10 ms·

How to Put More “Character” into Your NPCs

266 points by MaximumMadness 6y ago

brootstrap 6y ago
Cool read thanks for sharing. Probably just bias but my experience with some games man the NPCs really make the game tick. Two quick examples, hollow knight, dark souls (or all soulsborne-kiro). Both are big on exploration etc. NPC interactions are so memorable. Will never forget certain times playing, making progress, finding crazy ass new hilarious NPC. Fromsoft has plenty of these memorable NPCs from demon souls to sekiro!
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  As a primarily single-player gamer, I totally agree. The varied impact NPCs can have on a game is awesome, an example off the top of my head that I enjoy - Skyrim. There are hours of entertaining content [0] just based on some of the weird quirky behaviors of NPCs in that game. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzxv-MKtXZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzxv-MKtXZc
  - Aardwolf 6y ago
    Fully agree with that and the post above! Most Bethesda games have amazing NPC's, and the lack of them is exactly what made Fallout 76 so unappealing to me.
    - pixxel 6y ago
      NPCs are back in FO76, just in case you wasn’t aware. I picked it up for cheap the other week but have yet to play.
    - MaximumMadness 6y ago
      One of many[0] reasons Fallout 76 was bad. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8
      - saalweachter 6y ago
        Fallout 76 at least had a relatively small number of players per server, so you can still largely pretend you are engaged in the main plot line by yourself. ESO has just a steady stream of other players on the same quest chain as you, with absurdly short respawn times. You stumble on to the boss fight you need halfway in progress, help bring them down, while ignoring the other players, then by the time you loot the quest item and start back out the MOB has respawned. WoW was infamous for the competition to get your 10 bear pelts or whatever, but it didn't feel this crowded.
    - phonypc 6y ago
      Really? I feel like Bethesda game NPCs are mostly memorable for their "so bad, it's good" quality. Unless you go back to Morrowind maybe.
      - acomjean 6y ago
        I liked em. They had good character, some made me laugh (John Hancock is trying to sell insurance?) though I was just watching my Girlfriend play through fallout 4 they kept it entertaining. "A settlement needs your help".. Thanks Preston... Well that NPC got kinda stuck on the same topic after a while..
  - jpindar 6y ago
    The first NPC I thought of when reading the article was Jon Battle-born. Those videos are hilarious though.
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
    Agreed! Skyrim has some great writing. Case and point: Eslaf Erol.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  > (or all soulsborne-kiro) Gaah, are we really calling them this now? Can't we just say "FromSoft games"? Are we going to lengthen it even further with Elden Ring? Soulsbornekiroring games.
  - scollet 6y ago
    Lest you forget Armored Core.
    - dkersten 6y ago
      I would actually love a soulslike Armored Core. Please, FROM!
  - on_and_off 6y ago
    FromSoft also made Armored core, so no. Most often people call these soulslikes. Kind of a dumb name and it might artificially constrain new entries to fit into a Dark Souls shaped hole (for example all these games don't have to have basically the same minimalistic light vs dark story) but well, that's how we talked about doomslike for a while as well. Not sure what other descriptive we could use, intentional games ? The combat being more focused on giving weight to your actions vs allowing you to interrupt and change course anytime is the biggest differentiator IMO. GMTK made a great video on what this genra by the way : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      The problem with "Souls-likes" is it encompasses non FromSoftware games, whereas people saying stuff like "Soulsbornekiro" are referring to their games only. I think Souls-like is a fine descriptor for things like Salt and Sanctuary, The Surge, Nioh, etc. It's harder to find a descriptor for FromSoft's games. Honestly, I think tacking Sekiro on is my biggest issue, because that game is by their biggest departure from the Souls formula. > for example all these games don't have to have basically the same minimalistic light vs dark story I would argue From's games themselves don't fit in the simple "light vs dark" mold. Dark Souls is honestly more of a deconstruction of "light vs dark" tropes.
- grawprog 6y ago
  I agree with all those. As a counterpoint, I felt salt and sanctuary didn't quite live up to either dark souls or hollow knight with its NPCs. They just felt kind of generic. To add some more to your list though, Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening probably had my favourite NPCs in zelda games. Both of those games had weird trippy vibes that the NPC's helped bring out. Especially majora's mask, everyone just felt wrong and their side stories and quests really helped make the game.
- on_and_off 6y ago
  Interesting. I love Hollow Knight and all of its characters but I could never take any of the From Software ones seriously (I haven't played all their games though, currently finishing bloodborne). The maniacal laugh almost sounds like a placeholder
goda90 6y ago
