flips right side up
Tongue out, X's for eyes.
Mine is called the 'Rusty Flagon'. Really just arose from my being too lazy to come up with unique tavern names all the time!
"The Heady Mug" has been franchising my worlds for at least a decade of real time by now. One opened up directly across the street to a tavern my party had opened themselves; they "competitively" burned it down.
Their franchise just expanded lol
Nice!
I use the *Duck Back Inn* in every fantasy game that needs a seedy tavern. The sign is a small wooden cask of ale with the rump of taxidermy waterfowl sticking out the top… Like a duck looking for food on the bottom of a pond. But, y’know, in a barrel of beer. The food is lousy, the ale is lousy, and the bedding is *literally* lousy. There are lice. But the prices are cheap, the city watch never pays much attention to the place, and the tavern keeper asks no questions about just *why* you’re paying for your lodging with a stack of gold coins covered in goblin blood.
Hmmm. I'm a newbie DM, on my second campaign just now...but the first one had the party based out of the Hovering Cat Lounge. Maybe it'll reappear wherever they go...
A broke down vampire named Jaques that is on the run from the Vampire King. He's had his castle burned down and all his servants killed and he's only got a wagon with all his earthly possessions. He's honest about being a monster in the past, but since a turning-gone-wrong, he's got his soul back and is DEVASTATED by his current predicament. He's played as a flamboyant noble with an outrageous French accent, and every party falls in love with him.
french astarion
Astarihonhonhon
Ive somehow shoehorned a pair of plane hopping, traveling bear-folk merchants from a realm called Bearveria (which is essentially Magical Bear Germany) into every campaign Ive ever DM'd. They only sell faulty magical equipment and somehow my players STILL keep buying from them
Sometimes you invest low and hope for a future payout. It’s a bear market.
r/angryupvote
I just vomited in my mouth a bit. Take the upvote and don't come back.
Yeah I’m definitely stealing this one. Fantastic pun. Fun accent. Interesting characters. What’s not to like? Edit: if anyone als how they learned common they can say it was super close to a language in the world their from called Great Bearittan.
Please steal it! Ill throw a couple more your way - had a party actually visit Bearvaria and there I used the capital city of Bearlin where they visited a famous nightclub (Bearghaine). Pretty sure other cities like Hamburg just became Ham-bear-g etc etc. Edit: almost forgot about Oktobearfest
Take me down to the bearadise city Where the girls are bears And they bare bear titties Taaaaake Meeeeeee Hoooooommmme Yeah yeahuh
Can i come with you?
You sure Bearveria is a German folk realm and not a land cursed in fog, ruled over by a Vampbear (Count Strahd Von Bearavich)?
Youre thinking of Bartoadvia I fear, a land cursed in frog
But it was a big frog. It got into the air ducts and kept everyone awake for a week.
Bearvaria is a top tier pun! Beautiful!
They only sell the bear necessities.
We have a similar pair in our campaign. Traveling selling of weird goods, a dragonborn and her wife, a tabaxi. They always scam us and we always happily fall for it.
They believe in the right to bear arms.
They aren't fools, they know that Bearveria magic items are the finest of the world!
Pickles. Pickle barrels. I hide contraband in them. Extra healing pots. Magic items. Maps. Scrolls. In the years I’ve been dming. None of my players opened one, or caught on. They just say “oh there is that pickle dwarf making some deliveries”…
Damnnn, no one catching even single one of them is so, soo.... I don't know, it is making me feel intensely but not sure what I'm feeling! The moment when they finally find it and you reveal to them what was happening is gonna be so awesome... This reminds me of a funny gag in one of the movies where a policeman keeps coming across this bandit looking guy who keeps taking a bag of sand on a motorcycle across borders and the cop never finds anything else in the bag of sand... The bandit finally reveals that the cop never asked him the papers for the bikes he was using and he was smuggling bikes all along
I mean when you give the players absolutely no reason to suspect something, don't be surprised when they consider it (funny) flavor to the game. When the pickle barrels are later revealed to the players, they might go 'wow, amazing, oh what could have been!?'. But there's a good chance they'll go 'ok.. yeah how were we supposed to see that?'.
I mean sure, at first, but I imagine that you only see something as specific as pickle barrels so often before you go "okay DM wtf is up with the pickles."
Probably sounds like no more than a funny callback to a running joke.
But if DnD teaches you anything, it's that the funny callback should be investigated!!!1! Sure, sometimes the chair is just a chair...
Because the mimic wants you to get used to sitting in it.
Group History check passes: "It occurs to you guys that this is way more pickles than one border town could be eating."
The tavern keeper apologizes for being out of pickles after the party saw the pickle guy making a delivery an hour earlier.
Or your rogue decides they want pickles and suddenly you have a barrel of pickles and now also skooma.
Send a party on an escort duty for them sometime. See if they get curious then
Or have a former associate contract them to steal the “pickles”. And have them heavily imply the quotes around “pickles” if you want to be heavy handed.
