Npcs and text

[Julien Brightside]

Title:

Npcs and text

Question:

Should all NPCs provide valuable information to the player, or is it okay to have some of them just say your usual random village banter?

 

[Ms Littlefish]

Zoidberg: Why not both!?

It's all a matter how you word it. I think it's perfectly possible for NPC dialogue to be back and forth, conversational, and essentially world-build; but that it can still serve a purpose toward the game's information.

At the same time, world-building is important. So I wouldn't really kick myself if every NPC doesn't dish out game secrets, instructions, quests, ect. There's a big difference between an NPC describing a facet of the village life as opposed to, say, some dank memes. 

 

[ArcaneEli]

a mix is good.

if every villager says nothing useful then there is no point to even making them talk.

if every villager says something important your gonna have very little villagers or the important stuff just becomes "where should I look next"

 

[Kes]

A line I've seen too often is, "If you're going into the woods, take some poison cures with you. "

I'm always left wondering why, when I walk up to some random stranger, they would just blurt out something like this. If you were walking along and a stranger stopped you, would the first thing you say, before they've even opened their mouth,"If you're going downtown, remember to avoid X"? Doubtful. Now, I know a game isn't realistic, but I do think there are lots of ways we can get our NPCs to give useful info without falling back on the type of statement I've quoted.

Summary: make your useful info at least a little interesting and a tiny bit realistic. That way you can often combine both types of dialogue mentioned in the OP.

 

[Zortik]

@ksjp17

The way I handled NPCs was "What would the main character remember them saying?"

After all, getting through all of the motions of greetings, introductions, etc would just be asinine. So instead, I tend to pretend that this NPC has opened up a bit to the player and now wants to share something. Who is this NPC and what would they share?

This would be an example of why someone might warn you about taking some poison cures. Although, I'd handle that dialogue differently and wouldn't use the example you shared.

Sometimes it's silly, often times it's just noise that is moderately relevant, and once in a while it's quite pertinent.

@Julien

The exercise I walk myself through is this:

Problem: What does this NPC have to say and should he ever say anything different?

Where is this NPC at? Would it make sense to make an observation about the surroundings or not?

Does this NPC have a family? What's going on with that family? Anything they'd share?

What have some other NPCs already said? Could this NPC give their own spin on it?

What's the big news/plot line going on? Would it make sense for this NPC to speak on it?

Then I make a decision on whether it should be funny, insightful, charming, mean, etc.

This process works for me. If it doesn't work for you, another super simple thing to think about is this:

At the grocery store / market, what are some of the oddball responses / conversations you hear between the cashier and a customer?

That sort of senseless banter is exactly how some NPC dialogue should come across.

It's just small talk

 

[Julien Brightside]

@Zortik

Good ideas, this should definitely help me.

Thoughtbanter: One can divide NPC texts into three types.

Directed towards the player, the NPC may be unfriendly or friendly depending on how they know the player.

Overheard conversation, two NPCs are talking to eachother, making the player overhear the conversation.

Mumbling, the NPC are only talking to themself and do not really registrate the player.

 

[Fernyfer775]

I tend to do a few different types of NPCs

1. Random NPC who says absolutely nothing of importance, but just adds a bit of humor or random chatter. Sometimes this random chatter leads the player to a location they would generally have not gone to where they could find treasure. Example: "Sally, over in the small hut to the west has so much junk in her house" and then by going to said hut, you find a treasure chest. 
2. NPC that foreshadows or says something in regards to something happening in that town, like: "I heard there were a group of soldiers who chased that sweet mage girl into the woods...I wonder what happened to her." Then later in the story you run into said mage girl, dead or alive, whatever.
3. NPC that directly makes the story move forward.

 

[Column]

I did this before. Made my town, dropped a few random NPCs, but I had modified a sprite sheet to have a copy of all the default NPCs with space bubbles above their heads. I'd toss two or three of those in a town, and make them the only ones with dialog. I remember FF12 being like that, a town full of people, but not all of then wanted to talk to you.

 

[Clangeddin]

I'd prefer the minimalistic approach, a few NPCs that provide useful information is better than a having an army of random fellas that say "Hello, I catched gonorrhea yesterday =(".

Now, I don't mind the useless banther every now and then if it provides some humour or some backstory/lore element, but I would keep it something rare, and generally, I'd make the number of useless NPCs less than the number of the useful one. Especially because the developer may know which NPC is useful and which one is not, but the player can only know by talking to them.

 

[Shake0615]

This is my soapbox in RPG Maker games, so be prepared for some strong opinions. 