I think another thing that could help make it feel more immersive would be a bit of unreliability or incompleteness in information gathered from NPCs. Why does every villager know that there is a legendary mirror in the Fire Mountains that can block dragon flames? Were they all at the meeting where that was clearly and repeatedly announced? Maybe instead they could be saying things like "I hear theres some legendary weapon in the Fire Mountains". "Mabel told me she heard about a a magic mirror that drives away dragons". "An adventurer came from the mountains the other day and mentioned a magical shield against dragons". Now the player knows they should hunt for something to fight the dragon, but what it is isn't clear. Perhaps the full info will come from an important NPC later.
- voz_ 6y ago
  This is far closer to how a lot of modern RPGs work.
- gowld 6y ago
  You would enjoy Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa) on the Gameboy.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Its fine for NPCs to be wrong on flavor. But as soon as you make NPCs incorrect on gameplay-defining moments (ex: There's a vampire weak to silver bullets ahead!!. Woops, its not weak to silver because its not a vampire...), players will get pissed off. In my experience as dungeon master, players are very accepting of "I don't know" as a response. But as soon as you "mislead" players, they start to think of that situation as a betrayal of trust. So "villagers don't know" whats ahead is far better than "villager MISTAKENLY thinks there's a vampire ahead".
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Or have different villages give different answers? But yeah, the player has to be given a fair chance.
    - 6y ago
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
A really good reference for things like this is D&D's Dungeon Master's Guide. It collects a whole lot of advice about different parts of creating a world and story. It doesn't go deep, but it's a great reference.
- arkades 6y ago
  Oddly enough, I find the DMG advice so specific to the type of gaming that sits in the general category of "D&D-type play" that I find it of pretty minor value in any other game at all. Think of how much value the DMG brings to doing collab worldbuilding using "A Spark in Fate Core", as the prelude to a Fate Pathfinder game. Or even how much it brings to the Fate Pathfinder game. When it comes to NPCs and stories, I find the NPC and Fronts guidance for Apocalypse World and Dungeon World to go much, much farther, and be much more generalizable. At least if you like sandbox D&D, versus railroad D&D.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
    We might be focusing on different parts of the DMG. The parts I focused on and remember well are the parts that have nothing to do with D&D. Take Chapter 4: Creating NPCs. The first half of it is about fleshing out memorable characters quickly, which is a skill useful for any tabletop game (or just general fiction writing). It advises you to flesh out occupation & history, appearance, abilities, talent, mannerism, interactions with others, useful knowledge, ideals, bonds, flaws and secrets, with sections of examples and tables for quick generation, as well as advice for what to focus on really quickly. Most of the rest of the chapter is the same for villains, with little D&D-specific bits filling the remainder. Or the play style section in chapter 1, which is about how different people play for different reasons, and you should get to know whether which of your players are looking for hack and slash, versus immersive storytelling. That's even more important in other kinds of games than it is in D&D! I haven't actually played D&D in a long time, but it's been very useful for me in other very different kinds of games, and even fiction writing. I'd recommend you take another look.
    - arkades 6y ago
vepea2Ch 6y ago
Matthew Mercer (the dungeon master of Critical Role) gave this useful tip about NPCs during a Q&A after an early episode of the first campaign : the two most important things to know about your NPC is 1/ what they want and 2/ what they fear ; after that, you can improvise. Of course, in a video game, NPCs won't improvise, but I guess it's a useful advice to tie NPCs in their environment and not just have them being some sort of isolated entities. That being said, as both a d&d player and a RPG videogames players, what I would really want from NPCs in videogames would be for them to stop being just "switches", which I activate using an action button and who provide always the same text. The videogame which allows discussion with NPCs to be initiated by a question asked by the player will get all my attention :)
- MaximumMadness 6y ago
  What role do you see fear playing in NPCs via video games? Outside of the occasional "scream" or "run away" I can't think of a time where I've seen fear utilized deeply via gaming NPCs
  - vepea2Ch 6y ago
    In dnd, when you want a NPC to go your way, you can do them a favor, persuade them or intimidate them. If the players discover what the NPC fears, they can play on it. So basically, in videogames, it could offer two way of handling the NPC as well.
  - arkades 6y ago
    Video games don't have NPCs in the same way. They have scripts. The key distinction being that the purpose of knowing their wants/fears is to know how they should respond as unforeseen events unfold. Real RPGs have unforeseen events. Video games have branching, but highly deterministic, events - therefore, the "NPC" just needs a set of scripts that cover those branches. You don't need to predict anything. They don't need to be characters in the way that RPG characters are characters; they need to be characters the way that fiction characters are characters.
