Note: this is not about the latest orc racism bulls$&% to rip through the screaming morons that call themselves the Twitter D&D community. Don’t even get me started about that stupid crap. This is about relatability and recognizability and how it relates to making NPCs seem human. I came up with the title days ago and it’s a good title. I’m keeping it. The Twitter D&D community can go f$&% itself. For a change.

After the last article’s realization, I am not sure I have a Long, Rambling Introduction™ in me. Especially given that the last article basically served as this article’s free writing. And I don’t want to force this s$&%. I mean, sure, it’s part of my style. It’s part of what makes me me. It adds to the conversational tone I try to maintain. I ramble and I get distracted and I go off on rants because I’m a human being talking about something I’m passionate about. But it only works if it’s authentic. Genuine. If it seems like I’m forcing it, then people’s bulls%$& detectors will go off and they’ll be done with me. That’s why Denny’s social media account is fun and why Burger King can’t pull that s$&% off to save their life. I truly believe Denny’s handed over their Twitter credentials to some random 20-something and told them to do whatever they wanted. Whereas BK obviously has a dude in a suit pretending to be a random 20-something tweeting to his ‘fellow kids’ and he’s only allowed to do what’s safe or on-message or woke.

So I think I’ll skip the Long, Rambling Introduction™ this time and just jump right into the topic du jour of the day. Continuing my series on making players care, I’m going to explain why people care about fictional characters.

Can You Relate, Man?

Let’s talk about relatability. It literally means “something you can have some kind of relationship with.” And it’s what authors and screenwriters and game designers call it when they’re trying to make a character they’d like the audience to give a f$&% about. And if you ever want to tell an author or designer that you give a f$&% about their characters, tell them their characters are relatable. There’s no higher praise.

There’s a reason that we creatives don’t talk about making likable characters. We talk about making relatable characters. It’s impossible to make a character people will like. It can’t be done. Let me explain.

In my last article, I showed you that you can’t make people care about things. But you can offer them the chance to care. To get emotionally invested. And if you believe what I said last time – and you should or else why the f$&% are you still reading my stuff – the key to getting people emotionally invested is tricking particular parts of their brains into forgetting it’s all pretend. Because the brain is kind of stupid about telling real emotions from pretend emotions. That’s one of many things the brain is stupid about. It’s also stupid about telling the difference between ideas it came up with and ideas someone else put in there. Whatever Chris Nolan claims.

Point is that people can have emotions about fictional characters. They can care about them the way they care about humans. That’s relatability. But most people are pretty picky about who they actually like. Take me. Some people absolutely love me. And rightly so. I’m a f$&%ing delight to be around. But some people can’t stand me. They don’t like my bombast and my sarcasm and my tendency to throw things when people say stupid s$&%. If you introduce me to ten of your friends, they’re all going to have some emotional reaction to me. But that reaction will vary. Some will like me. Some will hate me. That’s people for you.

Anyway, that’s why most authors talk more about relatability than likeability. Because the best a creator can do – initially – is to make a character that fools most people’s brains into forming human-type bonds with it. Characters that get some emotional response out of an audience. And that’s what authors are after. Any emotional response is a good one. Mostly. You don’t want people hating your protagonist or despising your loveable mascot and you don’t want people cheering for your villain. Beyond those f$&% ups, though, if your fictional world is full of characters that people have emotions about, it’s a win. And that’s your goal as a GM.

Now, look, likeability is a thing. For example, if you introduce me to ten of your friends, most of them will likely turn out to like me. Some won’t, but most will. Eight out of ten, say. That’s likeability. A likable character – like me – is a character that most people are inclined to like. And advanced students eventually learn how to make likable characters and hateable characters so they can ensure that people cheer for the good guys, jeer at the bad guys, and buy toys in the shape of the loveable mascot. But even masters of the craft f$&% that up. It’s not foolproof and it doesn’t work on everyone equally.

Right now, we’re going to focus on how to make characters relatable. What qualities make it possible for people to have human-type emotions at fictional characters? We’ll deal with likeability and hateability and loveable marketing gimmicks in future articles.

Sneaky Socialization

Before we talk about relatability, we have to talk about realism. Because there’s a difference between relatable characters and realistic characters. And realistic characters aren’t relatable.

What you have to understand is that relatability is a trick. Slight of mirrors. A handful of smoke. You’re fooling people’s brains into having feelings for a nonexistent cloud of statistics and descriptions. Don’t feel guilty, though; people want to be fooled. People like caring about people. It’s one of the first things we learn when we’re learning basic social skills. Assuming we ever learn basic social skills.

