NPC Shorthand — Advanced Old School Revival

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NPC shorthand is a way to write out the stats for NPCs so it's easy to understand what an NPC can do in an encounter at a glance. Below are a few examples.

Example NPC Cards

Below are several examples of creating NPCs in the shorthand notation. When you create NPCs in OSR+, this format will make it easier to condense their stats to fit on an index card for easy reference while you run the game.

Dissecting the NPC Card

The goal of NPC shorthand is to make it so that you don't have to look anything up when you're running an NPC. If you have the GM Cheat Sheet handy, the definition of tactics, maleficence (and their basic perils and their secondary effects) are readily available, so references to Reach or Lightning should be easy enough to look for on the cheat sheet.

Here's how it all breaks down line-by-line:

Name, Level, Origin, Class, Kit

For monsters, we just need to know their monster type (Humanoid) and their level. Monster types impart additional abilities (like traits, boons, and banes) that all monsters of the type share. For non-monstrous NPCs, we need to know their level, plus their origin, class, and kit.

Attributes

Mighty, Deft, and Smart. We write (A) or (D) if an attribute has advantage or disadvantage. We use this abbreviation throughout, wherever a check could be involved in the roll.

HP/AP, Defense, MP, INIT, SOak, APR

HP and AP are written as a pair: 5/10 means 5 HP and 10 AP, and defense is the bonus added to a d6 roll. Soak (not depicted above) is a flat number between 1 - 3. We also include INIT to depict any bonus to initiative for having the Perception skill. Actions Per Round (APR) is always equal to one-third the monster's level rounded down, up to a maximum of 4.

Armor Type, Shields

This is an optional line to detail the sort of armor they're wearing and if they carry a shield. It's also a reminder of how to narrate the NPC's armament in the fiction.

SKills

We list all known skills and their modifiers here. Exploding skills (not depicted above) are designated with an asterisk (*).

Passive & Active Abilities

The bulleted list encompasses anything the NPC can do that is not an attack, including passive and active abilities they may have such as banes or boons, traits, auras, or abilities from kits and classes. Most abilities are written as active tense verbal phrases, so that it's easy to understand what the ability does at a glance. We use brackets to remind ourselves where the abilities derive from. You'll notice that in some cases, we break out a kit's ability into its constituent parts: the Redmainer Hunter, for example, has the kit Monster Hunter, which confers a form of monster lore as well as the ability to create monster-typed supply from the kit, so we list these as separate line items. For banes and boons, you can use emojis (if typing the shorthand on a computer) to specify the reactions, or simply put the reaction in brackets if writing by hand: [Exploits] Divine. It's helpful to group like-reactions together, to save space.

NPC TAg

If it’s possible for the NPC to join the party, we add the NPC’s tag under its strategy notation in quotes and italics. The Redmainer Hunter for example has Friend of Beasts as its NPC tag.

Attacks/Maleficence

Each unique attack is underlined, so it sticks out visually. The pattern is "Weapon Name [To Hit] (Advantage/Disadvantage): Damage (Tactics, Perils, AoE)." Write down the style of weapon as opposed to its class, e.g., "Spear" vs. "Reach" so that you can remember what sort of specific weapon the NPC is carrying for narrative purposes, but avoid ambiguity ("Thrown Dagger" vs. "Dagger" distinguishes between a Thrown vs. Small weapon).

Spells

Finally, for spellcasters, list all their spells. If they have a mix of spells of different types of magic, you'll want to calculate their modifiers for each spell so you don't need to look them up. Boldface spells that the NPC comes into play with that (meaning they are already cast).

Phases

If the monster has abilities that trigger on certain phases, we list them separately in a way similar to attacks. The Toxic Abomination, for example, "Explodes" when it's "Dying" (at 0 HP) in a melee AoE, dealing 1d6 venom damage.

You can also list other things like Size, Languages, Bonus MP/AP/HP (as a reminder), or Deeds and Stances, if applicable.

What About Stances & Deeds?

Generally, stances are player-facing abilities and not meant to be adopted by monsters or other NPCs, but you can use stances as inspiration for the custom abilities monsters might have. In the section on encounter design, you'll also learn that it's sometimes helpful to round out the party's competition by giving specials, bosses, and BBEGs stances.