  - vkou 6y ago
pixxel 6y ago
I’m playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance at the moment. It’s one of the best open world experiences I’ve played thanks largely to the NPCs and their stories/requirements. A smaller world, by modern open world standards, which allows devs to create a more meaningful world. Hell, I’ve spent a third of my time playing Farkle (dice) with various NPCs, simply enjoying the pub background chatter etc.
- goda90 6y ago
  I'm also playing it right now. If you haven't gotten it yet, I recommend the DLC "A Woman's Lot". There's a full side quest where you play as Theresa from Skalitz on the day of the attack. I just finished another side quest from the DLC where you help out another woman from Skalitz over in Sasau as she gets tangled up in church affairs that I found intriguing.
  - thom 6y ago
    I don't believe this is a spoiler, but: There's a point at which you get to join the monastery in Sasau and I'll be honest, I just stayed there for ages going about my daily duties because it seemed like an okay life, translating illuminated manuscripts and such.
50ckpuppet 6y ago
Make them Republicans?
at_a_remove 6y ago
I recall that each of the ghosts in Pac-Man has their own hidden behaviors which help define their character.
- catalogia 6y ago
  The red ghost cases you, the pink and cyan ghosts try to cut you off, and the orange ghost alternates between chasing you and fleeing from you.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    Cyan is actually much more complicated than that, it's goal is a combination of Pacman and Red's position: https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavi... Also all of them have "chase" and "flee" modes.
danmostudco 6y ago
I feel Earthbound, the classic SNES RPG where Ness debuted, is a masterclass on NPC dialogue. The dialogue is so well crafted it makes you eager to talk to each NPC you come by, knowing even if they don't give you relevant information they will give you a silly hot take on the world they occupy. It makes everything so much more rich. The Rabbit Girl referenced in the article is from Undertale by Toby Fox, who cut his teeth in gamemaking creating Earthbound mods. I suspect this is why his characters in Undertale follow a similar whimsical nature to this early influence of his. Undertale borrowed a lot from Earthbound's character construction. I've been playing through Earthbound over the last few weeks and consistently find the writers and localization team put in just the right extra 10% to turn a "bleh" interaction into one you think about for days to come. For example, in a nod to the greedy, one character grumbles about the loan he gave to your family and now he "lives in poverty" - all while standing in the biggest house in the game. Later on, a key item with key information gets shipped to your character via the equivalent of Fedex "Neglected Class." A rumpled delivery man eventually shows up and tells you "Anyway, he said... well... uh... I forgot. Yep, I forgot... actually I forgot the stuff I was supposed to deliver, too. I think it was some weird machine to make trout-flavored yogurt. Yeah, I forgot it at the desert... I'm not going back that way, so don't ask me to get the package... I mean, it's your package, right? So YOU go get it! Go on, get out of here." You then have to schlep to another part of the game to recover the package the delivery man decided just wasn't worth his time [0] If you've played the game and want to figure out why some of the quirkiness just WORKS, I would recommend the later parts of Tim Roger's piece from a decade or so ago [1]. [0] https://youtu.be/EIoLcNLyd0g?t=27902 https://youtu.be/EIoLcNLyd0g?t=27902 [1] http://archive.is/fMD7F http://archive.is/fMD7F (edit - huh, yeah this article has NOT aged well at all I should have taken a closer look since it first was released long ago, but I'll leave it here for the sake of discussion & derivative comments).
- RuleOfBirds 6y ago
  Couldn't get past the first page. That piece you suggest by Tim Roger is disgusting to read in its casual misogynistic violence.
  - virtue3 6y ago
MaximumMadness 6y ago
Hey all - I'm Max, one of the co-editors of The Pause Button, a publication all about video games. I wanted to share one of our recent contributor posts that I thought you'd all enjoy. If you have any recommendations for good gaming content to check out, are interested in writing for our publication, or just want to chat - feel free to commment here or email me at max@pausebutton.news
Animats 6y ago
Aw, I was hoping for some approach to making NPCs more conversational. I've been trying to use Rasa for that. Rasa is really intended for Siri/Alexa like things, or rather, it aspires to be. In practice it can do a phone tree with a few digressions. It's based on TensorFlow. You put in a list of questions users might ask, and when someone does ask, it detects which stored question is closest. So you can put in a FAQ, and people can get answers based on it. There's a notion of "slots", so someone can ask "How do I get to PLACE", that would match "Where is PLACE" (that's the TensorFlow part) and the matcher returns PLACE, which can be looked up. I'm not sure this is much ahead of Bobrow's BASEBALL program from the 1960s.
