SMALL TALK FOR RANDOM NPCS

Posts

Pages: 1
Hello, guys.
so, i'm doing a game who already have a story, graphics, and a lot os stuff made, but as the game will have a non-linear feel, i need to put alot of NPCs in the scenario, and to give some little personality to them, but i'm not good at thinking what topics of small talk should be there?

Can someone help-me with those "Small-talk" lines? The plot will happen in a small north american-town, something like in the series Twin peaks.
It can be any NPC, like a old woman, a young girl, a police officer... You know, just random people...
Give the characters a life outside the main story and have them talk about it. Basically, give them their own mini-stories over the course of the game.

Maybe x and y are dating. Over the course of the game they break up only to get back together at the end.
A police officer makes a bad call and has to deal with the fallout from it.
The local toyshop owner is waiting on a shipment of a toy that a lot of parents are trying to get for their children, which finally comes in at the end, or mid-way through the game.
A married couple is expecting a child and as the pregnancy goes along, slowly talk more about the child than their own lives before it.
A new family moves in to a house and slowly adjusts to the town, making friends.
A family grieves the loss of a family member.

Simple, small things that happen in life. You can have people talk about those people or the people themselves talk.

Maybe an old woman doesn't like to talk about herself but her neighbours are nosey and want to know more about her. After a while you learn that half the rumours that abound about her are false and she's really just a lonely old woman. Or maybe she was a spy in her youth or used to own an aeroplane.

Seriously, though, we don't know your world, the rules of your world, what exists or doesn't exist in your world so coming up with something for the people in it to talk about is hard to do without that familiarity.

Sure, we could make up idle bits of chatter, but it wouldn't really fit your game or might just be boring. You could do things like tutorial NPCs who tell you how to do stuff, or informative types who tell you about quests or talk about your past doings like "Oh, did you hear about what happened the other day? Some kid..." but that's pretty generic stuff.

It's honestly up to you.
Thank you, man. Creating mini-stories is really a good idea.

I'm making my game as a project for college. The player will control an fbi agent, trying to find a missing girl.
It's more like an adventure, as the focus will be on the story, and i'm not using a turn-based battle system, but the action will happen with a "shooting engine" i made.

Here, a short video:
Small talk of NPCs follows a simple principle : they live their own life when you aren't looking.

In any case, you should play Sunken Spire for reference.

They can complement each other, they can talk about what is going on in town and in the world, they can wonder what the hell you are doing in such a small ass town anyway.
Think of them as people and characters in a living town, then write dialogue accordingly.
Pages: 1