Bit Players


An impor­tant part of any nar­ra­tive expe­ri­ence, whether pre­sent­ed in a video game or a pen-and-paper expe­ri­ence, is the sup­port­ing cast. Two weeks ago, I cri­tiqued the over-population of heroes and hero nar­ra­tives in gam­ing, and this week’s dis­cus­sion is sort of con­nect­ed to that issue. A diverse and inter­est­ing sup­port­ing cast does­n’t mere­ly offer more char­ac­ters and dis­trac­tions to a hero­ic nar­ra­tive. The sup­port­ing cast pro­vides most oppor­tu­ni­ties for char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the hero, and this is espe­cial­ly the case in gam­ing. This is as true in BioWare games (after all, we get a much bet­ter idea of who Shepard is in light of his/her treat­ment of the many char­ac­ters in the uni­verse who appear for a moment and then dis­ap­pear for the rest of the game) as it is in cin­e­mat­ic action/adventure games like God of War or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. This is also where the nar­ra­tives of most action/adventure games fail, in my opin­ion. A sup­port­ing cast is also impor­tant for verisimil­i­tude, and, if the nar­ra­tive is inter­est­ed in estab­lish­ing a set­ting, a good sup­port­ing cast is essen­tial.

Having a strong sup­port­ing cast is par­tial­ly its own reward. This is self-evident, and won’t need fur­ther expla­na­tion. A strong exam­ple of this raw nar­ra­tive value is Shale, from Dragon Age: Origins. She’s inter­est­ing in and of her­self, and though that isn’t her only value to the nar­ra­tive, her own self is the pri­ma­ry con­tri­bu­tion to the work. So we’ll skip right past that point, and head right into the other two rea­sons why a sup­port­ing cast is essen­tial to good sto­ry­telling.

The Master/Slave Dialectic

The first essen­tial func­tion of a sup­port­ing cast is to enhance the main char­ac­ter. Let’s not mince words: the avatar char­ac­ter is the focus of the great major­i­ty of game nar­ra­tives. Convincing the play­er to empathize with the avatar char­ac­ter can make an incred­i­ble dif­fer­ence to the play­er’s enjoy­ment of the nar­ra­tive as a whole. That link is just a fact of gam­ing. In nar­ra­tive terms, the main character(s) are more real than the sup­port­ing cast. They are given more screen time and more agency. A good nar­ra­tive will seek to increas­ing­ly reveal aspects of the main character(s) to the player/viewer, while also induc­ing and dis­play­ing char­ac­ter growth. Due to var­i­ous con­straints, this means that the sup­port­ing cast is essen­tial­ly less real to the play­er, or at least serves as a mir­ror, or foil, to the main character(s).

The prob­lem with many action/adventure games is that the cast is too small or too lim­it­ed to give even the main char­ac­ter a chance to grow in response. It is typ­i­cal to see the reck­less hero treat every other char­ac­ter they encounter in rough­ly the same fash­ion. Kratos, for instance, has three basic reac­tions to the peo­ple and people-like things he encoun­ters: beau­ti­ful women with­out any plot use are screwed (the beau­ti­ful women demo­graph­ic of the cast cor­re­sponds 100% with the infatuated-with-Kratos-and-his-god-like-physique demo­graph­ic), any­thing foe-like in nature is evis­cer­at­ed, and any­one else is bru­tal­ly used until its use­ful­ness is expend­ed, at which point it is also evis­cer­at­ed. Therefore, Kratos never obtains any sort of depth, and this is par­tial­ly due to lack of qual­i­ty sup­port­ing cast.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is an exam­ple of a higher-quality sup­port­ing cast. The cast in LoS is able to human­ize Gabriel, the hero of the tale, to a much greater extent than Kratos. For instance, early on in the game, he encoun­ters a young mute woman (she has telepa­thy, so she’s not too mute) and her pro­tec­tor, a mur­der­er pun­ished by eter­nal impris­on­ment in a giant suit of armor. At the end of the sec­ond chap­ter, when the woman is mur­dered and Gabriel is left hold­ing the knife, Gabriel is forced to reluc­tant­ly kill the girl’s mas­sive and enraged body­guard (since he does need the gaunt­let worked into the giant’s armor, and there’s no talk­ing him down). In that scene, Gabriel dis­plays anguish over the death of the girl, though the feel­ing are tem­pered by Gabriel’s resolve to stop the Lords of Shadow and res­ur­rect his dead wife. That scene begins to com­pli­cate Gabriel, essen­tial­ly mak­ing him more human.

While LoS is far from per­fect in this regard, its com­par­a­tive­ly large sup­port­ing cast is almost always use­ful for char­ac­ter­iz­ing Gabriel. Without these inter­ac­tions, Gabriel would have been anoth­er Kratos; a stub­born man who express­es only rage and a deter­mi­na­tion to see his goal ful­filled. These cast mem­bers are includ­ed in the game not just because they pro­pel the plot, but because they are inter­est­ing foils to Gabriel, even if they aren’t that inter­est­ing in and of them­selves. Even the Lords of Shadow, despite being plen­ty mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal, are the shad­ow selves of the ancient heroes that found­ed Gabriel’s holy order; they are pure evil, yet intrigu­ing­ly so, and serve as con­stant reminders of what Gabriel could become. They become voic­es in Gabriel’s own psycho-drama.

