Improvised NPCs

Players talk to the one person you did not prepare. The Improvised NPC tool creates a named entity stub in seconds so you can keep the scene moving and flesh out the details after the session.

📜 Chronicler

The tool is accessible directly from Session Mode. You do not need to leave the session view to use it.

Creating an improvised NPC

In Session Mode, click Improvise NPC in the session toolbar, or press Q.
Type a name, or leave the name field blank to get a generated suggestion pulled from your world's naming conventions.
Optionally set a role or archetype — Innkeeper, City Guard, Merchant, Scholar, Fence, and so on. This is optional context, not a mechanical field.
Click Create. A stub NPC entity is created immediately in your world's entity list.

The created NPC appears in your world like any other NPC entity. You can find it in the entity list, link it via wikilinks, and reference it in future sessions.

💡Tip

If you leave the name field blank, Skryrún generates a suggestion based on your world's naming conventions. If those are not configured, it falls back to a culturally neutral default. You can always rename the entity later.

Adding context with AI generation

👑 Runekeeper

Runekeeper subscribers can generate personality, motivation, and appearance for the new NPC, grounded in your world's existing content.

After the stub is created, click Generate Details on the improvised NPC card. Skryrún produces:

Appearance — a brief physical description consistent with the NPC's role and location
Personality — one or two traits that give the character a distinct voice
Motivation — what this person wants right now, in this scene

Generation is informed by the location where Session Mode is currently focused and the entities nearby in your world's relationship graph. An innkeeper generated while the active location is a frontier mining camp reads differently from one generated in the capital city's merchant quarter.

📝Note

Generated details are a starting point. Edit them freely — the NPC is a normal entity once created, and all fields are writable. If a generated trait does not fit what just happened in your scene, change it.

What gets created

The improvised NPC stub contains:

Name (entered or generated)
Type set to NPC
Role/archetype label if you set one
A blank article body ready for notes
No stat block, no blocks — just the shell

This is intentional. The tool is for capturing the NPC during play, not for building a complete character on the fly. Add NPC blocks, stat blocks, wikilinks, and article content after the session when you have time.

After the session

Once the session ends, find improvised NPCs in your entity list — they are marked with an Improvised badge until you remove it. During your post-session review:

If the NPC was a one-time background character, delete the entity or leave it as-is.
If players named them, asked about them, or are likely to interact with them again, add depth: write an article body, attach blocks, connect them to factions and locations via wikilinks.

An improvised NPC that gets fleshed out after the session becomes a full world entity. Connection Gravity picks it up once it has relationships in the graph, so it can surface in future sessions automatically.

Practical example

Mid-session, the party decides to question a dockworker they just met. You press Q, type "Maren" as a name, set the role to Dockworker, and hit Create. You now have an entity named Maren to reference and build on. After the session: you note that the players seemed suspicious of her, write two paragraphs about her actual involvement with the smugglers, add a Hook block, and link her to the Dockworkers' Guild faction entity. Next session, Gravity may surface her if the party goes near the docks again.

Troubleshooting

The Improvise NPC button or Q shortcut isn't working. Improvised NPCs are created from within Session Mode. If you are in Build mode, the shortcut and button are not available. Enter Session Mode first, then use the tool.

The generated name suggestion doesn't match my world's naming conventions. Name generation uses your world's configured naming conventions if they are set up. If you have not configured conventions, generation falls back to a generic default. Configure naming conventions under World Settings → Naming Conventions to get contextual suggestions.

I created an improvised NPC but can't find it in the entity list. Improvised NPCs are created with the Improvised badge and appear in your NPC entity list immediately. If you cannot find it, check that the entity type filter in the sidebar is set to show NPCs (not filtered to a specific other type). You can also search by name using global search.

The Generate Details button isn't appearing on the improvised NPC card. AI generation requires Runekeeper tier. On Chronicler or Weaver, the stub is created without the Generate Details option. You can still fill in article content and blocks manually after the session.