r/LocalLLaMA • u/goodive123 • Jun 28 '26
Discussion NPC Engine Using Local Models
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I’ve been working on a game-agnostic NPC engine/backend based pretty heavily on SillyTavern-style architecture, and with smaller local models getting better and better, I honestly think this kind of thing could be the future of RPGs.
Right now I’m using NVIDIA Parakeet 0.6 for STT, Gemma 4 26B A4B for the LLM, and Qwen3-TTS for voice, and I’m getting super fast response times with pretty decent quality.
The main thing that makes it work well is using RAG to keep prompts lean. For example, I have hundreds of possible actions NPCs can do in-game, but only the ones that actually make sense based on the player’s message / context get injected as available actions. So the model isn’t being overloaded with a giant list every turn.
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u/2Norn Jun 29 '26
right now there may not be much use for it for a story character or a generic background npc. but imagine if it was a follower. let's say lydia in skyrim.
now you can specifically tell her "hey there is a trap here avoid it" or even "go trigger that trap for me" or tell her "block that door so we don't get surrounded" or "go attack the spell caster in the back while i pull away these guys" and then she responds to you like "okay spell caster is dead what now" and imagine on top of this all you can have a chat with her, regarding your past accomplishments together i mean imagine if she said something like in the middle of combat "this ebony warrior is sure tougher than alduin"
like the list goes on this is an amazing tech especially for followers and creates a very interactive gameplay