How do you make a village or a town come to life?

[R.J.]

I've been fooling around with RPG Maker MV, and carefully started on something that resembles a game.

However, when I was making a village map, I suddenly thought to myself... "How do I determine how many people should live here?" "What do the people who live here do all day?"

Questions like that. And that never really struck me before, because as most other people, I used to just throw in a random number of houses, make some interiors and throw in some NPC's with random meaningless lines.

But I kinda want to do it different this time, and I'm not sure how. There's very little reference to fall back on in terms of logistics or day-to-day activity in a fantasy village. The closest thing is probably the medieval age, but even that's not quite the same as what you make in RPG Maker.

 

[Injury]

Resources. Early villages settle near water and reasonable terrain.

What role does each person take in the village? What needs are being met? Why are/aren't they?

You have a shop keeper. Where does he get his goods? Does the next town over have a shipping route, or what?

Is it a big village, or a small one? Are you near a forest? Regular hunters coming and going?

Monsters! Is this a place where heroes or adventurers travel through on the regular to stop for respite?

Just think about all that stuff while making your village. Or just say screw it. Remember to balance your population with resources.

Take time to make individuals, not NPCs with garbage to say. Give them task and purpose.

 

[coyotecraft]

I think what you might be after is milieu. If the setting is a spaceship then the milieu is the portrayal of life on a spaceship. Rpgs and Fantasy novels are all about Milieu and it's an exploration of an unknown world.
If you examine RPGs closely, very rarely is there just a town that you pass through. They have history and current events. It's your job to present the most interesting thing about it. The casino. A military academy. A string of murders. It's engulfed in dragon-fire. The mine collapsed. The brotherhood of White Mages have adopted necromancy in response to an incurable plague.
These things usually fuel the preceding quests and give the NPC something to talk about.

With any writing, it's important to ground your characters in their surroundings. At the very least by having them make observations. It might be an ordinary town, but it's made interesting by the fact that the Thief in your party has conned everyone in the town, and all of the wanted posters are of him in disguise.

 

[Sated]

If you examine RPGs closely, very rarely is there just a town that you pass through.

Actually, in the JRPGs that the RPGMaker engines were made to emulate, this is very often the case.

The better idea would be to take inspiration from western RPGs, since they tend to do the whole world-building thing a lot better IMO.

 

[coyotecraft]

I can't think of any jrpgs that were like that. Even the first Final Fantasy game, the towns had something going on. The kidnapped princess, port town is controlled by Pirates, The Elfland prince is under an enchanted sleep. I can only think of a few Tales of games that had towns you pass through, but the party was putting the innocent town in danger. Or it was post airship content, hotsprings and minigames.

 

[Injury]

Look at games like The World End with You. I always found it a good example of something I'd like to emulate. People don't usually stop and talk to everyone, and they just pass right by. People who have opinions or offer something usually stick around.