Writing Good NPCs
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มิ.ย. 2024
- I talk about how you can write interesting and memorable NPCs without falling into the same old overused tropes.
Videos I reference:
Tropes: • Tropes
Subverting Tropes: • Subverting Tropes
The Origin of Dumb Dialog: • The Origin of Dumb Dialog
Why I Like Flawed Characters: • Why I Like Flawed Char... - เกม
![เจอประจำ ตอน เปิดเทอมวันแรก [EP.29]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eFK-B836i60/mqdefault.jpg)
Instructions unclear, am now a crime syndicate boss
I'm so glad I saw this before watching the video hahaha
Tim: “Dead parents are overused and hack!”
Me: “Use different dead family members … got it”
"Use sick grandparents instead..."✍️
"My father is a Adamantium Golem and my mother is a god. And they both died when I was young!"
@@ColonelRPG that instantly get meh hooked :D
“My half cousin’s step son’s boyfriend’s aunt’s sister-in-law is dead!”
*writing* dead... second-cousin... once... removed...
As an avid fallout quest modder who writes all his npcs this is EXACTLY the video I needed.
ayyyyy
god speed o7
I loved Brotherhood guy from Fallout Nevada mod who didn't care about his mission and just wanted clean water to take a bath, something very humane and realistic about that character.
One of the things I love most about My Neighbor Totoro and Miyazaki films in general is how he takes the time to show you who a person is through their minor personality traits, like when a character drops something or how they clutch their clothes when they're afraid. They usually aren't handled through dialogue but the animation shows you who they are. It's those little things that make you care about them and I think they're what really give his work such life and lasting appreciation.
Brings to mind one common piece of advice in filmmaking: show, don't tell.
I think it applies to storytelling in general. Video game writers often push narrative in your face very aggressively through dialogue or journal/lore entries when much of that could simply be done by visual cues.
@@Infinite_Jesterenvironmental storytelling
I'm a firm believer that immersion is ALL about the small things.
small stuff that 'no one would notice' but when they do they are like "oh wow they bothered to do that?" or if you don't notice them directly you are constantly soaking them up in your subconscious. i think the latter is more impressive because you become immersed without even noticing it. Cyberpunk 2077 did that for me. i would find myself just wandering Night City and taking in the atmosphere.
@@quillclock Yeah, I do the same thing.
@@Infinite_Jester I think the main issue is that small and background details costs way more in video games than books or movies. Small details would have to be modeled/drawn and animated. Dialogue is cheap and easy to produce which contrasts greatly. It's worth the cost in narrative heavy games but a lot of games (and their fans) deprioritize story or have basically zero story.
“Time is money. Chit-chat is not money. You here about the job or what?”
Butch of The Hub - Fallout 1
I'm here about the what.
@@FluffySylveonBoi or the job
Hearing him say “my parents were killed in an auto accident” in that muppet voice has given me the energy to keep going for the rest of this week
"Suck it Batman!" - Tim Cain 2024 :)
3:05
@@johnmothtech
🙃😂🤣😅
Dude !
I died !
"I used to be a programmer like you... then I took an arrow to the eye." - a very interesting and original and engaging piece of dialog from an npc with an eyepatch that totally doesn't have the same voice as 200 other npc's in the game
Tim: Talks about a speech impediment
Me: wha? When?
Tim: *moving to another topic* simerly
Me: oh
4:14 that sounds like a fallout trait
In the last D&D campaign I was part of, my character was an orphan. I know, the shame! But he was also well adjusted, didn't treat it as anything tragic, and it was only part of his backstory only to explain how a rock gnome could end up as a monk!
If you're going to have clichéd elements to a character's backstory, I think it's best to treat them as incidental rather than core to their being.
Made me think about what is the number one story of a half elf?
