[MUD-Dev] believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation)

[Mike Rozak]

Not having a world populated with NPCs, my personal preference is
more NPCs.  I think/hope they would increase the immersion (despite
being lousy conversationalists), and provide more ways for PCs to
interact with one another.

Here's a slightly different approach that might (or might not) work:

  1) Populate cities with lots of NPCs that don't do much except
  wander around and answer questions that PCs might ask. My personal
  preference would be for 3/4+ of the people wandering the streets
  of a city to be NPCs doing ordinary jobs, to increase the illusion
  of a world, as opposed to the reality of playground.

  Some people might object to this idea because the NPCs are
  basically scenery. My arguement is: So are trees, but MMORPGs draw
  them. (How about SpeedNPC in addition to SpeedTree?) The biggest
  problem with this is the extra computation.

    a) The scenic NPCs could provide some useful services:

      - Ask them where the local shop is.

      - Ask them what time it is.

      - Each one might know some special tidbit of information.

      - Ask them if they have seen so-and-so walk by. (More
      computation). This would be interesting, being able to track
      other PCs (or NPCs) by asking around.

      - Ask NPCs to repeat conversations they heard PCs
      saying. (Never have a conversation in public?)

      - If a fight broke out in the city, at least one would run to
      the city guard, who would come and break up the fight.

      - Random and interesing behaviors. One co-worker who attended
      a conference in NYC related that he had walked past a homeless
      person that had pulled his pants down and was yelling "I'm
      naked." He didn't mention anything about the conference. Naked
      people isn't family VW content, but it proves the point that
      some behaviors can be very memorable. Kids running around and
      shouting, "Tag, you're it!" or preachers professing the end of
      the world, all add to the ambience.

      - Etc.

    b) Since there are so many NPCs, a PC trying to lie low could
    masquerade as a NPC.

  2) Allow GMs (or actors) to "possess" NPCs, like the Matrix
  movies, except their outward appearance wouldn't change. That way,
  if a GM thought that an intelligent NPC would improve the
  experience, they could take over the NPC for a few minutes. GMs
  could just as quickly leave an NPC back to its AI and possess
  another one.

  3) Allow GMs to affect entire groups of NPCs. Think of this as the
  GM playing a God-game an manipulating the NPCs in bulk.

    - Make the villagers angry, or happy depending upon what PCs are
    doing.

    - Make the villagers all flee an evil monster

    - Control NPC buying habits (such as food and clothing)

  4) Allow players to "hire" NPCs and give them tasks to do, such
  as:

    - Pickup and deliveries, to/from other PCs and NPCs (this
    introduces the callenge of figuring out which NPCs are doing
    deliveries and waylaying them)

    - Wander around the town shouting "hear-yea, hear-yea, hear-yea,
    Fred is a great guy!" or other ads

    - Guard stuff

    - Watch an area for specific passerbys ("Tell me if Joe walks
    by." or "Tell me is someone from the Warlords guild is in
    town.")

    - Other AI?

  One could also argue that NPCs aren't necessary because PCs can do
  all those jobs. However, PCs don't like doing boring jobs, and
  they don't stay in character.

  5) PCs could approach NPCs asking if the NPC has any jobs to do
  (insta-quest). Most NPCs wouldn't need any, but some would have
  pickup and delivery tasks, or even item aquisition ("go find me
  some belladonna, I don't care how.") More powerful NPCs would have
  more demanding jobs.

  6) NPCs could be intelligent enemies. Why not have a NPC that
  pick-pockets from PCs? Or which steals treasure from monsters the
  PCs just killed? Or NPCs that are hired assasins (perhaps hired by
  other NPCs) whose job it is to kill a PC that crossed a NPC.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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