Sister Vigilante

Someone over at SHS might make an NPC named Akron! If he gets there first, you might have to change the name! [p.s. good luck]

These are just some thoughts I’ve had while working on Xan, Angelo, and hanging around the forums here. They’re stated as if they were absolutely true which of course they aren’t. I’d rather put them forward, though, as if I were some authority (which of course I’m not) and just let people make of them what they will. If you disagree, you’re probably right 1) Too much content is as bad as too little An NPC mod should have at least as much content as the existing NPCs. It’s hard to avoid an NPC mod without slightly more content than the existing NPCs, who after all don’t have much unless you’re romancing them. But always remember that the mod is part of a game, and once it starts to eat up just a lot of raw space in the form of text, the game suffers—and in the event your writing is really better than Bioware’s, your writing suffers! You can just write a novel if that’s what you really want to do. 2) A good mod feels polished and streamlined It isn’t too hard to find your way through quests. Small things like journal entries are given attention. Every option the PC is allowed to take, even if unlikely, is fleshed out. Equivalent dialogue paths have similar numbers of talks. The content isn’t all loaded in one section of the game, leaving others sparse. There are even numbers of banters with other NPCs. It doesn’t seem as if the mod author is pressuring you to take certain options. Custom items don’t have too many abilities. There are, of course, few typos or glaring grammatical faults. It’s hard to say exactly what “polished” or “streamlined” mean, but we all know when we’ve played a mod like this: that doesn’t just seem like it was produced by a mad genius of a writer, but someone who actually had our enjoyment in mind. 3) People are looking for different things in Mods For example: I’ve seen so many projects take flak for making their NPC the “center” of the game, or at least noticeably more special than other NPCs. This is generally not a good thing, but I can easily see that a player might want their love interest to seem unique, creating a sort of classical love story in the game. In short, this is a pitfall, but it doesn’t automatically disqualify a mod from being any good. If you think you can write a good NPC who happens to also be the son/daughter of a major deity and has half of Athkatla already in his/her debt, I might think you've got your work cut out for you, but the premise alone doesn’t make it bad (only perhaps more likely to be). Conversely, some people just don’t like reading text and prefer mods that are as low-key as possible. 4) You can argue all day about what does and doesn’t “belong” in the game I personally think, and if you’re playing it after all these years you might agree, that the original game produces an impression of great consistency in its characterization, general writing, design&etc. That said, pretty much anything you want to put in there, you can make a logical case for. Baldur’s Gate contains references to everything from Monty Python to Cyrano de Bergerac. It ignores D&D rules. It breaks the fourth wall. I always thought Irenicus was a particular offender in this respect, with lines like “you warrant no villain’s exposition from me.” As for speech patterns, they’re so varied in the game that one might get the impression any bit of modern slang would fly. There are some points where the PC is given only one dialogue option, and many in which he/she is given only two. That said, there are obviously some things that “break” the game experience. If you give your NPC a laser canon, there’s probably no way to make that work. The same goes for certain speech patterns and certain instances of in-jokery, fourth-wall breakage and even innocent references to outside D&D lore. A lot of it depends on how it’s handled, and I think you just have to go with your gut. It is important, at least for the vast majority of players, to have a mod that seems as if it belongs in the game; but debates about what doesn’t and doesn’t belong are bound to go nowhere. 5) Sometimes you have to sacrifice storytelling Relating back to the first point, to make your mod part of the game, you can’t always fill in every detail you might like. For example, the temptation to flesh out minor characters is always strong; but in the game there are people, even those with names, whose only purpose is to step out and die—and this works. I once had a writing teacher who advised me to do this in all writing, telling me “Shakespeare was ruthless.” In fact, drama is a good place to look for these cues. Also notice that we don’t know much about the childhood of most Bioware NPCs. That may seem like the rational place to start with a character, but in the game world, it’s far more important to know who a character is right now than to know every detail of his or her past. 6) The game world is existentially different from ours Realizing this has a profound effect on writing an NPC. Faerunians, for example, are more or less guaranteed an afterlife, unlike us real folks who can never be sure. Accordingly Faerunian religion is different from what we might commonly think of as religiosity (and this is perhaps more true the more you know about religion). The same extends to debates about philosophy and politics, if you even want to run the risk of putting that in there. “Existential” might sound highfalutin but it means nothing more than the basis of a character, influencing their psychology and worldview. And since a lot of mod authors are pretty smart, and like to put loads of psychology and philosophy in there, actually examining the philosophical underpinnings of the game world and their repercussions—if it doesn’t make you feel too silly—can be rewarding. 