- thom 6y ago
  It's sort of funny to me that this is how RPGs worked for ages but then voice actors came along the horizon narrowed somewhat.
platz 6y ago
Better themes in games would go a long way to make more interesting NPC. If you have a stereotypical theme, your NPC's may have a hard time not being stereotypical too. https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/10/roguelike_theme_list.png https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/...
- karatestomp 6y ago
  Oh man, I clicked that link expecting a totally different sense of "theme". Setting is closer to the what's intended here, not literary theme.
jttyf 6y ago
It seems like the author is conflating natural dialogue with creativity. You can't give a character much personality in a few lines of text, so Mother-style quirky dialogue (as in the Undertale example) is one way to make your NPCs more memorable despite that constraint, but they definitely won't sound like real people or have much character. "An animal walks another animal on a leash" is a joke, not a character. The author shows how to turn a short hint into a more fleshed out character interaction, but "personality" is limited to a trait ("brave", "klutzy") or a relationship to the player, and in an effort to convey these traits in just a couple of lines of text, they end up coming off as forced, contrived. Definitely an improvement from the walking hint, but trying to convey a personality in too few lines and having it come off as a caricature, in my opinion, is worse than an underdeveloped character.
microtherion 6y ago
I used to put character into my NPCs, but then I took an arrow in the knee.
thom 6y ago
With the latest Unreal Engine demo out, I can't help but think that we've probably had enough polygons for a while. Maybe we could have a few iterations of game engines with really revolutionary procedural generation, and ultra realistic text-to-speech.
- Riccardo_G 6y ago
  The Unreal Engine demo was spectacular. The polygons pretty much become quite noise which made the scenery look almost too real in some cases ;) Biased, but I think Replica's AI voice will help a lot of game devs in the future to come!
  - thom 6y ago
    Got a demo link?
seph-reed 6y ago
Just want to plug Cross-Code here. I didn't make it, and don't know the people who did. But I loved it for very relevant reasons to this article. http://www.cross-code.com/en/home http://www.cross-code.com/en/home
atum47 6y ago
Man, this is great. I have a project oriented to give NPC's a more human touch. The project is on a early stage, (just a prof of concept, really), but with a dialog generator, I think I can make a NPC behave's like a player in the game. It's kinda hard cause programming games is not my real job. I work at a bank and the hours are long, but I still wanna finish this project someday and test with on a RPG. https://github.com/victorqribeiro/gaia https://github.com/victorqribeiro/gaia The proof of concept I was talking about. By the way, I'm open to discuss this project with anyone interested.
- anchpop 6y ago
  I like the idea of making NPCs agents that affect the world just like player characters
  - atum47 6y ago
    righh?! I have a half implemented RPG that I'm dying to try this out. But I'm a long way still.
- chaos_a 6y ago
  Your project reminds me of the game Drowning in Problems. Although it has a lot less character, it still tells a rather simple story. http://game.notch.net/drowning/# http://game.notch.net/drowning/#
Riccardo_G 6y ago
Memorable NPCs definitely make or break games, or having NPCs at all (looking at you Fallout 76!). One of the most recent great experiences has been with Hollow Knight; I got so immersed in trying to figure out more about these interesting creatures and their stories, even though they barely really had much to say in some cases. I think something that helped a lot was also how different they all were from one another. On the other hand, a game like Zelda BOTW, I really wanted to get more into the characters, and the cut-scenes were they used voices were incredibly capturing, but then most of their dialogue then ended up just being text, even for the primary characters, which really hurt a bit at the start. The game is still one of the best ever, just wish there was more voiced dialogue. I cannot believe that it was a monetary thing, so maybe just space conservation? Hopefully https://replicastudios.com/ https://replicastudios.com/ will be able to help make NPCs more like characters.
magicalhippo 6y ago
It doesn't have to be much. I still vividly recall my discovery of what happened when you repeatedly clicked on the same soldier in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/qPN-x7rST58?t=15 https://youtu.be/qPN-x7rST58?t=15.
Kiro 6y ago
I go the complete opposite direction in my game. The NPCs convey as little information as possible and nothing that is not relevant to the gameplay. This makes them completely braindead and not immersive at all but for me it's all about the gameplay and mechanics, not superfluous NPC dialogues.
freediver 6y ago
I always dreamed of building a MUD, which lives on two completely independent servers and features the same world. But players from one server would appear as NPCs (in-character descriptions would be mandatory) on the other and vice versa. That way the NPC dialogue and gameplay that would emerge on any one server would feel magical to PCs.

