night market npcing guide

The Night Market is a faction of researchers living in the Helix research station beneath the waves of Lake Red Jacket. They come up once every other month to spend a weekend in the harbor, trading with the residents of Beacon.

The Market is made up of various shopkeeper NPCs. The ringleader is Pluto, who can be found during every Night Market visit. The rest of the shopkeepers are a rotating cast of NPCs, played by the game mods (of all levels!) and... you, dear player!

Players who make double AC with 20+ comments for the month will be entered into a RNG pool for a shot at playing an NPC shopkeeper for the next Night Market visit! The Night Market comes around on the second weekend of every other month, so, for example, the activity checks in October and November will be used to determine the NPCs for a Night Market visit in December. One player will be RNG'd from each month, giving us two players NPCing during each Night Market visit, alongside Pluto and our mods' rotating shopkeepers.

So! If you're interested in playing a shopkeeper for the Night Market, be sure to shoot for double AC! Here's all the other stuff to keep in mind:

• Players chosen to NPC will be ineligible for future drawings. We want to spread the wealth!


• If you need to back out from NPCing, we ask that you give us at least 4 days notice before the next Night Market visit. This is to give us time to find and orient an alternate, and for that alternate to design their NPC. If you're able to let us know with 4 days notice, you'll be eligible for future NPC drawings.


• NPC players will be allowed to use NPC threads for AC. Let's say you play Mario, and you clock in enough NPC comments to make AC with them. You can sub in your NPC for Mario if you like, using your NPC's threads for Mario's AC. If you just play Mario, great! We'll still ask that you do the typical summary write-up and such, but Mario's comments are set thanks to your NPC. If you also play Pacman, however, you'll still need to make normal AC with him.


• As a shopkeeper, you'll get to choose: the character you'll play, the goods/services they'll sell, the prices/currency they'll accept, and their role within the Night Market faction. You'll work with the mods to lightly AU a character into this group. Our goal here is to give you as much creative control as possible, but we're happy to help brainstorm, too! Don't feel like you have to come into this with a super detailed plan.


• As a shopkeeper, you'll be responsible for: threading with characters that tag into your toplevel and managing an OOC "shop" thread like these. Pretty straightforward!


• Shopkeepers are not responsible for plot stuff. All plot-related stuff should be rerouted to one of the mod NPCs (Pluto's your best bet as the perma NPC, but any others are fine!), and we'll post a reminder during each visit that our player shopkeepers aren't the folks to go to with plotty topics.


• On that note, players chosen to NPC will not get secret plot knowledge! We won't spoil the mysteries for you, don't worry. We'll give you what you need to play your NPC, and if you like, we'll give you a few small, noncritical pieces of information to disperse at your character's leisure. These info nuggets will be things like an anecdote from a past reset or knowledge of life in the Helix station, things of that nature. Neat facts!


• You can choose almost any character to play as an NPC. We'll get to character limitations in a minute, but even our standard "appable character" rules don't necessarily apply. Fandom OCs, characters without enough canon, AU'd characters... It's a one-off NPC, so anything that doesn't break the game is probably fine with us. We do reserve the right to ask you to choose another character, but if you're looking for an excuse to dust off that old journal for a character you can't play anywhere, run 'em by us!


• Your chosen NPC cannot be notable CR for another character already in game. This is to preserve the status quo of the game; we don't want another player's Mario having an existential crisis over Princess Peach, the Night Market NPC. However, Waluigi the Night Market NPC would be fine, since Mario knows that dude, but mostly in passing. (i assume? apologies if i'm screwing up deep mario lore. we'd research this in a real world scenario, for the record.) If we're at all iffy on the closeness of the CR, we'll err on the side of caution and ask you to pick another character.


• Your chosen NPC must have a reason to be part of the Night Market. The Market vets their members carefully, choosing characters that can contribute something worthwhile to their cause... their cause being to fix the world and fight off the World Eaters. This is a fairly broad definition, but we purposely want to keep it flexible to accommodate a lot of different character types. This is something we can work together on as you're designing your NPC, but feel free to ask us questions in advance!


• Anyone can NPC with us! Are you capable of making double AC to enter the RNG pool? Great! That's the only requirement. It doesn't matter how long you've been in the game, how familiar you are with the game's lore and plot, what kind of tagger you are, etc. This is a fun, bonus thing. It's entirely self indulgent. Lean in.

If you have any questions about playing a Night Market NPC, you can PM the mod account (inthenightmods) or comment directly to this page!