Game Master’s Arsenal: Professor NPCs Volume 1 by Alex Townsend and Jacob Shelden is a generic role playing game supplement published by Shelden & Townsend.
The supplement is available as a six page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover and one the front matter.
The Introduction explains that the aim of the series is to provide GMs with tools, characters and locations. They have been written to be as system-agnostic as possible. It also explains that the following characters are meant to be used as NPCs fulfilling a niche role, and there are some recommendations on how to use them, though they could be used in other genres.
The NPCs follow. Each is given a name, summary, preferred genre, personality, goals, interesting secret and three potential plot hooks. Each is intended to be a professorial character, with one for high fantasy, one for the Cthulhu Mythos and one for space opera.
Game Master’s Arsenal: Professor NPCs Volume 1 in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that these aren’t needed. Navigation is okay. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
Each NPC is described in a decent level of detail and the plot hooks add further potential use to them. The lack of stats isn’t a huge matter, as these are essentially not going to be NPCs the characters face in combat, though for professor-types, it might be advisable to at least add some relevant skills. They could perhaps be adapted to other settings, as suggested, but it would probably be easiest to adapt them to adjacent settings, namely the Cthulhu Mythos professor to horror fantasy or horror science fiction. Game Master’s Arsenal: Professor NPCs Volume 1 can be found by clicking here.
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