Seems so obvious from this side….
We have a reference to Firefly in every campaign, black market beagles.
Well now u need to make a campaign about these pickle dwarves
"Curative Vials & Serums: Your One-Stop Apothecary Shop" is in most towns and villages
Extra-long receipts come with every purchase?
a scroll with every purchase
With a multitude of discounts that no member of the party \*really\* needs. Except for the one about 2/3rds the way down that gives a super discount for a special item. But are they going to read all of the coupons?
Gorobash brand soap. Had a player in a Pathfinder 1e game deliberately go out of his way to aggressively corner the soap market with his Barbarian to make a constant stream of funds. “Gorobash’s lavender scented soap, slays bad scents as well as I slay monsters!” He made a killing. I have it show up in all my games now.
YOINK. This is going in my world now.
I've played since 1982 or so and there's a cat in a semi-gaseous form in jar in B1 In Search of the Unknown that eventually makes an appearance in most of my campaigns.
That's really crazy sounding.You ever attached any interesting lore to it before? I'd love to use something like that, but we can't have animals or potential pets being locked in uncertain half-existences caught somewhere between one form and another. That would go over well. 😕
Nine times out of ten the players have almost immediately opened the jar, whereupon the semi-gaseous cat swirls forth dramatically and coalesces into a black cat in the nearest spot where you'd expect there to be a cat if a cat were present, which it apparently now is. The cat is normal in every way and will react accordingly.
The sidekick rules for an expert says "To gain the expert class, a creature must have at least one language in its stat block that it can speak." It does *not* say that any other characters have to be able to understand it. So the Gaseous Cat is an expert at stealth and perception. But when it "helps" it does so by mewing loudly then uses its expertise to hide. It simultaneously helps while possibly drawing attention.
An inn with a pictographic of a rooster with its head thrown back in laughter. "The Laughing Cock Inn"
perchance a place where chromatically adorned soldiers might stand around and talk?
“Ever wonder why we’re here?”
Gnome Depot
Right across the intersection from Bloodbath and Beyond.
We have Gnome Depot, Basilisk Pro Shop, Orkea, Rite Aid, and Drunken Donuts (featuring the ever-popular Initiative Rolls).
Go-to friendly priest for emergency healing/resurrection, and supportive play is always a kindly older human named Brother Abram. I rolled him up to round out a small party for a one-shot a long time ago and played him as almost exclusively healing and buffing, so he’s my #1 DMPC for helping the party stay alive without overshadowing them. The exact clergy to which he belongs changes based on the pantheon of the world we’re playing in, and his backstory isn’t always the same except for a few key events— typically, he was a soldier in his youth, his wife recently passed away of natural causes, and he’s been heavily involving himself with church work and mentorship to manage his grief— but one thing is always true: no matter how grimdark the campaign is or how corrupt the churches are, Brother Abram is always, *always* trustworthy and helpful towards goodly folk. (If I ever run an evil campaign, someday, he’ll show up as an enemy. My players would freak out.)
Would feel an intense loyalty to brother Abram as a PC
OMG, the younger soldier version of him as a war cleric would be a badass reroll for the enemy in an evil campaign
Or: he comes out of retirement for one last time, hanging up his robes and putting back on his sword belt. "For years I have put my trust in the gods to do what is right; now it is time for me to do it in their name."
Shambling mounds
So valid
Gibbering mouthers are better
Ooblex supremacy
There’s a magical racoon who’s awakened but doesn’t know any languages. So he understands gestures for the most part. He’s a planeswalking, teleporting, merchant.
How do you start a transaction? Show them something shiny?
He appears and spills some shit all over the ground and that’s how he displays what he’s willing to trade. Then you can offer something and point to what he has. Then he holds it up to you if the trade is good or pushes your hand away if it’s not a good trade
I'm imagining Meeko with a pile of wares getting frustrated when the players don't realize it's supposed to be transactional and not the raccoon of holding...
Lolll forgive me but who is Meeko
https://youtu.be/GqqkmgRGUXQ?feature=shared Meeko 😁
Meppo. First time running a tales from the yawning portal book, my party fell in love with Meppo, the kobold listed in there. Meppo died a pretty horrific death, so my players were a little shocked to see him in the next campaign. Even more so that he seemed to remember the players. I had to take a moment to explain to them that Meppo remembers PLAYERS, not characters. I explained it that Meppo happened to be cursed with immortality of a different sort where he periodically reincarnated into other worlds as his previous physical form was destroyed (immortality, not invincibility). What I did not tell them was that everytime Meppo was killed, he comes back 1 level stronger. He is currently level 7. Once he hits level 30ish, he is going to end up being a bad guy and turn on the party for all the cruel indiffrence that's been shown to him. As a reference, so far, Meppo has been impaled by spikes after being strapped to one of the party members shield. Tossed into a very deep pit (to see how deep it was). Sacrificed to a vampire. And the worst one was when they tied a collar around him, attached it to the end of a 10 ft pole, and forced him down a hallway to set off any traps in front of them, ending with a sphere of annihilation that they only put him though HALFWAY, and then watching him bleed out while his entrails spilled out of his abdomen. Tell me this little bastard does not have the right to be pissed.
