This post continues in the pattern set by the last post.
Captain America: the First Avenger
The writer has two agendas to set up with Steve Rogers: that he's ready to sacrifice himself and that he won't quit. The first word he says, in answer to the question, "Boy, lotta guys getting killed over there; kinda makes you think twice about enlisting, huh?", is a stern "Nope." Count 'em, that's one. He's labeled 4F ... but a film minute and 20 seconds later, Steve is getting beat up in an alley, setting up his catch phrase, "I can do this all day." Yessir, in straight language, Steve is a loser and a sucker. Used to be, in Steve's day, these were cherished traits.
We don't like him because he's tough and a hero, though of course we know that's where this is going; and, naturally, if we liked the comic we're disposed to like the character. But the writer isn't relying on that. He's giving good, solid reasons to like Steve. Like Dickens and Shakespeare noted before him, the best way to cultivate sympathy for a character is to have a little guy struggle against a great big guy. We want to see David win against Goliath. And even though David became a great king, and even though Steve becomes Captain America, we recognize when these were little guys who were willing to lay down on the wire for their fellow man. An NPC with almost no hit points, who nevertheless will try to stand next to the player even against the strongest monster, is an easy sell ... we need only add a few lines before getting into it with dice: "As Winston takes his place against the enemy, you see the screwed up look of courage in his soft, young face; nevertheless, he doesn't flinch, he doesn't waver, he gives it all he's got."
If your players don't melt at that, even if Winston is killed (and I don't fudge dice, so he might be), there going to care about this guy, even if he doesn't live to become first level. You just see the funeral they give him.
Before we see John, we see his hand gripping the armrest of his seat, followed by the passenger next to him saying, "You don't like flying, do you?" As we pan to John's face, he looks cool, calm ... and he mutters, "What gives you that idea." This combination hits home without our realizing the discontinuity here. John is scared ... but John won't admit it. Right away, we find out he's a cop; and soon after that, we find him actually following the advice of his fellow passenger, making fists with his toes in the carpet. 'Course, that sets up an ongoing complication with the plot, but in the moment we see John as the sort of fellow whose open to new ideas, even if they seem silly. John is human. He's subject to weaknesses. He is also flexible and able to get past his fear. In those first few minutes, however, we don't know yet of what he's capable. That comes later.
John is the NPC that everyone underestimates. Before the fight, he's sweating. He hasn't got shoes. He doesn't look ready. He's a nice enough fellow, but the party's certain that when the chips are down, John's going to fold. And then, he ends up being ... John. Do not judge a book by its cover.
Couldn't resist. In the timeline of Bruce Willis films, Die Hard is his breakthrough film. He'd done the show Moonlighting for about 18 months before he got the gig to make the film, which he got because he was popular on TV. He'd never played a serious bad ass before 1988; in the film Sunset, released the same year as Die Hard, he's the comic relief.
By the release of RED in 2010, Willis is playing his super-guy action-hero persona in every film, even when that's not his character. So how do we make the audience "like him"? That is, in a way they didn't like him before. Simple. We put Frank Moses in a calm, harmless setting. He draws on his housecoat. Has his old man pills. Does his old man workout. Gets his mail. And calls into his addictive phone relationship with ... a phone operator. Lying about not getting the cheque he's got in his hand, just to hear the voice of a strange woman, so he can talk about his budding avocado. Wow. That sure is sad.
Like John, Frank is a hidden killing machine of incomprehensible ability (and more so than John); but Frank is calm. Frank fears nothing. Frank is bored, lonely, and trying his best to be Ferdinand the Bull, having been put out to pasture. Frank will tag along with the party out of habit, but what he really wants is to get in touch with things in life he never experienced, because he was always fighting so damn hard. He'd like a real life. Like the mystery of growing an avocado. Or having a girlfriend. See, at heart, he's "gooey on the inside. Gooey."
Takes some skill to make the party grasp that; but Frank makes a good character for a romance plot, who afterwards turns up again and again as a friend of the party who helped him find his lady-love.