So, yeah, it’s a trick. But the audience is willing. No one goes to a magic show thinking the magician isn’t up to something. People willingly accept the illusion in return for entertainment. Same with fictional characters. It takes some trickery to get people to care about them, but they want to be tricked.

Why? Because people have to care about people. We’re social creatures. Our survival, our comfort, and our happiness depend on other people. We’re hardwired to need social interaction. We have to build relationships because our world is made out of relationships. Relationships are serious business. Very serious. One of the major factors clinical psychiatrists use to assess the suicide risk in depressed patients is their participation in regular social gatherings outside the home. Hell, that’s also one of the big pathologies for major depression. Social isolation is painful, dangerous, and even deadly. To most people, it’s a fate very near to – or even worse than – death. That’s why prisoners are isolated only in the most extreme situations or when cruel jailers want to break them. And it’s why psychiatrists in America today are deeply concerned over the greatly diminished amount of unsupervised social interaction children have these days.

If you give them half a chance, most players will jump at the chance to form pretend relationships with nonexistent characters. The problem is you have to give them that chance. And that’s where realism f$&%s things up. Realistic characters are paradoxically kind of unreal. There’s lots of reasons for that and I don’t want to waste a lot of time telling you what NOT to do. Just understand that because relatability is an illusion, you’re trying to present a shiny, stage version of someone who could be real if you squint at them and then use a lot of pyrotechnics and patter and sexy assistants in sequined leotards to cover up the trick.

Metaphorically speaking.

Apart from that, I’ll give you one rule that you can also get from any writing professor or actual author: never, ever base a character on any real person. It’ll always backfire. And not just for lawsuit-related reasons.

Trust me.

Social Smoke and Mirrors

How do you pull off this grand deception? It’s actually not that hard. You just have to give people an ‘in’ and they’ll play along. They can’t help it. And that ‘in’ is called recognition. If you see something familiar in a fictional character – something of yourself or something of someone you know – the parts of your brain that are hardwired to care about people will kick in. That’s the goal, at least. The theory. Create a fictional character, infuse it with qualities that people recognize from themselves, and then let the players’ brains do the rest.

Now that’s not to say that every NPC has to be a mirror that reflects the players back at themselves. Recognition is a pretty broad thing. Emotionally and socially mature people form relationships with all sorts of people, not just echoes of themselves. I have never had a painstakingly crafted chocolate souffle crater because the idiotic upstairs neighbors decided to crank Notorious B.I.G.’s Kick in the Door so I can’t say what that feels like. But I have spent days getting just the perfect paint job on a Reaper Bones mindflayer only to see it eaten by a cat. So, I can relate.

And we’re right back to where we started with this. If you learn what makes a character recognizable to most people and populate your world with a variety of recognizable characters, the players will connect with some of them. Bam. Emotional investment.

But before we talk about the things that make characters relatable and recognizable to most people, there’s just one more thing I have to mention. And then, I promise, I’ll give you a simple f$&%ing list of ‘recognizably human qualities.’ And I’ll even use a running example.

Emotional Sudoku

While most people want to care about people, they also want to figure people out for themselves. We’re wired with a natural curiosity about people. We like figuring out what’s in other people’s heads. Why? Well, partly it’s because it’s a necessary survival skill. We can’t actually see what’s in someone else’s head. But social interaction is vital. So we have to get really good at guessing about other people. And the people who guessed best prospered while the people who didn’t got eaten by mammoths that they couldn’t fight off alone. Remember that most forms of play are really about practicing necessary skills in a safe environment. Social games prepare us for real-life social interactions.

Because we’re wired to want to figure people out as a form of social play and practice and because most people keep the stuff in their heads private anyway, we don’t expect people to blurt out everything in their noggins. When fictional characters share their entire backstory and all their tragedies and regrets and dark secrets to someone they just met, that makes them seem totally inhuman. It breaks the illusion of humanity.

But we’ll cover this in more detail when we talk about bringing characters to life through play. For now, as you read through my list of relatable, recognizably human qualities, just remember it’s stuff for you to know about the NPCs and stuff for the NPCs to show gradually through play. It’s not stuff you just explain to the players. Do, don’t tell, don’t show.

Like Recognizably Human Things Do

Okay, so what makes a relatable character relatable? What qualities make a character recognizable as a fellow person even though they’re just an imaginary narrative construct or a cloud of 1s and 0s. Well, here’s a list. It’s not an exhaustive list. But it is a list of the biggest, strongest, most powerful hints that the thing you’re dealing with is the same as you: human.

