Anyone have some advise for creating NPC's for a campaign? Any links to resources or general tips would be very appreciated!

This is my first real campaign to run and I don't have experience making NPC's.

The DMG has some info, but if you want a quick and simple NPC generator, Donjon has one that works for me pretty well. Gives a basic outline that you can build on if you want.

I like RPGTinker.com for minor humanoid NPCs, and villains.

For major NPCs, I actually use the Character generator here on DndB, since it takes minimal time to whip up a 1st level character and level it up if you so wish.

It would be super nice if there was a way to generate a super simple NPC block so we didn't have to opt for Monster home brew or deal with the huge sheet of options that a created character includes. 

I think monster creation gets me the best format for easy rolling, but it just involves a lot of cross-referencing and time to get to the end result.

my advice is just use existing ones, there's thousands and thousands out there from official creations in 5e modules to bucket loads of homebrews..don't recreate the wheel and spend that energy elsewhere.

Quote from SLM4DM93 >>

Anyone have some advise for creating NPC's for a campaign? Any links to resources or general tips would be very appreciated!

This is my first real campaign to run and I don't have experience making NPC's.

 For RP: I would suggest giving them two personality traits (Ex: irritable, stubborn), a quirk (hums while they work), two descriptive words (tall, bulky), and one connection (agent for the kingdom of Galoron). Boom. That's all you should need to RP a minor NPC.

 For stats: All you really need to do is take an NPC stat block (usually commoner) and add racial traits (DMG pg. 282). Maybe some class features if you really have to.

This might be a bit heady for a new DM, but if you're looking for guidance for your "random" NPCs, or are playing in an open world (though not advisable for a new DM), I sometimes like to play with an NPC personality/motivation system used from an old game called Twilight: 2000.  You have an ordinary set of playing cards and draw two cards to assess a primary motive and a lesser "nuance" to that motive.  Suits fit into four personality orientations (clubs: violence, diamonds: material wealth, hearts: sociability, spades: ambition/power).  T2K usually involved a lot of random encounters and unless you wanted multiple de facto TPKs encouraged a broader range of social interactions and conflict resolution (realistic setting with lots of access to military weapons, getting shot wasn't fun for the player and everyone around them), so groups that made headway in campaigns often did a lot of talking.  The random draws made the talking a little less monotonous.

I'm going to put in a plug for two different systems, one cheap, one free.

The cheap one is the Universal NPC Emulator (called "UNE" for short) - it's available on DriveThruRPG. I think it costs about $5. It lets you randomly roll for the mood, motivation, etc, of an NPC, as well as their reaction to the player characters.

The free one is to use the Character generation system from Ironsworn. Not the stats.. but rather, the Oracles in the back of the book let you define an NPC's Role, Goal, Descriptor, Disposition, Mood, and Activity. The Ironsworn PDF can be had for free from DriveThruRPG.

I have had great luck with both of these systems to randomly generate NPCs and they work great. But you do have to put in some work. For example, last night I worked with one of my players to create the bad person who had chased the girlfriend from his backstory out of his home town. At first we did not actually know she had been chased, just that she left. I rolled in the open for him (using Foundry and some roll tables I made), and UNE told us that the person was a "Skilled Pauper" who wanted to "Blight the Poor", "Embrace Friends," and "Manage Atrocities." At first I was at a loss but then he suggested... the head of a crime family (like a Mafia don), thus a skilled but "lower class" person, who extorts the people of the low district, considers loyalty to "the family" important, and makes sure to control the crimes (atrocities) conducted by his minions. So... the keywords give you the starting point and then you create the story out of them.