Building Likeableness

Preface

Every time I turn to films as examples for human behaviour and art, I am in a quandary.  I have seen many thousands of movies and I have a good memory for them, helped in that I rewatch films that I like many times; every year in some cases, every four or five years in others.  I can usually remember how long its been since I've seen a liked film.

However, I find many people haven't seen many films, less than a thousand, and that of those, most cannot remember more than a hundred.  While I have the dialogue of perhaps 15,000 scenes rolling around in my head, so that I can find an example for pretty much anything I want on a moment's notice, I learn all the time that my listener has never heard of the film, or if they have heard of it, they've never seen it, and if they've seen it they can't remember a single thing that happened.  This is almost always the case, even with really popular films, if the film is more than ten years old.

Too, this culture judges us for the films we like.  If we say we like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, we're in fine company among even young white males, who have been indoctrinated in the "classics" by their fathers.  Say that we like Oscar-validated films like Amadeus, Ghandi and Silence of the Lambs, we're judged to be effete but tolerable.  But if we say that we like certain films, like Pleasantville, Tangled or Sucker Punch, we're vilified as ignorant pandering gits and sooks.  Culture, especially internet culture, demands that we bend and crawl to certain films, because they speak highly of white man-boy values, and hate other films because they are too this or too that, boring these same man-boys or touching on the wrong subjects.

With this post, I have to piss on all that.  The goal of this post is not to address the worthiness of the films being called up.  Liking these films doesn't matter.  Our agenda is to understand how characters are set up to be liked or disliked.  Naturally, in many cases the reader won't "like" the character being described as likeable ... get over it.  Many people did like these characters, else the films would not have done as well as they did.  Not every film in the universe was made for YOU, personally.  If you haven't seen the film discussed, or you don't like the film discussed, just move onto the next example.  If you aren't capable of learning, don't read this.

The next question that needs answering is how to make players care about NPCs.  It's all well and good to say they ought to, and explain the benefits of it, but readers and DMs will scratch their heads and ask, "How do I make that happen?  I wouldn't know where to start."

Thankfully, writers have been teaching us for centuries how to make characters likeable, often within five minutes after we start reading or watching a story.  We need only deconstruct what's being done, how it is being done and why it works.  Towards that end, I'm going to discuss a number of characters from different films.  Because the character's introduction is of importance, and not the film's plot or resolution, there won't be any spoilers.  As well, occasionally, it will help to also understand how to make a character unlikeable, using the same material.  In each case, I'm going to assume the reader has seen the film and therefore knows the character being discussed, or can look it up on IMDb/Wikipedia if they need to jog the memory.

Some of these characters are very simple and some are complex.  The more I write, the more complex is the character.

The Little Mermaid

Before we even see Ariel, we establish her as a naughty girl who isn't doing as she's expected; we cut right to her being naughty—and therefore having fun, for what child doesn't understand that the only way to have any fun is to do things we're not supposed to do?  We discover soon after that she's capable and brave, protecting her friends ... so that when she gets into the inevitable father-daughter squabble about her lack of responsibility, we already know that it's not true.  She just doesn't want to be bossed around.

All this is fairly standard territory for any child-parent conflict, but another layer is soon added, one that comes directly from Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote the original tale.  Ariel yearns.  She yearns desperately.  Just as Luke Skywalker yearns for something more than a farmer's life, or as Chico of the Magnificent Seven yearns to be gunfighter and not a farmer.  This intense yearning for something better lays at the heart of every Adventurer's soul.  To make any NPC likeable, we need only spin out a few deeply heartfelt lines to describe the character's intense passion for something better.  It isn't enough to merely "want" adventure.  The character must need it like air.  And note, it doesn't even matter if the character has any awareness of how dangerous the world is, or how inadequate they are to face it.  Ariel is a complete neophyte, utterly out of her depth, and yet we still care about her.  It is the same with all such would-be greenhorn adventurers.

Back to the Future

Our first look at Marty is of an irresponsible kid with remarkably poor judgement.  We like him before he takes off the glasses for the first time, since he's just done something very wrong and very cool.  Marty breaks the rules; he's an outsider, disliked by authority (he's a slacker), and what he is tortured by the humiliating reality of his homelife—pushing him into rebellion and fantasy while crippling his self-esteem.  We feel for him; we want success; and though his friend Doc is barking mad, Doc is the poster boy for a life lived towards fantasy and, with regards to Libyans, spectacularly poor judgement.  We can see why these two people have bonded, despite their ages, though we've just met them.

We don't need more than this, but the film keeps finding new reasons for us to like both Marty and Doc.  The two get switched around in the plots of the second and third movies, as parallels between them proliferate.  Our takeaway is that rebellion against authority, the kooky pursuit of dreams and a scrambling desperation are traits that we LIKE to see in other people.  We can invest any of these into an NPC and get good results.

