There is a comedy comic by Jacob Andrews in which the main character is seen serving someone in a shop. After the customer leaves they have a sudden moment and declare in horror “I'm an NPC!”
I've been a role-player and gamer for over 20 years and I am currently reading some extremely dense deep dives into the theory and history of such play. I was also a retail employee for over 15 years until I was finally able to leave shortly before turning 40. Overall, it is hardly surprising that I'd produce an over-thought response to this concept.
The first point to make is that everyone is an NPC to everyone else. This isn't obvious at first sight when playing these games – most are designed to support multiple PCs against a backdrop of NPCs. We are told that instead of having a single 'main character' TTRPGs have a whole group of them who share the spotlight equally.
The truth is a little more complex. Every player experiences the game from from the perspective of their own character and must immerse themselves in that position to play the role well. Each player is only privy to the thoughts and intentions of the character they are responsible for, seeing only the external actions of the other PCs. Rather than writing a story with six main characters, the group is writing six versions of the same story with a different protagonist for each. In every one, the other five are simply the principal supporting cast – differentiated from the rest of the NPCs only by who is performing their part.
(I have written before about the pit-falls of playing a character whose intended arc revolves around failing to keep their own secrets. To you, the core personal plot of the main character relies upon those beats. To everyone else, it is merely an optional side quest involving one of many NPCs).
It is a well-known piece of writing and acting advice that 'everyone is the hero of their own story'. However, this is most commonly invoked when helping people to get inside the head of the actual villain. The true applications are much broader. In gaming terms, the real world sees us crafting billions of versions of the same story. Each one has a different protagonist and in every other one we are a larger or smaller member of the supporting cast. So don't worry about it – everyone is an NPC!
One of the more noted features of NPCs in video games is the limited nature of their interactions and activities. A vendor typically says the same thing each time you talk to them and spends most of their hours standing in the same position so that the player can find them on their schedule. It is unsurprising that working in actual retail would bring on such feelings of ennui. It is literally a requirement of the job to behave in this way to provide the exact same standardisation and utility for the customer. It isn't so much that you ARE an NPC of this type, rather that you are obliged to spend a dispiriting amount of your life pretending to be one by your corpo overlords. It's enough to make anyone dream of being an edgerunner...
Of course, the difference between a PC and an NPC isn't just composed of the former having free expression and an unpredictable daily routine. The real mark of a player character is the conflict they had along the way. Without all the killing and death traps, the average PC is just a victim of the gig economy – an outsider reduced to knocking on random stranger's doors (or more accurately barging into their houses) to ask if they have any one-off jobs available whilst being low-key threatened by the cops every time one walks past. Although a fertile source of escapism and narrative drama, neither clause of the murder-hobo lifestyle is commonly considered aspirational in the real world.
Perhaps the best thing PCs have going for them is the triviality of living expenses. Most are free to pour every coin they earn into the eventual ownership of buildings with no bills or upkeep costs. Some games even allow you to marry or adopt without accruing any kind of ongoing fiscal responsibility. When game do include living expenses, they are usually minor when compared to the fortunes that pass through the character's hands as a result of selling on loot or unusually fair hazard pay. Although rarer games like Dungeon Bitches do explore the idea of adventurers as a marginalised group, for most it is a two-year fast track to either death or retirement in a gold-plated castle.
In the real world, these kind of high risk/ high reward options are harder to define even outside the law. If everyone is an NPC, then maybe the classical PC doesn't really exist. Those who claim to have followed these kind of arcs often tend to have started out with many unstated advantages (making both the risk and reward relatively lower) or to have followed a path more typical of a major world antagonist.
Sounds political? Yes it is. As Avery Alder put it brilliantly in an interview for issue 15 of the comic DIE: “I think all game mechanics are inherently political. What game mechanics do is model our reality. And since it is impossible to create a system the objectively models the universe without it being the size of the universe, you as a designer end up making choices about what enables someone to achieve their goals in the world. Is it having broad-reaching, generationally-linked coalitions of support? Is it being individually skilled and self-possessed, and having a discrete set of skills, like 'use of broadsword,' and 'animal tracking,' that you can pick up and take with you, out of a community? And usually it's the latter, in role-playing games. But even just that starting premise of, 'our skills and power and capacity grow over time, are embedded within us as individuals, are contextless, are fully meritorious, and self-deserved, and self-possessed.' There are a lot of political assumptions built into that alone.”
Viewed from a political standpoint, there are darker implications to the PC/NPC divide. At a game-mechanical level the NPCs are not 'full' characters and exist for the benefit of the PCs. Since PCs gain through conflict, the usual assumption is that they will gain exponentially by taking from at least a certain sub-set of NPCs. If players don't take care to avoid it, this can impact how the characters behave within the fiction. Indeed, some player groups deliberately embrace the idea on the quest to level up.