Writing for Brevity

We want to make sure that everything on the card helps you be as lazy as possible at game time:

Most abilities are written as active tense verbal phrases ("Sees in Dark"), so that it's easy to understand what the ability does at a glance.
The numbers are all pre-calculated by you when you write up the card, that way you don't have to do any math on the fly: just roll and add the bonus indicated. For example, all monsters are considered proficient in the weapons they use, so the Yum Yum Goblin has a +8 to his attack (his Deft of 6, +2 for being skilled with the weapon). This is also true of any ability they have that would require a contested check, except spell checks and skill checks, which require them to be proficient in the relevant arcana or skill. Similarly, perks from level advancement are already factored into the final numbers. The Time Mage has 19 MP because this is his Smart x2, +3 for taking the MP Bonus perk.
We're also careful to list abilities in a definitional fashion: with the Redmainer Hunter, instead of Resourceful (which is the real name of the technique that the Ranger has), we write "Always Has Cheap Supply" because that explains what the ability does at a glance.

Strategy Notation

Strategy notation borrows syntax from programming (the conditional operator) to minimize the amount of language necessary to describe the NPC's behavioral pattern. A colon : means "then," whereas a double-pound || means "or." Finally the ? means "if." This is to remind you what the NPC would do if threatened, or any special things it might do as its status changes.

Some examples:

Bloodied ? Earthquake : Club x2. If at half health, the giant uses its Earthquake ability, otherwise it just attacks twice with a club.
Darts x2 || Smoke Bomb. The NPC makes two thrown attacks, or uses a smoke bomb.
Stealth : Attack. The assassin goes into stealth, then attacks.

Building a Vorpal Ghoul

You can read a detailed, step-by-step guide for homebrewing your own monsters in the Game Master's Guide, which helps you with calculating their level and covers all the bases. In the OSR+ Bestiary (currently in development), all the classic monsters pre-exist and are ready to play, but you can either use them to build your own variations, or follow the guide to create your own.

Now let's build a Vorpal Ghoul together!

Selecting a Monster Type

Consider the “ghoul.” Traditionally, a ghoul is a type of undead, which means it should have certain immunities and resistances we expect undead to have. The monster type Undead already accounts for this mechanically: all Undead monsters get boons against Cold, Sleep, Charm, Necrosis, and Attribute Damage, and banes from Divine and Healing. They also get the traits Immutable Form (which protects them from poison, disease, paralysis, venom, and shapechange—such effects wear off at the end of the round), Unnatural Persistence (they do not require air, water, or food to survive), and Unnatural Presence (their uncanny presence alerts wildlife and gives people an eerie feeling). These abilities are all defined for each type in the OSR+ Bestiary, so choosing a type is the starting point, because it sets up our monster's base template.

Another thing we expect is that, like other Undead, the ghoul will not die permanently unless burned, dismembered, or destroyed by sanctified energy like a divine maleficence: it returns to life shortly after dying. Again, the monster type for Undead accounts for this, granting all Undead creatures the phase Resurrects (Dying), which means the trait Resurrects kicks in when the monster has the status Dying.

Doing the Math: Abilities granted by monster types are free, and each weakness coming from the monster type reduces the monster's level by 1. This implies that the Undead type is particularly powerful, because it imparts 7 benefits to the monster for free! The trait Unnatural Presence and the banes Divine and Healing are weaknesses, so that means we start off at -3 when calculating its level.

Determining Attributes

Ghouls are particularly agile undead, but not particularly strong or smart, so we distribute their stats like so: 3 Mighty, 5 Deft, and 2 Smart. Monsters get 10 points to start, and every point we add beyond that increases their level. Since these are relatively weak opponents, we'll stick with just 10 points.

Attacks & Abilities

The key feature of a ghoul is its paralytic attack. We also give the ghoul the ability to bite and claw as attacks, with the bite attack imparting the paralysis and venom statuses as minor perils, and dealing damage as Light weapons.

Ghouls are also known to operate in roving packs. So we give them the ability Strength in Numbers, which grants all ghouls operating in a melee space together advantage on all their attacks. We also want them to be able to see in the dark, so we give them Darkvision.

Doing the Math: Attacks don't affect a monster's level, since the number of actions it can take in a round (APR) is already determined by its level. But we did give it two traits: Strength in Numbers and Darkvision. That's +2, so -3 plus 2 is -1.

Maybe we want to amp up the fearsomeness of our ghouls for our particular adventure scenario, because they're the star horror of our adventure. So what we'll do is give our ghouls a phase ability: if they strike from stealth, we'll have their attack deal 1 wound instead of its normal lethal damage. We'll call this ability Vorpal Attacks (Stealth), to indicate that their attacks are vorpal when the monster is in stealth.

Here's our Vorpal Ghoul:

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