Creating Memorable NPCs

Still kind of green at being the GM, so I wanted to ask the troper Hive Mind for advice on making interesting and memorable NPCs, whether they're allies, enemies or neutral.

I've had some success, but in the next arc for my Vampire The Requiem game I'm going to be introducing some really old and powerful elder vampires, the character's sires and grandsires, and I want them to be impressive without coming across as Big Bad Final Bosses. The players may decide to take them down, but I want them to have enough personality that their reactions run the gamut between liking, respecting, fearing and hating them.

That and any general advice would be awesome. I'm also totally cool with making funny NPCs for the heck of it.

edited 1st Sep '13 10:21:43 AM by Earnest

Sires? Screw that, drop that job on the players, they know better who was screwed up enough to embrace their characters. Grandsires? That's more like it, although you'd have to work off what your players came up with.

I like that idea, which brings up this interesting bit of coincidental weirdness. Both players in question were really excited about having "super powerful" Roman kindred (an emperor and a general respectively) be their grandsires, but have kind of stalled on the sires themselves. I managed to talk one down from having their sire be a U.S. President(!!!!!!!!! and another ! for good measure) to a state senator. I'm running our last ST's New Orleans campaign, so I'll just have him drum up a Louisiana state senator he likes. (If he insists his sire is a president I'm going to just have to force my hand and pick one of the forgotten presidents.)

But yeah, I've got an idea for the next overarching plot. One was a member of the original Camarilla, and is part of a conspiracy to resurrect it via political means, he expects the player to help bring down the local power structure. The other has been building a mercenary force and eventually plans to use it to resurrect the Camarilla.

What I'm debating is whether both sires are in cahoots or out for each other's blood. Or some combination of both. Cue Oh, Crap! as the players realize their sires will be ever so grateful if their coterie mate "slipped and fell" and met final death. Failure to do so (read, intra-party loyalty) might get them written off as a loss themselves.

edited 1st Sep '13 1:28:24 PM by Earnest

Maybe Warren Harding, if it doesn't go too far against normalcy? ;)

Hmm, I'd been thinking of using William Henry Harrison, but Warren Harding seems a touch more interesting and less fail-tastic.