Just a couple of characters hanging out in the Tea Shop Discord
I've been revisiting my small ttrpg The Tiniest Tea Shop, which is all about connecting with the NPCs that visit your shop and seeing them through their journeys in life. It's hard to know how to help potential players find those meaningful NPCs that make my game great. I've written a few out and gone into detail on how players can make their own but I'm never sure it's enough. I've considered adding more in-depth narrative to the original game, or releasing a setting book (for my weird tea shop game like come on dude), or even introducing a Stardew Valley-esque relationship system where you build up to events with customers more mechanically rather than finding those moments in the narrative. All this to say, characters can be a difficult part of creating any fiction and yet they remain one of the most integral and memorable things about our favorite works of fiction.
This aim of this jam is to (hopefully) inspire each other with our ideas of the creation, development, and mechanical uses of NPCs. Thanks for being here!
Rules
- No generative AI allowed. If you've seen any of my games you've seen that I'm no artist, no literary savant, and certainly not an instructional designer. You don't need to be either.
- Any kind of game, game tool, asset, essay, manifesto, or anything else is allowed as long as it's on theme.
- No rankings or prizes, this is just for fun and inspiration.
Jam Cover Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Camden Public Library / Flickr: The Commons
Jam Page Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / The Getty
