Interesting NPC or Locations in a Town Ideas

[Wolf sword]

So who has ideas for NPCs?

Here is one Engels Coach Shop https://www.youtube.com/@EngelsCoachShop.
He is a wagon wright.
PC need a new ride? He has wagons for sale.

Any others?

[Homer]

Three quick thoughts:

1. The local library and librarian. Our small rural library had the complete Foxfire, two sets of encyclopedias, a collection of almanacs going back neatly 100 years, and maybe most importantly, back issues of the county paper recording marriages, births, deaths, and property sales.

2. The county extension office and agent. Our agent had a wealth of information on agriculture, forestry, husbandry, and food prep and preservation. The agents tended to be fairly experienced because of longevity, and the usually had a small stock of seeds and specialty equipment to help sample soil, etc.

3. The local highway department and its work force. Growing up the AHTD had most of the earthmoving equipment in the county (front end loaders, backhoes, graders, sometimes a dozer, HETS, etc), bulk fuel and a maintenance bay with a chain lift, and road maintenance and repair supplies. All of their vehicles were diesel, so easier to run and most had CB type radios. Plenty of uses for them post tdm, from cutting roads to fixing roads to digging mass graves or earthworks. There was also a rail maintenance yard in town, with material for track upkeep and a gas powered track truck.

Just a couple thoughts.

[Raellus]

This is something that I was working on during a discussion of late war demographics.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=6897&highlight=demographics

I'm not sure how interesting these are, but here they are.

The Country Veterinarian
This itinerant vet serviced a couple of Polish farming collectives before the war. Although she has no formal training in medicine for humans, many of her veterinary skills can still be applied to treating people- she can set a broken bone, deliver a baby, and perform minor surgery, for example.

Club Foot
One of very few military-aged male in the village, and the only one who hasn’t served in the armed forces. Aside from limited mobility (he walks with a pronounced limp), this young man is physically capable, and very intelligent.

The Wounded Warrior
Former Polish army AFV crewman, now blind, both eyes destroyed in battle. Battles PTSD and depression. He can offer mechanical advice (can help PCs on skill rolls) and, with time, could perform simple tasks by feel.

The Deserters (3 Variants)
1. The Coward: he deserted because he’s afraid of being maimed or killed. Still pretty much useless in a fight.

2. The Idealist: Opposes the war- war in general, really. Refuses to fight, but willing to provide assistance of non-lethal nature.

3. The Secret Keeper: Served in the hated ZOMO paramilitary riot police- routinely used violence against unarmed protestors prior to the war; hunted partisans during; deserted when the rest of his small unit was wiped out during the last NATO offensive in the area. When he sought shelter in the village, he lied that he was a lowly motor rifleman; he’d likely become the village pariah if anyone found out the truth about him.

The Aspiring Teacher
Although she’s received no formal pedagogical training, this 18-year-old young woman uses her own limited education to do her best to teach the few village children basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. She also speaks some English.

The Broken Woman
Nothing particularly horrible happened to her- nothing that hadn’t happened to many others- but something about the war broke her psyche. She carries around a doll and interacts with it as though it’s her real child who was, in reality, a casualty of the war.

The Great Patriotic War Vet
An elderly man who fought with one of the Soviets’ Polish formations in the last world war, growing to loathe the USSR in the bargain. Can offer general tactical advice and insight into the Soviet military mind. Can also handle a bolt-action rifle quite well, but is slow-moving.

The POW
This [insert appropriate nationality] soldier was captured earlier in the war and subsequently loaned out to a local collective farm as manual labor. He escaped in the confusion of nearby heavy combat and found his way to the village. He’s managed to earn the villagers’ trust and has been “adopted” as one of their own.

The City Mice
A middle-aged refugee family from a nearby city. Father was a government accountant before the war, but cooking the books is a skill that’s not particularly useful in today’s world. Mother was a secretary. Their two children, a girl and a boy, now teenagers, were students. They all try to earn their keep on the farm but usually end up getting in the way more than helping.

-

[Wolf sword]

Three quick thoughts:

1. The local library and librarian. Our small rural library had the complete Foxfire, two sets of encyclopedias, a collection of almanacs going back neatly 100 years, and maybe most importantly, back issues of the county paper recording marriages, births, deaths, and property sales.


To riff on this idea, if you have a traveling merchant convoy going town to town you could have one of the members of the convoy as a traveling library. Like the old book-mobile.

[Homer]

To riff on this idea, if you have a traveling merchant convoy going town to town you could have one of the members of the convoy as a traveling library. Like the old book-mobile.

A neat find would be an intact abandoned Snap-on tool truck, Tom’s snack truck, coke truck, or Saf-gard shoe mobile. Not exactly the kind of “loot” PCs normally go for, but imagine the trade, morale, or future development value of 5 tons of tools, footwear, or salty snacks. Or the power of having “The Last Dr. Pepper”.

The county seat (or its equivalent) in any agricultural/forestry area probably has a small machine shop, a welder shop, and a diesel mechanic shop. With those three you can keep a lot of the farm and logging equipment going almost indefinitely. My uncle owned a pre WW2 sawmill he bought when he got home which is still running like a charm today. The parts get get fabricated at this point, but it still works. Could see something similar in a town taking special orders as part of a trade economy or making up new equipment from scrap. Rumor was the machine shop in my town was even able to turn out some “special equipment” for folks who approached hunting season as more of a suggestion than a rule.

[Trooper]

This is something that I was working on during a discussion of late war demographics.

https://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=6897&highlight=demographics

I'm not sure how interesting these are, but here they are.

The Country Veterinarian
This itinerant vet serviced a couple of Polish farming collectives before the war. Although she has no formal training in medicine for humans, many of her veterinary skills can still be applied to treating people- she can set a broken bone, deliver a baby, and perform minor surgery, for example.

