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I Am SO Over The "Rootless Vagabond" Archetype
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<blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6424690" data-attributes="member: 22779"><p>This, IMO, is probably the biggest culprit. All it really takes is one experience like this to make players really gun shy about tying themselves to anything. If everything you add to your character is going to be a Monkey's Paw, then why would you take anything?</p><p></p><p>One mechanic from a game I read a few years back, whose name escapes me - you play 11th century Monks playing a Modern (i.e. 11th C) RPG really helps here. Kinda indie, game within a game thing. Looked like fine. The mechanic was called Background, but, the meaning was different. The player could put up to three things about that character in the Background and it would be true, but, whatever goes into that Background cannot be used by the DM. So, if my Background was, Big Family, then I have this big family and maybe I can get free lodging whenever I go to a city. But, my family never becomes part of the main story, it remains in the Background. Cool way to tie the character to the setting while keeping the player happy that he's not handing the levers to his character to the DM.</p><p></p><p>There's another issue as well. Miscommunication between the DM and players. Say the player takes a character who has lots of ties to a local town, he's been defending that town from invading armies and has now set out to join forces with a larger army to try to protect his town. But, the DM's campaign then moves the party several month's journey away from that town, which means all that background is basically pointless since it cannot be leveraged at all. If the player had spent significant time developing that town, family, whatever, it might be pretty discouraging to see all that work basically swirl around the drain in the first two sessions. Or maybe the player's merchant family enterprise get's destroyed in the first session of the game, and his entire family, barring a small number that get introduced later, is killed. Again, might be a bit of a discouragement to create character background the next time around.</p><p></p><p><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hussar, post: 6424690, member: 22779"] This, IMO, is probably the biggest culprit. All it really takes is one experience like this to make players really gun shy about tying themselves to anything. If everything you add to your character is going to be a Monkey's Paw, then why would you take anything? One mechanic from a game I read a few years back, whose name escapes me - you play 11th century Monks playing a Modern (i.e. 11th C) RPG really helps here. Kinda indie, game within a game thing. Looked like fine. The mechanic was called Background, but, the meaning was different. The player could put up to three things about that character in the Background and it would be true, but, whatever goes into that Background cannot be used by the DM. So, if my Background was, Big Family, then I have this big family and maybe I can get free lodging whenever I go to a city. But, my family never becomes part of the main story, it remains in the Background. Cool way to tie the character to the setting while keeping the player happy that he's not handing the levers to his character to the DM. There's another issue as well. Miscommunication between the DM and players. Say the player takes a character who has lots of ties to a local town, he's been defending that town from invading armies and has now set out to join forces with a larger army to try to protect his town. But, the DM's campaign then moves the party several month's journey away from that town, which means all that background is basically pointless since it cannot be leveraged at all. If the player had spent significant time developing that town, family, whatever, it might be pretty discouraging to see all that work basically swirl around the drain in the first two sessions. Or maybe the player's merchant family enterprise get's destroyed in the first session of the game, and his entire family, barring a small number that get introduced later, is killed. Again, might be a bit of a discouragement to create character background the next time around. :p [/QUOTE]
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I Am SO Over The "Rootless Vagabond" Archetype
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