Towns with Enough Points of Interest

I'm trying to figure out what I'll be wanting in my game's first town, a relatively small village on the edge of a forest. I know there will be two houses that can be entered, and presumably some kind of store or other establishment where items are sold, but I'm wondering how much else I'll need. I want to have other points of interest, but is there such a thing as too few or too many?

How would you recommend a town be designed? Should it be possible to enter and explore every building? Does having too much to look into in one town get tedious after a while? How do these considerations change depending on the size of the town or city?

A tourist information point with tutorials for the game on the shelves, hehe. I personally like to enter most buildings, i loved the way FF7 did it in the slums around Midgar and the other towns, each house had its own unique little story and a small reward, it just made everything feel so rich. but empty houses with one npc that says one line ... nah that doesn't work.

I wouldn't do a tourist information point for a really small village. Maybe a noticeboard in a public area. Just think about what kind of people/occupations you might find in a small village.

Good advice, but it's one thing to know what kind of people you can find in a village and whether it's a good idea to allow a player to interact with all those characters, enter their homes/businesses, etc. As Cluly said, you want to avoid having a bunch of stuff that can't be made interesting.

Yeah. Only add them if they make sense, or make it interesting. What you don't want is a town where the only buildings you can enter or people you can talk to are those who'll help you progress in your quests. That's just as bland as heaps of places/people with no purpose.

I guess a good approach would be to add in whats required first and see how you feel about it. You can always build around that, i find once you start mapping that ideas come and go, its an organic process if you're not following a design, its like painting. if you get something you like, copy it out into another map in case you don't like what you add next.

As for adding to much or too many house's, well; I used FF7 as an example of the narrative the maps had inside the buildings, what I can add to that is Midgar was big, like REALLY BIG, but the scale and population density was only hinted at via background elements, not house after house; building after building. Rarely is there ever a door you can't enter, people try to open doors, its what you do with doors. Hide the doors to buildings, make it so you can't get to a door, etc. If there's noway to enter something, nobody will try and its dismissed. I'm not the best at explaining this stuff, but i hope that helps anyway.

I say add as much as is necessary to give a good feel of a town. I'm guessing that, when you say 'first town', you're saying the main character's home? Well, that's super important! You have a good opportunity to let the player get to know your main character by his interactions with the people in town. It's all about exposition! If you make characters with personality that, when interacting with the main character, allows you to teach the player something about them in an organic way, then you've got a winner. Do enough to establish your character as someone who matters. As far as for the town's sake, it's kind of a character too. Any interaction that allows you to learn about the town or one of your characters (or both!) is considered good and necessary.

I never make it possible for you to enter other people's homes. Let's face it, who in their right mind will let a total stranger walk into their home and loot for stuff? That's just not realistic and can break immersion. Just because many older RPGs did it, doesn't mean it's such a good idea.

As for points of interest, they can serve as a good way to let the player know of the town's backstory and generally to provide some lore. I agree that making a town just for the sole purpose of buying stuff from shops and then moving on isn't a good design, because it's boring and uninspired. Towns should have a personality. Even if they don't have any specific places of interest, you can convey the personality in many other ways. For example, remember that town from FF6 that's run by criminals? That's a great example of how a town can be given personality without having to put any extraordinary places of interest. You can make NPCs behave a certain way, or add little details to the scenery, or even just have a cutscene take place that defines this town upon the player entering it.

All of the posts in this thread have been great. Well except the first part of matseb's post, in my opinion. Exploration is a huge part of roleplaying, and while, yes, walking into someone's house isn't realistic...neither are dragons, magic, and basically every other reoccurring theme in RPGs lol.

I usually try to make my towns and cities alive. If this town is on the edge of a forest, they probably base their economy onon trading woodworkings. As such, there should be evidence of that. A lumbermill or what have you. A mining town should have a refinery or smelting factory of sorts. Things like that let the player see what type of town it is, as opposed to just being told it is as such.

It's up to you of course how you do it, but that comparison isn't really fair. When we're talking about entering other people's houses, we're not introducing fantasy concepts. We're showing how a regular person responds to a total stranger entering their home. Unless your game world explains why everybody so freely lets you in to loot their stuff, then it's not believable. Realism is not about what's real in today's world, it's about suspension of disbelief and internal logic within the game.

Edit: Just thought I'd make my point clearer. But if we go by your logic, then why don't we have the player casually walk into a shop and steal stuff without paying whilst smiling at the shopkeeper, or how about make a simple civilian without any superpowers to knock down a brick wall in a single punch? Just because it's fantasy, it's not an excuse to do stuff that doesn't make any sense within the game, if you see what I'm saying.

I think a good village should have some non-essential NPCs to fill out the town's flavor.  But I do like the idea that not every building can be entered.  Or, if a lot can, the villagers would have hidden most of their stuff in case of robbers.

And yeah, the first town is arguably the most important, since it sets the mood for the entire game.  If the player has the Doomed Hometown trope going on, that sets a dark tone for the entire RPG, but if it is a very Happy Hometown, that can imply the game isn't all doom and gloom.

I just can't really wrap my head around "Villagers let complete strangers wander into their house," unless said stranger has some special right to be there (they're a member of the Guard, nobility or the King or Queen).  I can see close friends and family allowing the person to wander around at will, but not a total stranger.

And I sometimes toy with the Kleptomaniac Hero trope --- in one of my games, if you try it, you get arrested, and in another, the player himself comments "I don't really want to steal" or something like that.

In fact, in one of my games where the PCs become vampires, if the PCs wander into some areas (i.e. churches or people's houses), they start taking a LOT of damage.