# Do you like character descriptions (for NPCs or the MC)?

**URL:** <https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/do-you-like-character-descriptions-for-npcs-or-the-mc/12456>\
**Category:** Game Development\
**Created:** [October 14, 2015, 4:42pm UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/do-you-like-character-descriptions-for-npcs-or-the-mc/12456 "2015-10-14T16:42:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![PaulGresty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f05b48/32.png) [@PaulGresty](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/u/PaulGresty)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2015, 6:09pm UTC](https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/do-you-like-character-descriptions-for-npcs-or-the-mc/12456/11 "2015-10-15T18:09:31Z")

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Re. the main character… what interests me most, by far, is creating your own unique character. That could come down to strict role-playing within the game; certainly, it involves creating a character that can be vastly different from playthrough to playthrough.

So, _Heroes Rise_ is a really great, well-written game - but the character you play isn’t going to be massively different from one game to the next. You’ll always have the same superpowers, and the same motivations. By contrast, _Life of a Wizard_ is a much narrower game, in terms of story description. Places and characters rarely get more than a smidgen of description. But your character, the MC, can be _immensely_ different from game to game. Of the two, I much prefer _Life of a Wizard_.

So, the main character doesn’t need a lot of description, or backstory, or pre-written personality. That’s for you, the player, to create.

Re. the NPCs in the game… I want description. My own way of thinking is that the player gets to control his or her own actions, but has to accept the rest of the universe as-is. So, you don’t get to choose the names of NPCs, and you have no authorial control over their characteristics. You want them to behave a certain way, manipulate them with your character - just as you’d have to do in the real world.

That said, fiction in general is a simulation of reality; you don’t have to detail every crease, every imperfection. That’s doubly true for interactive fiction, which favours a short descriptive form.

(By the by, I know that _Life of a Wizard_ breaks this rule again and again… I still think it’s a fantastic game…)

> [@leo](#):
>
> For the NPC I mean a pre-written, pre-established look for the character. For the MC I mean you get to choose how you look from a set of descriptors (a la Orpheus Ruse or It’s Killing Time, as examples)

I wrote _The ORPHEUS Ruse_ (respect the capitalisation!), and in that case I felt it was important to provide a physical description of the player’s own body, just because they spent 95% of the game _out of_ that body. In all of the player’s body-swapping shenanigans, the difference in appearance was one of the first things remarked upon - because, well, you would. The differences in more internal characteristics - memories, fondness for certain people or things, aptitudes - came more slowly. Because they’re buried more deeply.

In retrospect, I wonder if even this much emphasis on physical appearance was an error. As I recall, early drafts of the game even had a ‘Beauty’ characteristic, which was a big, big ideological mistake. After a while, I came to my senses and realised that notions of beauty are wholly subjective; I deleted the stat entirely.

At least I think I did. Didn’t I? It’s been a while since I wrote the thing.

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