Wait, Wait ... Isn't that Sherlock?

I don't ordinarily consider things like how to communicate in the game world.  I just do it.  Then I make a passing comment and find myself writing a series, because the subject material is so big, it can't be done in one post.  The task forces me to answer the question of what "just do it" means.  This takes me down rabbit holes to places where no one I've ever seen has gone.

What people want to find on the net is a titled post, "Nine Great Lines to Pick-up NPCs" ... which I won't do, because in essence a post like that is a sham.  Communication is more than finding a good combination of words.  It's more than convincing someone of something.  Approaching communication like it is a key that goes in a lock always ends in a bad scene, like how the girl that gets picked up with the great one-liner turns out to be a frightening mess you wish you'd never met.

[I'll veer away from one-gender references, but in this case, picking up potential sex partners through "cold-calling" is still a male-dominated motif; still, my apologies for the image]

Thus, so far, the dive into why DMs and Players are both pre-programmed to see NPCs as "flesh-sticks" without feelings, who represent a game puzzle and not people.  And why I've chosen to discuss why personal connection with NPCs offers possibilities as practical solutions for larger game problems, like how to clear a dangerous lair from the game map.  What I haven't offered, however, is any information on how to transform an NPC from a flesh-stick to a fictional being that the players would care about ... and this is the real task at hand.  If we find a means to care about an NPC, we don't need an operators manual on what words to say or how to communicate.  We already know how to do those things (most of us, anyway) with people in the real world.

Look, whether we're talking about a meeting with fellow parents at the P.T.A., or fellow fiends in a burned-out basement, the rules are clearly understood:  we're talking to a person who has their unique viewpoints, issues, stresses and intentions, and we understand there are lines we don't cross too soon.  First engagements are careful, uncertain, with walls up; and though neither side has the benefit of knowing what the other is thinking, BOTH sides are well aware, even if unconsciously, that the other is guarded, just as we are.  So we approach moments where we meet people in ways that we've formed by habit: small talk, appeals to mutual interests, don't get too personal ... not until there's some reason we have to trust.

These guards don't exist in D&D because, first, we can get as personal as we want with an NPC and so what?  If the conversation gets too "boring," we can draw our blaster and wreck the control panel.   Not caring is so immediately gratifying, so deliciously unlike having to deal with real people.  NPCs are just cardboard cutouts.  We can whack them with clubs and swords without a shred of guilt.  The escapism of it is a huge part of the game for many, many people.

The contrary position isn't an easy one.  Why care?  Why want that?

As much fun as cutouts are, the fun is limited.  They offer only one kind of fun.  There are more emotions available than gleeful destruction, which is all cardboard allows.  Were we stuck on a planet with nothing but cardboard cutouts, we would very soon starve for more meaningful interactions, the sort of interactions that only humans can give us.  It isn't easy to explain, but while escapism through immediate gratification is a legitimate exercise, there is a higher form of escapism that we pursue.

The apt example, and the one that many don't like, is that as a youth we escape from the mediocrity of being under the thumb of life's expectations through the pursuit of danger, drugs, alcohol, sex, violence and other gut-driven activities.  Some never rise from that; but many begin to realize that a greater escape can be obtained through acquisition of knowledge, family, responsibility, materialism, personal authority and so on ... even though these things come with awful occasional trials.  It is a question of what kind of escape do we want to pursue.  For many, the escape offered by slapping down NPCs (or monsters) is enough.  For others, it isn't.

It is for those others that we're writing now.

Let's examine a concomitant gaming phenomenon: the attachment players have for their characters.  We well know that if we have a character we love, and the character dies, we will feel a deep-seated response to that.  I recognize many players never experience this, as detached as they are from their characters, but it is a common phenomena and has always been evident in any game I've played face-to-face.

Suppose, however, that your fellow player's character dies.  Yours is fine, but Jared's character Vika has bought the big one and won't be back.  Let's say Vika and your character have been together for three years.  Where are your feelings about Vika?  On one level, you will probably feel bad for Jared.  You will probably regret losing Vika's fighting ability, spells, whatever things that Vika might have offered the game.  My question is, will you miss Vika.  Will you find yourself thinking, "Oh, damn.  Vika.  I really liked her."  Is that a part of your process?

