How does one make Renaer interesting?

This probably isn’t super helpful, but I do have a bit of a neat anecdote about Renaer:

During the lead up to my running Dragon Heist, one of my players presented me with his backstory. He was the only son of a noble family in Neverwinter who had a tryst with the son of a rival nobleman. My player’s older sister discovered the affair, and seized the opportunity to basically exile the player (it was a real Capulets-and-Montagues situation; his parents would have flipped if they found out he was seeing someone from this rival family, so she blackmailed him into leaving), making her the heir apparent. Player then moved to Waterdeep to try to start over.

He told me all that, and I asked if he had any ideas as to who his paramour had been. He said no, so I told him, “Well, you aren’t going to believe this, but a major NPC in this adventure happens to be the son of a prominent nobleman from Neverwinter... if you want, we can say he was the guy.” My player was all for it.

As a result, things have been super awkward with Renaer - the PC had left Neverwinter in a rush without explaining the situation to Renaer. He regrets breaking things off so abruptly and isn’t sure where the two stand in terms of their relationship now. Renaer, meanwhile, pieced together the situation fairly easily, but I’d still deeply hurt at how PC handled things and hadn’t decided whether or not to forgive him. So every interaction between the two is this awkward dance where each is trying to figure out what they are to each other and if they might one day be able to put all this behind them. Of course, they’ve only alluded to their shared history in very vague terms, so the rest of the party has no clue what their history is, just that they used to know each other and something bad happened between them.

So... that’s a pretty specific outcome that’s not really broadly applicable to other campaigns, but that’s how I lucked into making Renaer interesting, haha.

To get some backstory, I read the D&D fantasy book Blackstaff Tower. In there Renaer was the main hero and the story told how he and Vajra Safar met and became friends/allies, which really helped me run both characters and how they interacted in Dragon Heist.

Related to this, it didn't really make sense that Renaer would be cowering in a warehouse to be rescued by some lowbie adventurers, and I thought Floon was too silly. So I reworked it so that Floon was actually the Blackstaff in disguise so she could hang out with her friend Renaer without causing gossip, and they went along with the Zentarim kidnapping so they could gather info on the Z xs. X feud.

My players didn't find/figure out about this until the end of the campaign, when "Floon" insisted on accompanying the party to the Vault (they had to ask Renaer for help getting through his family crypt). At the appropriate moment Floon turned into the Blackstaff who helped with the epic Battle of the Vault (she and Manshoon had a Wizards Battle).

Like a lot of NPCs, Renear is as good as you make him, honestly. You know your party and what they like better than us, so tailor him a bit to match their tastes, and perhaps try to make his exposition less obvious.

In my second run of the game, one of the party tried to shake him down when they first met, and only respected him when he stood his ground and later helped them get some info out of a captured kenku.
It didn't hurt that, when questioned, he admitted to jumping in so fiercely to protect his lover, Floon... Which made Floon's later reveal as a foppish, annoyingly-voiced courtesan all the more hilarious. (There have since been many a questions about what Renear sees in Floon; if they get him drunk enough, they might just find out)

I played him as something of a naive nobleman with a vindictive streak, fiercely loyal, both knowledgeable and disdainful of noble niceties, but also a bit out of his depth when it comes to being a commoner. I got a lot of mileage out of that duality, on top of his connections and loyalty to the party who saved his lover. Offering up his rapier as an aid to the party on occasion (if the cause was just) didn't hurt, either.

Hopefully some of that helped you.

In my campaign he is discovering that he was just a spare body in case his father needed to transfer his consciousness.

Lots of pathos from that.

I modified Renear a bit. Note that I continued the campaign beyond the main storyline, so I got more time to set-up things up. Also, english is not my first language, so sorry in advance for my wonky grammar. In my campaign, I made Renear seems like an actual good guy, sick and tired of his father's reputation: the nobility keeps mocking him and nagging him about Dagult's mythical secret vault, and the common folks who recognizes him project their anger towards him since his father never got an actual judgement (he lost his position, only to become the ruler of the next big city north).

Renear tries to be a good and optimistic man, but sometimes, most of the times, things gets rough for him. He tried to be an adventurer in Waterdeep to get some reputation and good favors back, but it didn't work. He hangs out with the bad people, often get drunks and beaten up.

To thank my PCs for saving him, he proposed to invest in the tavern. He gave the money to renovate it, in exchange of the third of the profits. The PCs accepted his offer. Renear then begun to hang around the tavern, but my players where tired of seeing him come in with bruises and cut from his night in the city, so they invited him to take a room in the manor. Renear was super gratefull and things got better for him.>! I was super gratefull because it justifies perfectly why the Fireball event happens at the PCs tavern.!< He drank less, didn't get in fight anymore and had a sense of purpose, managing the tavern and the employees.