7) Conversely, if you want to write a serious mod, know when to suspend the game world If you want to stage real human dilemmas, it sometimes means pulling someone out of the game’s world briefly into our own. A person might die permanently while, going by rules, there is a chance he or she could be raised. A cleric who’s lost his faith might do so for reasons that more resemble why a real person might. People may be motivated by prejudices or ambitions that don’t seem entirely native to the game world, but are crucial the story you’re trying to tell. Most Faerunians don’t seem to wonder if “life really has a point,” but bringing your outside perspective into the game, it’s easy to see that they might. It is always best, I think, to try to come up with an in-game explanation for why something unusual happens; but if the story is powerful, I think you can get away with the explanation being a little flimsy. The point of fantasy is ultimately to look at potentially real situations in a different light, and sometimes it touches more closely on our world than at others. 8) Don’t insert your opinions, political, philosophical or religious, into the mod I should actually say, don’t make your own opinions the only ones in the mod. There are few things uglier than seeing a writer’s convictions, whatever they may be, sort of peek through his writing—but it’s quite normal for strong opinions of some sort to be expressed in a story. Ideally, if two characters in a mod are having a debate (say, your NPC and a Bioware NPC), it shouldn’t be possible to tell which one of them represents the author’s opinion. You might even try (gasp!) writing a character whose convictions are radically against your own, and assigning your opinion to an appropriate Bioware NPC. If you have the time, I really recommend the critic Bakhtin's study of Dostoyevsky's "polyphonic" novels. If you want the short version, he says the Dostoyevsky created characters with the ability to think for themselves, which doesn't sound as if it should be that revolutionary--but when you think about it... 9) Don't pick on anyone This sort of goes with the previous point. Can’t stand that Anomen? This is actually a good thing! Once you sit down and try to start writing him fairly, in spite of disliking him, you may find that the effort produces some of your best and most surprising dialogue. The same goes for characters you find boring, to which I can attest from personal experience. 10) Good characters aren’t caricature I saw it pointed out somewhere recently, and quite astutely, that what we’ve come to think of as the defining quirks of the Bioware NPCs (Aerie’s stuttering, Edwin’s muttered asides) hardly appear in every single one of their dialogues. If your NPC can be defined too easily by something they do, rather than what they think or feel, this may be trouble. 11) Conversely, good characters lend themselves to caricature But yet again, this is a game world, and sometimes you have to work in broad strokes. A PC racing through the game can’t stop to appreciate every shading of a deliberately ambiguous character. When your NPC isn’t in the spotlight, it helps if they can have a sort of comic persona—like most of the existing NPCs—they can step into for a moment for one line of interjection. When the dialogue is all theirs, you can explore all the doubts and complexities they might have. 12) Anti-Mary Sues are as bad as Mary Sues It might seem clever to create a character who goes against the grain by being as plain as mud, but this is fantasy, after all. A few unique abilities or a nifty origin set a character apart. Most importantly, a character should be who they are--not a reaction to a certain trend in the modding world. The same goes for characters who "angst about their pasts." Whoever said this was necessarily a bad thing? The trick is to make them react uniquely and believably to a unique and believable trauma. 13) Use action text sparingly (e.g. “NPC X glides across the floor towards you.”) This is just a pet peeve of mine. It appeared almost nowhere in the original game and I can hardly think of any addition the game needed less. I’ve used it myself, as it seems to have become the industry standard, but it should be avoided whenever possible. Of course it's hard to avoid with flirts, but even there, the less text the better. You’d be surprised how much you can convey by dialogue when you try. For some reason this form just lends itself to abuse. It is the hard truth that many people who can write living, witty dialogue are not so good at writing prose. 14) Especially in erotic scenes Unless you absolutely must. But even if so, try to keep it short, the shorter the better. If I know one fundamental truth about writing it is this: fewer words are sexier. Seriously. Try it out and you’ll see what I mean. 15) But don’t. Do not. Describe the color. Of your character’s eyes If it’s an exotic color like, I don’t know, violet-lavender, you don’t need to have that in the first place. If it’s a normal color, why are you describing it? Especially don’t describe their eye color if conveying their eye color isn’t the point of the sentence. 16) If you’re stuck for a banter idea, try changing who speaks first I’ve been amazed at how often this works for me. Your NPC doesn’t have anything to say to NPC X? Try switching it around and seeing if NPC X has anything to say to your character. 17) Try to please a crowd, but not the crowd There’s no shame in creating a mod you think that people might actually want to play; but if you try and cater to everyone, you’ll end up sacrificing your integrity and whatever artistic vision you might have had. If you want to see how this can destroy a good man’s soul, just look at your favorite political candidate. Trust the opinions of a few people you respect, take advice that seems especially fitting, and you should do fine.

