Well yeah. The goal is to humanize the person they just killed, to make the players potentially regret their murderhobo ways for a brief moment. And one of the fastest ways to make a character (at least shallowly) altruistic is to have them pet the dog. Do something kind for something/someone innocent. It’s often used to show that an antagonist isn’t entirely evil, and is acting against the party due to a specific goal (rather than simply being evil for evil’s sake).
It’s the inverse of the “kick the dog” trope, where a character does something obviously evil for no narrative purpose other than proving that they are evil.
Well yeah. The goal is to humanize the person they just killed, to make the players potentially regret their murderhobo ways for a brief moment. And one of the fastest ways to make a character (at least shallowly) altruistic is to have them pet the dog. Do something kind for something/someone innocent. It’s often used to show that an antagonist isn’t entirely evil, and is acting against the party due to a specific goal (rather than simply being evil for evil’s sake).
It’s the inverse of the “kick the dog” trope, where a character does something obviously evil for no narrative purpose other than proving that they are evil.