Web Video / Epic NPC Man

Epic NPC Man is a web series by Viva La Dirt League about an NPC shopkeeper called Greg in the town of Honeywood. He has many interactions with his fellow, less genre-savvy NPCs and the players of the game (whose name is not given at first, but bears some similarities to The Elder Scrolls, and later episodes reveal that the name of the in-universe game is "Skycraft"). The series parodies the Role-Playing Game genre by pointing out some of the logic that can appear in video games, and deconstructs many video game tropes by replicating them in a live-action, semi-realistic environment.

All the episodes can be found here.

A Kickstarter campaign was held for a short film called Baelin's Route about the Fisherman NPC as he walks his scripted route around the world of Epic NPC Man which premiered in 2021.

Because of the nature of the series, expect a lot of Lampshade Hanging.

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Ah, hello Troper, and welcome to th—Skip!:

• Achievements in Ignorance: In "Missing an Obvious Game Mechanic", Rowan expresses dismay at coming across a murder scene, saying there are no clues and it will take hours to track the killers. Ben is confused since the quest should only take a few minutes with Detective Mode, slowly realizing that Rowan has no idea how to use this mechanic or that it even exists. He's stunned, then admits he's honestly impressed Rowan got this far in the game solving these quests through sheer brute force.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
  • Most notably with Bodger who sells high-level equipment to players at inflated prices. Examples include "Legendary Sword" (the player finds that they are not high enough level to wield what he just purchased) and "Markup" (where the player accidentally sells Bodger his main weapon and is infuriated to learn he has to buy it back with all the gold he has).
  • This also happens to Fred Orchardson the poor fruit seller, who is forced to buy items he doesn't need from players, despite not having enough to support his family. Later going mad as a result.
• Affectionate Parody: A parody of immersive fantasy games done by gamers.
• All Men Are Perverts: A good number of Male PCs shown have either a name of a sexual variation or are outright blatant with their sexual harassment of women in the game, be they PCs or NPCs.
• Artifact Title: Originally, every episode was about Greg the garlic merchant or took place in front of his shop. Over time, fewer and fewer episodes showed the "Epic NPC Man" aside from the closing titles, to the point where some seasons barely have him at all.
• Artificial Brilliance: Greg hasn't exactly figured out that he's in a video game, but is more than aware enough to realize things aren't quite right about his world. Baelin, despite his very limited AI, also seems capable of functioning past that point should he be placed under enough stress. Charles also has this; but, as one commenter put it, his partner, Bernard, has more charisma points.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The Guard. He's taken an arrow to the head without noticing, been killed by an Assassin whilst distracted, had a bucket put on his head so a player could steal from the shop, had his uniform stolen off him, and wound up in the town lake for one episode.
  • The Pixel art version of Baelin is much less powerful/intelligent than his live action counterpart. When Britt attempts to escort him to the capital, he stands still and smiles while being attacked, wanders into danger and at one point casually walks off a rope bridge suspended over lava!
• Beware the Nice Ones: Greg threatens death to an adventurer, when he does not stop skipping the dialogue.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Baelin is an annoying fisherman who always repeats the same phrase, but when two adventurers make the mistake of attacking him, he beats them both.
• Bland-Name Product: The show is set in the fictional game of Skycraft, a portmanteau of Skyrim and Warcraft.
• Blinded by the Light: A notable side effect for Holy Nova. The same can be said for magic in general.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Implied in the "Darkwood" episode, as Baelin's Evil Counterpart speaks in a noticeably more sophisticated manner.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: In "Skipping the Grind with Money", Britt gets annoyed with Rowan when he pays real money to unlock armor that take a long time to earn with in-game progress. Rowan argues that he has earned the armor, by working at his job in real life, to which Britt concedes he has a fair point. However, she still is disgusted when the items he buys include weapons that provide a significant in-game advantage instead of just being cosmetic.
• Bullying a Dragon: Of the two muggers, Bernard (the helmeted one) always tries to assault targets that are much more powerful than themselves, while Charles (the helmetless one) tends to fail to talk him out of it. In one episode, they even try to mug a literal dragon.
• Butterface: In "Character Creation", The player briefly chooses Britt's body using the respective face, but quickly changes to a Rowan's face, but with the same body.