What was happening all that time was that Renear tries to find his father's vault to give the money to the harper, because he is convinced they'll put it to good use. When he showed up at the Trollskull tavern injured, it wasn't actually because a drunk sailor recognized him and beat him up, but because he was in a harper raid on a Xanathar or Zhent hideout. When the PCs kinda forced him to live at the Manor, he secretly turned it into a harper savehaven (my player just learned that all their employees are actually harper agents). When the PCs where stuck, he secretly used his Harper contacts to get info and subtly nudge them in the right direction. He revealed his allegiance just before going down in the Vault, requesting that the dragons (or part of it) be given to the harpers.

Things got a bit awkward with Renear recently (his allegiance his starting to get in the way of the PCs), but they have been friends for almost 25 sessions now. Interactions with him have been interesting recently.

While I think Renaer was intended to be a fairly generic nice, cool, well-connected noble guy, my DM chose to play him as a loser instead, which I really enjoyed.

Why a loser?

The book gives you a couple blocks of dialogue for Renaer, both of which are mostly rants about his dad (one pretty unprompted, too), so she decided that daddy issues were the crux of his character. Most of his major life decisions, like joining the Harpers, being unmarried, and routinely bucking the expectations of noble society to do things like get drunk in dive bars with Floon....all of that's because he knows it would piss off his dad, every bit of it. Of course, he's still a good person at heart, but for our Renaer, getting involved in the treasure hunt was very personal, since he wanted to undo his father's crimes.

There's also a few little oddities like nobody seeming to realize that Renaer was missing despite him and Floon going missing at the same time. Your first quest is to rescue Floon, not to rescue Floon and Renaer. While a simple explanation for this is that it wouldn't be unusual to not be able to reach Renaer (Harper missions and such), our DM instead took it as an indication that Renaer honestly doesn't have a lot of close friends. He KNOWS everyone, yes, but he doesn't fit into noble society terribly well and apparently prefers to hang around people like Floon and Volo.

Random stuff DM did with our Renaer:

-Now that he's the only one living in his house, he's dismissed all of the servants and does his best to...not live there whenever possible. He's often found staying at various inns and taverns. His home has fallen into a bit of disrepair, but it's open to his friends to use (we've found a very hungover Floon and Volo on his couch on multiple occassions).

-Dude has a bit of an alcohol problem.

-Most of the other nobles' perceptions of him were neutral to negative. He was still invited to all of the important events, on account of his father having been the previous Open Lord and all, but he wasn't exactly WANTED.

-After we bullied Orond Gralhund into telling us about his wife's involvement with the fireball, Yalah murdered him and pinned the crime on Renaer since he was with us at the time (and we had failed to introduce ourselves so he was the only one she knew lol). Trying to figure out how to bust Renaer out of jail, as well as saving ourselves from being accused of being accomplices, was a fun multi-session diversion! DM ran that instead of having us get arrested during some chase scene later.

-And...he honestly brought an element of much-needed emotional stability to the party. Yes, he was a disaster man like the rest of us, but he was fairly calm and level-headed whenever his dad WASN'T involved. To contrast, the rest of us were:

1. An incredibly anxious teenage cleric
2. A 52-year-old rogue who gave no fucks and was way too old for this shit
3. A young and silly, but somewhat childlike, paladin that just didn't know how to human

So Renaer also served as a...semi-but-not-really-responsible adult figure for our younger characters. Or at least the best at faking it.

I struggled with the same thing but a few things helped: First, I put him in places where the book didnt and had him say things the book didnt have him say. Like habvoing him be the first NPC the bard interacted with and him taking her to the opera to meet mitt (I find him being anaroper operative under mirt is interesting enough. I also played a lot with the daddy issues and how his relationship with his father played out. Thats a weath of character stiff thats your playground. He can also form a trio with and volo, giving him another dimension. You really just gotta make him have important story moments with the characters after his dialogue. Maybe he challenges them to a duel on brightswords, or come sto check up after FIREBALL. And tells them the rumors he’s heard about blue alley. IDK how much of a solution this is but I hope its helpful.

My party members are from the North, so Renaer is their fixer in a town where they have few other connections.

I totally changed chapter 3. No fireball, Renaer came to the players and explained that he'd been investigating the stone since getting kidnapped and was getting close to having it down. He wanted their help to try and grab it when he finds the location and they agreed to help. I let a session go by where they met with Zardoz I think then had Renaer come back and say he tracked down the stone to Gralhund Manor.

While the players were staking out the manor and preparing to try and sneak in I had a Xanathar group invade ahead of them and they could see it happening. They jumped in and beat the invaders, I had way more house guards, but they all went down in the fighting and Renaer was with the party for the fight.

I also played lady Gralhund different where she's kind of an independent work for anyone, knows a lot about the crime scene in the city type. She asks for the players help because she feels like she got in over her head and wants a safe place to hide out for a while. After the agree to take her in, I had her bring out the 2 kids which was a fun moment.

Now Ranear, lady Gralhund, her 2 kids and her bodyguard are all at trollskull Manor. It's been pretty fun.

