Actual Talking Between Player and NPC

The first post in this series can be read here.  

After this bricklaying of the background, we can address the problem at hand: as a player, you want to talk to an NPC.  How do you go about doing this?

We have certain hurdles, which ought to apply in an RPG as much as they do in real life, in part because communication is built-in as a game challenge and in part because the game gives us an opportunity to play-test real life situations.  These hurdles are the same obstructions that we suffer with all the time: that it is hard to address someone we don't know; and that it is expected that anyone addressing us does so out of a motivation we don't trust.

We're in game, and your fighter wants to speak with a town resident to learn something about the game world.  We should assume that if you're from around here, the DM shouldn't insist on you asking anyone anything about the surrounding environment.  This is your home.  You should already know everything there is to know, and you should already have a relationship with everyone around.  So, the trouble with speaking to a town resident should only apply if you're a stranger in this town.

Think of how you feel when you're addressed by a stranger.  Not every stranger you've met has an agenda, but you've met enough to know that anyone might have one.  Is this a salesperson?  Is it a religious fanatic?  Is this stranger trying to distract you, so that someone can pick your pocket or knock you out from behind?  Is the stranger a beggar?  Depending on where the reader lives, these possibilities are greater or lesser.  Readers from New York will view strangers very differently than readers from the Platte Valley in Nebraska.

For D&D purposes, it ought to be understood that the enclosed, tight packing of people together in even the smallest towns made every urban center a dangerous place.  A crowded avenue was less openly aggressive than a slum, where a gang could brazenly attack in the open, but every street had some kind of threat.  Without welfare, with hundreds of recent arrivals from the country struggling to live in the city, with an occupying "police" force whose only concern was to protect the money of perhaps 10% of the city's residents, factions and families openly contested in the streets over territory that could amount to no more than a hundred foot stretch.  Think Romeo and Juliet, think drug dealers or streetwalkers ready to knife someone for standing on the wrong corner, think New York street gangs who still fight over which people are allowed to use a convenience store.  I don't mean to paint constant discord and violence, but it's there like an constant bass tone ... and anyone who might walk up and talk to you without obvious cause could mean a threat.  While that case may not occur more often than 1 in 30 times, or 50 times, each time it has occurred in the past causes you to treat everyone with vigilance.

So, randomly talking to a stranger in a town, how do you think they're going to treat you?

That's right: they're going to treat you like a potential criminal.  Which means the weirder you sound, the less straightforwardly you talk about specific, relatable things, the more you will sound like an uncertain threat.  "Hey, Mr. Townstranger, can you tell us where the local dungeon is?"  wtf.

Even if you try something friendly—like, "Hey, those are nice beets you've got growing there.  How do you get such a green colour on those?"—you're still going to sound like you're setting the stranger up somehow.  Why do you, a stranger, care what sort of beets I'm raising?  Small talk is hard; strangers, particularly the sort of xenophobic strangers who largely have never gone more than 7 miles from the place where they were born, want you to get to the gawddamned point.  Are you buying these beets?  Are you asking directions to a specific place, that I would know?  Then fuck off.

This is what makes a tavern better than a random person on the street.  Strangers are expected in taverns; the tavernkeeper's livelihood depends on them.  This doesn't mean the tapster is all that anxious to speak; mostly, the focus is on serving you food and drink and getting your money—and as a stranger, there's no reason to assume you'll ever be back, so gaining your approval isn't high on the list of priorities (this not being the PR era of the present day).  Still, you're permitted socially to say something to the tavernkeeper about the weather, the general feel of the town, asking questions about employment or getting directions.  Those are safe subjects.  But asking, "Hey, heard any rumours, Mr. Strangebartender I've never met before?" deserves nothing less than a trite fuck off.

Players should not have to ask these sorts of questions.  If there is a dungeon about, it wouldn't be called a "dungeon" and probably if it were known to the town someone would have gotten rid of it already.  Dungeons are found by chance, not by someone presenting a travelogue showing players the way.  This bad, bad trope was invented by lazy writers who couldn't think of a better reason for a party to tramp into the wilderness, where they could accidentally stumble across such a thing.  Additionally, if there were a rumour, it wouldn't be told to a stranger; it would be told under the auspices, "Don't tell anyone, but I heard ..."  That's how rumours are.

