[Adm.Lee]

I almost never played, so I can only offer other people's PCs or my NPCs.

When I ran the game in college and high school, if the group was small, I often stuck an experienced NCO in the group. It would fill out the watch schedule or fill gaps in PC skills, as well as allow me the voice, "Are you SURE you want to do that... sir?" I've no military experience, but I was the wargamer/historian in the group.

- I cannot recall the names, but one was a Polish Marine living in Krakow. He rolled an abysmal AGL score, so I ruled that he'd lost an arm and was now a freelancer in that city.

- Another was a German armored-recon NCO, I quickly gave him the background detail that he had left a wife and daughter in Hamburg. The players quickly coalesced around the goal of getting Heinz back home to them! That was a lesson to me as a young GM about what can happen when the players like an NPC.

- In my very first campaign, my group tended towards the "Kelly's Heroes" school of wacky backstories and the like. We were in high school, it was part of the mood. The standout was Ernie, the Dutch tank LT, who had a rubber duck on his dogtag chain.