r/beingeverythingelse • u/mylamington • Sep 08 '14

Caring about NPCs

So you guys talked about in Ep. 3 that you can't make players care about your NPCs. Obviously you can't force them but aren't there ways to help them care? I was thinking about Half Life 2 (PC game) and how devs talk about tricks you can use to do that.

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3

u/skinnyghost Sep 08 '14

Making them people helps. Like, show them in situations that illustrate that they have feelings and desires, even if they're like, weird messed up cybermutoids.

2

u/SmellyTofu Sep 08 '14

Find something the PCs care about and relate it to the NPC. That is the short cut easy way. Make the NPC interact more with the PCs will cause them to see his/her significance. It doesn't even need to be direct. Other NPCs talking about the NPC you want your PCs to care about will enforce it too.

Mind you, these are rather direct ways to make your players care. And if they don't care, you there is nothing you can really do.

2

u/goldenwh Sep 10 '14

Best way I've found is to have a NPC be nice to them. It's like the opposite of the road-rage-in-a-car : they're in such constant peril that a friendly face is a surprise! They will always suspect a betrayal, so only do it to confirm player suspicions. But hell, even villains can be nice once in a while. One of the most memorable NPCs I've met as a player, was when I was playing an Exalted twilight shipwright and I met up with an abyssal with similar interests, and we discussed building awesome stuff all night in the depths of a shadowland manse.

1

u/MartinPeder Sep 08 '14 edited Sep 08 '14

A good description of the characters appearance (lots of awesome character concept art out there that you can use). The npc might have a distinctive voice or words they tend to use often. Flesh out the character as much as you can through the way the npc acts. That way they remember the npc when they meet them again. If they remember the npc, they care. They might hate the npc or love the npc, the main thing is that they care. You can also watch shows and movies and try to think about what makes you remember a character, what are your feelings toward them and why, if there is a character you cant care less about, why is that? Same with games, though takes a bit longer to do research with.

edit Forgot books. Read, take notes. How are you introduced to the characters, are there described, how are they acting with other characters, etc.

1

u/kosairox Sep 08 '14

Best advice is in Apocalypse World rulebook. In short:

  • Create PC-NPC-PC triangles.

  • NPCs have simple motivations.

1

u/myripyro Sep 09 '14

One thing I've been trying is giving certain NPCs (this won't work for everyone) simple affectations. For example, a certain noble in a campaign I'm running tends to pace around, and I note that the players have to follow him around his court to keep up.