Christine is a thirty-something waitress in a low-end restaurant somewhere in London, the sort where the patrons don't care if the servers chat openly to each other while serving food. She's rather dense in discussions about sex, easily embarrassed and shocked, habitually moral without actually being moral, talkative and crude. She's not likeable at all, at first, except that she's cute and definitely not happy about her present. Brashly, she describes her sex life as "wet knickers and missed periods;" a moment later, Christine runs out the front of the restaurant to scream at a "scrubber," a slattern-looking woman, about rent that hasn't been paid.
It's a difficult character to grasp and harder to portray. I include it here because not every NPC needs to be as simple as most of the ones I've presented. Players will like an NPC who's fast-talking, unrefined, cocksure and in their face, so long as the DM is able to keep the dialogue both shocking and interesting at the same time. It needs saying something the players don't expect, adding something insulting, then following that up with something that makes the players laugh before they have time to react to being insulted. It's revealed in a series of scenes that Christine is capable of patience, forgiveness and being as bold as brass when the moment calls for it; the reader might think of the sort of mother whose just five feet tall giving steady abuse to her three six-foot-four sons, while they dig their toes into the ground and apologize. It's a motherish fearlessness that breeds love and protectiveness in players who meet NPCs like this.
Oh, lots of meat here. We could do Jack, Bud, Ed or Sid ... we're made to like them all, but let's take the opportunity here and do a villain. How are we meant to like Dudley?
Well, first, his name is Dudley, which we normally associate with a somewhat gawky, harmless, earnest fellow who's not too bright. Second, we have him played by James Cromwell, whom some will remember played a nerd father in Revenge of the Nerds. Third, the "heroes" of the film are brawling, sleazy, ambitious slightly crooked punks. We're introduced to them all before we meet Dudley, whom we first see asking a reporter to drop his title as police captain ("call me Dudley"), followed by his giving fatherly advice to Ed Exley that amounts to, "you're political but you're not crooked enough." It's a strange exchange, where we're forgiving of Dudley's obvious corruption, because by this time we've already been told that L.A. in the 1940s is a mobster town where execution style murders are business as usual. Dudley seems like the sort of fellow whose trying to hold a corrupt department together with tape and sealing wax ... so even though his advice is "bad," it seems less "bad" than the members of his department (especially with the scene that follows soon after).
The stereotype advantages the cliche of fatherly advice, given in the calm, indulgent tone that Dudley uses. Hell, we've all gotten bad advice from our fathers; we know they meant well. We're plugged into accepting Dad's concern as a sort of love ... and oh what a mess that makes when it turns out how wrong Dad really is.
Now, I'm not saying that the Dad stereotype needs to be set up for a gotcha twist at some later point; but presenting a father-type who shows concern for the party, gives a few good pieces of advice, then a few bad ones, will get a surprising positive response from players ... one that can be played straight, with them knowing that "Dad's advice" is often wrong, but that Dad himself is still pretty cool.
Here's another sort of father; a sports manager this time. Before we even meet Sonny, we're treated to a conversation between the owner and manager of the Seattle Seahawks, Walt and Tom. They're looking for a chump. A desperate chump. Cut to Sonny Weaver of the Cleveland Browns, the losingest football team (hasn't won a superbowl since 1964) in a losingest town (Cleveland is famous for losing teams, not to mention losing everything else), listening to two radio sports hosts talking about what a bunch of losers the Cleveland Browns are, and specifically why Sonny isn't the man his father was, and why he's complete garbage as the Browns' new manager. Yep, the director of Ghost Busters, Ivan Reitman, lays it on pretty thick. That's Reitman's style.
It is hard not to like a loser. This is just another take on the small guy fighting the big guy that we've already seen, except that now the small guy is a 50-something fighting the whole world ... not quite alone, as it turns out, but feeling that way. For the first twenty minutes the film does nothing but kick the shit out of Sonny—in the way that only football fans and true believers can. This is one of those things where a character can't be beaten down too hard ... it always makes the redemption that much sweeter.
Tempted to address Victoria, but we've just seen someone down on their luck, so it's got to be Toddy. He starts the film anyway. The opening shot pans from a cold, miserable Paris in the 1930s to the aging Toddy sleeping in bed, while the young man he's just slept with, Richard, starts to rifle Toddy's wallet. Toddy catches him at it and they proceed to tepidly insult one another. Richard is a punk; Toddy is taciturn, sarcastic and ultimately resigned to the process of young men ripping him off in exchange for sex.