If you're going to make the effort of putting in a character for a player to interact with then that character needs a purpose. Everything that you do in a story-based game must do one of three things (outside of mechanics like combat, character progression, etc.):

1. Move the plot forward.
2. Reveal character.
3. Reveal backstory.

Anything else should be cut, plain and simple. Instead of having an NPC say something useless like, "Don't these flowers smell wonderful?" have them say, "My mother always loved tulips. Every time I smell them I'm reminded of the better years we had before the Plague came and took her." (revealing back story) or "These? They're the tulips my mother planted last year, why do you ask? You don't really strike me as the gardening type. Perhaps under all that heavy armor you're just another villager like us, young man." (revealing character) or "The petals are wilting no matter how much I water them and the roots are beginning to shrivel. I haven't seen such hardy flowers die off so quickly since the Pl - No. It must be the weevils. Yes, I'll have to do a better job of controlling these pests..." (moving plot forward). Even from this simple hypothetical exchange, we see so much story. A year ago some plague apparently wiped out a local village and for some reason guards have been placed there (presumably the young hero based on the dialogue), and now the symptoms that preceded the disease have returned. Why is the disease back and how would a warrior solve the problem? It makes things much more interesting.

NPCs are not there to make your world just "look populated." Each of them is a person with their own story that should add to your hero's story. I said this in another post, but I'll go ahead and repeat it: the C in NPC is character so give them character. There should never be random banter. Every bit of dialogue should contribute in some small way.

 

[Column]

@shake0615

Hang on to your soapbox! I can see where that would work in a lot of games, especially one concerning something that affects the world as a whole, like a plague, some sort of disaster, or maybe some dark lord taking over the world type thing, especially in a fantasy or medieval setting. Towns were a lot more close knit back in those time. If something happened to anyone, everyone knew about it, so it'd make sense for something to be the "talk of the town".

Now, in a game with a more modern setting, it'd be more reasonable to have NPCs that talked about.. nothing. Because that's how people are these days. Everyone has something to say, but no one ever says anything. Like the game I'm working on, the main character works for a shadow organization. The whole point of what he does if for people NOT to know about it. Sort of like the men in black and such. So it wouldn't make sense for every Joe blow on the street to have something to say that would impact the story. What your NPCs say really just depends on the story, the setting, and what actually is going on for them to talk about.

 

[Shake0615]

@ Column

I agree with your last statement that NPC dialogue is dependent upon your story, but I would like to add that even in a setting such as yours there's more for the NPCs to say than, well, nothing.

If your MC works for a shadow organization then the goals of said organization must be lofty or significant, otherwise what's with the secrecy? Who would care about what they did? And, given that, the existence of this group must have some immediate relevance to the world and their workings would have a profound impact on society. If not, why should the player care about it? The citizens of this society would recognize the effects of this group though they would be unable to articulate exactly what caused them. Not every Joe Blow should reveal important plot points, but everyone should be affected by the story's conflict and should have something - however minor - to say about it. To illustrate using my example above, let's say that my flower woman was unaware of the fact that the Plague was actually created by a Necromancer from afar who unleashed it on the village to see its effects. After learning the true nature of the events, the King sent a battalion of soldiers (including the Hero) to guard the village in case he returned. The flower woman would not be any wiser about what was really going on but she would have been affected by the danger the antagonist posed, nonetheless. So her statement about the possibility of the Plague returning is ironic because she doesn't realize that the Hero (and a keen player) knows the real significance behind her words. The same could easily be said of any NPC in your game as well.   It's not about revealing "the main plot" but it's about how revealing how that plot has affected the world, not just the Hero.

I would also add that in the modern world our technology and use of social media knit us even tighter, which makes an even stronger case for the interconnectivity of your story's events. What happens to one person tends to become a personal problem for everyone when posted online. (Remember Kony 2012?)

As a player, I want to know that what I do has a purpose behind it. If I interact with someone in this game I want there to be a reason for it and I want there to be a payoff for talking to NPCs. If more than a few of them don't tell me anything of significance, then I'll just skip past them (why did the developer waste their time making them?) or stop playing the game entirely. 

 

[Column]

I dunno, I guess I feel sort of the opposite. If a game makes me feel obligated to track down and speak to every npc in every town, I get frustrated.

Here's a thought. Should you give NPCs proper names or just leave them as 'villager' or 'young child' or other generic titles? Me, I do a little of both. I might leave a random townsie something like 'man is suit', but if it's an important one, I might give them a proper name, or at least a nick name. A follow up question. Should you use portraits for NPCs dialog boxes? Do you use portraits at all for your characters sprach?

 

[Shake0615]

I think the naming and portrait part is up to the developer and I wouldn't say that a player should be required to talk to all NPCS to move forward in the story. I just mean that NPCs should have a deeper purpose than making the town look like people live there. I think it's an area that's too often neglected in this community and there's great potential for deepening the story through NPC dialogue. That's all.

 

[Column]

While I agree that the value of the npc is highly overlooked, I don't think they should be relied on too heavily as the driving force behind your plot. I, for one, love gifty npcs, like how there's always that one person on the first route of a pokemon game that gives you a free potion. And there are always the people around town that have tidbits of informstion to help you prepare for what lies ahead, like telling you what types the local pokemon gym leader uses, or telling you that a terrible fire breathing dragon live in the caves near the town. I just don't think every single npc has to have something profound to say, because, let's face it, sometimes people just don't have anything intelligent to add lol.