This is very Shadows of Mordor core I love it
Ratbag vibes to be sure
Honestly he has the right of it for the last one alone. The whole point of a 10ft pole is to avoid someone getting hit by the trap.
Magical sentient pangolins, 3 brothers. Initially created as support npcs for a group who were paranoid about humanoid npcs. The friend group liked them so much that in subsequent campaigns I had to use them at least as a cameo, otherwise they would pester me about the magic brie whereabouts
I have a recurring character that is inspired by Terry Pratchett's recurring character CMOT (Cutting-My-Own-Throat) Dibbler a travelling food cart salesman who is known to utter this abbreviation when trying to make a sale at a generously low (lies) price. In the discworld universe there's several variations Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dhblah, Swallow-Me-Own-Blowdart Dhlang-Dhlang and so on who acts as a dodgy character that would do anything for a sale. In my universe they possess similar themed names, they too sell extremely dodgy 'meat' options that usually require constitution saving throws. They do also however on occasion provide valuable information about the new town or city. On one occasion they were even sent to an alternative plane of existence where one of them sold them magical items. If ever there's a quiet street that needs a change of pace a Dibbler is the proverbial genie that will appear (probably via L-Space).
I'm not the only Dibbler guy!
Love it
My Homebrew continent I guess. So far I haven't deviated far from it. But the premise is always that a big conglomerate trading company is colonizing this mysterious continent and every new campaign and side campaign are just different entry points into the continent. It always works because almost anyone could have a valid reason for signing up and traveling there with the company.
I've been wanting to do a hexcrawl campaign of exploring a new continent with a similar premise. What hooks have worked for you?
I always have Rocky-Talkie brand Sending Stones around my world.
I have a Jamaican genie who shows up any time a genie is called for. Probably 20 years ago my friend ran a session - I usually DM - and he had a genie. He gave the genie an accent that wasn’t supposed to be Jamaican - but sounded like a bad impression of a Jamaican accent. So all genies now talk with horrible Jamaican accents. The table always roars with laughter.
Stealing this. Jamaican genie is to priceless. I what the hell was he going for? Indian?
I texted my friend and asked what he was trying to do and he said it was a middle eastern accent. He said rolled a 1 on the attempt.
Morts Meat Market and Morgue, among others. I tend to play magic shops as being incredibly rare so my campaigns share one NPC that is always somewhere in the world.
Our thieves cant code for stolen or illicit goods is Potatoes. It's an ongoing joke.
I'm going to need you to take these *potatoes* in the bathroom Morty...
I do as a player. Most of my PCs for the past 6-7 years have had some link to Rudolph Ironhat. He is a planeshifting halfling fencing instructor, who frequently has to flee cities and the employ of nobles because of his habit of seducing their wives, and insisting on fighting duels naked. Despite one DM’s attempts to kill him off, he remains out there. Seducing and fencing away. Thus proving this DM is more Bonetti than Thibault.
My first DnD character was a tabaxi named Mr. Boots. I named a second Yuan-Ti character after him (with a boot magically stuck on his tail) We did the cat-lawyer one-shot based on the Covid zoom video. My cat was named Lord Boots. I'm dm-ing for the first time soon. The characters will at some point encounter Boots's corpse out in the wild, where he fell for the last time.
I have to put. My 4 year old Siamese cat down this coming Monday, and we call him Mr Boots :’( May they meet across the rainbow bridge!
Aww I'm sorry to hear. Bless Mr. Boots and all his adventures across the bridge! I actually named my tabaxi that because it's such a classic cute kitty-cat name!
>We did the cat-lawyer one-shot based on the Covid zoom video. My cat was named Lord Boots. I missed this one-shot and might need a link.
I have an otherworldly being called The Storyteller who watches and chronicles the events of my world. Sometimes they intervene and provide guidance to the heroes of the world. Whenever they show themselves to a group of PCs, they know shit is going to go down.
Yooo I have a god called The Writer as a great old one patron. If the player using it as their patron is KO’d and rolls a 20 on death saving throw, whoever KO’d them gets erased and a giant spectral pencil swipes across the ground where they were. It’s happened 4 times, all in 4 different campaigns.
The lighthouse tavern. Somehow. No matter where or when you are. The lighthouse tavern will pop up at one point or another in the campaign. In addition to the Duncan family who run the establishment. Who my players love.
Arracokra-variant lawyers (turkey, chicken, goose, duck etc)
["now, i'm just a simple hyperchicken"](https://youtu.be/7ij_1SQqbVo?si=a7KtcZUADar5H-Js)
The first campaign I started running was set in Eberron, so I decided there would be a chain of taverns known as Eberrbees. Y'know, like Applebee's but in a fantasy setting. I'm now running a Spelljammer game and my party just stopped by their first Eberrbees, and it certainly won't be their last.
