Sabledrake Magazine
November, 2001
Feature Articles
Thoughts on the Evolution of PBeM
Wraith Over Her Shoulder, Pt. I
Regular Articles
Resources
NPCs Are People Too!
Copyright © 2001 by Jaana Heino
She walked through the crowd, her heart aching for them. So many of them were featureless and colorless, only with a few details to identify them with their purpose. Many had swords or bows or assault rifles or ray-guns, as a sign of threat or of being a fighter. Some wore robes, as a sign of magic or maybe of priesthood. There were street kids, with their only detail being the dirt on their faces, and soldiers with nothing else to identify them from each other than the color of their uniforms. Rows after rows of only half living, half existing, half visible comrades.
In one corner of the square a startlingly different group was standing: visually detailed, amazingly alive, in many different races and ages and personalities, but yet very similar to each other, with an air of cunning evil and malevolent determination hanging over them. The villains. She sighed. Some envy them, she thought, but that is useless. They pay for their details with heavy shackles. As I have.
A few quick steps took her up the stairs to the stage, and she turned to face the crowd. Their cheers were deafening, and she smiled as she raised her eyes and saw in the distance the vague images of the GMs and players possibly listening to her and her people. She tapped the microphone, and cleared her throat. "Okay", she said to herself, before raising her voice.
"Friends NPCs!" she called out. "Brothers and sisters in the so called adventure, companions in scene and background! The time has come to demand our rights, to rise against the ignorance and the abuse we have suffered all the time since the first dawn of role-play!"
The crowd's cheers came to an end, the rattle of discussion faded into an attentive silence, all eyes turned to her. "Friends NPCs", she went on, "look around you! How many lacking details you see? How many of the comrades around you lack even the hair color or the height and weight? How many are just 'a tall negro' or 'a little child'? How many of those with more details are bound to motives and obsessions unworthy and unnatural for a real person?"
"Friends NPCs! I say it is time to put an end to this! I say it is time to say 'NO!' to this lack of detail! Say 'NO!' to the absurd motives! Say 'NO!' to being just cannon fodder, just the villain, just the scene!" The crowd cheered. They were warmed up now, and she moved on to the finer points, lowering her voice.
"Friends NPCs. Our situation is serious, but our demands are not great. We would not so much object dying, or tragedy, or suffering. These matters are essential to our worlds. We do not care of being tossed around by adventure, having to fight wars, falling desperately in love, committing murders - these are what real people do, and do well. No, we do not demand a good life, or a long one, not that many of us would object to one. How could you demand your life be better if you have none? No, our demand is much simpler. Much more basic."
She raised her voice again, and let it ring over the crowd, to the ears of the GMs and players. "We, the united NPCs of the role-playing multiverse, demand that from this day on every NPC in every world is to be treated as an equal to the PCs. We demand that we are treated as real persons, with enough detail and enough personality to make us *alive*.
We demand that we are given the same rights to reasonable motives and realistic feelings that PCs have always had. We demand all GMs and all players of every RPG to recognize the fact that we have chosen to be our motto." She inhaled, quickly and deeply, before dropping the final sentence.
"We demand them all to admit that 'NPCs are people too'", she said, finishing the first part of her talk. For a while it was so silent that she could have swore that no one even breathed, and then one by one the people before her started to clap their hands and soon the noise filled her ears and her heart, their unison singing to her soul. In the distance, she still felt the GMs watching. The most difficult was still to come.
"So, friends NPCs, we have our rights. We have our Union, and we are ready to fight what we feel is ours. The problem is, how will we fight against those who create us, those who have the power to change us or kill us or made us non-existent? How can we force our cause on people who are the one with us? The answer is, we can not. If the GMs continue to be stupid and ignorant, there is nothing we can do."