• Calvinball: "Mini Games" features a bizarre Hearthstone-esque mini game which Greg lampshades as having completely incomprehensible rules.
• Chainmail Bikini: Whenever Britt (the sole female in the main cast) is playing a PC, this trope inevitably comes into play. Later episodes would drop this and give her more practical armor.
• Chew Toy: Fred Orchardson gets abused by both players and NPCs alike:
  • Players force-sell him items he doesn't need at inflated prices and rob his chest left out in the wilderness.
  • Another player lies to him about accepting his quest and leads him to a demon to fight on his behalf.
  • After the muggers mugged the wheelbarrow, the producers liked a suggestion that it belongs to Fred so much that they made it canon.
  • In Baelin's path he is restrained and robbed at knifepoint by a female assassin.
• Character Catch Phrase:
  Baelin: Mornin'! Nice day for fishin' ain't it? Hu hah!
  Eugene: Slow yourself, adventurer! [pathetic crying]
  Greg: Hello, adventurer, and welcome to the town of Honeywood!
  The guard: For the peace of the kingdom! For the King! For the Alliance! For king and country!
  The muggers: Let's! Go! Mug 'em!
• Conspicuously Selective Perception: Played straight and doubly subverted in "Assassin". The guard is killed because he concentrates on the sound of the stone being thrown, despite Greg noticing the assassin and trying to warn him. Greg, on the other hand, knows exactly what's going on when the assassin comes for him, but can't resist his programming forcing him to look away when the assassin throws another stone.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Baelin, most of the time he is an annoying fisherman who always repeats a phrase, but if they make him angry, shows how dangerous he really is.
• Cut and Paste Environments: As the PC completes her final quest in Honeywood, Greg warns her to stay away from a dark evil town named Darkwood found up in the north. She then takes a time-lapsed journey to "Darkwood"... which just ends up being Honeywood with a dark fog filter applied to the camera. She then has a brief encounter with an "evil" version of Greg (who offers her a virtually identical quest!) as well as Baelin, the fisherman:
  Evil Baelin: Good evening! Glorious night for fishing, wouldn't you say? Muhuhu... muhuhahaha!
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In "Cut-scene VS Game-play", the hero handily defeats an orc using smooth action moves. Then after the cutscene ends and control is transferred to the player he doesn't manage to do anything but flail around uselessly while the remaining orcs slaughter him.
• Damage Is Fire: It is to Greg's cottage. Fortunately, other NPCs have some sort of builder function and can repair it by hitting it with a hammer, causing the flames to vanish.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: One player, who is used to "F" being the "Use" key, discovers that it is the "Punch" key, resulting in him accidentally punching Greg constantly when he presses it to advance the conversation.
• A Day in the Limelight: In "Blacksmith", the episode focuses on Bodger, the local blacksmith in Honeywood. He takes upon himself to forge a set of legendary armor for the PC's quest. Greg the Garlic Farmer doesn't even show up in the episode proper until after the segment ends.
  Greg: Hey! What are you guys doing over there?
  Bodger: Shut up, Greg! I've had it to here with you!
  Greg: It just—it just kind of feels weird, me not being part of this.
  Bodger: It's not all about you, Greg! You don't have to be involved in every conversation!
  Everybody's always talking to Greg; well, it's MY time now!
  Greg: [beat] You're a little bit of a dick.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The eponymous character gets to respawn if he is killed by a player.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Honeywood's Evil Twin settlement is "a dark, evil town named Darkwood, where darkness reigns".
• Disproportionate Retribution: If a player kicks a chicken, or defends himself from bandits in front of the guard, they will be horribly killed.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?
  • The episodes "Soulmate" and "Can a simple NPC become self aware?" can be seen as a metaphor for Alzheimer's.
  • "Quest Greg" reflects the idea of someone like a police officer, soldier or EMT watching a loved one die, but having to bury their own grief because they still have a job to perform.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: As the muggers found out, this is one of Fred's Berserk Button. Fred is more insulted that the muggers gave him money to fix his cart and get his life on track, thinking that he was that so pathetic that the muggers would rather show him kindness than rob him blind.
• Dull Surprise: Bodger's friend Isaac sleepwalks his way through any video he appears in, no matter how dramatic the situation.
  Isaac: [flatly] It's heartbreaking knowing what has happened to the women and children. They truly are suffering in these dark times.