Somehow, the players have to figure out a way to make themselves "belong" to the general tapestry of the town.  This means NOT expecting to be instantly accepted, giving NPCs a definite reason to see the player as trustworthy (and generous), not acting goofy or weird, not wearing their weapons and armour to the bar, buying stuff and hanging around a few days getting to know people.  Good first lines include statements like, "I just came into town and I'm looking for a bed and a good meal."  "I'm not feeling well, could you direct me to the apothecary."  "Hello."  "Nice day."  And, if a response is given, adding something like, "That's a fine animal you have there," or "Good morrow to you."  Then, moving on and not trying to force a conversation.  Get a room.  Get a drink and a meal.  Sleep, get up the same morning, get another meal from the same place.  Mention that yesterday's meal was fair but that this morning's was excellent.  Mutter about a few things you'd like to do that day to the innkeeper.  See if he/she responds, offers some advice.  TAKE IT.  Come back, describe your experience taking the innkeeper's advice.  Get another drink and another meal.  Sleep again.  Have the same thing for breakfast the second day.  THEN cautiously address the subject that you really care about.  "I have a job that's taking me up to the Strangedark Forest tomorrow.  I'm concerned about what I'll find there."

IF the innkeeper knows anything at that point, he/she will definitely tell you.  Unless the DM is a dolt.  If the innkeeper says, "I've never known anyone who went up there before," (because the DM can't see  a cue for shit), then thank the innkeeper, remark that you've got to buy an animal and that since you got such good advice yesterday, maybe he/she knows a good place for horseflesh?  When there, strike up a conversation about horses with the stabler, mentioning your planned travel in the woods, and later a conversation about food with the provisioner, mentioning your planned journey to the woods ... and get someone to bite.  A good DM will take opportunities like that to feed you more and more information, about the fact that the woods are too dense for horses, you should take a mule, or you'll want jerky, because it rains a lot up in those foothills, or whatever expands the character's knowledge without the character having to blatantly ask blunt questions.

However, like I said, this is how it works when the Player AND the DM has some sense of how people actually converse with each other.  Given that many game participants are, well, garbage at communication, this is a long, long climb to a better role-playing experience.  Good sense on both parts, however, can lead to those kind of deep, caring relationships between DM and Player that I've been addressing.

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

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

Talking to NPCs

We'll get nowhere if we cannot understand the premise:  

NPCs are living, self-motivated beings with personal agendas, in the pursuit of those agendas full time.  They do not exist to provide players with information, send players on quests, fulfill a role in an adventure or otherwise service the party's existence.

Before comprehending anything in this post, it must be understood that you will not be able to take the information here as a DM and apply it to your game world, because your players will not understand what you're doing, and will not have grasped the premise I've just given.  Likewise, if you are a player in a gameworld, the DM will not grasp what you're doing, because the DM's non-players will not have adopted this premise either.  The only way that anything can be gleaned from what I'm about to write is that both the DM and the Players must, together, be informed and made to comprehend what is proposed as a design principle.

In role-playing games at this time and according to the presuppositions I see in place, even if the DM and players can be induced to sit down and consider the premise above, most likely they still won't get their heads around it, or understand how to employ it.  In short, we're digging out of a very deep hole here.

The Hole

Let's discuss first how NPCs are usually run in a game.

On page 8 of The Keep on the Borderlands module, we are given this description of an NPC, the corporal of the watch:

"He is dressed in plate mail and carries a shield, with sword and dagger at his waist.  The corporal is rather grouchy, with a low charisma, but he admires outspoken, brave fighters and is easily taken in by a pretty girl."

This is not an atypical description of an NPC in an ordinary module, even today (though the company will have left the sexism out).   First, we're told his armor and weapons if the players start a fight.  Then we're told how he's going to approach the players when he's talked to.  Finally, we're told the "key" that's needed to get what's wanted out of the corporal: be brave or be pretty.

