failed summer experiment!

[Stahn Li]

I was tired of my old villany, save the world campaigns and decided to try something differnt this summer.

Instead of villany I focused on rivalry and instead of claer cut evil bad guy gonna end the world I focused on two sides fighting for what they thought was right. I wanted moral drama.

Well I got it, but I did not realive what this meant in D&D terms, which was specifly PC's arguing for long periods of time over what they should do. You see there was no claer right or wrong in this campaign, and I wanted all decisions to be tough. They turned up to be so tough that different PC's made completely different decisions. I had to run two adventures one week because the party had split up. Also there is little party unity since the group split up into two opposing ideals.

As for rivalry, how can you satify rivaly without eventualy getting invloved in combat. You can only wield your DM wand for so long until some gets hurt....or dies.

I don't fell specifics are all that important to understand this situation,bu thow can this be pulled off. My adventures aren't bad, but are jsut very demanding on my part since I have no idea what my pc's will think or do. My PC's have even started to fight with each other (all in character, I do have good players)! Any advice, comments. I think one problem may be just that all my players aren't that similar and don't have all that much experiance roleplaying with each other.

 

[RangerWickett]

Long time no see, Michael. Now you know how it was during the period of my campaign when you weren't there. I didn't have a clear-cut villain either, just lots of groups vying for different things. Leena kinda wanted to help the Elves, Neil and Raul got pissed off at Shaaladel for telling them what to do, Ted hated the Serens but then got pissed off at Shaaladel personally, and then there was Hamid, whose character just wanted to get a soul so he could be evil.

I ended up with a group that felt their best course of action was to get the hell out of there, because they didn't like anybody, and almost nobody liked them. Made it rather hard to give them a reason to keep adventuring. I mean, I did have a mastermind behind the scenes trying to nudge different groups to war, but the PCs didn't like either side, and my villains weren't stupid enough to leave clues about their plans. I expected the PCs to actively try to find out who was causing the war, without realizing I'd given them no reason to think there was a mastermind.

Sorry your summer game didn't work out. I'm still looking forward to doing my bad Scottish accent and helping save the world, one whupass at a time.

Most people play D&D to be heroes. Heroes don't fight morally-ambiguous battles. They fight evil.

 

[GMVictory]

I don't fell specifics are all that important to understand this situation,bu thow can this be pulled off. My adventures aren't bad, but are jsut very demanding on my part since I have no idea what my pc's will think or do. My PC's have even started to fight with each other (all in character, I do have good players)! Any advice, comments. I think one problem may be just that all my players aren't that similar and don't have all that much experiance roleplaying with each other.

When the PCs are arguing, a squad of bad guys strike to take advantage of their divisiveness.

Have their rivals make attacks that do subdual damage rather that lethal. It is obvious to the players that the rivals are trying to stop them, not kill them. Have you put the group in situations where they have to socialize with the rivals? They might even get to like their rivals a little.

How good are you at running the game off the cuff? By not having a clear goal for your PC group, everyone is more likely to pursue their own agenda and you'll have to improvise a lot more.

Create a clear cut bad guy that has it in for the rivals and the PC group. This may lead them to work together to stop CCBG.

Just some ideas.

 

[Shadowdancer]

You have to find some way to unify the group for a common cause. Even if it's just working for the same government/church/guild/power group. They might have vastly different reasons for working for that cause, but it has to be mutually beneficial to all of them to work together to succeed.

Or they could all be magically bound together somehow. If they didn't all achieve a certain goal by a certain deadline, they would all die.