Cool read thanks for sharing. Probably just bias but my experience with some games man the NPCs really make the game tick. Two quick examples, hollow knight, dark souls (or all soulsborne-kiro). Both are big on exploration etc. NPC interactions are so memorable. Will never forget certain times playing, making progress, finding crazy ass new hilarious NPC. Fromsoft has plenty of these memorable NPCs from demon souls to sekiro!

MaximumMadness 6y ago
As a primarily single-player gamer, I totally agree. The varied impact NPCs can have on a game is awesome, an example off the top of my head that I enjoy - Skyrim. There are hours of entertaining content [0] just based on some of the weird quirky behaviors of NPCs in that game. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzxv-MKtXZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzxv-MKtXZc
- Aardwolf 6y ago
  Fully agree with that and the post above! Most Bethesda games have amazing NPC's, and the lack of them is exactly what made Fallout 76 so unappealing to me.
  - pixxel 6y ago
    NPCs are back in FO76, just in case you wasn’t aware. I picked it up for cheap the other week but have yet to play.
  - MaximumMadness 6y ago
    One of many[0] reasons Fallout 76 was bad. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyeCdd-dl8
    - saalweachter 6y ago
      Fallout 76 at least had a relatively small number of players per server, so you can still largely pretend you are engaged in the main plot line by yourself. ESO has just a steady stream of other players on the same quest chain as you, with absurdly short respawn times. You stumble on to the boss fight you need halfway in progress, help bring them down, while ignoring the other players, then by the time you loot the quest item and start back out the MOB has respawned. WoW was infamous for the competition to get your 10 bear pelts or whatever, but it didn't feel this crowded.
  - phonypc 6y ago
    Really? I feel like Bethesda game NPCs are mostly memorable for their "so bad, it's good" quality. Unless you go back to Morrowind maybe.
    - acomjean 6y ago
      I liked em. They had good character, some made me laugh (John Hancock is trying to sell insurance?) though I was just watching my Girlfriend play through fallout 4 they kept it entertaining. "A settlement needs your help".. Thanks Preston... Well that NPC got kinda stuck on the same topic after a while..
- jpindar 6y ago
  The first NPC I thought of when reading the article was Jon Battle-born. Those videos are hilarious though.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 6y ago
  Agreed! Skyrim has some great writing. Case and point: Eslaf Erol.
Trasmatta 6y ago
> (or all soulsborne-kiro) Gaah, are we really calling them this now? Can't we just say "FromSoft games"? Are we going to lengthen it even further with Elden Ring? Soulsbornekiroring games.
- scollet 6y ago
  Lest you forget Armored Core.
  - dkersten 6y ago
    I would actually love a soulslike Armored Core. Please, FROM!
- on_and_off 6y ago
  FromSoft also made Armored core, so no. Most often people call these soulslikes. Kind of a dumb name and it might artificially constrain new entries to fit into a Dark Souls shaped hole (for example all these games don't have to have basically the same minimalistic light vs dark story) but well, that's how we talked about doomslike for a while as well. Not sure what other descriptive we could use, intentional games ? The combat being more focused on giving weight to your actions vs allowing you to interrupt and change course anytime is the biggest differentiator IMO. GMTK made a great video on what this genra by the way : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx7BWayWu08
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    The problem with "Souls-likes" is it encompasses non FromSoftware games, whereas people saying stuff like "Soulsbornekiro" are referring to their games only. I think Souls-like is a fine descriptor for things like Salt and Sanctuary, The Surge, Nioh, etc. It's harder to find a descriptor for FromSoft's games. Honestly, I think tacking Sekiro on is my biggest issue, because that game is by their biggest departure from the Souls formula. > for example all these games don't have to have basically the same minimalistic light vs dark story I would argue From's games themselves don't fit in the simple "light vs dark" mold. Dark Souls is honestly more of a deconstruction of "light vs dark" tropes.
grawprog 6y ago
I agree with all those. As a counterpoint, I felt salt and sanctuary didn't quite live up to either dark souls or hollow knight with its NPCs. They just felt kind of generic. To add some more to your list though, Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening probably had my favourite NPCs in zelda games. Both of those games had weird trippy vibes that the NPC's helped bring out. Especially majora's mask, everyone just felt wrong and their side stories and quests really helped make the game.
on_and_off 6y ago
Interesting. I love Hollow Knight and all of its characters but I could never take any of the From Software ones seriously (I haven't played all their games though, currently finishing bloodborne). The maniacal laugh almost sounds like a placeholder

goda90 6y ago

I think another thing that could help make it feel more immersive would be a bit of unreliability or incompleteness in information gathered from NPCs. Why does every villager know that there is a legendary mirror in the Fire Mountains that can block dragon flames? Were they all at the meeting where that was clearly and repeatedly announced? Maybe instead they could be saying things like "I hear theres some legendary weapon in the Fire Mountains". "Mabel told me she heard about a a magic mirror that drives away dragons". "An adventurer came from the mountains the other day and mentioned a magical shield against dragons". Now the player knows they should hunt for something to fight the dragon, but what it is isn't clear. Perhaps the full info will come from an important NPC later.