Personality

I’ll start with this one because it’s the one that everyone knows. Personality is the unique way that a character thinks, talks, and acts that differentiates it from all the other characters in the world. Humans have personalities. And because everyone knows about this one, I’m not going to discuss it too much. But I am going to point out a few things.

First, while personalities make characters MORE relatable, they don’t make characters relatable on their own. They’re gravy. They’re icing. Lots of things have personality. Animals have personalities. Objects and machines and places are often ascribed personalities. Personality alone won’t make you mistake something for a human. It just helps you decide whether you like the human in question.

That’s a problem because a lot of GMs get as far as giving NPCs personality and then stop. And they don’t understand why no one finds their characters engaging. Their worlds are full of unique, quirky, fun characters that no one gives a squirrel’s left nut about. Personality doesn’t make a thing human. It makes a human thing interesting.

And personality can backfire. Holy f$&% can it ever backfire. And GMs are really good at getting it to backfire. So are the game designers at WotC. And most players.

Personality can make human things interesting, but it can also make human things so unreal that they aren’t human anymore. I’m sure you can think of a fictional character or NPC you encountered that just had too f$&%ing much personality. It was too quirky. It was too unique. It was too weird. And yes, some real people are too quirky and too unique and too weird. But remember what I said about realism, kids.

If you’re trying to run a gonzo, wacky game, quirky and unique and weird are great. But you’re not going for heavy doses of emotional engagement in that kind of game. I hope. If you’re going for emotional engagement, less personality is more.

Personality is a spread. You schmear a bit over the top of something that’s already human to jazz it up. One unique quirk or trait is usually enough to start. You can add another layer if the character starts to spend some serious time on camera. And it’ll continue to evolve from there on its own.

Vulnerability, Fear, and Pain

I struggled over what order to present these relatably, recognizably human qualities in. I knew personality would come first because it’s so overused and misused, but all the other qualities could basically go in any order. Except for this one. Vulnerability – and it’s partners in fear and pain – may be the most recognizably human things of all.

Humans are vulnerable. We live in a complex, chaotic world and we have almost no control over what happens to us. A single, random event can challenge our worldview, can send our life skittering into the gutter, or can rob us of something – or everything – that we love. And we can’t ever see that s$&% coming. Clinical psychiatrist Jordan Peterson once aptly said that the fact that we don’t wake up every day screaming in terror is a miracle.

Vulnerability is part of our humanity. And when we see something else that’s vulnerable, we instantly see ourselves in it. When I introduced Stedd the sorcerer – and he’s going to be my example because I already told his whole story in a three-part series starting with The Road to Elturel: An Object Lesson in Adventure Design – when I introduced Stedd the sorcerer, he appeared as a scrawny, starving, teenaged beggar who was being threatened by a group of powerful, armed soldiers. Nothing else about his backstory mattered at that moment. He was just a scared kid being crushed under the bootheel of someone with more power. Who hasn’t felt like that?

I’m not saying every NPC has to be introduced that way. But every NPC needs to have something that makes them vulnerable. Or something that scares them. Or something that hurts them. Because that’s recognizably human.

Hopes and Aspirations

That was a bummer of a start, huh? It sucks to realize your species is basically defined by its delicate mortality. But it’s funny how the mortality of humans is a defining feature in pretty much every bit of classic fantasy literature, isn’t it? I wonder why fantasy literature resonates so strongly with people.

But being at the mercy of the chaos of the world isn’t the only thing that makes us human. Another thing that makes us human is our ability to hope and dream. We can imagine a world that’s different from the one we’re in right now. We can picture a bright future. We can aspire. And so, when we see something that has hopes and aspirations, we recognize it as human.

Stedd was alone in the world. He’d been abandoned by his father and he never knew his mother. That was his reality. But he dreamed of being reunited with an uncle he’d only met once when he was five years old. He wasn’t just trying to escape his terrible, current situation, he was trying to have the family he’d been denied. He dreamed of being raised and protected by people who loved him. People who would provide him a safe, sheltered place in the world. He could imagine that life. Just like a human.

Values, Virtues, and Beliefs

Humans can imagine different possibilities. And they can also believe in things. Every human holds certain ideas sacred. And ideas, remember, are not real things. They aren’t physical. They don’t provably exist. People believe in things like love, justice, family, mercy, courage, integrity, truth, humility, responsible, and so on and et cetera. Some people value them so highly that they’re willing to take huge risks or make tremendous sacrifices for them. Doctors risk exposure to terrible diseases to save patients even in an age when being a doctor is far more expensive and far less lucrative than it ever was before. Single mothers slave away at multiple unpleasant jobs and keep ungodly hours for the benefit of the children they refused to give up. Workers in all sorts of fields take on huge risks in dangerous jobs just because they believe that providing for their family is worth it. And people all over the world risk imprisonment or death to raise their voices against awful, totalitarian regimes.