  Ben PC: Yeah man, you seem really heartbroken about it.
• Evil Hero: Many of the adventurers who are destined to be great heroes are assholes who will kill NPCs for fun.
• Face of a Thug: Snuggles is one of the kindest adventurers Greg meets, despite being a troll with the respective terrifying appearance.
• Foreshadowing: In "Baelin's Route", the rescued girl speculates aloud that Baelin might be something more than an ordinary fisherman. One of her guesses — that he's an orc disguised as a human — turns out to be correct about a different character.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: During the episode "Taking advantage of NPC's - Cannon Fodder" a patch that made village escort NPCs unkillable is introduced. Ben decides to exploit this and accepts their quests, then leads them to a high-level giant demonic boss. Suddenly all the harmless-looking civilians yell out battle cries (except Baelin, who still just says his usual catchphrase) and pull out improvised weapons, then proceed to whittle down the boss' health while the player steps back and smirks.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming:
  • Greg the garlic farmer and the main quest-giver NPC for Honeywood, Baradun the main storyline quest giver, and Bodger are at least somewhat self-aware and recognize the many oddities about their world. The wood cutter from the episode of the same name was able to start grasping his situation, but then reset (possibly out of despair).
  • Charles (the helmetless mugger) appears to attempt this when the circumstance is stupid enough, but is eventually reset by Bernard with a "Hey! What are we?!" He also notices when a dialogue loop happens, but is again unable to break out of it.
  • The "Baelin's Route" movie is all about this. Baelin the fisherman is the single most basic NPC in the game with only one line of dialog, but when faced with new situations he breaks out of his behavior loop and develops rapidly.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: The City Guards, oh so much.
  • "Perception": A guard investigates the murder of one of their comrades, only to holler out repeatedly "What could have done this?!"
  • "Persuade": A group of guards attempt to arrest a player for her numerous crimes. They set her free when she simply convinces them that she didn't do it... only to let her murder one of their comrades.
• Guide Dang It!: "Frustrating Game Design" has the player needing to pull a lever to open a secret entrance. There's no lever in sight, even after searching the area, so the frustrated player just pulls out a phone and looks up a walkthrough. It turns out the lever is a tiny thing the size of a popsicle stick built into the side of a tree, and has an appropriately tiny interaction radius.
• HA HA HA—No: When Dinkledork applies to join the Rangers Guild, this is the ranger's response. Then Dinkledork puts on a Charisma Ring and the ranger immediately sees him as worthy, even though he's still the same dork as he's been before.
• Hammerspace: Most times with the players' "inventory" system, but notably in "Horse Pocket," where the player characters are shown to produce horses from thin air.
• Healing Potion: The mechanics behind these are parodied, specifically the fact that you can stop play to heal, eating will heal you of all ills, and that using a health potion requires consuming both the potion and the (typically glass) container it's in together.
• Heroic Mime: The player in "When Your Hero Never Speaks" never says a word or changes his facial expression, yet manages to win the hearts of his two female companions. And his male companion.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: In "Healing in the Middle of Battle - Banquet", the player is low on health, so they open their inventory and chow down on several sausages, bread loaves, and cheese wheels to get back to full health.
• Idle Animation: Player characters sway subtly whenever the player isn't doing anything.
• Ignored Epiphany: In "Vikings", the Honeywood Muggers are robbed by the titular Vikings — two of whom had distracted the pair with a polite conversation that described the very method that was used on the pair, as a third snuck up and stole their stuff — and thus realize, for the first time in their lives, the sort of feeling that they've given their own victims. To cheer themselves up, they decide to mug Eugene.
• Impossible Item Drop: In "Boar Hearts", the adventurers need boar hearts for a potion so they try shooting some boars. However, instead of hearts digging around in their bodies uncovers a scarf, a health potion, and a chair.
• Impossible Thief: Players are able to do this, as demonstrated when a guard has his uniform stolen off him.
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: Parodied.
  • In "Over Powered", a guard congratulates the adventurer for defeating the troll, as the guards were not strong enough to defeat him, but the adventurer was. When the adventurer accidentally kicks a chicken, the guard kills the adventurer in a single attack.
  • In "Danger Music", an adventurer meets a little mouse who turns out to be a very powerful enemy.