Daddy issues
it kind of reminds me of a LARP forum discussion years back:
there was also a inflation of orphand characters, mostly with the home village raided by orcs. And how to avoid that and similar tropes. but later someone also correctly claimed: its not THAT bad of a trope, youre playing an adventurer, which is a very out of the norm type of person. as someone with loving parents, happy siplings, living in the green lands of everything, you're probably not ending up as a warrior or the typical murder-hobo :D
@@kyoujinko Half-elves were always complicated. One parent is going to outlive...well, about everyone that isn't an elf. The hook would be how one elven parent got together with a human parent and how interested in the family the elven parent was. See? Work to be done here! This is something that always troubled D&D campaigns.
@@davefinfrock3324That's the story I'm writing between my protagonist and her children when they enter the story later. She's an elf, her children are almost all half-elves but fantasy shenanigans cause half-dragons and a half-Celestial. The question, then, is how invested in the family and her even more unusual children's lives is my protagonist? Answer, as much as she can be when she and at least half of her children upon reaching adulthood are all adventurers, her because reasons, her children because they grew up on stories of their mother's past adventures and living through her continuing exploits.
I think untraumatized orphan has to account for a good portion of monks. I played a monk who had the head of his order tell him he knew both his parents when they were alive and his response was "Cool, I have some gardening I need to go do. Let me know if you need something"
You are quickly becoming the host of one of my favorite TH-cam channels. These videos are always so honest, concise, and helpful! "I am not a good writer. I'm a good narrative editor," is such a helpful caveat.
I will be completely unsurprised seeing some handsome, right handed, colorblind NPCs popping up in games in a few months.
Tim, it's great that your night vision is good enough to drive at low beam all the time, but high beams also make other drivers aware you sooner. If there's an oncoming car around a bend, you can see the light of their high beams way before you see the car. If however it's driving with just the low beams, you don't see it until it's closer and you have direct line of sight.
Regards: A professional, mostly nocturnal, truck driver.
Then there is One Piece where every character backstory is the author finding interesting ways of making a character an orphan.
I couldnt whistle untill my overbite was fixed
Go through your own life events. If there's at least one that makes you say "Man, that was crazy!", there's a chance the story is worth telling.
So so true! Great tip.
I too am right-handed and grab jars and bottles with my left hand while I open them with my right hand. It makes sense to me because unscrewing the top is usually more strenuous than simply holding the container. I also brush my teeth with my left hand. I use forks and spoons in my left hand but I use knives with my right hand. I hold a slice of pizza with my left hand. This is a quirk I've never thought about before.
Oath: I will never fight crime because my parents were never murdered
Flaw: Whistling hurts my ears
Equally bad with both feet is ambisinister!
Ave, true to TimCain
"i am good at seeing good writing, game and artistic design and so on" - the story of my life
Suddenly have the urge to rewatch Community again.
Don't mind if I do 😂
Chaos theory + NPC writing. That makes sense.
No way we got Tim Cain doing Dadbaby pose in the thumbnail before we got GTA 6
I have had some similar experiences re handedness; At school, I used to bat with my left hand, but throw with my right, all kinds of stuff like that. After some googling, I found that "cross-dominance", or "mixed-handedness" is a thing.
Also thanks for reminding me how good season six of Community is. It has some of my favourite Dean moments: all the Honda stuff, "and jesus wept"!
Thanks for all the interesting videos Tim!
Hey Tim, just wanted to say I've really appreciated your channel and daily uploads. It's been a part of my routine to set up a queue of TH-cam videos to listen to during my morning commute and I always start the day with yours!
I know this may seem unrelated but this video did remind me of something I've wanted to do for years and probably never will but it's sort of a dream of mine. My favorite video game is Morrowind and while most NPCs are not what people usually think of when they think of the good about that game there is one town I always had a big connection with called Gnisis in the game. And I felt it had a pretty colorful variety of NPCS and I always wanted to make a fan made movie set in the town with those NPCS during the Oblivion Crisis of the game that came after. Like the Legion Garrison, the town miners, the old telvanni wizard who lives in a tower at the far corner of the town, the ashlanders who are out in the wilderness of the town and one of the small fishing villages to the north that redoran owns. Sort of all these people band together to survive during the Oblivion crisis. I know it will probably never happen but I was reminded because it would focus on the NPCS of the town not the player character and I felt some of the NPCS in that town at least were really cool.
