They Don’t Even Notice You

It’s easy to think of the PCs as the main characters of the game. Even if we run a game where we avoid writing a plot, or railroading the players, or beginning with an assumption that the characters are predestined heroes; the camera is almost always focused on them. They’re indubitably protagonists.

This is all well and good – but over time, it can feel like every room, hex, encounter, scene, and scenario revolves around the PCs. If it happens too much, it’s a drag on the verisimilitude of the world. 

So throw in a few encounters that are definitely not all about the PCs.

• An enormous monster – a t-rex or a kaiju – walks past (or over) the PCs, in search of bigger game
• Two armies clash, and the PCs are treated as bystanders, if they’re noticed at all
• Bickering town merchants are only interested in interacting with the PCs insofar as it advances their respective side in their endless argument 
• Powerful wizards, liches, or demigods are locked in battle; the PCs barely register amid the minions, summoned creatures, and particle effects crowding the battlefield  
• A (non-magical) storm, earthquake, or volcanic eruption hits the area where the PCs are; they can not "defeat" it, only endure it

Sometimes a living game world is just happening around the PCs. Sometimes the creature almost steps on them, not because it's attacking them, but because it just doesn't know or care that they are there. Sometimes they don’t even notice you.