If you'll permit me a moment of egocentricity I'd just like say that I personally believe I have a pretty damn good NPC collection. Not NPC sheets, mind you, but actual living and breathing people which reside in slumber in a charcoal notebook until such time as I release them into the fantasy world. For those who might have wondered where they all come from I provide the following step by step description of the thought process I use when designing my non player characters. For those who don't care, go watch Oprah.

Step One: Pick Up A Publication With A Bunch Of Nifty Words In It

My favorite are music catalogs, my most recent name source being the Discovery magazines I get from the BMG Music Club (motto: "serve you now, screw you later"). Other good sources are video catalogs, text books, weird WWW pages, car manuals, Sears advertisements, and anything else containing words and names like "Diebold", "Hellground", "Bloomdido", and "Shania". Type all of these up in a long list, not stopping until you get at least thirty of them. Congratulations, you now have names of your NPCs.

Step Two: Look For Names That Compliment Each Other

Certain words are simply made to be with one another. Diebold and Hellground make an excellent couple, Diebold and Bloomdido do not. When creating groups with members of diverse professions this rule can be broken, although it is rare one will find a "Throg" and a "Muffin Seed" standing side by side. Your list should slowly clump into smaller groups of four or five names each. As for the left overs, make them into a group anyway because an NPC is a terrible thing to waste.

Step Three: Go For A Walk In A Densely Populated Area

I openly admit that until I moved to center city Philadelphia from my home in backwoods Maryland I couldn't write an NPC worth crap. They'd all turn into the same thing: cliche's. When you only come within twenty feet of another human a measly five or ten times a day it's impossible to even begin to understand the diversity of people we have roaming around this planet. I can safely say I encounter more people I have never seen before in Philadelphia in a day that I did over the period of an entire year in Maryland. I have also learned that a majority of these people are screwed-up in some amusing way. Get to know them.

Step Four: Name The NPC Groups

This isn't a name in the strictest definition, meaning the group probably doesn't use it describe themselves in the shadowrun world, it is more of a personal reminder of what the general "theme" of the group is. The group name sets the general mood of the personalities contained within and is usually derived the names of these NPCs, although the relation is sometimes vague. I'll be looking at the names Sylvania, Chaz, Heitzer, and Jerico and think to myself, "Gee. Sounds like 'Damnation Game' to me!".

Step Five: Describe The NPCs

If I was using the name 'Damnation Game' I would probably relate all of the personalities and their professions to the idea of a deranged crusade, or a combat group in an underground club, or, if I felt like being corny, a group which battles people on boats by Hoover Dam (get it?). If I was using the crusade idea I would figure out why each of these NPCs would be involved in such a crusade, what the crusade was about, and how their individual profession would apply to it. Chaz would be the leader, having assembled a group dedicated to bringing down religious organizations opposed to their own warped faith. Their twisted tactics are designed to terrify the opposition, constantly toying with their enemies convictions in a frightening "game" of faith breaking manipulation. Heitzer would be the most evil and the most intelligent, gathering information on each opponent's convictions and figuring out intricate ways to destroy them. Jerico would be a master of stealth and disguise, infiltrating these groups in order to instigate Heitzer's plans. Sylvania would use more direct tactics, her former samurai skills coming in handy when its time to clear out a service with good old fashion SMG fire.

And there you go. You have an NPC group. Use this procedure on each group of names you have, the groups don't have to be related although they're all part of the same campaign. Actual physical descriptions aren't as important as personality and ideals as these are what the PCs will be primarily dealing with, not whether the mercenary speaking with them is a blonde or red head.

Side Note: The NPC Sheet

I initially stopped filling out NPC sheets because I just didn't have the time. That and I found myself getting frustrated when someone quickly wasted an NPC which took me an extended amount of time to write up. Eventually I realized the additional benefits of not filling out these sheets before the game and instead filling them out, in one way or another, on the fly DURING the game.

I'm sure a lot of gamemasters out there have figured out that their NPCs usually only use about ten percent of their recorded numeric attributes, weapons, and skills during a run. Half the time all you need is a body rating and a firearms or other skill rating and a vague idea of what their reaction is. The way I now assign various ratings to an NPC is wait until a rating or item is needed and then simply jot it down. If an NPC gets shot I write down the following next to their name on a piece of paper: B:6(7) 5/3 Jacket. If they get wounded I add a few slashes. This method takes a lot of self discipline as it is easy to scribble out B:6(10) 8/6 Full Heavy if you're not watching yourself. The gamemaster shouldn't use this ability to pull attributes, skills, and weapons out of their ass in order to completely screw the players, it is designed to allow the GM to adjust their NPCs powers and weaknesses to better align with those of the Pcs. Plus you don't have to fill out the damn sheet.

The down side of this method is that you have to memorize the stats of any weapons, cyberware, decks, spells, and other stuff you plan on giving the NPCs. Not knowing these ratings will slow down the game and piss off the players. No player wants to sit around and wait for you to look up the drain rating of a powerbolt that will soon be heading their way.