I love your videos around these topics, I am glad I was suggested your videos and grateful that you keep making them while sharing your valuable insight with us.
You are partly a reason why I am seeking my job in the game design field, while I always had a desire for making games, I always felt lost about what I would do or that I would be inadequate at the job compared to others, but hearing your experiences has helped me greatly to feel more confident in my ability to make it in that business.
Applied to my first game design job today after my first internship ended and I am hoping I land it, your videos will come in extra handy then. 😅
Speakers to drive away teenagers? What the heck?? 😮
yeah it's a thing, you can google them. essentially very high frequencies that older people can't hear anymore.
And in a few years everybody will ask why there are so many characters called Timmie now all over the place... it started here with this little video. Excuse me now, I have to make an NPC Tim.
Presumably a sarcastic orphan with amnesia.
You have a damn good way of explaining things. Thank you, Tim.
Perfect class right here! Thank you Tim, again.
Such a fantastic video. Thank you as always, Tim!
This is good advice for characters in any kind of writing. Games, TV, Novels, Short Stories, anything.
The key thing here I think is that it’s not the event that matters. Neither the intensity, complexity or even the unusualness of the event.
What matters is the way the character relates to the event and how they act on it.
Hey Tim, you might be cross-dominant, like me. I use my right hand for some activities, and my left hand for others. I rode my skateboard (decades ago) goofy footed. I also cannot whistle. So, you are definitely not alone.
7:04 thats actually really interesting and I have a similar phenomenon on my dad’s side of the family. Him, my sister, and my uncle both write right handed, but with things like sports they do the opposite, and do a lot of other things the opposite way. Interesting to hear you talk about that
Dead parents, memory wipe, mind controlled to be bad guy for half the game, bad ass attitudes and over the top stuff... have become too commonplace
beautifully illustrated! parasocial advanced +1 😂 Another great video!
Me “I’m watching a Tim Cain video, he’s talking about Wildstar.” My roommate, “Wait, Tim Cain worked on Wildstar?… that makes so much sense, the writing was so fun!” Me, “oh yeah, maybe he’s the one I have to talk to to get my skyplot back.” That was a real conversation, we love the writing in your games.
Good stuff. I'm glad my friend recommended your channel to me.
Something I always wonder in movies but could be applicable to games: normal people are too normal. However, in real life, everyone does some quirky things. E.g. Sneeze out of the blue for no reason. Hit their toe on the table. Knock on wood 3 times, etc. But movies are always made to avoid small quirks at all costs unless they fit the narrative. Should folks add some small quirks for no reason here and there?
I think so. One of the many reasons I like GURPS is the inclusion of quirks, which are little oddities about your character that don't really affect play very much. Something like "doesn't eat any meat except chicken" or "always wears a blue article of clothing". Quirks encourage role-playing, and I think they round out characters.
@@CainOnGames Would be interesting to see players/viewers overthinking a character coughing and it turning out it was not a terminal illness for a change. 😅
I love GURPS btw. Such freedom to make characters. I wish someone did some GURPS c-RPGs. btw, imho, the GURPS point system would be much superior to the regular D&D-like leveling system for c-RPGs.
Making up stuff about my characters in Fallout games was an amazing addition. So my gunslinger is very, very hot headed. Did it mean that I got into a shootout with Outcasts in F3 cause that one gal was shouting at me? Yes. Does that mean I lost a great way to get ammo and stimpaks that this mod added? Yes and I don't regret it at all. Another thing about him was that he was an addict, no particular drug - just high on anything constatly which created some very funny situations when I was low on caps and needed a hit.
Thanks for this advice Tim. It's really helpful and free!
