Generally speaking, what are some good all around tips for GMs to get players emotionally invested in NPCs. As a GM...

Generally speaking, what are some good all around tips for GMs to get players emotionally invested in NPCs. As a GM, I've only ever had success getting my players emotionally invested in an NPC once, and that was a literal throwaway NPC I had intended to kill off that session who literally did nothing but hide behind the players and cry. But they became so... Involved, I guess would be the word, in making sure that that NPC survived that I scrapped her dying and she lived on to become the party's live in chef/mascot.

Other attempts of mine to garner the same reaction towards other NPCs have failed. The players either don't care enough to have any sympathy towards the NPC or see them merely as a tool to be used and then executed once they outlived their immediate usefulness.

I don't mean to say I want my players to have investment in other NPCs I make, since that campaign is years and years over, but for others, maybe some tips and hints would go over well.

No one likes a bully. Have the introduction to the NPC be them being picked on, shaken down, or coerced. Expect the players to skip to violence.

Players often resent authority figures. If you want an NPC to illicit an emotional connection, don't make them a power figure. Make them a bar keep, a shop keeper, a stable hand- someone who provides for their needs at home or on the road, and can chat with every time they visit.

Think about your scenario when it worked. That NPC didn't have an immediate use to the PCs, if anything she had an immediate use for the PCs and the players recognized that. It's easier for players to humanize a character when they don't see them as a recourse.

Unfortunately, most times players will surprise you. In the end the only thing you can do is just go as you were but don't put too much heart into them. In my experience NPCs specifically made with the intent to attach to the player's heartstrings will usually fail. Players will love whoever interests them.
Also, your story sounds alot like the story of Noh.

Some good tips. Thank you.

>That NPC didn't have an immediate use to the PCs,
>if anything she had an immediate use for the PCs
I assume some typo or autocorrect in action here.

>easier for players to humanize a character when they don't see them as a recourse.
This is a good tip. I appreciate it.

>the story of Noh.
I'm not familiar with that one. Could you expand?

>I assume some typo or autocorrect in action here.
Poor phrasing actually. What I meant was the PCs didn't have an immediate use for the NPC, but the NPC had an immediate use for the PCs.

Noh is an old DnD story that floats about on 1d4chan wherein a DM tossed a challenge at his party. A couple of rare enchanted items(a rapier and mithril chainmail vest) with a small girl who would only say "No" and "Please do not take the items" guarding them. The idea being a pretty basic moral challenge of "be a dick and take the items" or "don't be a dick and don't take the items".

The players ended up taking the girl and letting her carry the items.

Ah, I remember that one now. Sadly, no, my NPC wasn't anything like Noh. She was literally a peasant girl who survived an orc attack on her village by hiding in some debris, was found by the PCs, and was intended to be captured and killed by the orc chieftain once the PCs abandoned her. But because they had made extra sure to not let her out of their sight/area of control, I couldn't reasonably have her get kidnapped and killed in front of the players. So she survived precisely because I counted on my players abandoning her and my players didn't abandon her.

Ah, alright. I understand what you mean now. Though pulling that off again is always a long shot.

Well, a good portion of decent players have a tendency to have a "Dad mode" when it comes to young helpless little girls.

Bump to front page.

The simple answer is that you can't. What makes players attached to a character isn't as clean cut as, say, getting an audience of a movie attached to a character. You can try to give them someone who loves the party and helps them, and actively makes themselves useful, and the party won't bat an eye when he gets eaten by wolves. Conversely, you can have some throwaway peasant in a town and they attach themselves to them like white on rice.

You can't do it on purpose. It's never the NPC you want them to like.

Depends on group

Make them useful
Make them chill
Make them human

Yes you can. You just gotta know what to look for and how to make it.

>The players ended up taking the girl and letting her carry the items.

That's what I would expect from most group. Don't get me wrong, your attempts to get me invested in story and characters are appreciated and they sometimes even work, but let's beat around the bush here - if wanted morality and emotional stories, I'd play WoD or something. I'm here in equal part for the shinnies.

As much as people keep telling you that you can't, there are tons of ways to make those special NPCs more meaningful. Here are a few for trying to make them protective of the NPC:

1. Like the first person said about bullying, it's a great idea. If you want that reaction from them, make the NPC seem weak and fragile. The players will likely attach themselves to them to protect that NPC.