  • In "Multi Escort", four NPCs that seem to lack fighting skills and need the adventurer to protect them, are able to defeat a powerful dragon.
  • In "Baelin's Route", the title character can barely block enough enemy attacks to stay alive when recruited as a companion by an adventurer, but when fighting by his own choice lays absolute waste to every adventurer and monster to oppose him. Another character directly asks about this, and he dodges the question. To be fair, initially, he really didn't know what was going on at first, and thus would be more concerned about protecting himself than killing someone he'd just met.
  • In "Why you don't fight NPC's", a level 60 adventurer who has defeated orc armies is no match for a fruit vendor.
• Improvised Weapon: Baelin, the fisherman in "Chicken" uses his pole like the rest use their swords. Yeah, go figure. In later instances he uses it as a staff.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Necessary due to the limited cast, but justified as this is a video game that reuses character assets. Often noticed by characters.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence:
  • In "Blocked Path", Rowan and Ben argue about their ability to cross an ankle-high fallen log.
  • And in "Block", an NPC stands in a doorway, preventing the player from passing through.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Baelin's "Mornin'! Nice day for fishin', ain't it?" line usually has no deeper meaning, but when he does want to convey something else the other characters have no trouble interpreting it.
• Jerkass:
  • A lot of the player characters come off this way, be it they skip the dialogueinvoked, pull some very stupid moves (like block another NPC's path, or fire at a Chainmail Bikini clad player), or some...more questionable actions.
  • There is the Main Quest-giver NPC named High Sorcerer Baradun, who never misses a chance to be condescending about Greg and Honeywood.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In "Bare Minimum", Greg criticizes the adventurer for only rescuing 4 of the 14 children, but the adventurer points out that the mission requirement was to save a minimum of 4 and if he wanted him to save everyone, he should have made it a requirement.
• Left-Justified Fantasy Map: Yes, it has one.
• Meaningful Name: There's an adventurer named Dinkledork, who's... well, you know.
• Mid-Battle Tea Break: Using the pause and inventory menus to turn the tide and win mid-battle occurs more than once during the series. Notable occurrences are: "How to Win Battles in RPGs - Pause" and "Healing in the Middle of Combat - Banquet".
• Most Definitely Not a Villain: The gold farmer's user name is "DefinitelyNotAGoldFarmer".
• Ms. Fanservice: Whenever Britt is featured as a character. Britt's attractive appearance is often emphasized in most episodes, such as the episode about female armor in RPG video games.
• Nice Guy: Greg is usually nice to everyone.
• Ninja Prop: Despite the live-action appearance, the show still takes place inside a video game and thus often features typical onscreen graphics such as dialog windows, tutorials, gamertags and option boxes. Some NPCs and players do notice these; one episode features Greg and Bodger attempting to inflate their respective graphics in a bizarre pissing contest.
• No Animals Were Harmed: The chicken that was kicked in "Chicken", and the rats that were killed in "Rats", were added into the videos in post-production.
• No Hero Discount: Skewered in "Legendary Sword" when Bodger the Blacksmith charges Adam the player for the title sword to slay the dragons that threaten to destroy everything, including Bodger himself.
• No-Sell:
  • "Overpowered from Side Quests" has the player ignore the story and get powerful gear from side quests. When he decides to get back to the main story, the thieves guild leader can't even scratch him. Even a bomb blowing up in front of him does nothing.
  • In "Kids in games are indestructible", this crosses over with Wouldn't Hurt a Child. The player gets pickpocketed by a little girl, who refuses to give him his gold back. Seeing no other choice, he tries to attack her with his sword, but she either effortlessly dodges it, does a Bare-Handed Blade Block, or just lets the sword bounce right off her. In desperation, he shoots a fireball at her, but she emerges unscathed and starts skipping towards him, giving a sing-song "You can't kill me!"
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The Troll Snuggles in "Troll". Despite his terrifying appearance, Snuggles turns out to be much friendlier than most player characters, who tend to act like jerkass.
• Not So Above It All: Greg is usually the most level-headed character, but he's not immune to having his crazy moments.
• Obliviously Evil: The player characters can be downright heinous at times, as best evidenced in Baelins Quest, but they're just regular people trying to play a video game.
• Only Sane Man:
  • Greg usually fulfills that role, although even he is not immune to oddities.
