A good NPC encounter lives or dies on variety — you want the shady figure on the road, the eccentric local, the suspicious merchant, and the gruff regular at the bar all feeling like genuinely different people at the table. This week's roundup pulls five picks from our NPCs and Villagers collection that together cover a solid spread of roles, from roadside threats to tavern locals to that one weird trader the party will absolutely remember.
Bandit Archer Miniature
Every village road needs a reason to stay alert, and the Bandit Archer from Tytan Troll does that job brilliantly. This set gives you a group of ranged fighters who work just as well as the hired muscle behind a local crime lord as they do a straight ambush encounter on the road out of town. Drop a couple into your next hex crawl and suddenly that "uneventful journey" has some genuine tension to it.
Strahd Bundle Miniature Set 6
This set from Tytan Troll is a genuinely useful bundle if you're running anything with a darker, gothic village feel — it covers a solid mix of character types that slot naturally into a cursed settlement or a town with secrets. Having a ready-made cast of varied NPCs like this means you're not scrambling for a stand-in when the players decide to interrogate the local priest or follow the suspicious stranger into the alley. Brilliant for Curse of Strahd obviously, but honestly useful well beyond that setting.
Female Tiefling Wizard Miniature
Not every village elder is a kindly old farmer, and this Female Tiefling Wizard from Duncan Shadow makes for a genuinely compelling local figure — the kind of NPC who knows more than she's letting on. She works brilliantly as a village mystic, a reclusive scholar the party has to track down, or the contact who gives out the quest hook with an air of dangerous competence. Three distinct sculpts in the set means you've got options depending on the vibe you're going for.
Dwarf Tavern Miniatures
No village encounter collection is complete without someone planted at the bar, and this set from Epic Miniatures gives you a group of stocky, characterful dwarves that are perfect for exactly that. The Dwarf Tavern set works beautifully as background locals, quest-givers, or the surprisingly dangerous regulars who step in when a bar fight gets out of hand. Having four distinct figures means the table genuinely feels populated rather than copy-pasted.
Goblin Merchant Miniature
This one from My 3D Print Forge is a brilliant wildcard — a goblin dressed up in merchant finery, cane in hand, looking like he absolutely has a deal you can't refuse. The Goblin Merchant is perfect as a travelling trader the party keeps bumping into across your campaign, or as the surprisingly well-connected fence operating out of the shadier end of town. Players genuinely love an NPC with this much personality on the model, and it shows in every session he turns up.
That's our five for this week — a solid mix that should cover most of the NPCs a village encounter could throw at your players. If you've used any of these at your table we'd genuinely love to hear about it, so feel free to drop a comment or tag us on socials with how the session went.