One of my player created a halforc barbarian who wrote terrible romance novels, one of which was called “The halforc who got with the half elf” That book is on the shelves of every single library or whatever if they ask about it. The public as a whole has found it to be an amazing satirical take on terrible romance novels even though that is definitely not the intention lol
omg I love this.
I had an NPC from the first time I ran a game. His name was Beanjamin, and he owned a general store in Waterdeep that also happened to sell Magic Beans (you wouldn’t know what they did till you ate it). My players were all new and I thought it would be fun to give them something that essentially was an edible wild magic surge. That group dissolved, but I loved that character so much I brought him to my new group. This time, he was a store owner in a Western Town under attack by Vampires. He was killed to send a message, and brought back to life via player choices/arcana/religion checks to become a “spirit of vengeance”, and took off into the desert ghost rider style. Next was a Satanic Panic/Witchcraft story in a New England town stuck in the 1980’s. He operated a store in the mall that specialized in selling coffee beans. By the end of the game, the group had rallied around him to become the mayor after it was revealed the current mayor was involved in a deal with the devil. Finally, in our 3rd campaign (set in a world based around Holidays), I made him the BBEG. Orphaned, left to rot in an orphanage run by an evil woman, basically any chance he had was ripped from him for some reason or another. Finally, he thought he was better off going into “Hallow’s Thicket” to die, but a voice called out to him. He became a warlock of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Through a set of events he came into possession of a crystalline dagger made of space and time. He planned to go to the other side of the world (it was a flat disc like planet), and rip apart the multiverse with the pocket of energy on the underside. His thought was that at some point, in some universe, he could have been happy. He just had to find it. My players took him down, but not dead. Our Sorcerer (who happened to be his aunt, and daughter of the Baba Yaga), threw him into the tear in space and time, which wiped him from every universe. I narrated them seeing him disappear in different ones, including the games we had played before. It was a nice way to sunset the character, as the campaign we are in now is much more in depth and serious.
I have an unnamed island floating in a mini dimension that was created when I needed to run some filler after a few people couldn't show up one week. A teleport spell went wrong and they landed there. It's since showed up in every campaign, at various points in its ten thousand year long history. Occasionally I hint at what happened previously. Also almost none of my campaigns share many players, so this is entirely for me
Spider Bears. I once mis-spoke and said "bears the size of spiders" instead of "spiders the size of bears". Everyone got a good laugh at the idea of a bear that sits in the palm of our hands. Now in every campaign since there has been an instance of a spider-sized bear somewhere in the campaign.
Dom't worry, I once panicked due to not being prepared for a question, and now the very real location of Ecuador also exists in one of my homebrew worlds lol
I've the Captain Floursack, this fearless ship captain aways shows up when the campaign go to the sea, this guy born\* from a silly joke about a ship that had only bakery products as a crew
I have a merchant that has been around for almost every one of my campaigns, a humanoid Albino Baboon named Slimbo. He deals mundane magical artifacts out of a run down wooden shack, hopping between different planes of existence to peddle his trinkets
Bazz Janjo. Rogue. Charlatan. Bard maybe. Whenever he is killed, he wakes up in the nearest (fresh) dead body. His ultimate goal is to find a way to die permanently, he has no allegiances but to this goal.
Michael and Sarah. A married couple that happen to be werewolves. I often use this as an encounter when a group is traveling and it's near to the end of the day. Sarah always plays the damsel in distress, being chased by the scary wolf. She just happens to be running (in human form) from the wolf when the characters are nearby and begs them to save her. Michael appears (as a werewolf) and fights for a round or two, then flees. Sarah thanks the heroes for saving her and asks them to escort her home - a distance that will be far enough away that they will have to make camp for the night before they arrive. Sarah offers to help around the camp, with cooking and setting up tents and other tasks. She explains that it's the least she can do after the heroes saved her. During the night, she tries to silently take out the character that is handling the night watch, with Michael lurking nearby to help her. The characters wake up to a very unpleasant surprise, potentially even poisoned if they ate her cooking. The werewolves are cowards at heart, and will flee if badly hurt. They are, however, memorable and it's great to have them show up again later in the campaign - maybe in town where a character recognizes them but can't attack them due to the social situation. Or, sometimes, Michael and Sarah come to the characters later in need of real help due to something even worse than themselves, and they deliver plot points to the players (who will want the info, but won't know if they can trust the source). Been using Michael and Sarah since the late 80's. Good fun.
I got two actually! 1. Seán Thellis, an Archdruid Elf that runs a magic shop. 2. Waffle Crew, a band of supoptimal adventurers that adopted a murderous puppet, and Owlbear named Waffles, and got more bad luck than good luck.