It's a game puzzle.  You want information, you have to press this button or that one.  You want to fight, here are the statistics.  We get nothing about who the corporal is, if he likes the job, if he's honest or what his motivations are.  We have limited space and we don't need to know those things, because the purpose of the NPC being here is to provide a game challenge.

Specifically, that game challenge is to "get" something from the corporal: the treasure of his +1 sword if he's beaten in combat, or knowledge about the keep.  Aside from being a threat or a medieval webpage, he's useless.

Every player that approaches the corporal thinks about him in this way.  If the DM were to create more character underlying the corporal's motivation, the players would assume this was a "game puzzle" that needed deciphering.  The more information we add to the corporal, the larger and more complex the game puzzle must be, in the player's imagination.  At no time and in no way will the players jump to the conclusion that quite possibly the corporal might just be "shooting the shit," because he's bored at his job and this is simply who he is.  The players have been TRAINED to deal with every NPC as a puzzle, a thing to be deciphered so the next important part of the adventure, or "story," can be wormed out and everyone can move onto the next puzzle.

Suppose the player, however, decides the corporal is a real person and decides to talk to him.  "How you doing, nice night out, isn't it, shame it wasn't pork for dinner, I was saying to my friends just yesterday that there seem to be a lot more settlers that have moved in than there were last year ..."

Listening to this, answering, the DM will be thinking, "What is the player doing?  Why isn't the player solving the puzzle?  We're just wasting time."  The DM has no conception of deciding if the corporal maybe likes this player, or is interested in unloading a bit about the Keep being something of a rather pleasant posting, or anything that might lead to the player and the corporal becoming acquaintences.  Instead, the DM will keep turning the subject back towards the adventure's agenda, talking about the Caves of Chaos, or gruffly telling the player to "move on, move on," maintaining the 2D illusion that the corporal is meant to present.  There is no pathway of conversation that would lead the corporal to be anything except "spearcarrier 3" in the mental play the DM has concocted.

So the reader can see, there is no easy way out of the hole.  A 3D character encourages the players to distrust immediately, while players approaching the DM's 2D character is a dead-end.  How do we get out?

The DM's Path

Sorry, I have to start with an example.

Westworld is a 1973 science fiction thriller predominantly revolving around two young men, Peter and John, who visit an android-populated theme park based upon three genres, most notably the standard American western, this being the choice of the main characters.  It is really two movies.  The first part is a fun romp in which the visitors explore the options available to them through the theme park.  The second part begins with an unexpected twist that we don't need to talk about, as nothing about the second half of the film is relevant to this post.

Peter and John arrive in the non-Leone "Wild West" and are given their clothes and weapons.  They get a room at the hotel, visit the bar, get pushed around by the sheriff, kill the sheriff (a couple of times), become outlaws, head into the outback and eventually return to town.  Most of the standard tropes (gunfight, bar fight, bank robbery) are incorporated into the story.

The two men are not given an "adventure" to play.  They are released into a pure sandbox and are expected to make their own fun.  This is doable, since the liquor is real, the guns feel real and "emotionally kill" the androids, the old western furnishings, rooms, clothes and sexy girls all provide a treat for the senses.

It is perhaps unknown to many readers, but Westworld was a smash sensation in 1973.  Everyone saw it and everyone and anyone interested in science fiction or fantasy was blown away by it.  The film made a splash equivalent to Star Wars.  Only, it wasn't marketed through toys and the splash didn't last as long.

The notion that Gygax, Arneson and others, playing and publishing D&D in 1974, weren't greatly influenced by the film is laughable.  Michael Crichton, writer and director of the film, the same guy who wrote Jurassic Park, the Andromeda Strain and much else taught them how a sandbox worked.  Unfortunately, a sandbox does not make a very good movie, so the sandbox had to be subverted halfway through in order to ensure the rest of the movie followed the writer's rather cliched science fiction agenda.