TLDR; Change a lot about chapter 3 from the book to put Renear in more and have him more invested in finding out why he was kidnapped.

I too read Blackstaff Tower prior to this module, so I had a much fuller view of him than the module gives. It's a little daunting to run anything in Waterdeep after reading it though, so your milage may vary--my brain is currently pretty full of lore that I probably don't need.

My PC's will meet Renaer on Sunday. He's older and wiser and less the flamboyant trouble-maker than he was in the novel, but I'm pushing the part where he's got a target on his back from virtually every bad guy in town. I'm running a mix of the Alexandrian plus some other publications, so there's at least six groups of varying power that are targeting him...pretty much all the time.

He's literally (and mechanically) exhausted and often wounded--both of those mechanics will help to explain the hiding as opposed to fighting in the warehouse. He doesn't want to leave town; he's not a coward and he's such a stalwart defender of Waterdeep at this point that he'll refuse to be taken down by his father's wrongdoings.

Walking him into a room is asking for trouble--anyone who recognizes him will either feel sorry for him or hate him, and he's too proud to walk out of the room until he's changed their mind. It's a combo of pride and tired that several of my PCs will probably latch on to...hopefully.

Maybe helpful?

Check out Night in Trollskull Manor. Specifically Part 6 the delves into his character a bit more.

Read Blackstaff Tower by Stephen E. Schend, the novel that first introduced Renaer and Vajra.

Cool things about Renaer:

• He founded a private espionage club to secretly support the Blackstaff.
• He has a tragi-romantic back story.
• He's the direct vector for Dagult Neverember.
• He's fucking gorgeous.
• He's insanely well connected. Any time the PCs want to meet somebody, it's good odds that Renaer can make the introductions.
• Works the other way, too: Any time somebody wants to meet the PCs, there's a good chance they'll use Renaer to make the connection.
• This also means that Renaer's recommendation could easily make-or-break Trollskull Manor. If the PCs get invested in the tavern, they'll get invested in Renaer's social circle.
• In a scenario boiling over with intrigue and double-crosses, Renaer is just a legitimately nice guy who, unless the PCs really go out of their way to piss him off, will reliably have their backs and be a friendly face. Don't knock it. A good friend is hard to find.

I nodded raenar a tad and taken the swashbuckler template as my inspiration turning him into a sort of trust fund child with a moral compass, he fell out with his father and kept a sizeable amount of the money but lives off it. He's happy to spend his father's money on good people viewing it as a daily bit of low key revenge against the man, he's a Galant wannabe adventurer so is happy to fight alongside the party and prove his worth as a fighter. There's an ongoing war happening in my world and he has his eyes set on joining up so he's been a useful eye into that conflict from the mindset of the pre 1914 nobles sons that went to fight for jobs and glory

I don't have the background on the forgotten realms to know the full history. So I made Renaer the ideal dashing swordsman, charming, honest, the ideal of nobility.

And of course in the first raid on the xanaghar hideout the players set off every alarm and Nihiloor left his pet intellect devourer hidden away. The players charged the orc mage and Renaer got brainsucked.

So now he's a xanathar mole trying to get them to grab the stone. It's gonna be a terrible surprise for the player romancing him if anyone casts protection from good/evil any time soon.

I ran Renaer and Floon as a couple, and that made him too interesting to the party. He does come off a little bland, so the extra layer helped a lot I think .

I made him and Floon like Bill and Ted and they became some of my player's favorite NPCs. Basically lovable idiots.

This is all really great idea stuff in this thread but I simply made him more charismatic. Think flirty musketeer. When in battle he always throws himself in front of the arrows to shield the noble lady etc. my party loves him.

Renaers main trait to me just seems to be how generally trustworthy and friendly he can be for someone in his position. He's willing to introduce the party to Mirt based on his first impression. He frankly isn't as important as a lot of other characters, hes more of a plot device. Personally, i had him frequent Trollskull to check up on the Harper player at first, and just chat with them about whatever, local politics, nobles, sports whatever. They really built up a rapport and he's usually their first source of info when something comes up.

As for his job, he has a noble name despite his fathers exile, and is a member of the Harpers, feel free to play up the spy stuff.

I like Renaer and I remember being disappointed that my previous DM didn't use him more. But the truth is, in a book filled to the brim with engaging NPCs, he doesn't really stand out.

This is my second time around (first as a DM) and no one's been bothered yet to find out anything about him other than his dad being rich.

We're putting the "Heist" in Dragon Heist and the players have allied with the Zhentarim. The Harpers as a whole have been hard to integrate because they don't really fit into the whole heist trope.

In my game he's mostly comedic relief. Always drinking, quipping. Which made the reveal that he's a Harper fairly out of left field but.. it's just the way it went.

My problem with Renaer was that he's an experienced adcenturer who winds up with the party at the start.

The only time I used him much, he wound up rolling horribly so the PCs didn't believe he was really an adventurer and gave him shit even after the Blackstaff confirmed it