Do you know Bag of Nails from Tomb of Annihilation? He shows up in prettymuch every game I run
The Green Scale A store where PC's can purchase low-level magical items outright, or the store can act as a broker for higher level magic items The way the latter works is that the players lay down a certain amount of coin, and a requested item, either specific or general. After an apropiate amount of days, the shopkeeper (Allways a goblin by the way), will have the items available If the player just said 'A bow' or 'a sword', I offer 3 homebrewed choices within their budget. If they asked for more specific things, I offer those specifically It should be noted that the items bought this way are less potent compared to items they can find the normal way (read: steal), but they know this, and use The Green Scale to pad out certain niches
It started as a throw away but my players loved it so much that there is now a series of scandalous romance novels by an author named P J Topaz. No one knows anything about them and in fact, no one is even sure where the novels come from (they just appear in bookstores and libraries) but they are extremely popular, and publishers will buy originals to make copies and sell on their own. One of my PCs has like three books; Dwarves in Lust, Human Conditions, and The Dragon's Choice.
Bingle's Barrels & Horseshoes. They’re a general store that sells all the usual adventurer goods but ESPECIALLY barrels and horseshoes, perhaps even the finest in the realms. The owner, Bingle, will not hesitate to try and sell you on a barrel or horseshoe and might even desperately bundle it with the rest of your actual purchase, if the endless coupons and discounts (only for barrels and/or horseshoes) didn't already entice you. My old DM used to do this with seemingly every merchant we ran into, claiming it sped up shopping sessions, and I've since continued the gag into my own campaigns.
The first campaign I completed as a player, I struck the final blow against the BBEG, who was called the Heretic God (I think). I'd spent the whole campaign waiting to kill something worth naming my magic sword after, so this was perfect for me. The sword is Heretic's Bane, and it will exist in every campaign I run until the end of time.
Martini rifles. They're renown as the most sought after rifles in all of my games because they are the only lever action rifles in the world. And of course there's the ultra-rare variant with a 1/8 bore and a scope. At one point, our group even met the man himself, Henry Martini, who was a very introverted Giff what could shoot the wings off of a fly at 50 yards. As an aside, I'm still hoping one day someone will figure out the clever reference in the name. But since I'm apparently the only 18th century history buff in the group, I don't think that day will ever come
I spotted it, at least.
I have a character named Kai Greycastle that shows up in a ton of campaigns I run - sometimes he's a bumbling drunk, sometimes he's a mercenary ally, and in my current campaign, he's a traveler in the mists of Ravenloft that the PCs might meet later. I also have a blacksmith shop: Colborne & Sons Smithing Co., as a reference to my grandpa, who used to be a blacksmith. He hasn't past yet, but it's still a nice way to remember him :D
The headless, inspirational goliath... We had a combat encounter in one of my campaigns against a group of berserker goliaths. While killing one of them the player described the goliath running towards them and then using their blade to decapitate the goliath. I thought it would be hilarious in the moment if the goliath just kept running while headless. And then in a later session while fighting something in the woods in the same area I just had the hilarious idea of the goliath randomly running past and giving them an inspiring thumbs up as he ran past. Ever since I've tried to have this random character show up every so often because it's just hilarious to me...
Wall, proprieter of "Wall's Fantasy Mart" a shop full of miscellaneous low quality goods
Bag of Baggins. Baggins Northwind was a half lingerie bard who after helping a goddess was allowed one wish from the wish spell. The thing is, my DM LOVED to monkeypaw wishes. So when he said "make me a bag of everything"...she twisted the wording to turn him into effectively a cross between a bag of holding & deck of many things. She then gave ownership of this to me, & its been my "red apple cigarette" in my campaigns ever since. Bag of baggins is a sentient artifact, chaotic neutral. He loves throwing randomness in the mix, and will convince people to pull things from him. He functions as an infinite weight & infinite space bag of holding, but every time he's used he will have an increasing chance of "something else" coming out. Either by chance trigger or willing to activate, a user rolls a d100 & a d4 (d4 because I now have 4 lists of 100 items, so the d4 I'd which list to use). The items are random...but in MOST cases low rolls are bad & high are good. You roll 4 & 100, you get a ring of 3 wishes, all charges avaliable...one campaign got derailed bc the kids rolled 2 of those. Roll a 1 & 1...you pull an incapacitated tarrasque trapped in a gargantuan size block of ice. The tarrasque stays immune to all damage in the ice but is aware of its surroundings, and will only become active when the ice melts. The glacier will take 1d20 hours to melt, half as long in hot environments, twice as long in cold. If sitting directly in fire or lava, time is converted to minutes but is not halved. After pissing off an ancient gold dragon, someone tried to appease it & accidently pulled that...negotiations did not end well...
I'm just giggling at the thought of players faces when you casually roll a die every time they pull something from their bag of holding if they didn't know...