As someone that writes NPCs, thanks for these fantastic lectures.
I like the way you speak, makes listening more enjoyable
A random raider running towards me in battle and saying "Look, your shoe´s untied!" made him one of the most memorable characters of Fallout 2 for me xD
As someone who studied writing to become an author when I was much, much younger; this is solid advice. The key to good characters and dialogue are the small quirks, not big flag characteristics. It's true with movies and theaters too. What are the most memorable things about iconic characters? Their tragic backstory and heroic accomplishments?
Or "do you feel lucky pal?", or Huckleberry Finn and the fence, or Han Solo shooting first?
This almost feels like a fun friday video! Thanks for sharing Tim. I hope the copyright gods don’t come after that community clip being used 😬
I'm right handed and I also grab the jar with my left and unscrew with my right because it's my stronger hand. I think typically you'd want to use your dominant hand for unscrewing. Granted, I'm also a goofy style snow boarder, so maybe I'm a little backward.
I love this. Thank you. I may make it a mandatory watch for anyone I play TTRPGs with. People struggle so much with making characters a LOOKATME or uneek. I hate it. I hate it so much. I loathe it. I've stopped playing with so many people because of it.
The odd right-left handedness is almost certainly because you’re left eye dominant. Being right handed and left eye dominant is much more common than actually being left handed, and is hereditary. It doesn’t even correlate to which eye you have stronger vision with. There are a lot of ways to test eye dominance; in the US many of us figure it out from learning to use a long gun - you’ll naturally have a strong inclination toward lining up the sights with your dominant eye rather than shouldering the gun according to your handedness. Interestingly, I have heard anecdotes of eye dominance changing after laser eye surgery. Not sure how much credence there is to that.
Anyway, love your channel - I have no interest in game development, but you are a really exceptionally articulate and expressive storyteller. Came here for Fallout, stayed for Tim.
This reminds me of my single favorite character from Fallout 4 - Teague of the Brotherhood of Steel, who is blessed with one of the most humanizing moments I’ve ever seen in a video game
My favorite thing is when i discovered my now wife is a trope, as someone who loves writing i was tickled pink when i saw it in starfield. But that’s the thing with tropes is that they’re tropes for a reason. Some people do overcome great personal tragedy and adversity.
I'm left handed. When I was in grade school in the 70s, my school did not have any left handed scissors so I could only use right handed scissors and to this day I still use only right handed scissors. I also do other weird things with my right hand such as always turn doorknobs with my right hand.
That's interesting because the hand I use for door knobs changes depending on which direction I'm going (the hand furthest from the door knob). I also do what Tim does and use my left hand to hold the jar and my right to open the lid. I don't see that as unusual though because my dominant hand is my right which also has my best grip strength to grip the lid.
I didn’t know other right-handed folks opened the jar with their lefts- I suppose I never noticed. I always open with my right
I'm glad someone said it. Thanks, Tim.
Little D&D trick. Make a shop keeper or important NPC super racist towards one member of the group, and super kind and generous to the rest. Maybe the Half-Orc or Halfling has to stay outside. Now, see if your players like or hate this character. Either way, likely to be more memorable.
We did that in Arcanum. It surprised players when their favorite shopkeeper in one play through was suddenly nasty in another, just because the player was a half-orc
@@CainOnGames Whelp, guess I need to play Arcanum now.
You explain very well
I totally grab the jar with my left hand and unscrew it with my right. I had no idea until now that that was at all unusual. I also can't whistle or snap my fingers
My grandfather was right handed, bad at some things, and also weird in how he'd use both hands for things unlike most right handers. He would say "I'm neitherdextrous"
what if I make the protaginist the battlescarred orphan and the npc sidekick the down to earth relatable character
That’s allowable 😀
What I understood from this video:
Tim is an NPC
Im also right handed and grab the jar with my left hand + unscrew it with my right. I think thats the default with most people.
great video, man.
