Random NPC Traits to the Rescue!

It's been said before, but one of the greatest pleasures of DMing and world-building is taking a random set of numbers and making sense of them, making them fit into your milieu. I absolutely love AD&D's rules pertaining to random NPC characteristics, because it makes you come up with a personality that somehow meshes with the broad strokes you've already laid down.

By way of a for instance, in populating the town of Whiteraven (the main hamlet out of which my PCs will be operating), I created the Mayor, a one Lady Beryl, a 4th level human fighter whose alignment is Neutral Good (she puts the welfare of her town above precepts of Law or Chaos). So I rolled on the NPC trait table in the 2e Players Handbook. I don't know if this is how you're supposed to use this table. As a matter of fact, I can't find anywhere where it says exactly how to use it, but as the Grognards might say, it's that very insubstantial attitude that makes the older D&D editions great. But I digress.

I roll a d20 for a general trait, and d100 for a specific trait. So for Lady Beryl, I got arrogant and avaricious. Not exactly the kind of personality one would associate with a Neutral Good fighter! So instead of re-rolling, I thought of how to make these traits fit with an NG mayor-fighter type. This is what I came up with:

"She knows she's good at her job, even better than her lord. She cares about her subjects but sees making their lives better mostly as a means to make her own better. She takes small cuts of tax money which she hoards away; she doesn't spend it on lavish living, but tells herself it's an "emergency fund" for the town. In truth, she's loath to ever spend any of it."

So because of this random roll, I have an NPC that is three-dimensional and believable as a real person. She's someone with her own motives and desires, not just a "friendly mayor" for the PCs to interact with. She's a good person, but one with flaws and shortcomings (of course, she would simply say she's being pragmatic and practical!). The point is: I love making sense of random statistics. It encourages creativity and forces me to think outside my own little box. I can already think of a half-dozen adventure hooks that could spring from Lady Beryl's position and personality, and I can't wait to see those ideas come to fruition.