voz_ 6y ago
This is far closer to how a lot of modern RPGs work.
gowld 6y ago
You would enjoy Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa) on the Gameboy.
dragontamer 6y ago
Its fine for NPCs to be wrong on flavor. But as soon as you make NPCs incorrect on gameplay-defining moments (ex: There's a vampire weak to silver bullets ahead!!. Woops, its not weak to silver because its not a vampire...), players will get pissed off. In my experience as dungeon master, players are very accepting of "I don't know" as a response. But as soon as you "mislead" players, they start to think of that situation as a betrayal of trust. So "villagers don't know" whats ahead is far better than "villager MISTAKENLY thinks there's a vampire ahead".
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Or have different villages give different answers? But yeah, the player has to be given a fair chance.
  - 6y ago

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

A really good reference for things like this is D&D's Dungeon Master's Guide. It collects a whole lot of advice about different parts of creating a world and story. It doesn't go deep, but it's a great reference.

arkades 6y ago
Oddly enough, I find the DMG advice so specific to the type of gaming that sits in the general category of "D&D-type play" that I find it of pretty minor value in any other game at all. Think of how much value the DMG brings to doing collab worldbuilding using "A Spark in Fate Core", as the prelude to a Fate Pathfinder game. Or even how much it brings to the Fate Pathfinder game. When it comes to NPCs and stories, I find the NPC and Fronts guidance for Apocalypse World and Dungeon World to go much, much farther, and be much more generalizable. At least if you like sandbox D&D, versus railroad D&D.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  We might be focusing on different parts of the DMG. The parts I focused on and remember well are the parts that have nothing to do with D&D. Take Chapter 4: Creating NPCs. The first half of it is about fleshing out memorable characters quickly, which is a skill useful for any tabletop game (or just general fiction writing). It advises you to flesh out occupation & history, appearance, abilities, talent, mannerism, interactions with others, useful knowledge, ideals, bonds, flaws and secrets, with sections of examples and tables for quick generation, as well as advice for what to focus on really quickly. Most of the rest of the chapter is the same for villains, with little D&D-specific bits filling the remainder. Or the play style section in chapter 1, which is about how different people play for different reasons, and you should get to know whether which of your players are looking for hack and slash, versus immersive storytelling. That's even more important in other kinds of games than it is in D&D! I haven't actually played D&D in a long time, but it's been very useful for me in other very different kinds of games, and even fiction writing. I'd recommend you take another look.
  - arkades 6y ago

vepea2Ch 6y ago

Matthew Mercer (the dungeon master of Critical Role) gave this useful tip about NPCs during a Q&A after an early episode of the first campaign : the two most important things to know about your NPC is 1/ what they want and 2/ what they fear ; after that, you can improvise. Of course, in a video game, NPCs won't improvise, but I guess it's a useful advice to tie NPCs in their environment and not just have them being some sort of isolated entities. That being said, as both a d&d player and a RPG videogames players, what I would really want from NPCs in videogames would be for them to stop being just "switches", which I activate using an action button and who provide always the same text. The videogame which allows discussion with NPCs to be initiated by a question asked by the player will get all my attention :)

MaximumMadness 6y ago
What role do you see fear playing in NPCs via video games? Outside of the occasional "scream" or "run away" I can't think of a time where I've seen fear utilized deeply via gaming NPCs
- vepea2Ch 6y ago
  In dnd, when you want a NPC to go your way, you can do them a favor, persuade them or intimidate them. If the players discover what the NPC fears, they can play on it. So basically, in videogames, it could offer two way of handling the NPC as well.
- arkades 6y ago
  Video games don't have NPCs in the same way. They have scripts. The key distinction being that the purpose of knowing their wants/fears is to know how they should respond as unforeseen events unfold. Real RPGs have unforeseen events. Video games have branching, but highly deterministic, events - therefore, the "NPC" just needs a set of scripts that cover those branches. You don't need to predict anything. They don't need to be characters in the way that RPG characters are characters; they need to be characters the way that fiction characters are characters.
- vkou 6y ago

pixxel 6y ago

I’m playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance at the moment. It’s one of the best open world experiences I’ve played thanks largely to the NPCs and their stories/requirements. A smaller world, by modern open world standards, which allows devs to create a more meaningful world. Hell, I’ve spent a third of my time playing Farkle (dice) with various NPCs, simply enjoying the pub background chatter etc.