I've asked around over Christmas and I've had varied answers.  Witnessing characters die over a long time, I can attest that the death of your own character is much more hurtful than that of someone else's.  Unquestionably, there is more empathy for the other player than there is a sense of loss for the character left behind—though I must admit that until this past weekend, I've never given it any thought or asked anyone about it.  I feel certain there is a greater detachment for someone else's character, because while we have lost Vika, we still have the player Jared.  Jared is fine.  Any loss we feel can be transferred quickly to the sense of comfort we have for Jared's continued presence.

Whereas this doesn't work for our own character.  When we lose our precious Driksos, the fact that we didn't die in actuality doesn't help much with our sense of loss.  Everyone has grown up learning that things get lost, from the bunny we loved at the age of three that just went missing during that one move, to the car we finally had to surrender in favour of a new one.  Things stop working, they break, they get broken or stolen, or they're made redundant ... and though it keeps happening, and the callous we feel for loss gets thicker, we know it's going to hurt when our Cocker Spaniel Zenita passes, as she surely must because we're certain to outlive her.  Knowing we're alive, when Zenita is gone, isn't a comfort.  That knowledge only adds to the pain.

This feeling isn't there for a lot of D&D players for numerous reasons.  It's the approach to die rolls, or how easy it is to get a new 9th level when the old 9th level has died.  Playing "one-shot" campaigns helps a lot with a player's attachment to the character.  Some people don't own cats or dogs because the commitment is too great and the idea of having one or the other for 12 years, only to watch them die one day, is unbearable.  Some RPGers don't like campaigns, because they might feel too much.

But I have one more phenomenon that fits into this later query.  I have watched players grow just as attached to an NPC as they are to their own characters—and feel just as much loss when that NPC dies, as they would their own character.  Why?  I've seen the sense of loss be felt more keenly towards an NPC than towards a fellow player's character.  What is that?  Is it also because the NPC also has the finality of not feeling reassured that the fellow player is still alive?  The NPC has no player; and the DM isn't much comfort.  

Players associate DMs and NPCs only when the NPC is a hateful, miserable baddie.  Then the DM is accused of manipulating the party, arbitrarily screwing with the party's well-being and otherwise playing fast-and-loose with fairness.  This is never the response when the party likes the NPC.  If the NPC shows up in the nick of time to help the party, the DM is never accused of unholy interventionism.  And if the NPC dies, the DM is the murderer, as in a third-person party that interferes with the NPC's well-being.

When parties like an NPC, it is always because the NPC has some characteristic the party relates to emotionally.  A friendly, paternal figure who is both able to forgive and wag a finger now and then.  A brave idealist who gets into trouble but miraculously survives.  A wise servant who, despite being self-sacrificing most of the time, nevertheless seems armed with a hundred unexpected talents.  We have characters like this in the literature of every culture.  It's Obiwan, it's Indy, it's Jeeves.  We are drawn to these characters even though we know they're entirely fictional—which doesn't matter, because we care.

Why does it make a difference if it is Our character or it's the NPC we hired, who is also a part of the party and also strives with their might to help us on our way?  Is one more "fictional" than the other?  Or is it an arbitrary line we draw, because we want to be close to our own character but to no one else?  Why is the loss of our character more keenly felt than our neighbours?  Is it because we did all the work to keep our character alive?  But what about all the times that Jared's character saved ours?  And if Jared, the real life Jared, died, don't we often think we'd rather it was us that had died and not him?  Is that not where we so often go in our thoughts?

There is a LOT more going on here than cardboard cutouts.  Until we surrender ourselves to the fact of fictional characters as they affect us, we can't see the deeper layers that exist under every D&D game, and every interaction we have with an NPC that we meet on the street.  Every NPC is potentially a Jeeves or an Indy, or a thousand other beloved characters that we discount by insisting that there's nothing to "care" about with NPCs.  This is something about which we need to awaken ourselves.

This series continues with Building Likeableness