-

Former civil defense specialist Cresson Kearny wrote in his book Nuclear Survival Skills that you could find large amount of antibiotics from animal farms after nuclear attacks.

Vets can easily treat humans in most injuries or illnesses. If you travel in India, its not uncommon that rural areas that in during nighttime and weekends “local doctor on duty” is veterinarian.

In Finland during World War 2 many physicians in frontline duty were medical students. There simply weren’t enough “real doctors” even less you could find “real surgeons” to operate wounded soldiers. Systems worked quite well and those who served in both German and Finnish armed forces told that medical treatment for wounded was better in Finland – despite the fact that Germany had more doctors and hospitals. In Finland idea was to operate wounded near frontlines and in Germany they were eager to evacuate wounded to nearest military or civilian hospital.

In Baltic states local anticommunist partisans didn’t have access to hospitals. Most wounded were treated by local nurses, who provided surgical operations in primitive conditions.

Medical care after nuclear war is problematic. Most hospitals are located in urban areas and many facilities and their staff are destroyed in nuclear attacks and in rioting and looting.

There are no more universities to train doctors. Few years after nuclear strikes many people will get help from feldsher. Learning on the job and reading old manuals will teach you necessary skills. Some are former paramedics, nurses or even dentist – some are just smart people trying to help other people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsher

[Ckosacranoid]

Can not forget about the village idiot.

[Tegyrius]

I have a number of one-off encounters as low-probability results in my random encounter generator. Here's a brief selection:

* * *

This is a bridging unit consisting of seven Experienced combat engineers with small arms. They have a 5-ton truck with a Mk. 19 AGL and a Biber (the bridgelayer variant of the Leopard 1 MBT) carrying a DShK on an improvised mount at the commander's hatch.

The engineers are Canadians who were attached to the US 5th Infantry Division's combat engineer battalion before the Kalisz breakout. Their ranking NCO is Master Corporal Wynona Campbell (charismatic [spade ace], moderately sociable [heart 5]). Predictably, the AVLB is named, and prominently labeled, Wynona's Big Brown Beaver.

* * *

This is a group of five Hungarian refugees traveling by horse-drawn wagon. Four of them are musicians who comprise a string quartet. They travel between settlements, playing both classical music and their own arrangements of 1980s and early '90s Western rock songs. Their leader is Rebeka Dobos, the cellist (very sociable [heart 10], somewhat violent [club 3]). The other musicians are Adam Fulop, the cellist, and Lajos and Katica Bartha, the violinists. All four are unarmed Novice NPCs.

The party's fifth member, and the reason a group like this is able to travel safely, is Laszlo Bathory. Laszlo is a former special operations trooper, now mute from a massive throat injury, who communicates through sign language and a small slate. He is an immense Elite NPC armed with an AK-74/BG-1, a suppressed Stechkin, and a sharpened entrenching tool.

* * *

The characters encounter a well-concealed ambush. The opposing force is an American straggler unit composed of [1d6+6] Veteran NPCs with military small arms, a [random heavy weapon], and a [random heavy weapon]. They occupy expertly-located firing positions. Their leader is the biggest damn Mexican any of the characters has ever seen: a 50% scaled-up Danny Trejo lookalike in piecemeal camouflage, carrying a PK MG backed up by a pair of M1911s chambered in .38 Super.

Unless the characters appear to be Warsaw Pact troops or have earned a reputation for criminality or war crimes, the leader hails them. He introduces himself as Horrendous Gonzalez. He is friendly and affable (charismatic [spade ace], very sociable [heart 9]). He and his troops are former 5th Infantry Division personnel who've been operating behind enemy lines since they were cut off during the Pact's fall 1997 counteroffensive. They've settled into the role of local defenders, with several communities in the area supporting their efforts to keep their AO clear of slavers and marauders. Several of them have taken local spouses and they have little interest in returning to the United States or traveling elsewhere in Europe.

The group has set the ambush in anticipation of encountering [randomly-selected adversary group]. If initial discussions remain friendly and the characters impress Gonzalez with their competence, he invites them to join his group in dealing with their target. Success in this operation will earn the characters local allies in both Gonzalez's band and the villages under their protection.

(If the characters do have a reputation for war crimes or look like a Warsaw Pact patrol, and if they don't have obvious overwhelming superiority, Gonzalez orders his troops to engage. He orders a withdrawal if he takes 25% casualties.)

- C.

[ToughOmbres]

This older NPC (veteran or novice at GM's discretion) may or may not have previous military experience but does have a full load out (from military surplus stores before the TDM) and a Battle Rifle, shotgun and sidearm (GM's choice but will vary by location-note that they will not have grenades or other exotic weapons unavailable to civilians before the Twilight War.)
The NPC also has a small cache of other calibers (even exotic calibers) available-such as .38 special, 7.62 Tokarev, 9mm Makarov or even 7.62 x 39 (GM's discretion) as well as a shrinking supply of MRE's and canned foods carefully accumulated before the nuclear exchange-they have supplemented their food supply with what they can gather, fishing or plant in a small garden or orchard.
The Last Man on Earth does not really believe he is the LMOE but behaves very much as if he (or she) is alone. This NPC will avoid groups or quietly observe "legitimate" US military units and intervene on their side if they are ambushed or come under attack-believing himself/herself to be loyal to the armed forces (be they CivGov or Milgov).
If peaceful contact can be initiated, the LMOE will offer to trade small amounts of food, ammunition or limited medical supplies for ?
As for motivation, loneliness, patriotism or a desire to abandon their solitude and attach themselves to a military unit could all be "cards."