I also agree with you – if the organisation were formed to change the world, there would be caution exercised in recruiting people who believed in ‘the cause’ ie the reform, and a greater chance of some of the laudable prototypes you argue in favour of inclusion being found and recruited. Similarly, if the organisation became large enough, such people would make contact and, in effect, recruit themselves. However, the basis of the group in question was a small random group of ordinary people that had been rescued and had been formed into an organisation by their rescuers. Most would have been participating out of gratitude, not altruism, and the balance because the objectives either coincided with their prejudices or idealism, or out of greed, because they perceived some personal benefit to doing so.

It’s been my experience that only in the modern world, with its broader educational standards, do you get truly altruistic people without prejudice. Historically, prejudices were accepted truths. Even the US constitution suffers, as a plain-text reading of it values Negros at 3/5 of the value of a white person. Altruistic people ended up serving the churches, and accepting as literal truth the dogmas of those religions. I have met very few people, even now, who do not have biases, blind spots, and prejudices, no matter how idealistic and altruistic they may be – so few that I am forced to ask whether or not those people also have such flaws, but have simply not been placed in a situation where the flaws become aparrant. In general, I don’t believe in angels and I don’t believe that anyone is iredeemably evil; we are all shades of gray. Is that cynical?

I do believe in altruistic people, good people – I know a great many of them – but don’t know any of them without character flaws. The very best of them know that they are flaws and work to overcome them, and not let biases guide their actions, but most of them simply know what they think is ‘right’ – and 99.99% of the time, that’s good enough, but every now and then, they will say something or dismiss something or someone out of religious or racial or cultural bias, and think they are being perfectly correct. And that’s with the benefit of the modern world and its educational system and media exposure to a broader spectrum of humanity. When your only source of information is the local priest, how many of the religious dogmas that his faith propounds will be accepted as fact?

I want to thank you for such courtesy. Such courtesy is rare in the online world (and impossible in the list of NPCs you’ve given).

Regardless, thank you for the sentiment.

And that encapsulates quite well my frustration with your answer — and my sadness at all those who cheered it on for its “accuracy” and “realism”.

You were thinking in terms of popular stereotypes based in cynicism, not in terms of either drama or reality.

Contrary to Guidance’s misperceptions, showing only one side does NOT show both sides of the coin. It is no more realistic or evenhanded to deny the reality of good people in this world than it is to deny the reality of evil people.

You write, “But if you have a random selection of people, a representative sample, how many such exceptional people will you find?”

I’ve studied such things in real life, and part of that included how they are portrayed in film and literature, so maybe I’m too close to the subject, but in both real life and fiction, the sort of activities which create networks of people out to change the world attract an unusually high percentage of exceptional people. Now, you could argue that those exceptional people are represented exclusively by the PCs, and for game masters who prefer that PCs walk around with P. and C. stamped on their foreheads, that is a legitimate answer.

A campaign with exclusively cynical interpretations for its NPCs encourages players to be cynical; it evokes what tvtropes.com would call a “crapsack world”, a world in which no one can be trusted. That’s great for a noir campaign. It also works fine for a dungeon crawl in which every other being is wicked or worthless enough that it’s okay to kill them off and take their possessions as treasure.

However, a campaign with good, bad, and neutral characters, with characters who are exceptional and characters who are ordinary and characters who are pitably inept, such a campaign generates far more drama, adventure, and depth.

Your answer was in depth enough that I’d hoped for something that would give me depth in my campaign, not take depth away.

You’re right, there is no-one there who is a Martin Luther King, Jr. Or an Oscar Schindler. But if you have a random selection of people, a representative sample, how many such exceptional people will you find? The circumstances argued that the vast majority would be ordinary people, with both positive aspects and flaws, because the likelyhood of such extraordinary people being amongst those picked seemed so remote as to be unrealistic. Nevertheless, your point is well-made.

However, even if you extend the list of archetype ‘common’ characters to include such individuals, the primary scope of the answer was about how to take a diverse set of random individuals and forge an intelligence apparatus out of them, and how that in turn would affect the campaign. It is that aspect of the answer that I think most of the favourable responses concern, not the degree of comprehensiveness of the categories.

You are quite correct in that we try to answer the specific question posed as generically as possible, so that the solutions offered can be applied to analagous situations by other GMs.

I would add Feist and Eddings to the list of influances you cite. And Jerry Bruckheimer. But all of these are drawing from common foundations, which are the different eras of human history, especially European history, and that is the point I was making. I am unaware of any protests against the crusades made at the time on Altruistic grounds – there were political complaints, there were complaints about the costs, there were complaints about defences being weakened, and complaints by rival religious groups who were interested parties (by definition) – though I might be selling people short; just because I don’t know about any doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

But, at the time, I was thinking of right-to-life people who bomb abortion clinics and murder doctors and nurses, and environmentalists who are more interested in persuing political agendas than actually supporting genuine environmental protections, and religious recruiters who knock on people’s doors to proselytise them, and people who arbitrarily release experimental animals with no concern for what infectious agents they might carry… so perhaps the charge of unintended cynicism is justified. Ordinary people have a bad record when it comes to being angels, except, perhaps, when confronted with real devils.

