I haven't actually played D&D in a long time, but it's been very useful for me in other very different kinds of games, and even fiction writing. That's even more important in other kinds of games than it is in D&D! Or the play style section in chapter 1, which is about how different people play for different reasons, and you should get to know whether which of your players are looking for hack and slash, versus immersive storytelling. Most of the rest of the chapter is the same for villains, with little D&D-specific bits filling the remainder. It advises you to flesh out occupation & history, appearance, abilities, talent, mannerism, interactions with others, useful knowledge, ideals, bonds, flaws and secrets, with sections of examples and tables for quick generation, as well as advice for what to focus on really quickly. The first half of it is about fleshing out memorable characters quickly, which is a skill useful for any tabletop game (or just general fiction writing). The parts I focused on and remember well are the parts that have nothing to do with D&D. We might be focusing on different parts of the DMG. (edit - huh, yeah this article has NOT aged well at all I should have taken a closer look since it first was released long ago, but I'll leave it here for the sake of discussion & derivative comments). If you've played the game and want to figure out why some of the quirkiness just WORKS, I would recommend the later parts of Tim Roger's piece from a decade or so ago. I mean, it's your package, right? So YOU go get it! Go on, get out of here.' You then have to schlep to another part of the game to recover the package the delivery man decided just wasn't worth his time I'm not going back that way, so don't ask me to get the package. I think it was some weird machine to make trout-flavored yogurt. actually I forgot the stuff I was supposed to deliver, too. Later on, a key item with key information gets shipped to your character via the equivalent of Fedex 'Neglected Class.' A rumpled delivery man eventually shows up and tells you 'Anyway, he said. For example, in a nod to the greedy, one character grumbles about the loan he gave to your family and now he 'lives in poverty' - all while standing in the biggest house in the game. I've been playing through Earthbound over the last few weeks and consistently find the writers and localization team put in just the right extra 10% to turn a 'bleh' interaction into one you think about for days to come. Undertale borrowed a lot from Earthbound's character construction. I suspect this is why his characters in Undertale follow a similar whimsical nature to this early influence of his. The Rabbit Girl referenced in the article is from Undertale by Toby Fox, who cut his teeth in gamemaking creating Earthbound mods. The dialogue is so well crafted it makes you eager to talk to each NPC you come by, knowing even if they don't give you relevant information they will give you a silly hot take on the world they occupy. I feel Earthbound, the classic SNES RPG where Ness debuted, is a masterclass on NPC dialogue.

Fallout 4 interrupting dialogue