… this list contains like 3 items phrased differently ~7 times each.
“This person had a family/friends” “This person was supporting someone else” “This person liked their pets”
repeat …
Well yeah. The goal is to humanize the person they just killed, to make the players potentially regret their murderhobo ways for a brief moment. And one of the fastest ways to make a character (at least shallowly) altruistic is to have them pet the dog. Do something kind for something/someone innocent. It’s often used to show that an antagonist isn’t entirely evil, and is acting against the party due to a specific goal (rather than simply being evil for evil’s sake).
It’s the inverse of the “kick the dog” trope, where a character does something obviously evil for no narrative purpose other than proving that they are evil.
This reminded me of how system really affects player behavior. I was playing a game where doing some things would trigger a check to avoid consequences.
There was a lot of “I’m gonna shoot him” -> “ok but you’ll have to roll for humanity loss” -> “…fine, nevermind, I’ll talk to him instead”
And then there’s my fighter, who killed three pirates after hearing about their hopes and dreams.
“Great I’ll put it in the bag of holding. How much is it worth? I rolled a 20, you have to tell me”
You loot the kobold’s body. You find a note that reads:
“Dear Krag, I miss you so much, and I pray for you to return soon. Our clutch of eggs is due to hatch, and more than anything I want the first thing they see is their devoted father…”
DM: Trying his best to write an emotional moment
“Drenched from head to toe in the blood of your opponent, you stand over their crumpled body.”
“Sweet! I loot the corpse. What do you I find?”
“A small note: ‘Note to self: get cure for horrible blood plague.’”
“…fuck.”
“My dearest Delilah, how I long to sit with you and our beautiful daughter…”
Okay sure but this guy jumped out of a bush with a flaming axe and said he’d eat our spleens. And Vilrod here identified the axe as +1 against spleens.
