| What Your NPCs Teach You About the Setting | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 7 2010, 12:19 PM (278 Views) | |
| kismetrose | May 7 2010, 12:19 PM Post #1 |
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The other night, I sat down and generated some ideas for a second evil campaign set in Thay. This happened kind of out of the blue but it was very fun and it seems to have flipped a switch somewhere. I referenced a character from my first evil campaign on a new page of my D&D site, and yesterday I drove to work thinking about Thay as I'd developed it. Gulyas was the start of the reverie. He was a member of the PCs' family who was dead by the campaign start, but I did a prelude to give the players an idea of how things worked in the PCs' country and household while they were growing up. Gulyas made an impression then as a sweet, jolly "Uncle" (he was actually the grandfather to two of the PCs, but everyone called him "Uncle") with a penchant for young girls. Most of the time he was sated by house slaves, and the family at large knew about that. But the slaves weren't enough, and only a few knew about his predation of family members - and they let it slide, for the most part. I was thinking that Gulyas never thought of himself as a predator, and that he was a good example of evil in Thay. He knew that his victims got upset at times but didn't understand why; in his damaged morality, pleasure was pleasure, and it was the highest goal in life. And he was but one member in a family branch of dysfunctional people, each with their own twisted concerns and difficulties. Did that mean that they saw life in Thay as miserable? And I immediately saw Othilla, Gulyas' niece, who he'd tricked and manipulated as a girl, and who he taught to be a bard. She was damaged almost from the start. She married a man she could hardly stand to get it out of the way, and then sought stardom on Thay's stage. She bore her lover's child in secret, and then another child by her legitimate husband just to be sure, and almost ran away with her lover - but he ran away from her first. Left behind with her husband and children, she descended into drugs and became a washed-up has-been. She's one of the more miserable characters I've created, in some ways, but when I called her to mind, she said, "Oh, no - the slaves are miserable. If you want to see a bad life, look to them. I have riches and food whenever I want them." She was serious. As miserable as she's been, she doesn't blame her country's laws, which state that nobles must be married and have a child by the age of 35. She doesn't blame her country's customs, twisted as they are, for her condition. She has very distinct people in mind to blame - none of them herself, of course - and still thinks she's got it good because at least she'll always have enough drugs to escape. And then I thought of Othilla, who always disregarded her children (one of which was a PC), and Gulyas, who loathed his only legitimate son. They were representatives of Thayan parenting at large. In my Thay, children are a necessary evil, an inconvenience that is left to slaves at the earliest opportunity - at least part of the time. There are some parents who love their children, like the mother of two of the PCs. And they do so without selfish motives or thoughts of gain. At that point in my thoughts, another NPC, Othilla's husband, broke in: "But can't we do both?" I heard his accent, saw his fanciful dress and everything, and he was rather in earnest. "After all, I love my daughter more than most Thayans but I view her as proof that I married up. I took care of her and expected her to go on to great things. Someday she'll take care of me, which is good for your old age, if you can admit to it gracefully (and most can't). She's married to the side but she doesn't need to marry up because she's got a goddess on her side. And I know my daughter is taking care of her goddess' concerns, and I pray that her deity will look after her later on." E'luaz is a bit of a dandy but he does love daughter with a fierce pride. He believes she's superior in many ways and that she has inherited the best from her family. It's no wonder a deity chose her! He spent a lot of energy preserving her safety while she was growing up, and his true viciousness is reserved for those who get in her way. He has even had to forgive her things that are very difficult to forgive (like marrying her mother's former lover) because of his considerable affection. But his own concerns are never very far away. I had something better than television or radio on my drive to work, to be sure, particularly since my characters were teaching me about their world. I had realized some things but had not taken them further. Good NPCs can make the extrapolations for you. After all, they live there. Edited by kismetrose, May 7 2010, 12:21 PM.
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1:25 AM Jul 11