Of course, actually living up to your values and beliefs is hard. It takes will, courage, responsibility, and sacrifice. We’re not all up to the task. And no one lives up to their virtues all the time. But most adults know it’s worthy to strive to live up to your values. And when we see something that shows signs of virtue, we see that thing as human because it reflects the person we hope to be. We see it as an idealized human. We respect real-life heroes and cheer for fictional heroes because they serve as examples of the best of humanity. And when we see a fictional character manage against all odds to make a sacrifice or take a stand, it gives us hope that we, too, can stand up for what we believe in.

Stedd was deeply troubled by the fact that his uncontrolled magical abilities kept hurting people. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He believed that causing pain was wrong and that every human had a duty to minimize the harm they caused. Partway through the adventure, he had a crisis over that and tried to flee from the heroes. He was ready to give up his hope of having a family and to isolate himself to keep others safe. But the party talked him down.

Flaws and Failings

We’re all flawed. We have vices and weaknesses. We make mistakes. We knowingly make bad choices. We pursue selfish ends. We choose the easy path instead of the meaningful or virtuous one. That’s part of being human. We’re capable of wonderful things, but we’re also capable of terrible things. When we see other flawed creatures make mistakes or bad choices or fail to live up to their ideals, we say, “Hello fellow human, I feel your pain.”

But there’s more to this. People tend to be hard on themselves. Very hard. I know all of the bad things I’ve ever done and thought. My brain keeps a list. I – and I alone – know what badness I am capable of. And while my brain also knows the good things I am capable of, all brains tend to overvalue the bad. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’re a bad person because you are uniquely positioned to appreciate all the bad you’ve done. So, when you see a fictional character – particularly a character you otherwise recognize as a good person – make mistakes or do bad things, it offers comfort. Good people make mistakes. Good people with flaws are kindred spirits. And they help us develop a healthy self-image.

I need to mention the schlock that Hollywood has been s$&%ing out here. Because it seems like most of the s$&% writers in Hollywood have forgotten what writers have known for f$&%ing centuries. Millenia. That human characters need flaws and failings to be human. There’s this tendency to create flawless characters. Or give them only minor, meaningless flaws. Especially, but not exclusively, when it comes to female and minority characters. Apparently, it’d be insulting to give them flaws or have them fail. Or it would make them weak. Because strength equals flawlessness. That’s complete horses$&% and someone needs to say it. Actually, a lot of us have been saying it. But we get called terrible istaphobes when we do. Well, reader, I actually want you to create good characters for your game, so the people who want to insult me for giving correct advice can f$&% right off.

A strong character isn’t flawless. A strong character has failings. But they take responsibility for them. They overcome them. They succeed despite them. And I don’t care what color the character comes in or what’s between their legs. That’s true of all humans of every flavor and variety. When you present a flawless character as an ideal, you’re hurting the people in your audience because real people have flaws. There are no perfect humans. I can try to live up to the ideal of a flawed character who finds the inner strength to overcome their flaws. But I can never live up to the ideal of a flawless character. Flawless characters aren’t aspirational or empowering. They are disempowering f$&%ing lies that tell humans who know they have flaws that they will never, ever be good enough because heroism comes from perfection.

And maybe that’s part of why Hollywood was failing BEFORE the industry was willingly destroyed to fight the CCP virus. But what do I know?

Sorry. This is a hot topic for me. But my rant is over. Flaws and failings make your characters recognizably human. And now I’ll try to calm down and speed this up to bring this article home.

Self-Awareness

Humans are self-aware. We know we’ve got thoughts and ideas in our heads and we’re always trying to work them out. A lot of our heavier conversations are actually just us trying to figure out what the hell is happening in our heads by talking it out. And when a thing seems to be aware that there’s stuff going on in its brain and tries to figure out what’s happening in there, that thing is recognizably human.

But self-awareness is a lot like virtue. It’s a rare thing in real humans, but it’s a thing we recognize as a quality that humans should have. Very few people dare to think about what they believe and why. And to question and challenge the things in their heads. Very few people ever walk away from a conflict and go to the mirror and seriously consider whether they might have been the a$&hole in the conflict. But most of us THINK we do that s$&%. And we know that other people SHOULD do that s$&%. And when something DOES do that s$&% and we can see that the thing is struggling with inner conflict, we see a human cousin.

