Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@anja @futurebird
And then there are the above-average cats, who understand *way* more than you'd expect. One time I was talking with a friend about how conditions were such that my cat's fur was generating static, and she looked *very* offended at the idea that static had anything to do with *her*...

PCs having grievances can happen too, but it tends to be more of an intermediate technique than a basic one for players, and dependent on them already having a solid understanding of the setting.

The first thing to understand about how to have NPCs with legitimate grievances be a thing in a TTRPG is to imagine the world as a real one and the NPCs as people within that world. If you're just thinking of the setting as a flat backdrop for gameplay and the NPCs as colorful questgivers whose protection is a thin excuse for the plot to happen, then you're not going to be thinking in terms of things like what needs various NPCs might have and why they're unfulfilled or violated.

Thing is, your typical clear-out-the-humanoid-tribe dungeon crawl could be considered pretty evil in its own right by modern standards. Just putting an emphasis on how much that old trope would actually involve disrupting lives and destroying families could be enough, depending on what she's going for.