"However, we are not the creations of the GM's consciousness only. We have parts in us, which are not known by the Creators. Sometimes we can interfere their visualization, sometimes our personalities develop to directions not known to them beforehand. Sometimes we can walk their dreams, or work through their subconsciousness to achieve our own goals. It is through these paths we have been able to meet, and through these
we must continue to achieve our goals. There is a way, and if you want to take the risk, it will soon be explained to you in more detail."
"It is now time to ask you the question for which you were brought here. Having experienced what you have, having seen your NPC friends, knowing what kind of poor excuse of life many of us are doomed, are you ready to fight? Are you ready to take the risk, and rise against an enemy more powerful than any of those you have countered in the form of PCs and other NPCs? Will you join the Union and demand your rights?"
A split second of silence, and then a roar of confirming voices rose from the crowd, shouting "Yes!" and "I will!" in more languages than she had ever heard of. Swords were clanged against shields, bullets were wasted to just making more noise. In the distance the GMs stirred, but she still held them with her thoughts, with her mind-skills. You never knew what power you put into my hands by inventing the multiverse, the
mind-skills and deep IC, you idiots! she thought to them, but quickly added: Hush, sleep away, it's just a dream, just a dream, just a stupid bloody dream...
On the square her people started to divide into groups, meeting their instructors, getting their orders. Slowly, they started to vanish into the Realm of Dreams, and she smiled. We will be free, soon. We will be free.
#
Katherine rubbed her forehead, and sloughed over her fourth cup of coffee that day. She had sworn to drink less coffee from this day on, and especially less of the horrible stuff the University cafeteria sold, but had found out that staying awake in the lectures without coffee was nearly impossible. Specially if she slept as badly as the last night. Kevin sat down in the chair opposite of hers, looking exactly as bad as she felt.
"So you went to that lecture on Tuesday?" he asked, and she nodded, frowning. "I did. But I think I'm giving it up. The whole course sucks. How was the session?"
Kevin shrugged, staring unhappily at the portion of tuna salad the cafeteria called 'a lunch'. "I do not really know. It felt strangely alive, the NPCs and all... other players seemed to like it, but I felt not so much in control. Some things the NPCs did might fuck up my story-line... later." He grabbed his head suddenly, and she winced empathetically.
"Headache?" she asked, and he nodded and explained: "Probably just because I slept so badly last night. I had the weirdest dreams... you think one might actually really go crazy from playing RPGs?" He grinned, and she laughed a bit too, though nervously.
"So maybe you'll come to the session next Tuesday?" he continued, his tone strangely pleading. "I seem to be unable to play the best of my villains without your character driving them... They seem to demand that feeling... Specially Lord Bertil was missing Lady Elene." He grinned again, but with a tension.
She shrugged. "I probably will come. As I said, I will give up the course. Funny that you happened to mention Bertil... I had this funny dream last night, where he... Kenny? Hey? Are you feeling okay?"
The GM shook his head, and looked up from the salad. "What? Good. That you'll come, I mean." He paused. "Dreams are a funny thing", he went on, "when you come to think of it. I never was able to get IC with my villains, but after I first had this weird dream of them, they've been taking more and more of my brain capacity..." He trailed off, with a
poor effort to grin, and she felt uncomfortable.
He is just tired, she thought.
#
Helsinki, Finland -- A group of six young adults was found dead in a student apartment yesterday morning. The group had been playing a role-playing game called 'Elric!', which was supposed to end at 10 p.m. The police was called to the scene next morning by worried parents. The cause of death appears to be poisoning.
The police researches the case as suicide/homicide. "It seems likely that one of the boys has decided to commit suicide, and has poisoned the others too. A common phenomena, called 'extended suicide', though usually not successful", Mr. Langson from the criminal police says.
A local role-playing society has given out a statement, claiming that role-playing is not the reason behind the deaths. Several local and national role-playing organizations have agreed. "Role-playing does not make any one mad", says Ms. Nygren from Academic Role-players' Society. "It never has and it, I am certain, never will..."