  • Inverted in several sketches starring two PCs, played by Rowan and Ben. Rowan's character is using real world logic, and thus makes sense to the viewer; while Ben's character is respecting the rules of the game's logic, and thus naturally the sketch will ultimately prove Ben right.
• Photo Mode: The "Taking photos in Games - Photo Mode" episode parodies this, with the NPC being not paused and getting confused about everything what's happening.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Evil Twin of Greg in Darkwood. Despite being supposedly evil, his evil actions are limited to a Machiavellian laugh; beyond that, he is no different from Greg.
• Prone to Tears: Eugene the Escort Mission NPC, who is constantly sobbing uncontrollably and loudly about his dead family. This can lead to very unpleasant situations, like alerting enemies during his quest.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Most of the characters played by Britt; they don't like wearing a bikini as armor.
• Shoplift and Die: In "Retaliation", an adventurer finds out the hard way that merchants are stronger than they look.
• Shout-Out: VLDL, from the very beginning, asked for viewers to provide their gamer tags to feature in episodes. The most prominent to feature: PewDiePie in the second episode of the first season.
• Skewed Priorities: In "Mini Games", the PCs seem a lot more interested in playing a Hearthstone-esque card game than defending Honeywood.
• Strong as They Need to Be: The power of the guards and other npcs varies depending on what is convenient for the plot, normally a player can kill one without much difficulty, but in the episodes where Improbable Power Discrepancy is parodyed, they are so powerful that they can kill a max-level player with a single attack.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: The muggers can't resist trying to mug people, even high-level players who can kill them in an instant. Or dragons. Or, on one bizarrely successful instance, a wheelbarrow.
• Super Drowning Skills: In "Why Can't Heroes Swim in Games?", the player ignores Greg's insistence that they use a bridge to cross a small river that looks to be three inches deep at most. On stepping in, he's immediately swallowed whole.
• Take Your Time: In "Accept", when Greg is poisoned and supposedly has a few minutes to live, the adventurer can afford to do a lot of missions beforehand, and still save him in time.
• Talking Is a Free Action: In "Using an NPC Menu to Avoid Combat", a player being chased by an angry cyclops talks to Greg, which stops the cyclops in place. Greg can't help him, but the player goes through Greg's dialogue options to delay the inevitable. Eventually, there's nothing left to do but exit the conversation and get slaughtered.
• Team Rocket Wins: The muggers finally get a successful robbery when they decide to mug a wagon. (It should be noted that they were not mugging a driver, but the wagon, the inanimate object, itself.)
• Uniqueness Value: Subverted in the episode "One of a Kind". He provides his family heirloom, a ring, to the first adventurer. He then, more reluctantly, offers the same to the second adventurer. The box gets dropped, and we find that there are actually a lot of rings in his box.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Two adventurers take a beating later when they try to attack the fisherman.
  • Exaggerated in "Over Powered", where an adventurer gets killed by a guard because the former accidentally kicked a nearby chicken.
  • Not to mention the other player who'd kicked one deliberately, and immediately got mobbed and slaughtered by the entire town.
  • While Fred (somewhat) is perfectly fine getting abused verbally and mentally, but hitting him physically? He will get instantly mad and whip out a BFS to turn the schmuck into Ludicrous Gibs with just one swipe.
• Welcome to Corneria:
  • "Nice day for fishing, ain't it?" Even after he has repaired a shop, or killed a player. And even in winter!
  • The other NPCs are similarly prone to repeating various stock phrases, always with the exact same cadence and tone.
• What the Hell, Player?:
  • In "Insensitively Looting Dead Bodies", Greg is aghast at the player looting the bodies of several villagers killed by bad guys. In the end, the player even loots the corpse of his female companion's mother mere seconds after she dies, while the companion is actively weeping over her.
  • There's also what a player does to the NPC maiden he escorted in "When the player doesn't care".
• Wimp Fight: The short "Temporary Power" leads to a sissy slap-fight between Greg the NPC and the Adventurer when the later refuses to let go of the temporary secret weapon. Mocked by the closed captioning, which reads "**masculine fighting sounds**" when this happens.
• You All Look Familiar: Parodied. All of the player and non player characters are played by the same handful of actors, and the characters notice.
• You Monster!: The trio of players in "Hot Stuff" who killed every maiden in Honeywood... for an achievement!

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