This seems a long, long way from D&D, doesn't it? To comprehend character, the reader has to see past the immediate circumstances; people in general are dissatisfied with their circumstances for thousands of reasons. They chafe against their lives, the exchanges they must make to get what they want, the unhappy consequences of things they have to put up with ... what matters here is that Toddy repeatedly manages to put himself together and ford through, bestowing kindness, patience and sound advice upon others. Unhappy, but not bitter. He's a bartender who first tells the party that they can't stay for more than one night, because he's losing ownership of the inn in the morning, but not to worry, because the drinks are free. Toddy is the older hireling who wakes up beside the campfire in pain, takes five minutes to get on his horse and then tells heartwarming stories throughout the day. Misery and generosity make a fine combination.
Might as well do a fantasy story. Bit of shooting fish in a barrel, but ...
Skipping over the exposition about giants, setting up the film's content, which helps establish our Jack as a small boy (easy pickings for a film director), we meet the elder Jack for the first time in the classic manner. His uncle is ripping into him, berating the lad in the usual manner of elders. Jack takes a little misery, not as much as we saw it poured on Steve and Sonny above and to some degree on Toddy, but some misery just the same. It's always easy to show a character being dumped on. It builds sympathy in the onlooker, so long as the game's party isn't the sort to join in on the dumping because they feel the same need to be self-aggrandizing toads the same way as Jack's uncle does here. On his way, Jack apologizes to the horse for having to sell it (aww...) and soon demonstrates himself to be as gormless as his uncle suggests. But, you know, gormless in a well meaning way.
This is the last one, so I'll address the subject of inevitable success, which is a staple of films but need not be necessary in D&D. Trying is more important than succeeding. This is often missed by storytellers who think every crisis must end in a resolution of success, or else the players will feel swindled and bitter. In response, I grant you the ballad of White Squall by Stan Rogers ... which should get the cherished reader in the gut.
There is always another NPC, another anxious failure with hidden talents, another girl who wants to try so hard it makes her teeth hurt, another redeemed criminal ready to self-sacrifice to make things right ... it doesn't matter if the die does not roll their way at the critical time. In fact, as I suggested above, the death of such a character is more remarkable than the character's survival. Ages ago, during the online campaign, I set up the death of a father-like friar, Jan, at the hands of two criminals, after encouraging the players to like the fellow. The death felt like a stab to the heart; it also left a legacy that I'm sure both players continue to feel to this day—even though the death wasn't noteworthy or a case of self-sacrifice; in all truth, it wasn't even a tragedy ... it was, in fact, pure pathos. The death accomplished nothing except that it left the players on their own and the criminals were never brought to justice. That didn't matter. What mattered what the players felt a trusted friend of theirs had died.
If Jack or Isabelle had been eaten by the giant, it would have made a poor film; but an RPG isn't limited to the cast list or the narrow bandwidth of a film. An RPG can have dozens of important NPCs, who can disappear and re-emerge every few sessions or not until after a year. If one gets eaten by a giant, there are always others to step forward with the party and acquire their own important place in the party's hearts. The more cherished the NPC, the more intense the game moment when they don't make it ... just as it's infinitely intense with the player's own character bitterly meets its final end. Granted, this takes maturity; it isn't easy to admit that the world isn't made of candyfloss. But if its a candyfloss world the reader wants, NPCs as flesh-sticks will do nicely. If you want your players to find your game memorable, however, then you've got to let your NPCs and your players risk everything as they quest for success. Everything.
Okay.
I still haven't answered the question, how do you talk to an NPC. I'll need to get to that now.
This series continues with Actual Talking Between Player and NPC
Excellent examples. On the previous post I was going to ask about minor characters as a way of getting character introductions in a short amount of time, but you already did that with showing just the first introductions of the main characters. Given that we should be paying attention to all characters, main and secondary, in the movies and books we consume, is there any benefit to paying attention to main characters over secondary characters? Or should we be paying as much attention to both equally to improve our NPC chops?
ReplyDeleteAs regards minor characters, a good writer pays equal attention to every character being introduced. Later on, the main characters are given more attention, as their evolution matters more to the story, but it pays to grant as much meaning to every character as one can in a short time. As far as mining written work for NPCs, yes, look for them everywhere.
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