2. Children are great too(depending on your group), because they are so small and fragile. The bully option really helps here, especially if you place their family or parents as the bully. Most people will want to protect the child from such abuse, due to personal experience or just the natural thought of how wrong it is.

3. Make sure to give them a good personality, especially some cute character traits. Those cute things they do, fears, hiding behind players, etc.(Think anime desu) will also highlight the childishness and ignite that need to protect the NPC.

4. Make it subtly seem like the NPC would never survive without them. They'll be even more likely to want to protect them if just leaving them would kill them.

5. Make the NPC useful in some way(cooking, navigating, cleaning, etc). It'll make the PCs have even more reason to keep them around and protect them. That's their cook. They can't lose that.

6. Have the NPC look up to the PCs in general or even pick a PC to attach them to. That father/mother figure will be even more protective of them since they will feel almost directly responsible for them.

Long story short players are unpredictable and usually stupid about these things.

I have a player that specifically fell in love with a woman that was literally the BBEG inhabiting the body of a woman he brutally murdered and ate the soul of. Not even like 'it would make sense for my character to love this woman' but fucking BEGGING me to have her appear even after the jig was up and the party knew.

I had players that got extremely torn up for a knight that lasted all of three scenes before they got nat 20d by a ballista while helping the PCs. Which sucked, because they were going to be important and I had written a big backstory that I never got to use.

My most popular NPC spent most of her time getting drunk and mouthing off at literally everyone because she was a veteran and fucking done with this shit. Any time she needed anything the PCs were all over it, and when I tried to finally kill her off there was some serious outrage.

Meanwhile my characters actually designed to be sad and pathetic never go anywhere. I have never seen a player give a single fuck for the orphan kid or whatever.

So basically my strategy these days is to throw as much shit at the wall as I can and hopefully some of it sticks.

If you want to just have a memorable and more important NPC, using some of those previous aspects isn't bad, but there are a couple more that can help.

1. Comedy. People bond really well to people who make jokes. I don't really get it, but it seems to work. The character has to have some amusing aspects or make jokes. Have them tell embarrassing and funny stories.

2. Give them strong character traits. Maybe find out what kind of shows or characters your players are fans of to pick some of those traits that they enjoy.

3. As long as you aren't playing with sexist or homophobic bigots, make the character homo-sexual. Again, I don't really get why it matters, but those types of characters seem to stand out to many other people. They don't have to be flamboyant, but give them a mate or have them become attracted to one of the PCs.

4. Have them be attracted to one of the PCs whether they are hetero or homo-sexual. Again, binds the characters to the NPCs and as long as it isn't a boring or annoying NPC, the PCs may reciprocate that flirting. Whether it goes farther to a black screen or whatever is more up to the GM. Some playful flirting should be easy though.

5. Flirty bard is always a great fallback stereotype to do. Give you funny, flirty, likely pan-sexual as well. Build off of that. Once you are able to find other characters your party likes, you can make different ones.

Those are some tips I can think of off the top of my head. Main thing you need to do is observe your players. See what PCs they tend to make. Build an NPC that mirrors a lot of those traits that they often choose and like.

Stop making those sad and pathetic characters then. They obviously don't care about them. You have ideas of what kinds of characters they actually like, so make more like that. It's not a hard concept, buddy. Play to their likes.

Learn from Jackie Chan. Make your NPC the underdog. Make them visibly feel pain. Give them a feat or two that's a little uncharacteristic but necessary given the situation before immediately and rudely pulling them back down to earth. Job done.

I don't. Well, aside from when necessary. But even the ones that fit their tastes have like a 50% to hit rate.

Attaching an audience to a movie character is the same concept as your players to an NPC. A movie character is just aimed at a wider audience. The only difference is the movies are aimed at some 2 billion people, so they are likely to get a bunch of people that will like the character. With an RPG your audience usually only numbers in the single digits so you have to be more picky about what you make. It depends on what your players like.

>muh dik = gud gming

Quality.

They actually started out just taking her, and when she kept escaping and going back for the items they put them on her so she'd stop.

That just sounds like a kidnapping.

Technically, in the same sense that looting a chest in the middle of a dungeon is burglary, or killing one of its inhabitants is murder.

I'd say there's a fair bit of a difference between killing a goblin and taking it's cloak and finding a girl and immediately grabbing her and taking her without her consent.

That image makes no sense. It's not describing a good GM but good players. Even if a great GM presents the players with a classic choice between doing what is right and what is easy, average players will fail to pay attention and aimlessly drift toward whatever looks like it can be killed for XP.