When there is no adventure, the bartender is just a bartender.  The sheriff is just there to keep the peace or act crookedly if that power has been allowed to corrupt.  When someone throws a punch, a barfight erupts.  When the bank is robbed, the pieces are reset and the bank is there to get robbed again.  Crichton's idea of a sandbox was very, very simplistic, but it was a theme park and the movie was released in 1973.  Note that I've been specific about the western depicted is not Sergio Leone's ultra-violent unforgiving west, but much more the television west of Gunsmoke.  Crichton and his investors wanted to make money; still, the Gunsmoke version was still sufficient to scare people, as the second half of the film is something of a horror.  Imagine if it had been A Fistful of Dollars.  Or Peckinpah's the Wild Bunch.  Much, much more visceral.

When the denizens in your world are there to serve a personal agenda of yours to walk the party through a pre-designated path, there's room to give the androids (NPCs) a personality.  Instead of existing merely as obstacles or enablers, they may be given the opportunity to genuinely care about the well-being of the party.  We're usually able to imagine NPCs deciding "the party must die," but this is only a tiny part of the equation.  The gruff corporal of the watch might imagine, seeing the party retreat once from the Caves of Chaos and yet be willing to go again, that the party could use a little help on their second journey.  "Here, take my second Gareth with you; and take my sword—but bring it back."  Eventually, the whole keep might be concerned and rooting for the party, with dozens of them camped a safe distance from the Caves and yet ready to give aid should the party stumble out of the bushes.  After all, does anyone in the Keep actually like the Caves being there?

Still, that reaction relies on the players TALKING like human beings to the members of the Keep: sharing information, asking and offering help, demonstrating generosity, telling stories, making peace during a barfight instead of joining in, thus gaining the bartender's good will.  In a real bar, broken furniture and bottles spells destitution and poverty; unlike a movie western, there aren't more tables and bottles in the back that can be set up for the next group of patrons who want to fight.  In a real medieval town, the guard don't show up and arrest the rabble, they strip the rabble of wealth and sell them as slaves to the mines.

The DM has to get out of the headspace that the NPCs are set pieces.  This is difficult to explain.  Let's put a pin in it for the present; this isn't something I'm able to outline directly.  It must be reasoned out.

The Players Path

Another example.  My online party lately discovered a wrecked airship on a tundra plateau a couple of days from civilisation.  They killed the giant spider inside it and discovered some barrels of wine and ale that were intact.  The ship looks to have gone down three years ago.  Retreating because of wounds and needing recovery, they returned in order to collect the barrels and return them to town.  In a heavy rainfall, they set up camp, heard a thump in the night and the next morning, found a nearly dead stone giant had collapsed nearby.  They restored the giant to consciousness, learned the giant had been nearly killed fighting a giant cave bear, learned that the cave bear was still alive and "out there" and that the giant had lost his axe somewhere along his way from the hills to where he collapsed near the ship.

The party decided to recover the axe, which they found lying near a tarn; but then they were attacked by a large wolf with either blink or teleport capabilities.  They struck the wolf a blow, the wolf missed and then disappeared.  The party started back towards the camp and now they are being tracked by the wolf.  That's where we paused the campaign.

The party could have killed the giant but they didn't.  If they had killed the giant, they wouldn't have learned about the cave bear.  They didn't have to help the giant, but they did.  The giant told his story and as far as the party knows, this is the giant's reason for being there.  Not to fight the bear or rid the land of the monster (it is a really, really big bear, not a natural one), but specifically to tell the party about it.

Learning about the missing axe, the party bit and went after the axe.  I did not need to ask them.  Upon encountering the wolf, I'm quite sure the party believes the reason I said the axe was missing was so that I could find an excuse to have them attacked by the wolf.  "A" follows "B."  If I had not dropped the fact about the missing axe, and if they had not agreed to get it, there wouldn't have been a wolf encounter, right?  This is clearly me setting up the adventure as a pre-planned story.  Not a sandbox.

Let me explain this again from my point of view.

