NPC Concern

[GeorgeTownRaja]

So I came up with an imaginary nation (wonderland) of my own, and I have been adding NPCs in the likes of citizens, advisers, nobles, etc. You know, something that has to do with the political affairs of my nation. However, I'm worried that they might become sentient if I give them too much attention. Should I worry about it? 

[Glaurung26]

If you're concerned maybe establish clear boundaries about when they can interact. Keep the mindset that they're NPCs like in a videogame and basically time freezes when you're "not there in person." You can interact with them like they were "real" but remind yourself you're not responsible for raising, sheltering, and caring for them in your personal mind bubble. They just live off in their own wonderland bubble and you visit them there.

[Luminesce]

Yeah, it's a matter of establishing imaginary boundaries, as much for yourself as for any NPCs. Given you're not supposed to be treating them as sentient and all, a lot of it's on you. Think of them, consider them, as only surface-level aware, working on a different level entirely than you or your tulpas.

 

Now, there are many people who have lively internal worlds where the characters may have plenty of depth, something that would only normally get weird in the context of tulpamancy, where we "fear them being sentient". If you want to have that level of realness to your imagined characters, you just need to set clear mental boundaries - for yourself, really - on what those characters can be to you. We don't have any NPCs personally, but, personally I would treat any imagined characters with a sense of "you only exist here, until you leave my perception and cease to exist" - whereas my tulpas can follow me just fine into waking life consciousness, transcending any of those mental barriers.

 

 

Well, it's not like any of this has set in stone practices or rules. You can create your own symbolic processes/boundaries however makes sense to you, if mine didn't make sense. It mostly just boils down to not ever thinking of an NPC/imagined character as capable of becoming tulpa-like. Make a clean enough mental boundary and you could even end up giving depth to the characters and your interactions without fear of them "becoming tulpas", but it may be tricky to get to that point.

[ChloeBee]

I've created probably hundreds of characters throughout my life of writing. Not one of them has become a tulpa. There was one when I was a teenage that kind of straddled the line a little bit, but ah, that's a story for another day. The point is, tulpas are voluntary creations and you can decide whether or not a character becomes a tulpa.

[Guest]

It depends if you've gotten system growth under control or not. In the beginning we couldn't even have an AI voice on our space cruiser.  

[GeorgeTownRaja]

Quite interesting to see someone's different opinion on this topic. Let me set an example. Let's say that a maid approached me. Should I interact with her, or do I not say anything to her at all? 

Edited June 5, 2021 by GeorgeTownRaja

[Luminesce]

Just don't think of them as capable of leaving/being aware past their limited scope of your imagined scenario at the time. There's no reason practicing tulpamancy should suddenly lock you out of having in-depth interactions with NPCs - it just gets a little bit trickier. I can't put the pure thought into words, but you just have to not think of them as anything past an NPC temporarily existing in your imagined scenario.

Edited June 5, 2021 by Luminesce

[GeorgeTownRaja]

I know this might sound silly, but what about interacting with enemy NPCs? 

[GrayTheCat]

I agree with what others have said. As long as you strongly believe your NPCs are NPCs, they won't become tulpas.

 

On 6/5/2021 at 1:33 AM, Glaurung26 said:

If you're concerned maybe establish clear boundaries about when they can interact. Keep the mindset that they're NPCs like in a videogame and basically time freezes when you're "not there in person." You can interact with them like they were "real" but remind yourself you're not responsible for raising, sheltering, and caring for them in your personal mind bubble. They just live off in their own wonderland bubble and you visit them there.

 

This is my approach to my character creation. I generally watch the characters, pause if I need a break, and I rewind if I don't like something and I want to try something else.

 

Another trick is you can think of a script for the NPC to follow. If the NPC is only important for a couple scenes, you can automatically assume they only say one thing.

 

"Welcome to ______"!

 

"My daughter (blah blah blah). She looks so cute when she sleeps like that!"

 

"Beware, BEWARE, the (plot device)!"

 

I took my inspiration from videogame NPCs. You can write as short or long of a script as you want, but if the script starts to get longer and more concept based:

 

-Greets you and welcomes you to her home

-Adventure introduction

-Talks about husband

-Does something suspicious

-Denies suspicious act

-Sends you off on your adventure

 

You may want to turn the NPC into a reoccurring character. If not, that's perfectly fine too.

 

On 6/5/2021 at 6:48 PM, GeorgeTownRaja said:

Let's say that a maid approached me. Should I interact with her, or do I not say anything to her at all? 

 

You can talk to the maid. Keep to your expectation she's an NPC- if you think NPCs are only capable of doing certain things, stick to that. It will reenforce your expectation.

 

I personally find that it helps if I don't expect a character or NPC to think for themself. If a maid approached me, I would think about what the maids motivations are before replying.

 

On 6/13/2021 at 1:21 AM, GeorgeTownRaja said:

I know this might sound silly, but what about interacting with enemy NPCs? 

 

Enemy NPCs are the same, they just have a different expected behavior. You expect the bad guys to be a certain way, you expect the bad guys to do certain things or follow a script, etc.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Cat_ShadowGriffin

[Guest]

This is a part of the issue of being guilted into or feeling obligated to take any autonomous thoughtform. We see it on Reddit and Discord and there are plenty of people here historically who have just accepted stray autonomous thoughtforms because they were autonomous and they couldn't tell the difference.

 

You could say they wanted the headmates except they have clearly stated they didn't. If you have a persistent, autonomous and volitional thoughtform that you don't want, then don't force them. If it gets bad, like a certain dragon character of Bear's, then treat them like any other intrusive thoughtform or suffer uncontrollable system growth until you can figure it out.