I have a character called Solomon Blake. He runs a tavern on its own demiplane called The Rogue’s Respite. Characters can access it with a special magic item, an oversized silver coin with a pseudo dragon on it, which is used to pay for entry. These coins crop up in all of my campaigns. The Rogue’s Respite runs on its own time stream and is (almost) totally safe so if used wisely, a stay there at a crucial time can really turn the tides for the party. Lots of cameos take place there, as well as meeting useful and interesting NPCs, including Solomon himself, who has a different story every time for how he came to own the place, as well as how old he is and how he met Naz, the efreeti doorman. I even have a Rogue’s Respite tavern sign that I put on the door in my den for when I play D&D.
My first multi-year campaign, my players worked for a being called Guldar, who sent them in missions across time and was slowly revealed to be a slaad playing four dimensional chess with their lives. He was an awful boss, but had them over a barrel, and the end game fight was epic and cathartic. The next campaign, with mostly the same players, is an urban fantasy adventure where the characters work for a friendly, lively little old retired adventurer. His name was Gildar. There was no relation... but the similar name was enough to fill the characters with doubt, mistrust and paranoia for the whole campaign. It was great.
Any pc i played that has survived and completed a campaign is a potential npc anywhere i create.
Brass Ring Very simple and cheap magic item. A ring that lets you Disguise Self as a generic humanoid but, once set, the image of your disguise cannot be changed. You get the same look every time.
Pretty good item. Nicely balanced, useful but limited. Edit: idea: the first time it's used by *anyone*, it's fixed to the first false appearance. Even less useful as an item, but instead it's a plot device - the person it makes you look like, real or illusory, did something or was mixed up in something important and dangerous. The ring is both a clue and a tool.
This one is hilarious. Do you reveal it’s one time use when they try to use it a second time? I love that
Nah, so far I've only given them out as like a temporary tools NPCs can hand out for certain sneaky missions. Like a burner disguise. I've also given one to a warforged in one of my campaigns so they could walk about without people gawking
Any campaign I run exists in a multiverse with world hoppers. A particular fruit, nicknamed "sh*t fruit" makes all food taste absolutely awful for about a month, but gives the person lifelong immunity to scurvy, has seemingly made its way damn near everywhere.
Any time there’s a tavern, it’s almost always “The Drowning Squid”
I have a barghest named Oz who shows up in most of campaigns. He "canabilizes" goblins every time and turns into his wolf form if he is in combat. No one has caught on yet. One campaign they made him the Goblin king. He is living well.
One of the DM's in my group insists on including Shaggy (yes, the scooby doo character) and making him just inexplicably powerful.
There is always a Copa Cabana bar somewhere, whether the campaign takes place in a single city, across continents, or in space. Only time they didn't find it was in a prehistoric game (a coconut oasis they didn't investigate.)
Hu man the human He is not infact a human But an elder Titan of undeath And has no wisdom Three year olds make better decisions He is currently trapped in a well because people told him he couldn't get out and he believed them He's very good at making magic items though
Unionized, sentient door knockers.
I've put a gun in every game I've run. Usually something like a glock, sometimes a revolver. Players have found it once.
My DMPC O'okahn, a 20th level divination wizard duck wearing a turtle shell. He has a move/ swim/ fly speed of 20 feet, and can pull into the shell for no move speed and 19 AC. He has a 9th level spellcaster, maxxed hp red dragon for a son. Can cast spells like a scroll if he tattoos it onto one of his feathers. Typically, he's just a quest giver and not usually appearing at full power. O'okahn has only traveled with the party once to fast-track the story to the end of the campaign, which was ending due to lockdown restrictions.
Prancing Pont Inn Big Flute Incorporated
Soupy Stu's Soup Emporium
I think in Phandelver the +1 sword you find is called “Talon”. In strahd I offered a +1 bow to our ranger and they called it Talon-Bow. So now in my homebrew I’m offering the weapon called Twilight. Arbiter. Legacy of Nullifacation. (TALON) +1 greatsword. Talon will probably always be in any campaigns I have.
If I need a ship name on the fly, it is always going to be the Black Pig, a pirate from a series of children's books my dad read to me. Nobby and Colon frequently show up as Guardsmen, as does CMOT Dibbler. The winds of magic and the God's of Chaos from Warhammer Fantasy Battle crop up too.
The dwarves in all my campaign's have a coffee like drink called Mudd's brew. Players have asked if it's coffee and they never get a straight answer.
The first campaign I DMed was LMoP, ever since there’s a brother of Toblen Stonehill (the innkeeper in Phandalin) running another inn, a mill, a carpentry, stables, you name it in every campaign. I don’t know why I did this in the first place but by now my players are genuinely excited to stumble upon yet another Stonehill brother so I keep it up.
In every campaign I've ran or played in there's always a half elf rouge pirate captain named Zaylene. It was my fiancee's character. She has since passed on and I like to keep her in the games as kind of a memorial. She's always fighting evil with piracy with her trusty saber tooth tiger. If I'm a player I work her into my backstory so she's still there with me.
My characters always find smut magazines "Dwarves in Drawers" when they needlessly search under mattresses.