O-oh--by "the same" I meant, I'd linked that "memes" thread in another post in order to use the image of Xan getting his hair died pink to illustrate why I find him more amusing than depressing I can't draw

I didn't realize you'd done the same challenge! Thanks so much, this really made my day. "No I don't" is priceless, too.

Yay, she said she would and she did! This is great, can't wait to see where it goes Ooh, thank you! I like the way he sort of appears to be chatting up Viconia

This actually was more or less the assumption I went forward under, which is where Angelo's "bored" line comes from. Strangely enough, I met a half-Italian, half-Japanese guy in Japan. He'd switch fluently between three languages (English the third), it was almost spooky...

Mm-hmm! As far as I know that's the only line that's a direct pinch, though; I couldn't resist (Many a Mile is pretty much a rephrase of It's a Long Way To Tipperary)

Sorry I can't be of any help, but can I just say this sounds like a great idea?

Perhaps 3/4 of a joke, really.

Switched at birth?

Looks great!--although again, a bit on the young side. (This does get me wondering what ethnicity Sembia "corresponds" to...perhaps none specifically. I think I heard somewhere that Tethyr was based on Medieval Spain. Back when I was writing Fury, I seemed to be laboring under the delusion that Sembia was supposed to be India; of which I was certainly disabused by the time I started A.NPC...)

Xan is a terrific mod, except for that irritating voice he's got...but I hear there's a way to restore the original voice from BG1, at least for his select/order lines...

Incidentally--oops, the bulk of changesimprovements willmay be coming with v5, which is due to be released...soonsometime

Aw, thanks! It's good to know the romance was a success (at least with some), considering it was originally kind of secondary to the project... (Incidentally jeez, I sure am chatty. There's something like 600+ posts on this board, but I think I'm personally responsible for nearly half of them) This is great to hear, too; honestly it's something I'm vaguely proud of. I thought from the beginning that Angelo's build had the capacity to be vastly overpowered, and made some deliberate choices about his stats and the like. Anyway, thanks--and also nice avatar, Mugen

It's coming back to me now! I must have seen this when I played the game, actually, because the detail of his throat being slit struck with me--and became a part of my new narrative. Now speaking of faulty memories, I can't remember if I included my "full" story in the dialogues; but it should be on these very forums in Merzer's little "bio." I guess I'll leave it as is, although this is duly noted...

Awwww Thanks so much! I really appreciate this. In fact, I think I'll "sticky" it and make it, so to speak, a forum fixture. And yes, a number of things should be changing with v4 (hopefully all for the best...). I wouldn't want to tip my hand, but both these and other quibbles from the distant past may well be addressed although spoiler regarding one passage, do you mean to say that going by canon, Angelo wasn't actually the one directly responsible for Scar's death? This is news to me, although I believe it. I had no literal basis for assuming he was--and come to think of it, even in my story Fury (the "basis" for much of Angelo's character) it's Semaj who does the deed. Or, was it something else? [/]spoiler In any case, thanks again! I really think this is pretty awesome. -SV

Oooooh, I love Taboo! I had the chills for hours after watching it. It has to tie with this one for my favorite samurai film of all time. I like the Asano Tadanobu here for Angelo, although he'd look a bit older. The Matusda Ryuhei looks more like Sawara (if you added in the white hair...) Thanks, madhatter!

First of all, best of luck with what looks like a great project! Secondly, it has been decided that when it's finished it needs to be hosted at G3, so that when Aklon is released, we'll have five "big A" NPCs and you can have them all in your party! (which, if the PC is a cleric, would be a pretty balanced group, if a bit weighted towards melee)

Oh dear... (I have coined a new emote. It means "laughing until I cry.") Others should probably know this resulted from Angelo's joining talk in which he says: "...and from the looks of it, you're a harder sort than he [sarevok] was." Originally there was a gender check here so he could say: "...and from the looks of it, you're a harder woman than he was." I'll leave you to connect the dots yourselves... I once attended my college's Rocky Horror, reluctantly, with a date. This dialogue resulted: Total Stranger: Come on, don't you want to lick whipped cream off my stomach? It's Rocky Horror night! Me: No, I'm okay, really.

As in "flamboyantly hetero" or "makes you wonder"? Really both might be tricky, but I'll give anything a try.

Ah, thanks! It may be a long time before the next version of Angelo, but in the mean time, I fully support anyone downloading and using this. I could always make a joke about it being a "pale imitation" of the original...

This one is for Amaurea and this one is just for me. Note: This is the first and last time I will abuse Coppermine for my own amusement, I swear!

My money is on Yoshimo but, yes seconded

I'm not really sure, it looked fine on my computer (and you can see this version in "living color" on the project page). Probably had something to do with the software I'm using--Seashore, a free graphics program for the Mac, which can only work in Jpeg (so I used Mac's default picture viewer to convert back to BMP).

Here you can view the various portraits packaged with the Angelo mod. From right to left: -The lovely default portrait, custom-created by wonnimchunha -The original portrait used in the primeval beta, taken from http://cassinus.free.fr (I wonder who it was originally...someone referred to it shorthand as "Cassius," which I find quite plausible) -A slight edit of the default, done by me: I elongated the face a little, but as a result the colors got a bit washed-out -Amaurea's wonderful custom portrait Personally I have no preference for one over another: I often don't have a strong mental image of a character I'm writing, or I have a strange composite image, so any one of these is the "real Angelo" as far as I'm concerned Note: Anything else in there is just silly "fanart" created by me. But it involves the portraits so I consider it fair use.