Today’s question: Favorite Recurring NPC?
I was wondering how I was going to answer this one without repeating the NPC from yesterday’s question, and suddenly I remembered an NPC from an old Star Frontiers game that I played in 1982-1983 with my friend Brian Quigley.
I lifted him entirely from a short story (and TRAVELLER write-up) that appeared in Dragon Magazine Issue 59 (thanks to the kind soul who uploaded that PDF — a real blast to see it again). His name was Gent Jackson, and, as the picture at right demonstrates, they were kinda going for a “Captain Dallas from ALIEN” kinda vibe.
That is not how I played him.
I made him a rival to Brian’s character, and I played him as the most annoying guy you could imagine: Basically the sort of “Midwestern Insurance Salesman of the 1950s” archetype. Glad-handing, enthusiastic, everybody is “buddy” or “pal” or “friend”, and OH SO HELPFUL. So damn cheerful, in fact, you just want to kill him.
Which Brian tried to do. Repeatedly.
Good times.