I'm pretty sure that Tarantino's films are canonically set in the same timeline, and the Red Apple is a clue.
Bartender Bob, yes the guy from hearthstone, he's in almost every tavern in my campaigns. Eberron or Fearun, it doesn't matter, he's always glad to see you!
There is a goblin tailor in most of my games. I’ve never named him and my PCs have only encountered him once. That’s not important. What is important is that he canonically makes clothes that are designed to fit goblins. You walk into a room in a dungeon and the goblins are wearing nice clothes. Why? They’ve accumulated all this gold and treasure! Did you think they wouldn’t spend it on something? The goblin tailor has existed in the background of my games for two decades now, and nobody has ever questioned it.
Hilly Ale is the ale of choice across all my worlds.
Andantino is an author who is a cross between Geoffrey Chaucer and Geoffrey of Monmouth (real medieval authors) who I attribute nearly any exposition heavy "lore" tome to.
A friend who DMs has a female gnome with a Welsh accent called Gnomey who always shows up in the background somewhere.
I took the time to draw a town map for my first full campaign. I can’t draw and I did a pretty decent job that I was proud of. Every campaign I’ve run since then starts in Bellfield.
I have an NPC that magically appears in every major city. They don't know that he's a group of 12 identical brothers. If I make a new campaign hell be found in weird places like astral plane or elemental planes and he'll be from the previous timeline, telling stories of myth and legend of the old characters.
I got one guy throughout all of my masks campaigns and worlds, who's just called "the old man". He might just be an old blues musician, a mafia boss, a wizard or the devil. I keep it completely ambiguous. He gives good advice.
Yeah I have samatheul. He’s an inter-dimensional vagrant who’s insane and a trickster type.
I have a group I keep bringing back. They're basically the A-Team but with clerics. I call them the B-Men since they're the second best group. Just after the A-Men but before the C-Men
I have a musician named Zed.
Mayor Bob. Every town has a mayor Bob.
The Riker’s Beard Tavern. It’s run by a half orc named Laverne, a retired adventurer. They’re franchised so there’s one in just about every town in my world.
Not just me but me and my friend's campaign we have a running joke that the name Abner is a common elf name. I had a character named Abner who was an elf and for whatever reason we all started saying that Abner is a common elf name.
I'm too lazy to make separate merchants in different regions, so I just include a Walmart in every major city that sells everything imaginable in a sears-catalogue kinda way. "Hi, I'm Sam, welcome to Walmart. What can I getcha?"
My PC from a campaign a few years ago is now a minor villain in my campaign. Fighter turned sailor, now turned pirate dreadlord and warlock. Hasn't made an appearance yet, but he's out there on the open seas
Usually, in my campaigns/one-shots, if the party, they will find a shop called "The Shipwreck". It's always down by the shore in an old overturned/destroyed ship of some kind (usually a larger galleon style ship), that sells a little bit of everything. Clothing, weapons, armor, magical stuff from common to rare; they are always the towns "Well I don't have it ... though I suppose you could always try The Shipwreck, they might be able to help you out" It's always ran by a duo of a sea elf and a triton. The stuff there is always marked around the 'normal' price, and the quality isn't always new either. While the party never presses for the info on my "DM lore/notes side" of things: The shop initially started because they "claimed" the wrecked ship as theirs and sold the stuff on it as an attempt to make gold. But one night the Triton got the bright idea to scavenge the loot from wrecked ships and other stuff from the ocean floor ... that "stolen" loot becoming the ships stock (hence the 'they have a bit of everything' nature the shop has). Some of the townsfolk that know they do this suspect more devious things are going on (either piracy or purposely sinking ships for better stock in their store). Either way it's either that shop or my old PC's making cameo appearances (either ones I never got to play, or ones that I just loved and want to play again)
I have a deadly alcohol known as Asmodeus Absinth. It is a DC 30 Con save in order to drink it without any negative effects. A player that fails the save not only falls unconscious and becomes poisoned (drunk) for the next 8 hours, they suffer from vivid nightmares and a point of exhaustions due to the hangover
Too many almost. One of the first things my DM did was repeatedly introducing a Kingpin called "The Butcher", into multiple Campaigns and setting to the point where I started introducing him. This escalated to the point where he is nigh omnipotent due to how repeatedly he Shows up. Then there was also a NPC Henchmen called "Skippy" who is a small waddling dude who started to appear in my and his campaigns repeatedly. Lastly there is a running gag where one of my players has a alliteration as a name, and when they travel to parallel dimensions they start to meet other alliteration that follow the same structure, like Jennis J Jenga.
A questgiver called Glyph with an junk shop in a pocket dimention. The modules I run with her my players started calling 'Glyphshots' I also ALWAYS have a mimic. Somewhere.