Jeez, when I heard you say whistling hurt my ears, I remembered all the time I have walked around whistling at work. . . I know people sometimes hate that, but most of the time it's just because they think it's some happy go lucky thing, like I am being purposefully cheerfully or showing off or something, really I don't even think about it I am just a musician and always have tunes in my head. But causing pain is not something I had considered. I will be more careful in the future.
One game that back this up is Knights of the Old Republic the writing feels like you're talking a digital person not a bunch of code on a screen.
I used to be able to whistle, but I can't anymore! And I haven't had any sort of jaw trauma.
At this point, Tim is just using these videos to tell us about his childhood.
Oooh boy I love Community to bits ❤
Hi Tim! Got to leave a point for my boi Solaire in Dark Souls as a good NPC! Praise the...
I was literally just thinking about why we love Solaire when he really gets little dialogue throughout the game. That first conversation tells us so much about who he is and what he values in just a few lines. He’s yearning, he’s open (befriends us right away with no reason to trust us), he’s optimistic, he’s a little bit lost in a strange world. It’s great writing.
@@catladyaunt Yeah, From Soft does a lot with a very limited number of interactions, and they focus in on just a few dozen NPCs per game and make them all really interesting
And then he can just go mad unless you do some very specific thing that you have no way of knowing about through dialogue and exploration of the world. C'mon how many people actually figured it out without using internet? That is such a dumb choice.
i think i’d actually like a game that could implement some sort of degenerative disease or genetic disorder that would make the game more difficult but maybe had a trade off like night vision if X drug wasn’t taken or you have X amount of time before it fully takes over
"Battlescar orphan" lol 😄
when i met my girlfriend, who is left-handed, she thought i was left-handed too because i hold my phone in my left hand
So there is this game called Arknights, a game I love and adore because of how well written the characters are.
It makes me sad how difficult It is to get into for people who is not interested in visual novels or tower defense games because the story and characters are worth experiencing.
There are over 300 characters, all of them with their own backgrounds, quirks and distinct personalities, they really feel like real people.
The message of the video is something I was fortunate to learn on my own after reading a lot and asking myself why I like the characters I like, and It is always the small things that make them look alive and relatable.
Tim, I've been watching your videos quite a long while, thank you for sharing your personal stories with us so far.
İ never thought this would be the video i would comment under, but I share quite a few traits you described.
Being right handed however using the left to hold the jar, being ambidextrous with my feet, better low light vision, being unable to whistle and, most importantly, hearing really high frequencies.
I'm currently living in Tokyo, and most places around city center have these mosquitoes installed, they sometimes are debilitatingly strong, while general Japanese populace seems oblivious to their presence.
I'm curious if some of these traits may share a similar genetic trigger.
I am also right handed and grab jars with my left hand and and unscrew with my right hand.
I didn’t know that was weird 😂
Knowing your weaknesses is great
Exactly, it's great to know your weaknesses, Tim...
Hey Tim! Been a big fan of your videos, could you maybe answer in comments or make a video on how to network in the gaming industry? Thanks
I’ve never been very good at that.
I also grab left, unscrew with right, and I'm right handed.
For kicking, your dominant foot is actually the opposite of your dominant hand
i gotta see an NPC someday with an eyepatch that, when asked about it, says it was an accident while cooking, and that they don't really miss their depth perception that much
I use Mythic GME to make NPCs. I find TTRPGs can be the best way to create templates for characters and whatnot.
I also can't whistle... my wife can't whistle. But my 6 year old daughter can whistle... somehow she just taught herself... I also wonder if my mouth is not shaped right. I have very bad teeth formation and my teeth are all very crowded so they form a concave shape inside my mouth.
No player amnesia ... But ... KOTOR ...
I’ve never been able to figure out the whole whistling thing either. Thankfully I don’t have that super hearing where it hurts to hear😅
i'd love to see a game where the player character gets amnesia part way through, so the player themself doesn't have to relearn everything, just the character
i like the thumbnail
The first NPC that came to mind is Harold, mundane past and decisions lead to a extraordinary situation making a great NPC probably the best NPC in the saga.
