I just finished my first playthrough of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and wow, that was a great experience. The art and vibe is cozy, it has the feels, there’s a great story, choices matter, I love sci-fi, the core gameplay is fun, I got attached to the NPCs, it isn’t a grind. It’s just everything.
A coworker recommended it a few months ago, but I only picked it up for my book club. We had read Shakespeare’s The Tempest (I actually cheated and watched it), and after that, we all felt like we needed a break, so I suggested we play a video game instead of reading a book. The group agreed, so I was off.
In typical fashion, I was slow to get through the first two hours. Then I was hooked, and suddenly, I couldn’t wait to finish up work and get the children to sleep so I could log a few hours before going to bed just a little bit later than I should.
I’ll save the full review and explanation of the game for an actual game reviewer. However for the purposes of this TTRPG blog, I got particularly fixated on the NPCs: they feel rich and distinct, and I really did get invested in them.
And when I reflected on my own games, I am terrible at getting my players interested in the NPCs.
And I realized that the problem is that my NPCs are being NPCs.
Let me explain what I mean and how to make NPCs more engaging.
Why do NPCs exist?
NPCs can do a lot of things in a game including exposition, bartering, giving quests, helping, opposing, and whatever else you need.
But if you really want to slim it down, the minimum that NPCs have to do is to give the players information and quests.
That’s it. And it could be enough.
Back in the early 2000s, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a big hit. And the NPCs didn’t do much. Most of them were standing around waiting for you to come up and talk to them.
If I remember this correctly, it was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion that first introduced Radiant AI, where NPCs actually had lives. They would go to work and go home to eat and sleep and otherwise figure out how to accomplish their basic goals.
It sounds kind of obvious, but this was huge. Imagine if the player never showed up in these games (or just chose to stay in prison at the beginning of the game). In Morrowind, literally nothing would happen in the world; everyone is waiting to get poked. In Oblivion, the NPCs would just continue about their usual day.
How does this tie into Exocolonist? Well, to be fair, the NPCs are literally standing around waiting for you to talk to them. And often, they don’t have anything new to say. But many times, the story and game moves forward because they’re in the middle of something.
And there are a few notable times when things happen in the game even if you don’t intervene. All of these triggers took immense effort from the writers to plot out.
Back to Daggerheart, one of the GM principles is “Fill The World with Life, Wonder, and Danger.” As a GM, you could plan out a whole living world, but frankly, that’s a lot of work.
And I think you can fake it with one weird trick.
Show NPCs doing something else
I know that NPCs don’t really have a life outside of the moments when the players interact with them. I myself can’t be bothered to figure out what’s happening off-camera.
But I think it adds the illusion of depth to just show a NPC doing something else before a player engages with them.
Consider the following. The players need to find a town guard to ask about strange goings-on. When they walk up to the guard, you as the GM could just immediately start talking to the players in character.
Or you could first describe how the guard is:
- Shooing away a child
- Yawning
- Rubbing their knee and grimacing
- Practicing swinging their club
- Singing a love song
- Shaking sand out of their shoe
It can be mundane. It can be epic. What it does is provide a glimpse into things happening in the world separate from what the players are doing.
Maybe the players jump in and inquire about what the NPC is doing. Then you can improvise and come up with the rest of the situation and motivation. Maybe you can even invite your players to fill in the details.
Maybe the players note what the NPC is doing. They incorporate that little fact into their first impressions.
Maybe the players completely ignored what the NPC is doing. Even then, it can just be part of your patter to bring the world to life.
Life Pro Tip: How to talk to strangers
Bear with me here.
What is the best way to talk to strangers? Get a dog.
When you’re walking a dog, random people will come up to you to pet your dog or inquire about your dog or whatever. Unless you walk around with a grimace, having a dog makes you more approachable.
I guess it doesn’t have to be a dog. Maybe it’s a funny hat or the fact that you’re fishing on a bridge. It’s just anything for strangers to grasp onto because they know at least one thing about you.
Same idea for NPCs. If you describe your NPCs as names, ancestries, and motivations, there’s not really a lot for players to jump in on. But if they’re doing something notable or have something interesting with them, then there’s a much better chance that your players will find a way to engage with them.
Final Thoughts
Of course, we never know when the players will decide to latch onto a specific NPC or why. It’s just the same as not knowing whether players will take an adventure hook or decide to walk to the right parts of town.
“Show NPCs doing something else” is intended to be minimal work to invite players to engage with the world with evocative moments. Despite all of the worldbuilding you as a GM might do, the only real canon is what happens at the table. Give your players a sense of a bigger, living world, and figure it all out later if they dive in.
Also, I still have only finished one playthrough of I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. I know a big point is replaying the game, but I generally feel like replaying (or rewatching or rereading) is mostly a waste of time.
But I’ll still consider it.
Elsewhere in Daggerheart
I found another Daggerheart Blog! But it’s also in German, so I have no idea what it says! https://dolchherz.de
The Pocket Dimension is getting further into Daggerheart with a Session Zero for a new Actual Play
And BladeBound Saga has a trailer for a new campaign with players from across the AP-verse
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