The party decides to go into a random piece of Norwegian tundra to look around.  Statistically, they could walk across Norwegian tundra for the entire season and see NOTHING.  No one lives there for a reason.  There's no food, no wood, no precious minerals and it is cold and wet.  There's plenty of potential building stone, but this is NORWAY.  All the building stone we could ever want is within a stone's throw, and down here by the water there is food and wood.  We don't climb 3,000 ft. to get building stone.

As a DM, I am not interested in saying, "It is now September.  You've seen nothing.  What would the party like to do now?"  It's boring.  If the party is going to go up there, might just as well have them find something.  They will eventually, statistically; we might as well maintain momentum and have them find it today.

I picked a downed airship (with a hook), a giant (with a hook), a wolf (with a hook) and a bear (with a hook).  The giant knows about the bear but doesn't know about the wolf (that's a party spoiler, but a minor one and it doesn't matter because the giant will know about the wolf if the party gets back).  The giant dropped the axe because he fell off a mountain after a bad fight with a big bear and realistically, we drop things when we're on the edge of death.  The wolf's appearance is NOT random, and is NOT there so I can throw an random encounter, but to set up the hook; but I can't say what that is just now because that would be a bigger spoiler.

Moreover, the party DECIDED to get the axe.  The giant didn't need them to get it.  The party reasoned that if the bear showed up, then it would be a good idea if the giant was armed; but there is an immense air ship right there with hundreds of pieces of wood, any of which would serve as a club.  The giant HAS a weapon.  He just doesn't have his axe.

The party could sit tight, help the giant heal and then have the giant load the barrels onto their wagon.  The giant is clearly civilized and friendly, erudite, and has told them he was asked by the Count of Bergen (the province north of the party) to kill the cave bear, so the party KNOWS the giant has direct relations with humans.  They could simply ask the giant to return with them to town.  There's no adventure here.  There are things laying around in the sandbox and the players are giving them reasons for being what they are.  I'm just making sure they're all included.

All the hooks depend on the various entities (ship, giant, etc.) having agendas and motivations of their own.  The party isn't being asked to fight the cave bear; they weren't asked to get the axe.  If the party left, the giant would heal, find his own axe, meet the wolf, sort that out and then return to hunting the cave bear.  Like Indiana Jones chasing the Ark, without him the Nazis will still find it; and experience the same consequences.  Eventually.  It's just that with Jones' help, they found the Ark sooner and thus melted sooner.  The party is like Jones.  They're not needed; but if they want to join in, there's room.

Problem is, the party automatically creates what it thinks the DM's intentions MUST be ... and then they chase those intentions because they're willing.  Then they argue that the DM led them into the box they're in ... and this is understandable, because 99 times out of 100, that's exactly what the DM does.  Only, I'm not like that.

Recently, I've grasped that when I say the party doesn't want to bite on the proposed adventure, that there is a black-and-white choice being made.  They either can pursue the adventure or they can pursue some other adventure.  That's not really the case.  Parties almost always go for it when the adventure comes up.  The difference is that I don't have a specific route they should take.  How the party manages the wolf, or meets the bear, or befriends the giant, or reveals the mystery behind the ship, might happen in dozens of ways, none of which I have to invent because that's not my problem.  I'm not the solver.  I'm the designer.  I make the pieces, but I don't promise they fit together in any specific pattern.  The players may imagine that's my goal, because they immediately make a connection when I throw out a possible connector (axe missing) ... but that's more a matter of their jumping at the first thing, not an example of them thinking through their options.

It's hard to make the players understand that the giant is telling his story because he's there, and the players are there, and anyone who had nearly died fighting a big bear would tell that story, regardless of agenda.  Wouldn't you?  It's not a set-up.  It's logical.  There's no stumpy DM stepping out from behind a rock and telling the party that now they must get the axe to move onto the next part of the adventure.

That stumpy DM is there, however, because a bad children's TV show put him in the player's heads.  Unfortunately.

I'll leave the reader to think about what's been said so far, while I think about what I want to say next.

This series continues with Help & Problem Solving