[quote]Everyone knows Players will always ignore the complex, grimdark guy at the bar to go talk to the bug-eyed goblin with a funny accent who cleans the pigsties anyway, right?[/quote]

Fool, Zeroth. They'll ignore everything to start hitting up the first anime-style waitress they can find. Failing that, they'll Fireball the tavern.

The real tech you should apply though, NoCo, is to just outsource the creation of NPCs to the players. Managed to generate a whole class of students just by asking each player in one of my RPs to come up with three names and three relationships each.