Now that the hero/ine is all set to save the world, you must be wondering, "Who are these villagers the hero/ine is supposed to get praise from, and where are they found?"
Villagers, of course, reside in villages. These villages should be marked on your map as a group of houses. Now, the hero/ine should be warned that these villages are nothing like reality. The most noticeable aspect about an RPG village is the Lack of People. This Lack of People leads to an inevitable Lack of Housing and Lack of Roads. Yes, the hero/ine should consider him/herself lucky if the village can be distinguished from, say, a campground.
One theory proposes that RPG villages were purposely built extremely small and bland so that the hero/ine wouldn't find the place pleasant enough to give up the adventure and settle down to have a nice family. If that is the case, the villages are very successful. The hero/ine will be completely baffled as to how any villager could manage to survive in such a dismal place. There are no sources of food or household goods, an incredible lack of commerce or politics, and often no culture to speak of. Perhaps this lack stimulus is the key to the typical villager behaviour.
A villager can be easily identified from villains, allies, and other key figures by their Identical Appearances -- a far cry from the hero/ine's stylish (if impractical and/or impossible) fashion and hairdo. Perhaps this conformity was inspired by the fact that all their houses are nearly identical, down to the arrangement of furniture within.
The hero/ine can easily locate a villager by walking along the street. Invariably, a villager engaged in Random Locomotion With No Purpose will run smack into the hero/ine. If the hero/ine doesn't attempt to talk with the villager, the villager will continue onwards in a zombie-like trance, without so much as an "excuse me." In some cases, however, the hero/ine will find that all villagers are engaged in Tireless Verticality and will stand in the same position for hours on end.
Having trouble walking into a villager? No problem! Simply burst into a house and there should be a few inside. Despite the fact that the entire village is surrounded by monsters, rarely does a villager think to lock the door. Indeed, once inside, the hero/ine will find that s/he can wander freely throughout the house and even take anything lying around (this is one of the benefits of having no law enforcement offices within a village). The owner of the house will simply walk past the hero/ine with a blank stare, oblivious to their presence.
Now, you might think that villagers, as described above, are useless to the hero/ine. This is not so. For some unexplained reason, despite their monotonous existence, villagers seem to be a wealth of information on local villains and adventuring techniques. Once the hero/ine has located a villager, all s/he will have to do is to tap the villager lightly on the shoulder. Because of an Inherent Tendency to Blab, the hero/ine will find that the villager will skip all formalities and immediately speak about the mystery of the local dungeon, how to pass such and such an obstacle, or the general decline of the forces of good lately.
Needless to say, villagers reside in the bottom rung of the RPG hierarchy. You'll find that it lessens your disgust for them if you keep in mind that they exist only to serve the needs of the hero/ine (they also form an excuse to save the world, though most hero/ines, having met the villagers, believe that the world probably isn't worth saving) and should be viewed in the manner a queen bee views her drones.
