Chapter 2.1. Emotioneering Techniques Category 1: NPC Interesting Techniques

Chapter 2.1. Emotioneering Techniques Category #1: NPC Interesting Techniques

Boring people never rock your world, and they always leave before the party gets good.

This chapter deals

with techniques to make major NPCs interesting. The term "NPC Interesting Techniques" at first seems awkward. It makes sense to call a technique that makes an NPC deep an "NPC Deepening Technique." If a technique makes an NPC interesting, however, it sounds awkward to call it an "NPC Interesting Technique." Still, this makes more sense than calling it an "Interesting NPC Technique," for then the technique itself sounds interesting, instead of the technique being about a way to make an NPC interesting.

Thus you'll find many places in this book where the word "interesting" is used after the noun it describes ("NPC Interesting Techniques," "Plot Interesting Techniques," and so on), just as "Deepening" is used after these same nouns.

If you wouldn't invite a bore to your dinner gathering or marry one off to your daughter, sister, or pet, then don't put one in your games.

Boredom comes in many forms. Sometimes the problem is that the NPCs have no interesting characteristics, so they radiate all the sizzle of a Hallmark get-well card.

Other times, though, the game designer or writer has gone trolling through the over-fished waters of Tolkien or Lucas, and has dredged up some poor character who's dying of overexposure. The game designer proceeds to stick this Gandolf or Han Solo knock-off in his game and smile as he watches us gag on his freshly-minted cliché.

If you want to sustain emotional immersion in your game, then don't let boring NPCs jar the player out of the flow.

This chapter discusses techniques that make major NPCs dimensional, fresh, and thus interesting.