There’s a lot of pop personality typology, from astrology to Meyers-Briggs Type Indicators to the Enneagram of Personality. The most scientifically elaborated typlogy of personality is the Big Five personality traits, based on five continua: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Let’s use these to generate NPC personalities for TTRPGs!
Here’s a table with the extremes of each traits, framed in positive and negative terms. Roll a d20 and record the character’s trait. You can only have one trait from each row, however—for this purpose one couldn’t be both “unreliable” and “disciplined”. So if you roll again for another character trait, ignore results from a previously-selected row.
Table: d20 Big Five personality traits
| Openness | 1. cautious | 2. close-minded | 3.reckless | 4. adventurous |
| Conscientiousness | 5. spontaneous | 6. unreliable | 7. stubborn | 8. disciplined |
| Extraversion | 9. sociable | 10. attention-seeking | 11. self-absorbed | 12. introspective |
| Agreeableness | 13. compassionate | 14. naive | 15. argumentative | 16. competitive |
| Neuroticism | 17. stable | 18. uninspiring | 19. anxious | 20. sensitive |
panglott 