So I guess the moral is that you can't be a good GM without good players. Provide a self-consistent world for them, don't railroad them, and see if they notice. Only the best ones will.

Kidnapping is a crime and duress is an absolute defense. If a reasonable person would conclude the child is in clear and present danger to life and limb and the most reasonable way to mitigate the danger is to move the child, moving the child is not kidnapping. It is incumbent on the party to bring said situation to the attention of the proper authorities as soon as it is possible to do so safely, though.

Nothing in that summary that was posted indicated the child was in any danger.

It wasn't even a child, but a magic projection of some sort. The DM of that story just decided to roll with it and let them keep her Pinoccio style

Rare and valuable items, limited vocabulary, and no one nearby is probably sufficient in itself to establish a clear danger, although my scout-sense would be tingling to keep the kid and the items where they are and send someone back to summon help (she didn't get out there by herself, whoever came with her may need help as well.)

In the actual story it happens inside an abandoned dungeon which is more than enough hazard to establish clear threat to life and limb. In most jurisdictions the players would be under no obligation to help but would be protected under one of many forms of Good Samaritan laws if they did, provided they otherwise behaved in a reasonable-in-the-legal-sense manner. (Move the kid no further than necessary, signal for help immediately, contact authorities as soon as possible, and so forth.)

The girl was an alchemical, magical, spiritual or undead construct...

To a great extent, it's best not to force it. Players have a sixth sense for when someone is being pushed and will not like them just to be contrary. Also, even if they are willing to play along with you, a lot of characters will be liked or ignored for reasons imperceptible to even the players themselves. Introduce NPCs and if they don't enjoy them and the NPC is not important in some other way, just discard the NPC. If the PCs keep coming back for visits, then expand their backstory.

That aside, ultimately of course it depends on what kind of emotional investment you want to create in them. If you want positive feelings, make sure they don't look down on the PCs or otherwise lord it over them. This is particularly true if a lot of other NPCs do so. A little moderate helpfulness and politeness can sometimes go a long way. Conversely, if you want them hated, have them cause lots of trouble. Don't kill their families or anything over the top. Do something like have them buy up the mortgages for some PC or allied PC's property. Those petty hostilities are what wear on people. Most people are mentally prepared for the invading army of orcs to just burn the place down.

To provide a few examples, in one game we were in a city where literally everyone was looking down on us. We adopted the one NPC of any importance who didn't because we were so sick of it. Actually forced the situation into her becoming a major character and GM had to scrap plan to make her a minor villain. On the other side, we had some guy who was supposed to be sympathetic who showed up and hit on our maid from a position of power while being a smug little bastard. She wasn't anyone's girlfriend then and never was later, but that really got to us. We eventually forgot what his actual name was for a while as we referred to him only by a rhyming expletive. I still get a little angry thinking about it and that was 12 years ago.

...

Players are like cats, most of them.

You take great care in selecting the best cat gym available on Amazon and when it arrives, they are only interested in the box it came in.

Same with NPCs. Players can usually smell when care was taken with an NPC and to players, a NPC that smells of care smells like a trap. That makes a throwaway NPC "safe" to attach themselves to. They can care about them knowing that (for now, at least), they're not the BBEG, honey trap, plot bait, or a wound in waiting.

If your ultimate goal for NPCs is as some sort of plot bait, then players are going to continue avoiding becoming invested in the ones that smell like bait.

If your ultimate goal for NPCs is to get the players/PCs more invested in the world, so they'll do more than murderhobo their way across it, then consider approaching them like you would a cat. Something just enough to get their attention, and then a hint that their attention is not wanted. If they pursue the hints, have something ready to follow through on it, but don't make it the key to everything. Maybe the pot boy peeking out onto the floor and staring at a PC/another patron only thinks they look like his sibling who went adventuring five years ago and never came back. Maybe that leads to the PCs deciding to bring the kid with them, or just keep an eye out for someone who looks like the pot boy's sibling, and maybe it ties into your idea of having a particularly dangerous dungeon to aim the PCs at or a BBEG making a rise for power - but think of it as an "early hint" about it rather than the key they must discover. The whole point is they decide to pursue the lead themselves and don't feel pushed to investigate this kid.

I remember Noh. Good times.

From the original storytime related to Noh, she was just a soulless construct before their adventures with her in tow bound a spirit to her, allowing her to 'grow'.

>Players are like cats, most of them.
This. Oh god, so much this.