Playing Dungeons and Dragons with a couple friends the other night, I had a Moment. If you’re lucky, you get about one Moment a year, where all of a sudden, things just click for you. The task you’re doing comes into focus, or you suddenly understand someone elses ideas, or maybe an abstract concept gets a lot more real. If you’re unlucky, Moments don’t happen to you and you won’t understand this.

The Moment came when my traveling partner and I happened across the wreckage of a wagon and several dead bodies being picked over by a pack of goblins. We engaged them, dispatched them with little effort, and went to check for survivors. We found one in the form of a man trapped under the wagon, burned and bleeding and dying. We helped him out and tried to talk to him.

Now, normally, NPC’s are just that. Non Player Characters, quite literally not human. They exist to drive the plot, to keep the story moving and to give assistance in some situations. They just don’t matter, they aren’t real. Our characters aren’t real either, of course, but they have real people behind them. Their thoughts and feelings and ideas at least come from a person, not just a random generator.

After we got the man out from under the wagon and he warned us of a goblin army, he passed out. Neither of our characters are healers, and we’re too poor to carry that kind of magic with us. This man is going to die. Things are starting to fall into place. While my companion desperatly tries to improvise some bandages, I have already realized his wounds are going to kill him slowly and no aid will be able to get here in time. I make his death quick and end his pain.

Suddenly, this is no longer an NPC. This is a person in my mind. This is someone who was a son, a brother, a father and a husband. He was a soldier, a farmer, a craftsman. He had hopes and dreams and ideas and opinions and hobbies and habbits. He had friends and people who will wonder what happened to him on that trip and why he never came home. And now he is dead by my hand.

Things click in my mind. This is no longer a game so much as something I must do. The man at my feet is no longer a plot device, he is the focus of my anger. I may have killed him, but it was the goblins that made it happen. All these people around me are dead, because of them. I set off in the direction the man showed us before his death at a steady jog. I will find them and take vengence for each person killed here. None of the bastards will be able to sleep soundly so long as I draw breath.

We will later find that goblins are not native to this region of the world. I make the connection immediently; someone, or something, brought them here. This almost removes the fault of the goblins. It’s not really their fault, they’re under someone elses command, right? But still, my anger at them burns. They didn’t have to kill those people. They didn’t have to threaten the whole region with war. My vengence will simply include whoever commands them now as well.

As a player, this is the first time I have ever connected with an NPC, or the game in general, on this level. It’s always been fun, exciting and a good social event, but now all of a sudden, it seems that I’ve taken it to a new realm. I feel responsible for my actions in the world, for no reason whatsoever. I have a need to balance the scales, settle the score, put things right. His death wasn’t just a crime, it has disrupted the game itself. It’s not just a humorous, dice-rolling passtime, it is my duty to take revenge for what has happened.

He was a minor plot device, but if we had only set out on our trip an hour earlier, he would be alive. It’s my fault that he’s dead, and I will repay my debts to their spirits. My partner and I will set out soon with the priest-turned-commander from the nearby village. I won’t crack jokes this time. I won’t toy around with my enemies. I will lay deadly traps, I will poison my blades, I will use every means necessary to kill them quickly and efficently. I will throw their army into disarray and hunt them down one by one until the smoke from their burning bodies throws a black collum into the sky. Only then will I be satisfied that the spirits of the dead can be in peace, and that those still living can sleep easy.

Tomorrow, I will wake up and the feeling will be gone. The Moment where I understood the world I was in and the people in it will vanish, and I’ll be left feeling like it’s just a a game again. But I’ll remember. I will know what it feels like to get involved. And maybe, if I’m very, very lucky, I’ll be able to fall back in again.