A bet­ter exam­ple is the Uncharted series. Nathan Drake is an enjoy­able main char­ac­ter, but the game would be much less inter­est­ing if the vil­lains were not good foils, and espe­cial­ly if Elena weren’t around. Not only do Nathan and Elena have fan­tas­tic chem­istry, she brings out a very human (and often frus­trat­ed) side in Nathan. Without her, the nar­ra­tive sim­ply would­n’t work as well. Check this scene out for an exam­ple (she does­n’t stay put).

This is excep­tion­al­ly true in role-playing games. A DM includes a sup­port­ing cast not because he wants to play char­ac­ters too, but because in a game with­out non-player char­ac­ters (and thus a believ­able, inter­est­ing world) to respond to play­er action, play­er action becomes total­ly empty. This is because actions are, ide­al­ly, per­formed to affect change; the best way to dis­play the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of play­er action in any­thing more com­plex than a dun­geon crawl is through the non-player char­ac­ter. The non-player char­ac­ter can, for instance, be opin­ion­at­ed about the play­er char­ac­ter’s activ­i­ties, for good or ill. Hearing their own actions recit­ed and framed by the peo­ple of the game world can be equal­ly encour­ag­ing and sober­ing for play­ers. Moreover, a diverse cast of non-player char­ac­ters allows play­ers to explore the nuances of their char­ac­ters; per­haps a bar­bar­ian char­ac­ter only respects non-player char­ac­ters who are not rich and greedy, but then he dis­cov­ers that a pre­vi­ous­ly respect­ed NPC, now a friend, was slum­ming when he met him, and is actu­al­ly an incred­i­bly wealthy noble­man. A good DM will seek to bring out these nuances in his play­er’s char­ac­ters.

A Culture Is Made — Or Destroyed — By Its Articulate Voices

Take note, because I rarely use Ayn Rand quotes. This makes a good point, though. To some extent, the sup­port­ing cast is an ele­ment of game set­ting. Members of a sup­port­ing cast often rep­re­sent orga­ni­za­tions, races, and philoso­phies that fea­ture in a nar­ra­tive. In inter­act­ing with these spe­cif­ic NPCs, they func­tion as path­ways to under­stand­ing the nar­ra­tive’s set­ting, and often its themes.

The obvi­ous exam­ple here is Dragon Age. Characters like Sten, Zevran, and Leliana are inter­est­ing char­ac­ters, but they’re also win­dows into cul­tures and loca­tions that the game does­n’t direct­ly explore. This is espe­cial­ly the case with Sten; Qunari cul­ture is so rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the cul­tures encoun­tered in the game that Sten feels very alien, and dis­cov­er­ing why he acts so strange­ly is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fun, intrigu­ing, and reveal­ing of the set­ting. Each mem­ber of the party con­tributes to the play­er’s knowl­edge of the world in some way, though; Alistair explains the tem­plars and the Grey Wardens, Leliana has both fan­tas­tic and his­tor­i­cal sto­ries, as well as knowl­edge of Orlais, and so forth. This gives the play­er a broad­er sense of the world, as well as a rea­son to care about it, by way of the sup­port­ing cast.

An even bet­ter usage of the sup­port­ing cast is to shore up a nar­ra­tive’s themes. This is seen in Dragon Age 2, actu­al­ly. One of the largest issues that the game deals with is free­dom, name­ly how much an indi­vid­ual, espe­cial­ly a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous indi­vid­ual, should have. This is seen most clear­ly in the con­flict between Kirkwall’s mage and tem­plar pop­u­la­tions, though it’s preva­lent in plen­ty of other parts of the story. Most of the char­ac­ters have strong opin­ions regard­ing the polit­i­cal cli­mate; there is Anders, who believes that mages should be free from tem­plar rule, but has spe­cif­ic ideas about what mages should be free to do, and he cer­tain­ly does­n’t con­done the actions of blood mages or mages who have con­tact with demons. Merrill cares less about the pol­i­tics at work between the Circle and the tem­plars, but she is also will­ing to go to any lengths, even blood magic, in order to dis­cov­er more about her elven her­itage. Meanwhile, Fenris argues strong­ly for the neces­si­ty of the Circle, which is weight­ed by the fact that his ear­li­est mem­o­ries are from a land where mages rule with an iron fist. Combine that the fact that your avatar char­ac­ter’s sib­ling is either an apos­tate mage or is so tired of hid­ing apos­tate mages that he becomes a tem­plar, and you’ve got plen­ty of ten­sion brew­ing among your own lit­tle group. If the polit­i­cal issues of Kirkwall remained present only in rarely re-occuring NPC char­ac­ters, the ten­sion would be con­sid­er­ably less. Instead, char­ac­ters that the play­er can­not help but care about embody the poles of this tense dis­cus­sion, which draws the play­er into the issues at hand in an incred­i­ble way.

This is, again, dou­bly true for role-playing games. Any good DM will tell you that if you want to make the play­ers real­ly care about a tense issue in your cam­paign world, make sure the issue touch­es an NPC that they see often and care about. It’s a huge aid to a game if the DM can suc­cess­ful­ly human­ize a num­ber of NPCs and then use them, prob­a­bly by doing a lot of mean things to them, or hav­ing the NPCs do incred­i­bly mean things to other NPCs. Never under­es­ti­mate the abil­i­ty of human­iz­ing char­ac­ters to drive themes home and to bring incred­i­ble nar­ra­tive weight to a ses­sion.

That’s it for this week, folks! See you next week.


Matthew Schanuel

About Matthew Schanuel

Matthew Schanuel lives in Boston, Mass. He's a beer aficionado, a game player (and designer!), an academic-in-exile, a DM, and, most recently, an employee of a financial non-profit. He draws the comic Embers at night over at http://embers-at-night.tumblr.com/