D&D 5E I Am SO Over The "Rootless Vagabond" Archetype

[I'm A Banana]

For now, anyway.

It's probably a sign of me getting older.

One of the power fantasies that D&D allows for is self-sufficient characters who answer to no one, who improve their own skills by slaying their own monsters and never need anyone else. They come into town from Elsewhere, on some impossible mission, looking for only gold or glory, and leave just as suddenly, attached to no one, without responsibility or background. They are orphans or outcasts or otherwise abandoned souls who needed no one and answer to only themselves. They are Rootless Vagabonds, self-contained engines of freewheeling semi-heroism.

YAWN.

These days, I tend to find such characters taxing, cliche, and a little annoying. They're bland. They have no arc, no growth, no origin, no fate. no goals. They exist to slot into some excuse to slay monsters and then leave, as indistinct and irrelevant as the rest.

As a DM, I see a character like this enter my games, and I kind of sigh and shrug. "Well, I guess we've got another one for the pile of empty ciphers who talk in funny voices, whose goal doesn't go beyond 'kill the bad guys.'"

Which isn't to say that those characters are BAD per se. Just that I'm tired of them. Bored of them, even. They join no organizations, help NPC's as only mercenaries do, want only the most materialistic of things. XP and GP, GP and XP, one more fight, one more goblin, one more MacGuffin. They have nothing external that they value, nothing they're committed to beyond their own empowerment. That's all well and good for one character in a party, or an entire party here or there, to explore those angles, but probably 90% of the characters I've seen in D&D fall into this camp: no connections, no alliances, no memberships, no relationships, and no investigation of how or why that might be weird.

I don't necessarily just blame the players, here. I feel like most players don't come up with characters like this intentionally, but rather through an odd combination of design accident and system assumptions, they arrive here. 5e's background charts help a bit, but they've got little in the way of lasting effects, and they're easy to ignore.

Anyway, I float this thread because it sometimes seems like an oddly controversial idea in D&D, to leverage these connections in play. I've seen players try to create characters with "no strings attached," or who resist things like training NPC's or joining organizations on the idea that they don't want to commit to anything. I've heard players say, when pressed for background, that they don't want to give the DM any "fodder" by having things like living parents or family members, or things they value that aren't their swords and their spellbooks.

I've had some success in turning these players around in practice, but the initial resistance always surprises me, and my initial reaction is usually along the lines of "Why do you want to be SO. FREAKIN'. BORING?" But I bet there's plenty of legit reasons why some players are gun-shy about that.

So I'm hoping to see why it's controversial, why people might be gun-shy, and what might be some strategies for overcoming that. I've got some tentative and partial ideas, but I'd like to see what the ENWorld zeitgeist says about it.

Are you sick of rootless vagabonds? Are you fond of them? Why might they be especially popular? When might they be appropriate? How can we help guide folks to be less mercenary vigilante troubadours and more heroes with investments in elements of the world?

Curious about what you folks might say!

 

[Piratecat]

Both of my campaigns have the PCs attached to larger organizations or political factions, and the game is vastly more fun as a result. I'll pretty much always prefer connections that anchor them firmly to the world.

 

[Astrosicebear]

I played in a long running Age of Worms campaign. I played a Ranger/Scout Archer Archetype. I came in the game around 6th level. The other players were a Knight, a Cleric, a paladin, and a wizard (and sorcerer at one point). I was a simple lowly farmer, my life turned upside down when my wife and child were infected with the kyuss rot. I was trying to save them. I wasnt some uber-heroic guy, I played him as a farmer, doing what he needed to for his family. I always suggested the safe path, the scout path... everyone else charged right in. DM asked me once why I played such a character, its a game about doing heroic things. He didnt get it. Because i didnt talk in a brooding, low voice with a bad english accent, i wasnt playing right.

 

[Agamon]

If a player wants his PC to basically be a sidekick to the PCs that give me something to work with in the game, they can certainly present me the "loner-without-a-past" character. It's up to them, I won't force anyone to play what they don't want to play. But they might be better off in a different game.

 

[Piratecat]

The only thing that I'll really object to as a DM is the lone wolf character who then looks to me for a reason that his hero is adventuring with the rest of the group. That's not my problem! I now tell players that it's their responsibility to have a reason to be a hero, or to be with the party. If they can't come up with that, it may be the wrong archetype.

 

[Blue]

Not to start a pseudo-edition war, but have you looked at 13th Age, either to play or to mine for good ideas. Icon Relationships make players movers and shaker - protagonists in the story - even from 1st level, but the flip side is that they aren't rootless vagabonds. Backgrounds (13th Age skills) work best when associating you with the world, and the One Unique Thing often also is a strong link into the world. Plus all of them make the character less cliche and more interesting and connected.

13th Age and 5e share a lot of DNA and design philosophy - it would be rather simple to import some of the ideas even if you don't play/run 13th Age.

 

[Boarstorm]

I think some of the problem can be tied to players' lack of setting knowledge. When you don't have perfect knowledge of the world, it can be a little hard to tie yourself to the Order of Ebony or the Justicar's Guild when all the information you have on these things is a paragraph in your DM's setting bible. My players, at least, aren't the type to create an organization as part of their background (despite my encouragement), and don't want to tie themselves to something that may come back later to bite them on the behind.

I can't help but think that as a campaign matures or as a new campaign is launched with the same players in that world, they'll be more likely to tie themselves in with some of the characters and organizations they had crossed paths with in a "previous life."

That may be wishful thinking.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The flip side of that is "80-page Backstory Man," who expects anyone to care about his character's tragic past with its cast of thousands. Equally boring, but more attention-seeking and time-consuming.

Anyway, The Wanderer is certainly a cliche, but so are the Noble Paladin and the Apprentice Wizard and a bunch of others. The trick to keeping them interesting (whether in RP, literature, comics, or TV/film) is to be aware of the cliche and use it as a tool for storytelling. Being witty or endearing can help a lot here.

 

[LostSoul]

Are you sick of rootless vagabonds? Are you fond of them? Why might they be especially popular? When might they be appropriate? How can we help guide folks to be less mercenary vigilante troubadours and more heroes with investments in elements of the world?

I like rootless vagabonds. I find that rewarding XP for goals results in PCs who have goals. If you put them into a harsh setting where they need the support of NPCs to survive and achieve their goals (and vice-versa) and play those NPCs as real characters, they will start to form relationships with NPCs - even if the PCs are "Evil".

One example: I was playing a CE elf in 3.5. I needed to get out of the plane I was in and take some downtime, so I went to a frozen corner of the Forgotten Realms. There was a small village of impoverished humans there and I needed their help - I could have made my own igloo and food but it would have taken time that I didn't have. They had some problems of their own and, for some reason, my CE vagabond wanted to help them out. I gave them some fruit from a magic grove, solved a problem they were having with their local nature spirit, and became known as the "Honey Spirit".

 

[Lerysh]

I like well developed characters, and character histories as a DM. The Background feature of character creation helps with this I feel. The "roll dice kill things" crowd get a tangible trade off in stats for completing their character background assignment. They at least have SOME concept of life before adventuring.

Some people just want to roll dice, kill things, and that's ok. As long as there are 1 or 2 players interested in RP arcs and character development and back story the less RP crowd can just hang out until it's time to kill the next thing with dice.