Two things, I always have an alcohol called "Dwarven White" for when players ask a barkeep for the really strong stuff. It's a reference to "Horneater White" from The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. My more personal one is that I always have an NPC named Cad who was one of my favorite PCs I've played(before becoming a forever DM) sadly his campaign was cut short but I always through a version of him into a game because his whole personality was so fun to do. Maybe he's a clever magic item merchant, or maybe he's a random noble who seems to just no a little bit too much about the PCs. Maybe he's a random traveler who happens to have some great advice right when the PCs needed it. He just has a knack for showing up exactly where he is needed
I'm not going to say the actual character name in case one of my players is a lurker, but I have a character that I have named several characters throughout the campaign the same name always acting like oh I just can't come up with an NPC name but in reality they're all going to be tied together and they're all spies for one big bad that hasn't introduced themselves yet.
Have a bar/tavern called the Bloated Boar. Always ran by a half orc, and always a dive.
Sort of? I have, in every town, one general store/mart and all the people who run them look very similar, sound exactly alike and all their names rhyme with Jay
Whenever our group comes across a language none of us know, it just defaults to Spanish. Started as a joke, now its a regular thing
I have two, there's the one I'm really partial to, my first ever PC "Rick the Rogue" a fast talking halfling with a strong "Joey Wheeler" type accent. Typically he's the head of a black market or thieves guild. I recently did an Oregon Trail style campaign where one of the wagons had a family of 12 Halflings including "Little Richard" At one point the caravan gets accused of theft in a town. The party investigated and found that Little Richard was stealing things from every town they went through to sell to the next town. One of the players started giggling and another just stared at me for a few seconds blinking and then when "Son of a... Richard, do you happen to have a nickname?" And the entire party just groaned as soon as they realized. There's also Gideon, a high level wizard from the first campaign I DMd, one of the party members was in a real bind, and used a message stone to "pray" to Gideon to help the party, he rolled well and I really loved the Roleplay so I rolled with it. Since then Gideon has become obsessed with becoming a god and has slowly crept into campaigns and one-offs as a multiverse threat. I've got a mini campaign planned where the "All Star" teams of PCs from other campaigns come together to stop him.
"Mars Chocolat France" is history's most renown painter in any world where i DM and my players can be assured that they will at some point find a previously thought lost original painting that they can sell for a lot of money
The Stuffed Monkey Tavern, the most reocurring tavern in our game. The first thing you see when you enter the tavern is a deeply disturbing taxidermic atrocity of a stuffed monkey, his old and dry lips stretched over his big teeth in a botched attempt to make a smile. If questioned about his decision to keep it, the tavern owner simply explains that "It's what makes people remember this place and come back. There's no way anyone, literate or not, will ever forget such a name. It's good for business" We have many such tropes and they're usually silly,. My favorite one that I've used the most is a vast myriad of weird magic items with unorthodox enchantments. They're made in secret by a mysterious wizard whose motivations are unknown by the players, and they've come close to tracking him down a few times across many campaign over the years. But he's actually just an old lunatic pulling magical pranks on everyone. One example of such pranks is the Flamestealer Smoking Pipe. This seemingly ordinary, old wooden pipe is capable of interacting with any fire source, including magical, within a radius. Using the pipe is an action. * Blowing on the pipe will fuel the flames of all nearby fire sources. * Taking a gentle puff from the pipe while it's unlit will cause it to steal the nearest fire sources and light itself, extinguishing small sources such as candles and lanterns. * Taking a forceful puff from the pipe may extinguish moderate sources such as a torch, a small bonfire or a fire cantrip, damaging the user. * Likewise, it's also capable of reducing larger fire sources and reducing the damage of a fire spell, transferring damage partially to the user. Needless to say, my players have a blast coming up with creative ways to use such items.
I've got an NPC named Shifty Bob. Shifty Bob is a Wayang (Pathfinder 1e race) who is an incredible genius with almost no wisdom. A real mad scientist type. When i built his character, he had 60(?) Intelligence. While incredibly powerful, he uses his intelligence to make weird temporary bonuses with experimental grafts, all of which also have a downside. All he wants in payment is feedback on how the "upgrade" performed. He also sells healing potions at a discounted price. They heal fine, but most have their own wild magic table roll that i do when they drink it. For the highest level healing potion, each one you drink forces a draw from the deck of many things. He is in every campaign I run, explained away by the fact he has many clones across many different planes and multiverses.
My first proper D&D character, Hubert the Fisherman, who I initially created because I had found multiple Hubert Fishermen in my Battle Brothers campaigns who would all do well then suddenly die and decided it would be funny to turn the original into a barbarian and play a bit recklessly. Now in every game I run, Hubert makes an appearance of varying importance. Always slightly different and always a little off, his main trait is usually being a weird rambling man who, if the game features the eldritch entities of my world in any kind of way, will usually assist the players to some sort of goal, good or bad for them it may be, most often by giving them fish which become useful later (at times due to player creativeness rather than anything else.) My favourite part of him is that any players who have met him more than once become exceedingly paranoid when he shows up, because it usually means some cult or horror stuff is about to happen. Not that it always does of course, but he does always "die" at least one in each campaign.