I love the fact that some crazy old mutant/ghoul sharing stories for caps was actually part of events that created the main villain of first Fallout. First time you hear his story you think it's just some nonsense he made up/exaggerated but then you find out it's true. Best part about it? He never found out it was his old pal that led the mutant army.
Hi Tim, how do you make status effects like "fear" and "rage" feel more engaging?
As a player you can feel fear or rage while playing a game, and it can affect your gameplay. But what about those emotions affecting your avatar? When an enemy inflicts fear on you, you as the player might not be afraid yourself, but the game forces your character to act a certain way, and it's not what you would do in that situation. Is there a way to make those kinds of mechanics more immersive and personal to the player?
That's a neat question, and the answer really depends on the game and its mechanics. Just off the top of my noodle, one way to implement fear mechanics on a player would be to make their hands shake a lot. Aiming in combat would be harder, with called shots almost impossible (and if it uses a time-stopped UI, I would decrease the hit chances across the board), and spell casting might fail occasionally. Outside of combat, I could see shaking hands affecting mini-games for lockpicking, and NPCs might comment on the PCs hands and react to it.
I'd like to try these things at some point too. Like an illusion ability that makes it seem like a character is in high end gear (even though no stats change) so you think "Screw that, I have no chance!" and run away, or an enemy that insults you or steals some of your items so you get pissed off and want to hack at them.
@@CainOnGames Thanks, this is a great idea
Hi Tim! I strongly agree with what you said in this video, that's why I mostly prefer grounded settings in games (be it fantasy or sci-fi) rather than high fantasy settings.
I feel that mundanity in games makes it easier to introduce extraordinary elements that truly feel unique and stand out. But I also see a lot of people that don't like it when game focus too much on the common parts of life or try to deliver more on grounded aspects rather than fantastic tropes (like magic, fantasy races, gods, etc.).
What's your take on mundane and grounded settings in games? How does that come into play in design choices?
someone should make a game with every trope Tim hates
They did, it was Fallout 3. It's such a weird game when you think about it - main character is just a spectator of someone else story and all the interesting stuff is in side quests (Tenpenny Tower is such a great way of showing a situation with no good solution for example)
I listened to hundreds of your videos and never noticed you had a speech issue. Not even a hint. I mean I believe you! Just saying it never crossed my mind.
How are you so productive with these videos on top of your full time job?
You must have some legendary time management.
When I’m passionate about something (like a game, or chocolate, or this channel), I find the time
I adore you Tim, it’s not weird because I adore any illuminated dragon that opens its hoard to the world. Thank you
I had speech therapy as well, I stuttered hard, and it still pops up, I turned it into a massive advantage, anyway I write stories, poems and such…you’ve planted the seed for a character outline with an eyepatch that they do not need…😊🏳️🌈
I do a lot of writing. Depending on the impact level of the NPC, I usually follow this rule.
Ask what they need to do. Like provide a quest or information or say a funny line.
Then I do my best to write a real person around that concept. Levels of depth apply when necessary.
How/why their life lead them to say that?
Was it approximate given the context?
The quality comes from practice.
Question: how can I go about managing scope while crafting a setting or story? Is it possible to shoot yourself in the foot here? Coming from a setting-first perspective, have you ever had to axe certain aspects of the setting to account for feasibility of implementation?
I have a video coming up in a couple weeks on editing your game story.
My superpower is turning off my hiccups just by thinking "stop", and they do with a 100% success rate. X-Men here I come!
im right handed and do many things like you, in my case i think it is because i hurt my right arm a few times when i was a kid, so i had to learn how to do things that required strenght with my left arm, but i have no idea why i kick the ball with whatever leg but i never played well enough that it mattered
Will you do Livestream? I would love to donate to ask my dumb little questions 😂