1. Patron
Sometimes, the best way to create a patron for your player characters is simply to take a ruler from your campaign world and make that person the party's employer. When I was a teenager running a series of adventures set in TSR's World of Greyhawk (for the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons), there came a point when the party needed someone to direct them to the next adventure. The person I selected was His Illustrious Glory, Zoltan: the Beygraf of Ket and Shield of the True Faith. All I knew about him was that he was the ruler of Ket and whatever I could glean about his nation from a single paragraph in A Guide to the World of Greyhawk. I knew, for instance, that "the court of the Beygraf is a strange mixture of eastern and western influences." I decided that Zoltan would be a renaissance man, unusually open-minded and highly motivated to increase his understanding of the world, but also very cunning with regard to trade, foreign relations, and national defense. He was fascinated by maps and exploration, and he would generously fund expeditions both to appease his curiosity and increase his knowledge of world affairs. Naturally, this extended to the investigation of places and situations that might be of royal/national interest. The player characters, due to their reputation, were of particular interest to Zoltan who was in need of experts who could carry out special missions as needed. Zoltan could provide information, resources, and payment; the player characters could provide unusual expertise and plausible deniability. It helped that Zoltan was neither tyrannical nor insane.
There were no stats or biographical information about Zoltan apart from his name and title, but it was enough material to build an interesting and useful non-player character.
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