YOUR AN NPC

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TalesOfAria

Hello you might find this a lil lame but I think it might make the game feel a lil diff

Ok you know NPC'S (non player character) lately Ive been having trouble getting past the hello how are you doing stage :P

so I thought it might be good if people post a lil thing for them to say and ill add it to a characters as I make....

hehe ill start it off

(1)

Hi...
nice day isnt it.... havent seen you around before


(random stuff like that)
anyway was just an idea ;)

I have about 600 character sets so im kinda running out of things to say lol


Ocean
Resident foodmonster
11991
One thing you could try doing for NPCs is either having some of them give you quests, have some of the NPCs as friends, slightly lower the amount of NPCs, have a dialogue bubble on top of the ones that will speak to you, or involve the party members into the dialogue.

Example:


Welcome to Corneria


Oh, did you want to know where you were? You're in Corneria!

Corneria?! But we were supposed to be at Pravoka! <insert party member name>, I told you to stop and ask for directions!

You expect a guy to ask for directions? Anyway, we're not lost, it's the scenic route!

You don't have to make every NPC have 3 message boxes each (The less the better), and sometimes you can use a switch so after you talk to them once they just repeat a small message afterwards. Either way, treat the NPCs as people and not just filler material. Personally I have a hard time with this too, as the only speaking party member in my game in the beginning is a 13 year old right now, so it's kinda hard for me to write dialogue for them (I'm 23, I don't remember how it's like being 13!)

Another thing you can do is change the dialogue depending on the situation. So they don't forever repeat the same things, perhaps if you help someone in a quest, another NPC will reward you because they were relatives, or something. Or if you asked the King to build a wall around their town, the NPCs might appreciate you more. Something else you can try is writing out the background for the NPCs as you would do for the players.

Something else to try is having a reputation system, and having different choices of dialogue for an NPC. So you can bribe them, you can question them, kill them, take them on a quest with you, or something.
Make a little bit of back story in the town. Have a situation that is happening and all the NPCs talk about it, telling you their personal opinions.
author=Kelikan link=topic=112.msg1631#msg1631 date=1183736396
Make a little bit of back story in the town. Have a situation that is happening and all the NPCs talk about it, telling you their personal opinions.


This sounds great. If you really cannot think of more dialogue to write without having characters repeat themselves, then you should create some 'current events' that have got the town all abuzz. If it's public knowledge, you could have townspeople talking about things relevant to the main quest, but what would be even cooler would be if you created several small, optional side quests that the player could accomplish in each town. Townspeople could then be tapped by the player as being sources of information on finding out what quests exist, where to go and what to do to complete them, etc. You would make the player want to talk to everybody, as well as create more game content that would fill it out beyond the linear main quest, which is generally a good thing!
I know everyone longs for NPCS with important dialogue, but what thing that bugs me like no other is when NPCS take 6 message boxes to talk about the history of the town or something you don't care about. Please keep it brief. They can still be interesting.
I tend to give an NPC at least 6 things to say randomly instead of saying 1 thing over and over again. While it's only semi realistic, it's better then being repetitive.
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