Casting characters

Visuals for NPCs can be helpful. How do you get them?

Seeing another Ridley Scott historical-ish epic, Exodus: Gods And Kings (incredibly, not the whitest Ancient Egypt film of the last three years) reminded me that I never got around to making a trailer for Dark Ages Vampire.

I first made a credit sequence for The Watch House, following other Buffy games that took the rulebooks suggestion to cast the PCs and NPCs.

I got hung up on including the signature characters, and never got past Eva Green as Lucita. And for more modern signatures, Jamie Foxx as Theo Bell?

It’s easier with your own characters, of course. For my last V20 game I cast just about every NPC, because there would often be lots of them in the same scene and it really helped keeping track. I mostly went for little-known faces (most of them guest stars from Person Of Interest as it has a lot of interesting character actors in dark gloomy places) so the players would more associate the photo with the NPC. But I snuck some more familiar faces in as the most important roles. Art is easier for truly unique visuals, but in this case I wanted the down-to-earth feel that photography provided. The Nosferatu were the hard part, naturally. I grabbed the leader from Blade II, another from Face Off, several from The Walking Dead, one from Left 4 Dead cosplay...