As a retail worker serving customers for a shareholder-owned corporation, it is easy to feel like you are on the wrong side of this line. Every customer service worker has experience of rude or demeaning treatment at the hands of people who got away with it due to the institutionalised power imbalance between them. I've certainly had smiles demanded from me by complete strangers far more than the average for a cis male. But even when customers are polite and equitable – as most are – the imbalance is still a burden. Some of my least favourite customers were not 'Karens' but friendly people who regarded me as their regular cashier. I would have to make inane chat about the weather without calling out the obvious neo-nazi symbols on their possessions, or asking them if they even remembered we once knew each other before they went to prison for terrible crimes. In exchange for this you get paid a small amount – but aside from the fleeting glorification of 'key workers' society generally makes you feel like a failure for not earning your money a different way.
I'm going to go on a slight digression here in the light of recent news. Halifax Bank recently started including pronouns on the name badges of their staff members, which produced an outraged backlash from some customers and toxic coverage in the media. There is a whole mess of transphobia and right-wing hostility behind this reaction – one that seems nonsensical if you consider name badges as purely a guide on how to address the wearer.
The truth is that some customers do not regard name badges this way. The involuntary presentation of one's name actually feeds the imbalance between customer and staff member, since the customer will rarely offer their own whilst wearing out yours. More importantly it allows the customer to effortlessly secure your identity information at the start of the interaction, in case they feel the need to complain about you to your boss afterward. (And yes, certain old and partially sighted customers did start a transaction by peering at my badge and then openly telling me that was why they always did so).
Adding pronouns to the badge flips this script. It places the focus on the customer's behaviour during the transaction and defines acceptable standards of etiquette from them. I suspect that some amount of the outrage directed at this 'woke' move comes from discomfort at the shift from enabling the viewer to advocating for the wearer, even if the objectionable customer doesn't consciously realise it.
The demoralising factors of retail work can end up highlighting a potentially fairer worry associated with NPC comparisons – the lack of positive change. NPCs often begin a game with an established mix of home, family and/or job that put starting PCs to shame. Once the game is on, however, they seldom experience life changes without the intervention and aid of a player character. This feeling of inertia could itself be the catalyst needed to prompt some sort of action to improve one's lot. Although the stabs-to-riches tale of a fantasy hero may be out of reach, embracing some sort of risk and reward strategy may be necessary. Self-employment or taking a shot at a better career can be worth it if one is honest about the trade-offs going in.
Of course this kind of self-help advice leans into a very narrow view of the PC and risks reinforcing some of the worst habits of the paradigm. As noted above, PCs spend a significant amount of their time not on changing their own lives but on helping others improve theirs. For me, the most satisfying element of an RPG is often the ability to make a positive impact on other characters within the world. This is especially true for video games, where the world state you leave behind is typically the most compelling variable of a play-through. Many players prefer this kind of game to one based on level grinding in a vacuum, since the power gained is meaningless without a context. Someone who has put many hours into such good works is certainly a PC – even if they haven't touched what society would call the 'main quest'.
In my article on representation I said that fiction treating particular demographics as the natural 'main characters' of life is harmful whether you are within that demographic or not. Believing that only some vocations can confer the status of 'full character' is a trap to avoid. Although it is true that each player experiences their own PC as the protagonist, you certainly shouldn't try to act like the main character in your contribution to group play. Uplifting the experience of the other people at the table is perhaps the most important TTRPG skill of all.
I've always had a personal fondness for games that allow anyone from the game world to serve as a functional PC. Although I am biased due to it being among my first RPGs, I love the way that first edition Hunter: the Reckoning allows you to play anyone who happens to get 'Imbued' with power and encourages you to play as an every-man. Chosen One narratives can feel tedious and unearned, but Hunter avoids these traps by leaving you out-gunned and feeling rather like a disposable tool in the eyes of your 'benefactors'.
Even my favourite video game Oblivion blurs the lines somewhat. Although your actions drive the story forward in the expected way, you are ultimately a replaceable ally of the true hero. Things are so dire that the destiny of the world actually lies in the survival of the character played by Sean Bean...
I bought the City expansion to Talisman for the Tavern Maid character and Red Dragon Inn 7 to play the Wench. Although alchemists are rather outside my usual wheelhouse, there is a special pleasure in having the archetypal background NPC (and thus someone marginalised in most games) step forward and beat the adventurers at their own game.
Or maybe I just want to wipe out the clientele with the Crown of Command.
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