goda90 6y ago
I'm also playing it right now. If you haven't gotten it yet, I recommend the DLC "A Woman's Lot". There's a full side quest where you play as Theresa from Skalitz on the day of the attack. I just finished another side quest from the DLC where you help out another woman from Skalitz over in Sasau as she gets tangled up in church affairs that I found intriguing.
- thom 6y ago
  I don't believe this is a spoiler, but: There's a point at which you get to join the monastery in Sasau and I'll be honest, I just stayed there for ages going about my daily duties because it seemed like an okay life, translating illuminated manuscripts and such.

50ckpuppet 6y ago

Make them Republicans?

at_a_remove 6y ago

I recall that each of the ghosts in Pac-Man has their own hidden behaviors which help define their character.

catalogia 6y ago
The red ghost cases you, the pink and cyan ghosts try to cut you off, and the orange ghost alternates between chasing you and fleeing from you.
- Izkata 6y ago
  Cyan is actually much more complicated than that, it's goal is a combination of Pacman and Red's position: https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavior https://gameinternals.com/understanding-pac-man-ghost-behavi... Also all of them have "chase" and "flee" modes.

danmostudco 6y ago

I feel Earthbound, the classic SNES RPG where Ness debuted, is a masterclass on NPC dialogue. The dialogue is so well crafted it makes you eager to talk to each NPC you come by, knowing even if they don't give you relevant information they will give you a silly hot take on the world they occupy. It makes everything so much more rich. The Rabbit Girl referenced in the article is from Undertale by Toby Fox, who cut his teeth in gamemaking creating Earthbound mods. I suspect this is why his characters in Undertale follow a similar whimsical nature to this early influence of his. Undertale borrowed a lot from Earthbound's character construction. I've been playing through Earthbound over the last few weeks and consistently find the writers and localization team put in just the right extra 10% to turn a "bleh" interaction into one you think about for days to come. For example, in a nod to the greedy, one character grumbles about the loan he gave to your family and now he "lives in poverty" - all while standing in the biggest house in the game. Later on, a key item with key information gets shipped to your character via the equivalent of Fedex "Neglected Class." A rumpled delivery man eventually shows up and tells you "Anyway, he said... well... uh... I forgot. Yep, I forgot... actually I forgot the stuff I was supposed to deliver, too. I think it was some weird machine to make trout-flavored yogurt. Yeah, I forgot it at the desert... I'm not going back that way, so don't ask me to get the package... I mean, it's your package, right? So YOU go get it! Go on, get out of here." You then have to schlep to another part of the game to recover the package the delivery man decided just wasn't worth his time [0] If you've played the game and want to figure out why some of the quirkiness just WORKS, I would recommend the later parts of Tim Roger's piece from a decade or so ago [1]. [0] https://youtu.be/EIoLcNLyd0g?t=27902 https://youtu.be/EIoLcNLyd0g?t=27902 [1] http://archive.is/fMD7F http://archive.is/fMD7F (edit - huh, yeah this article has NOT aged well at all I should have taken a closer look since it first was released long ago, but I'll leave it here for the sake of discussion & derivative comments).

RuleOfBirds 6y ago
Couldn't get past the first page. That piece you suggest by Tim Roger is disgusting to read in its casual misogynistic violence.
- virtue3 6y ago

MaximumMadness 6y ago

Hey all - I'm Max, one of the co-editors of The Pause Button, a publication all about video games. I wanted to share one of our recent contributor posts that I thought you'd all enjoy. If you have any recommendations for good gaming content to check out, are interested in writing for our publication, or just want to chat - feel free to commment here or email me at max@pausebutton.news

Animats 6y ago

Aw, I was hoping for some approach to making NPCs more conversational. I've been trying to use Rasa for that. Rasa is really intended for Siri/Alexa like things, or rather, it aspires to be. In practice it can do a phone tree with a few digressions. It's based on TensorFlow. You put in a list of questions users might ask, and when someone does ask, it detects which stored question is closest. So you can put in a FAQ, and people can get answers based on it. There's a notion of "slots", so someone can ask "How do I get to PLACE", that would match "Where is PLACE" (that's the TensorFlow part) and the matcher returns PLACE, which can be looked up. I'm not sure this is much ahead of Bobrow's BASEBALL program from the 1960s.

