D&D General Wishing Away The Adventure

[Crimson Longinus]

Let's say robbery. A bandit in real life can train a weapon on someone and reasonable expect they will behave. No player I've ever met would stand for that, low level or not. Certainly in 5e they would see the gamist wisdom in just risking an attack and then going to town.

Well at low level the bandits could actually kill them. Though I'm not sure it is a terrible flaw that the characters are the sort of people who take insane risks. No sane person would o the sort of adventuring that happens in D&D, but we still tend to find it fun.

That's a roleplaying problem. I bemoan PCs never acting like actual living people on these boards all the time. But there's no solution for it. You can offer incentives, threaten punishments and include mechanics, but in the end players gonna player.

Not really. If the rules say the crossbow cannot kill me, why should I act like it could? And there is an easy solution, make it so that the crossbow can easily kill the characters. It is another matter whether that results the sort of gameplay we actually want, but to some it might.

 

[Reynard]

Not really. If the rules say the crossbow cannot kill me, why should I act like it could? And there is an easy solution, make it so that the crossbow can easily kill the characters. It is another matter whether that results the sort of gameplay we actually want, but to some it might.

I'm talking much more broadly than that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I'm talking much more broadly than that.

What do you mean?

 

[Reynard]

What do you mean?

This is an aside to the thread topic, ands we have discussed it before with some pretty contentious results, but I am talking about stuff as simple as PCs looking forward to a hot meal, cold drink, and warm bath after days in the wild. I am talking about characters actually valuing their lives and the lives of their friends. I am talking about dungeoneering work-life balance. I am talking about people with not just broad strokes ideals, bonds and flaws, but complex and sometimes contradictory traits, quirks and qualms. I mean players playing people, regardless of whether they are dragonfolk or feykin or whatever.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is an aside to the thread topic, ands we have discussed it before with some pretty contentious results, but I am talking about stuff as simple as PCs looking forward to a hot meal, cold drink, and warm bath after days in the wild. I am talking about characters actually valuing their lives and the lives of their friends. I am talking about dungeoneering work-life balance. I am talking about people with not just broad strokes ideals, bonds and flaws, but complex and sometimes contradictory traits, quirks and qualms. I mean players playing people, regardless of whether they are dragonfolk or feykin or whatever.

Sure. In my experience people do that.

 

[Reynard]

Sure. In my experience people do that.

I don't see it very often and between a decent sized player pool and running at cons, I play with a lot of people in a pretty broad cross section.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't see it very often and between a decent sized player pool and running at cons, I play with a lot of people in a pretty broad cross section.

Could be. I just play with friends that I know to be decent roleplayers.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't see it very often and between a decent sized player pool and running at cons, I play with a lot of people in a pretty broad cross section.

There are, I think, plenty of people in both camps. But the game supports those @Reynard has observed (unfortunately IMO), by the simple expedient of not having those kind of motivations matter, at all, in the rules in any capacity.

 

[MarkB]

or it may be that the choices being given may just be unacceptable to them. I have myself on a few occasions refused to take any of the options the DM wanted me to take because we had a "SERIOUS" difference of opinion of what Alignment or character morals or goals meant.

Usually I find that happens when the DM wants to play around in shades of Grey and the Player hits one of those shades and says that's the line I wont' cross. generally followed by a lot of explaining and rationalizing by DM and the player just says NO.

Yeah, I remember hitting that in a Living Spycraft convention game. My character was fine with pretty much any standard espionage stuff, and wouldn't hesitate to use deadly force in self-defence, but when we were given a mission whose goal was straight-up assassination of a politician in an African republic, that just didn't sit right with me at all.

I played out the scenario since it was a convention game and already paid for, but in a home game my character would likely have refused the assignment.

 

[Reynard]

Could be. I just play with friends that I know to be decent roleplayers.

There are, I think, plenty of people in both camps. But the game supports those @Reynard has observed (unfortunately IMO), by the simple expedient of not having those kind of motivations matter, at all, in the rules in any capacity.

I don't mean to imply people are bad roleplayers. I mean that most people roleplay dramatic figures -- heroic or otherwise -- rather than real people. We don't watch most action heroes have to take a potty break or get snippy over something minor. Like most forms of entertainment, RPGs focus on the "fun stuff" and that is totally understandable -- especially when most RPG stories are somewhere between B horror comedy and MCU action comedy.

I am just saying that sometimes I want characters that feel more real.