Fail

Yesterday, I walked out of my apartment to discard something on the curb. As I set it down, I noticed a middle-aged woman walking hurriedly up the sidewalk. She stopped at the corner and looked down the street, shouting, "Astor!" She turned around and walked back past my apartment building to the restaurant next door, which was just starting to get set up for its dinner hours. She peered inside and asked, "Did a little dog run in here?" She paused and went on, "Oh, my god. He ran away!"

Now this was clearly a setup for a subquest. I should have learned from games that I needed to approach the NPC and talk to her. I'd probably ask something like "What happened? Is there anything I can do?" She would have given me a task such as "search all the bushes in the area until you find my lost dog," at which point I'd go around shaking each bush until the dog ran out and reunited with its owner.

But I didn't. Apparently games haven't done a good enough job of shaping the way I approach situations in the real world. It's a shame, too. I could have leveled up.