thom 6y ago
It's sort of funny to me that this is how RPGs worked for ages but then voice actors came along the horizon narrowed somewhat.

platz 6y ago

Better themes in games would go a long way to make more interesting NPC. If you have a stereotypical theme, your NPC's may have a hard time not being stereotypical too. https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/10/roguelike_theme_list.png https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/gsg-content/uploads/2018/...

karatestomp 6y ago
Oh man, I clicked that link expecting a totally different sense of "theme". Setting is closer to the what's intended here, not literary theme.

jttyf 6y ago

It seems like the author is conflating natural dialogue with creativity. You can't give a character much personality in a few lines of text, so Mother-style quirky dialogue (as in the Undertale example) is one way to make your NPCs more memorable despite that constraint, but they definitely won't sound like real people or have much character. "An animal walks another animal on a leash" is a joke, not a character. The author shows how to turn a short hint into a more fleshed out character interaction, but "personality" is limited to a trait ("brave", "klutzy") or a relationship to the player, and in an effort to convey these traits in just a couple of lines of text, they end up coming off as forced, contrived. Definitely an improvement from the walking hint, but trying to convey a personality in too few lines and having it come off as a caricature, in my opinion, is worse than an underdeveloped character.

microtherion 6y ago

I used to put character into my NPCs, but then I took an arrow in the knee.

thom 6y ago

With the latest Unreal Engine demo out, I can't help but think that we've probably had enough polygons for a while. Maybe we could have a few iterations of game engines with really revolutionary procedural generation, and ultra realistic text-to-speech.

Riccardo_G 6y ago
The Unreal Engine demo was spectacular. The polygons pretty much become quite noise which made the scenery look almost too real in some cases ;) Biased, but I think Replica's AI voice will help a lot of game devs in the future to come!
- thom 6y ago
  Got a demo link?

seph-reed 6y ago

Just want to plug Cross-Code here. I didn't make it, and don't know the people who did. But I loved it for very relevant reasons to this article. http://www.cross-code.com/en/home http://www.cross-code.com/en/home

atum47 6y ago

Man, this is great. I have a project oriented to give NPC's a more human touch. The project is on a early stage, (just a prof of concept, really), but with a dialog generator, I think I can make a NPC behave's like a player in the game. It's kinda hard cause programming games is not my real job. I work at a bank and the hours are long, but I still wanna finish this project someday and test with on a RPG. https://github.com/victorqribeiro/gaia https://github.com/victorqribeiro/gaia The proof of concept I was talking about. By the way, I'm open to discuss this project with anyone interested.

anchpop 6y ago
I like the idea of making NPCs agents that affect the world just like player characters
- atum47 6y ago
  righh?! I have a half implemented RPG that I'm dying to try this out. But I'm a long way still.
chaos_a 6y ago
Your project reminds me of the game Drowning in Problems. Although it has a lot less character, it still tells a rather simple story. http://game.notch.net/drowning/# http://game.notch.net/drowning/#

Riccardo_G 6y ago

Memorable NPCs definitely make or break games, or having NPCs at all (looking at you Fallout 76!). One of the most recent great experiences has been with Hollow Knight; I got so immersed in trying to figure out more about these interesting creatures and their stories, even though they barely really had much to say in some cases. I think something that helped a lot was also how different they all were from one another. On the other hand, a game like Zelda BOTW, I really wanted to get more into the characters, and the cut-scenes were they used voices were incredibly capturing, but then most of their dialogue then ended up just being text, even for the primary characters, which really hurt a bit at the start. The game is still one of the best ever, just wish there was more voiced dialogue. I cannot believe that it was a monetary thing, so maybe just space conservation? Hopefully https://replicastudios.com/ https://replicastudios.com/ will be able to help make NPCs more like characters.

magicalhippo 6y ago

It doesn't have to be much. I still vividly recall my discovery of what happened when you repeatedly clicked on the same soldier in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans[1]. [1]: https://youtu.be/qPN-x7rST58?t=15 https://youtu.be/qPN-x7rST58?t=15.

Kiro 6y ago

I go the complete opposite direction in my game. The NPCs convey as little information as possible and nothing that is not relevant to the gameplay. This makes them completely braindead and not immersive at all but for me it's all about the gameplay and mechanics, not superfluous NPC dialogues.

freediver 6y ago

I always dreamed of building a MUD, which lives on two completely independent servers and features the same world. But players from one server would appear as NPCs (in-character descriptions would be mandatory) on the other and vice versa. That way the NPC dialogue and gameplay that would emerge on any one server would feel magical to PCs.