Hot Fuzz

As we watch Nicholas Angel walk towards the camera in the film's opening shot, we see the stiffness in every joint.  We are informed that he is perfectly educated, brave, brilliant, capable, motivated, competitive—in short, the best cop in existence.  He's also disliked.  Hated, in fact.  By everyone.  Including his girlfriend.  There we have it, in less than six minutes.  The character is a classic Mary Sue and the character is hopelessly sad and directionless.  He needs context to feel valuable; he needs support.  He needs a party who will let him be himself, who won't hate him because he's proficient.

In ways, not an easy character for the DM to run—but the formula can be downsized so that while the NPC is absurdly skilled with regards to the party, the various combats and struggles still need everyone in the party to step up.  A classic example (occurring in various myths) might be a giant that throws in with a group of low-level characters; though the giant is deadly strong, the giant is also lonely, friendly, well-meaning, generous and unable to squirm into very small places, etc.

Incidentally, we can see clearly how threatened, jealous people can systematically persecute someone just because he or she is "too" able to function.  Entitled, self-righteous petty people without much skill make great hateful NPCs.

Heartbreak Ridge

Gunny Highway is introduced in the film's first scene as, quote, "I'm mean, nasty and tired, I eat concertina wire and piss napalm, and I can put a round through a flea's ass at 200 meters."  Essentially the character is unlikeable ... except that he's not bothering anyone when he's threatened, and when he deals with the threat, he's not bothered much by having to exercise himself.  We quickly get the idea that Gunny is perfectly likeable so long as his causes are your causes, which works in the film because it's about the military and that's the marching song.  But we have to admire him before we can like him. Gunny's job is the keep you alive; conflict only occurs when you keep him from keeping you alive, mostly out of your ignorance.

A complex character to introduce as an NPC, to be sure.  A DM is sure to abuse the character by failing to understand that Gunny is NOT self-serving in any way.  He's a dangerous man who was deliberately trained to be dangerous, who became more dangerous because he survived ... but he's not selfish, political, discriminating or otherwise deflected from the one cause he has, which is to get the job done.  He will take the party in, keep the party alive and die, if necessary, without the least resentment.  This used to be a fairly common soldier-type.  I've spoken with and worked with hundreds of these guys.

Things that won't work in a campaign with them is subtlety of purpose, intrigue, backstabbing or insincerity.  They will take the job and finish the job, or die trying; when supplies and resources run out, they'll retreat rationally; they're not "heroes"; they're people doing a job.  They make great hirelings, providing wisdom, waiting their turn, holding their ground or fading into the background when things go sour, so they can rescue the party later.  What they won't stand for is betrayal.  Don't betray them.  Don't.

That Thing You Do

Apart from the credits, and the pleasant way he has about him as he works the store, why do we like Guy?  It helps that the song is "Loving You Lots and Lots" (not a classic song, it was written by Tom Hanks for the film), messing with your subconscious.  Halfway through the credits and after the song ends, we watch Guy dive into a basement, lay out some jazz and uncover his drums.  Now, drums say a lot about a person (and not just that you can tell if the stage is level by the drool coming out of both sides of a drummer's mouth).  It's hard to find a place to practice; you need a certain amount of quiet, but you won't be quiet and everyone else will hate that, particularly since a drummer's practice isn't "musical" in the way we perceive that.  This means that a drummer spends a lot of time being solitary.

Soon after Guy starts, he's interrupted by his father, who calls Guy up to scold him about forgetting to turn the store lights off.  This goes to tell us that Guy doesn't really care about the store; he can't wait to get to his drums ... and it tells us his father doesn't respect his drums.

This is so easy to set up as an NPC.  The party encounters a flute player on a side street, who has an amazing talent; within 30 seconds of the party hearing him, and stopping to admire him, a shop owner comes outside, screams at the fluteplayer and shoves a broom into his hand.  Like that, the fluteplayer is a likeable NPC and the shopkeeper is hated.  It is in our bones to hate people who cannot appreciate beauty.

The Road to El Dorado

Our first look at Miguel and Tulio is a wanted poster, that fades into the two characters playing dice.  This is not an easy set up for a DM presenting NPCs, because the most likeable quality M&T have is their wit and exhuberance.  These characters don't work in the abstract; they are full of energy, fast talking and utter greed.  Plus, they play off each other with great chemistry.  Still, the right sort of DM, with plenty of experience in 1940s screwball comedies, might pull this off.

Now, I don't know how easily it might be to sell this level of greed to a party as a friendship, but obviously it can be done because we like these guys.  They're daring, full of bravado and really tremendous bad luck.  In comedic terms, Tulio is the "straight-man" while Miguel is the optomistic dope.  These distinctions are important; they have played off each other through comedies written back into the time of the ancient Greeks.  The types must be understood to make this work.

These make great competitive NPCs, chasing after the same thing the party chases, who can show up, do some schtick, disappear into the night, then show up again at a critical moment to get the Macguffin thirty seconds ahead of the party.  What we want is the party to say, "I hate those guys," when of course the party admires them.

That's six movies.  I could honestly do this longer, and mean to, but I'd like to hear if this is working.  Is anyone learning anything?  Or shall I try a different tack to get these ideas across?

This series continues with Further NPCs