I think I'd apply for the position of guy who's super interested in something that's only interesting cause it's gsmeplay relevant. I'd stand by a river staring at it day and night and when the protagonist talks to me I'd say "I'd bet I could use a boat to cross this river."
Since I'm in my thirties, and therefore expendable in a JRPG, I'd like to be the NPC who has an optional quest where main characters play matchmaker. Give me the safest happily ever after please.
I'd be the rando that keeps track of the player's records despite having no means of obtaining that information. "Wow hero you've taken 53,211 steps so far and have collected 76/80 recipes!"
I'm that weird collector always asking for your stuff and giving nothing back, but if you give me one of all 297 unique item types I forge them all into the Ultimate Weapon for your jack-of-all-trades party member. Of course I don't help you keep track of what items you gave me, how did you know?
I am going to be a youngster who's super enthusiastic about an article of clothing. My hat, my sparkly dress, my shorts, you name it. Then after my dialogue I do a spin and little stars shoot around my character sprite.
Not even a Snorlax who's sleeping and blocking off a bottleneck to the next town, and you have to wake it up with a Pokéflute to progress. Just a Snorlax sleeping somewhere.
That one generic henchman who's lowkey super relateable. After you beat me to get the key to the next floor I'd say "It's a living" before stepping exactly one square to the left. Any time you talk to me afterwards I say something about being on break or taking this up with the union.
Since many people have called Kor a JRPG (I don't know if it really gets to be a JRPG since it wasn't made in the RPG region of Japan) I think I'd like to be Dongbert. Just a smug jerk who constantly loses, but still finds a way to make the victor feel like they lost.
I'm not vain enough to unironically request a :dongbert: emoji but sometimes when I'm gettin' my troll on I do wish I could easily link his dumb face.
Final boss of the minigame that everyone hates. You need to beat me to get the ultimate weapon for the best physical damage dealer in your party (the guy who throws playing cards as his normal attack) and the whole quest takes like twenty hours.
What I never understood about the NPC thing is that it's always assumed that NPCs are not like other main characters in the story. But it's just any character you can't play right? Even characters who have like hours and hours of screentime showcasing and developing a complex and nuanced personage.
The term (which is deeply reactionary and shouldn't be used except to criticize it) is based on a more literal reading, since NPCs aren't players, i.e. aren't controlled by a human but instead just have scripted dialogue, they don't think and don't have any sort of internality, they just do things automatically. "NPC" is a branch of the weird 4chan incel Discourse of asserting things like "only we have internal monologues, the normies don't" as though not hearing what other people think means that they don't think.
Absolute garbage generic side quest/fetch quest giver. Something totally moronic.
Oh you're the HERO? Could you help me collect 5 APPLES?
But I wouldn't actually accept the apples they already have in their inventory. They'd have to go get 5 APPLES. From trees. And there'd only be 4 apples on trees near me. And I'd only reward them with half the market price of 5 APPLES.
And this would be a more western RPG than JRPG one but the town guard who can inexplicably smoke you in combat or stop you because I trigger an unskippable dialogue when you do something bad, but is also woefully unprepared when plot happens and dies unceremoniously.
To be fair, enemies have weapons of +10 vs NPCs; you'd think it was dumb but given there's more NPCs in the world than there are PCs it's actually money well spent, especially as they still manage to kill players a fair number of times.
OOH Ooh or "crazy conspiracy hobo" that is shunned by the townspeople because actually I'm the only plot-irrelevant character who actually sees through The Veil and gives the hero some minor skill boost.
I would live in a box in the alley in the bad part of town but my spirit world house would be an impenetrable sanctuary where the player can use my bed to rest and have a chest for storage.
I trade you 3 mushrooms for a pear. No dialogue. Found dead after the cataclysm to make the event seem more devastating while not killing off too many actually important characters.
I'd be the NPC who gives a long, arduous and yet actually fascinating quest line but I'm bugged so you can't finish the quest, and the company stopped putting money into the game so it's never getting fixed, and you'll never know how this quest line ends, but the info for the end of it exists in the code, meaning I know how it ends I'm just not telling you.
Flavour NPC in the starter town who has, like, 1 line of repeating dialogue.
If I'm lucky, I'll turn up later to do the same line as part of a running gag. If I'm unlucky, I'll be obliterated when the protagonist's hometown gets wrecked for cheap pathos at the end of the tutorial.