Stedd was deeply troubled by inner conflict. He wanted safety and security and family, but he didn’t want to endanger anyone. He knew he’d have to learn to control his magic, but he didn’t know if he could. When the party had quiet moments and talked to him, that inner turmoil kept coming out. “I’m dangerous. I should just go away. But then I will never be happy. And what’s the point of living if you have to live in complete isolation and you can never achieve happiness?”

Challenge, Growth, and Agency

I started this list by pointing out that it’s not just human to suffer at the mercy of a fundamentally random, dangerous world, it’s the MOST human thing you can do. But it’s also human to struggle against that world. We strive to control our destinies. We strive to minimize the risks we take, sure, but we also choose to take risks and make sacrifices to improve our situations and to improve ourselves. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we f$&% up. But we learn from that. We improve. We face challenges and we grow stronger and we get better. And we do so by choice. That’s why it’s so vital that every person can choose for themselves what risks to take and what challenges to accept.

When we see things facing challenges and growing, we accept them as humans. Even if those things are just patterns of lights in the shape of a person being redrawn sixty times a second across a matrix of multicolored light-emitting diodes. But it only works if they’re doing so by their own volition.

The reason why ‘damsels in distress’ are sucky characters has nothing to do with stupid inclusion bulls$&%. That’s crap superficial garbage from the same people who think perfection is the only kind of strength there is. Damsels – and dudes – in distress suck because they have no agency. Because they are basically just objects. We can’t see them as humans.

In the very first Legend of Zelda game ever, Princess Zelda was not a damsel in distress. She struggled against Gannon, Prince of Darkness for years. Actively. And when she realized she didn’t possess the physical strength to defeat the literal embodiment of strength and ambition, she shattered the Triforce and hid the fragments in eight dungeons to keep it from Gannon. She then willingly allowed herself to be captured to allow her servant time to escape and locate someone strong enough to shove a sword up Gannon’s Triforce. Similarly, in Breath of the Wild, Zelda struggled against Calamity Ganon. She was not equal to the task of defeating the literal embodiment of chaos and destruction at the time and allowed herself to be distracted from her proper path by putting faith in the wrong plan. But, when the chips were down, she sacrificed herself to hold Calamity Ganon in check while someone powerful enough to shove a sword up Ganon’s Triforce could be brought back from the dead.

The lesson here is that the NPCs we care about are the ones we see doing something, anything, to master their own fate. Even if they can’t get there alone, even if they need the heroes of the story, they do something. Even if they fail, they do something. Because agency is human.

When the party met Stedd, he was already on the run. He wasn’t waiting around for rescuers to find him. He was trying to free himself. The odds were against him and he probably wouldn’t have made it on his own, but he was willing to try. And later, he chose to stay with the party and try to master his powers instead of running away. He needed the party’s help to escape and he needed the party’s help to make that choice, but it was still HIS choice.

Having it All

So that’s it. That’s a list of major things that make fictional characters relatably, recognizably human. Some are qualities that we see in ourselves. Some are things we wish we could see in ourselves. There’s no difference. Because fictional characters are not realistic humans. They’re illusionary humans who look just better enough than real humans that everyone will ignore the seams and wires and zippers.

Next, I’ll tell you how to portray those characters. How to bring them to life. Especially when you don’t bother to write most of that s$&% down beforehand. See, relatable characters don’t have to show all of those qualities right off the bat. Stedd was a particularly well-developed and fully-fleshed-out character. That’s why I used him as an example. He spent a lot of time on screen. Three full sessions. So he had to be fully developed.

Until a character gets some substantial screen time, you don’t actually have to have all those qualities in place. You just have to trick the players into thinking that all those qualities are inside the character somewhere. They don’t need to know what the shopkeeper wants and what he fears, they just have to believe the shopkeeper has wants and fears. They have to believe that if they asked the shopkeeper about them, he’d have an answer. It’s all just more trickery. And it comes down to playing the NPC in such a way that it seems like there’s more under the surface and making sure that the players never encounter an NPC that didn’t turn out to be recognizably, relatably human when they started digging at their humanity.

Starting my game off with Stedd was kind of manipulative. He was so fully developed that, after that, as long as every NPC in my game looked human from a distance, the players assumed that there was another Stedd inside each and every one. But so far, every time the players have gone looking for the Stedd in the shopkeeper, they’ve found him.