Ultimately, though, even good people who do good things do so because they consider it the right thing to do – which means that if they perceive what they are subsequently asked to do on behalf of the PCs to be a bad thing, some will switch sides. Idealists value their ideals over any mundane considerations. And that’s what my description of the Altruistic category was trying to convey.

I think you are getting caught up in the moral ethics department here. This isn’t an ethics or morality blog. This is focused on helping GM’s make adventures more interesting.

I don’t know what type of GM’s you have played with or what kind of GM you are, but most in my experience GM’s have no trouble being the good guy, actually in most cases their non villains are always to vanilla. It is article like this that give material to those GM’s to be able to mix it up a little and have better basis for the darker side of human nature.

Obviously everyone has flaws they either restrain or are blind to, but few would admit tot hem selves they have acted in an wrong way, most will rationalize. So unless you like to look in to human nature (such as you or my self, most people would rather not, to their own peril) most GM’s NPC’s will be one sided personalities with out suggestions such as these.

Now I understand your gripe with the inclination of this article to taint all the archetypes, but it is its objective to make the GM see both sides of the coin, it is up to each individual GM to balance and factor in for each of their NPC’s.

IMHO, this is a great article for most GM’s; however anyone with out the capacity to use this material in an intelligent way so as to enrich their campaign, shouldn’t be a GM in the first place, or it is the style of GMing they prefer. So don’t jump in attacking the morality of an article that is not meant to be moral or even aplied to real life, but is focused on Dramatic Value.

You write that “no hero is without flaws” — however, your list has no heroes at all, flawed or otherwise. In almost all fantasy fiction, your descriptions of Altruist and Idealist (the most heroic in your list) would be applied only to villains, never heroes.

Furthermore, although the original question pertained to a pseudo-Medieval fantasy world involving secret shrines to dark gods, your response was phrased as though it could be used for almost any campaign. I know a number of people for whom such cynicism violates verisimilitude (depending upon the genre). Admittedly, for a noir campaign or a punk campaign, your list is possibly too optimistic.

Your claims about the basis of fantasy gaming is a little off. Except in those cases wherein the game master is attempting an accurate historical recreation, most fantasy campaigns have been influenced by the writings (and film versions) of Tolkien, Lewis, Howard, Leiber, Moorcock, and Pratchett, as well as by the legends (and film versions) of King Arthur and Beowulf and by the various mythic tales. According to your list, there is no possibility of an NPC contact along the lines of Beorn, Elrond, Tom Bombadill, Eowyn, the Beavers, Mr. Tumnus, or any of the various allies encountered by Conan and Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser in their tales. None of the farmers or generous lords and ladies who aided Arthur exist, either, according to your list.

As for real life, yes, history is replete with otherwise good people doing bad things, but it is also replete with good people doing good things. The good people who do good things do not exist in your list — only those who self-delude.

No one who would operate an underground railroad against slavery exists in your list. No one would find a way to hide potential Inquisition victims exists. There is no one in your list to protest the Crusades even though such protests existed in real life. Your list has the oppression of African-Americans but denies the existence of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is misanthropic to simplify the entirety of human psychology to the Inquisition, the Crusades, and other horrors.

A stubborn cynicism may be popular, but that does not make it accurate. People who can see only the worst in humanity blind themselves against seeing anything better.

Moreover, the model apon which typical fantasy societies are based is that of a medieval society, when prejudices, foolish and mistaken notions, etc, were rife. History is full of otherwise good people doing bad things over prejudices and notions that we consider foolish in more enlightened modern times, from the Inquisition to the Crusades to the Witch trials at Salem to the colonialisation of Pacific Islanders to the abuses of Children in Orphanages. No villain ever thinks of themselves as a villain; the converse of that is that no hero is without flaws.

At first, his set-up looked promising, until I noticed the cynical contempt embedded within his descriptions for the Altruist, the Idealist, and the Naive contact types. Then I noticed that this list does not contain a single decent human being in it. Without exception, every NPC contact is prejudiced, foolish, cowardly, and/or predatory.

Worse, this listing is highly unrealistic in terms of its understanding of human nature. For a personal example, I have a number of friends or “contacts” who are neither prejudiced nor foolish nor cowardly nor predatory, but according to Mike’s list, my friends are of a type of people that do not exist!

I would refuse to play in any campaign with such an unrealistically nasty view of human nature. I am sorry to read that so many people are absorbing his suggestions and therefore the misanthropy contained within them.

My I suggest another tracking option. I have just been turned on to http://www.tiddlywiki.com a one file downloadable wiki. My main issue with any note taking system has always been the jumble that gets created as your networks of contacts, related organizations, and just general interaction with PC’s. I also hate using paper for any system. I always loose them.