So it happened again: My character arrived at a dungeon, and a greedy NPC there wanted my char to go in and do all the muscle work of clearing the dangers that the NPC was afraid to tackle alone. My char does this, and then the NPC somehow imagines that it will then kill my character and get the treasure all to itself. How is this anything but really stupid and annoying?

Really, if my character can wipe out an entire dungeon of stuff the NPC was afraid to face, then why would the NPC not also be terrified of my character? I mean, come on -- Dragonborn with high-level weaponry and experience is somehow less intimidating than the draugr she just annihilated?

It seems this has happened in pretty much every TES game I have played, at least once. Does anyone else find this trope just a bit senseless and annoying?

Never underestimate the power of an ego.... People do stupid things all the time. Have you been playing in Ironbind Barrow?

There's also that thing about "raising an army of undead to take over the world! Mwhahaha!!!" Doesn't anybody ever noticed that everyone who has ever tried that failed epicly? Five minutes thought would have made them realize that most undead are really, really stupid and the ones who aren't wouldn't let you keep power for fifteen minutes once they got bored.

There are a lot of those things in a lot of games around. It's silly, yes. And then there are the bandits you meet in the wild, or the assassins who jump you - all of whom say things like "Why don't you start running so I can stab you in the back?" as you're beheading them.... or roasting them with Yol Toor Shul, or shouting them off a cliff with Fus Ro Dah....

Said greedy npc is working smarter and not harder allowing lackeys to do his light work.

Betray and kill one unsuspecting foe or clear out a whole dungeon of armed and waiting bad guys - makes perfect sense to me.

Or the thief who threatens to "gut you like a fish" just before you behead him.

Have you ever found yourself "unsuspecting" when this kind of thing happens? It is so obvious to me that most of the time I have to argue with my character not to kill the NPCs beforehand, but to give them at least a chance to prove they aren't as stupid greedy as they seem. Just cause the NPC is devoid of any shred of morals doesn't mean my characters have to be -- but it is a bit inconvenient and irritating knowing the inevitable outcome as soon as the NPCs open their smarmy mouths.

Actually this time it was Angarvunde, and the NPC at least had the decency to end her own life without me, just after i started this thread. But Ironbind is another one that does take the trope to its full conclusion.

I don't know... the best time to challenge a better runner to a race is right after they ran a marathon. ...IRL if you had your characters "skills" and cleared a dungeon of a couple dozen foes...would you not be tired when you walked out? So he's fresh, your tired..maybe wounded ...smart? Well not in the game of course, cause one potion your healed and your stamina is already back up to full by the time you loot the "boss chest". So as a game mechanic... it svck's and makes no sense, IRL it would be the smart thing to do.

Well yes, of course my character is unsuspecting. They have never seen the NPC before and have no idea what their actions are gonna be.


'Argue with my character...' Just stop.

Never said they were smart, but they do have egos...LOL More like they are unsuspecting.

Um. I argue with my girls all the time. Not over this particular thing - 'cause even though it's pretty silly, I'm okay with going along with it - but yeah, we argue over a LOT of other stuff.... constantly....

Well, when I come up behind a person, and hear her talking to herself about how she could have this great power and treasure all to herself if only her stupid hired hands weren't afraid of undead and left her, and then she sees me and goes on about how with my brawn and her brains she can have all that treasure to herself -- um, she means, we can have it all... and she generally bossy and narcissistic -- yeah, pretty much any character with half a brain can already see how this one is going to end.

as for "argue with my character" well, perhaps the character argues with herself, or perhaps I argue with her, or perhaps I argue with myself ... however one might want to phrase it, there is a kind of conversation that goes on trying to ascertain just what this particular character would actually do, both in terms of morals and personality. And there is another kind of conversation that goes on in me as someone who has played this game and many similar games many times and knows where this sort of quest is likely to go -- do i stay faithful to roleplay? do I avoid the whole thing cause it is so painfully obvious? do i just preemptively FusRoDah the idiot NPC because that's really what this kind of a narcisist should get?

Actually, it might be fun sometime to gather all these NPC narcissists, take them to a cliff on the throat of the world, and FusRoDah the lot of them off the edge at once... Any of you enterprising Skyrim Youtubers up for that challenge? I would so love to see it!

Exactly.