Accomodatin players who are motivated by power fantasies in a heroic fantasy campaign

I play and DM a lot of D&D, mostly 4e these days, but I've played pretty much every edition from 1st onward. Regardless, this isn't an edition specific complaint.

I would say that the most common type of player I play with is one primarily interested in acting out some sort of heroic fantasy. The guys who want to save the world/princess/kingdom or whatever. These are the easiest players to keep satisfied, especially in 4e.

However, after the "heroic fantasy" types, I would say the second most common type of player I play with is one who is interested in a different kind of fantasy, one I'll call "power fantasy".

This type of player doesn't want to save the kingdom so much as take it over. If they defeat some monsters and take captives, they are invariably the ones who begin getting "creative" about what will be done with those captives. They're the players who read a list of high level spells and start thinking up, not what monsters they could beat or even what a powerful build might look like, but instead of all the awesome power this will enable them to assert over the people around them.

Its not that they're stupid evil or chaotic. They don't want to walk into every random inn and burn it down, or betray the party for the hell of it. At low levels, it is generally pretty easy to keep them on the same path as their less-megalomaniacal peers.

But what I've found is that, while these sorts of ambitions can make a decent "carrot" to keep the player on the same page as everyone, they are incredibly difficult to actually *satisfy* without breaking the game apart.

That is, lets take a level 1 party, with Jim the heroic cleric, Dave the standard-adventurer fighter, and Rob the power hungry wizard. At level 1, motivating this party to work together and stay "in line" is not hard. Even in 4e, 1st level characters aren't going to have anyone who matters shaking in their boots, so Rob isn't likely to have many opportunities to grab power in destructive ways without being suicidal. It is fairly easy to say to a group like this "the baron's daughter has been captured. there is a reward for her return, and also rumors that the goblin shaman who captured her has been using a staff, a relic with dark powers." Jim gets psyched for the rescuing, Dave for the reward, and Rob for the staff, and they all go tramping off together.

Now, lets say this group continues this way for some time, until they reach a much higher level, say, 20.

At level 20, motivating Jim is still easy--he does good because its good. Motivating Dave is also pretty easy--high level magic items/gold, and the promise of a better build.

But Rob...at this point, Rob isn't exactly hurting for magic staffs and the like, and while there are better ones out there, he doesn't really care, because he's never been motivated by bigger numbers like Dave, the sort of largely abstracted individual power level which D&D does a good job at rewarding. Nor does he give a damn about doing good for its own sake. Rather, Rob is and has been looking to wield power *over others*. When he was a chump, acquiring that power matters. But now that he's one of the more powerful beings in his world, he wants to stop acting like a"rich, murderous hobo" (as I've heard D&D adventurers described), and start acting the way a megalomanical wizard with godlike power would actually act.

Suddenly, keeping Rob on the same page as Dave and Jim is difficult, if not impossible. There are a few "solutions" I've attempted in these situations, and one of them have been particularly effective or satisfying.

Solution 1 - The character never becomes one of the most powerful beings in the kingdom, or if he does, it is at the end of the campaign. He can go build himself a nice house, eventually, if he likes. But he is simply never ever going to become the sort of force that can make a realistic run at taking his own kingdom or something, until the campaign ends. "You take over the kingdom of Moldania and become a legendary Dark Lord! Congrats, the end, lets rerolls level 1s".

My problem with this is that, essentially, Rob is never ever going to get to play the type of game he's looking for. Jim will eventually get to be "JIm, hero of the kingdom and princess savior extraordinaire." Everyone he interacts with will know him as such, and he can expect to adventure for a while as a full-blown hero. And Dave will eventually realize his dream build. But no npcs will ever bow down before the Dark Lord Rob in-game. In effect, I've sucked him into an entire campaign in pursuit of a playstyle I know I won't accomodate.

Solution 2 - The character *does* become one of the most powerful beings in the kingdom, but the campaign leaves the kingdom behind almost immediately. "Sure, you become the dark lord of Moldania, but you guys are sucked through a portal to Sigil, where Moldania is considered a laughable backwater and real power resides with godlike extraplanar entities". This is more or less what the 4e DMG suggests doing as the players move up tiers.

To my mind, this isn't really any better than the 1st solution. The player isn't after a nominal title of Dark Lord, he's after the feeling of actually being, you know, a Dark Lord. Putting him somewhere where nobody is impressed by his power isn't going to satisfy that, even if he's got a note on his character sheet that somewhere offscreen there's a kingdom full of subjects in awe of his power.

Solution 3 - The player achieves the power they crave, but that power is threatened by something which just so happens to hook them into the next adventure. "You've taken over Moldania, but the entire kingdom is now threatened by the ancient destroyer of worlds. To stop him you must reclaim the macguffin found across the world, and none of your minions are remotely strong enough to do it for you."

This seems to me to be the best solution in some ways, but its also pretty unwieldy. For all that one can finagle a way to get the player onboard with the adventure, when he's not on that adventure, he's going to be completely disconnected from everyone else, and probably eager to spend time fleshing out and RPing his newfound power in a way that can easily be time consuming for the DM, and mind-numbingly boring for everyone else.

In short, none of the solutions I've hit upon seem to really do the trick.

I realize that, from a certain point of view, an even better solution might be to simply nix the player's desire to play that sort of character from the get-go if I'm not interested in constructing an entire campaign around catering to it. But, while I might do this if I saw no other way, if possible I'd like to figure out some other way to accomodate their concept without breaking the campaign.

Among other reasons, I have a number of good gaming friends who are "roots for the villain even n Disney movies" types who don't really seem to like any fictional characters who are more morally upright than, say, Raistlin. Playing straightforward heroes isn't something they're going to enjoy. However, most of my other gaming friends are, as I said, pretty straightforward heroic fantasy types who probably won't enjoy a villainous campaign or something otherwise built around catering to the ambitions of a would-be despot. Simply put, it'd be a lot better for all involved if we could figure out a way to satisfy everyone, somehow accomodating both power mad Rob and heroic Jim in the same campaign.

Any ideas for how one would do this?

Rob takes over the kingdom, with Jim and Dave as trusted advisors. Rob begins making the "reforms" he's been dreaming of, turning Moldania into a conquering power that threatens to engulf its neighbors. At this point there are several ways the campaign can go:

1. Rob becomes a co-driver of the storyline. He sends Jim and Dave (and maybe another adventuring character of his own, since his wizard is busy ruling now) on diplomatic, spying, military and relic-acquisition missions, chosen from a menu of opportunities and threats provided by you, the GM. Most of the wizard's playing is now done between tabletop sessions, by email. He casts rituals to teleport the party and divines for information, but never gets out and casts fireballs at monsters any more.

2. Rob's rule becomes increasingly oppressive, and Jim and Dave find themselves unable to support him any more. This is the direction the campaign would take if it were a novel, but to play it out requires mature players and some out of game discussion about whether the players want to go there. Because the most satisfying ending at this point is for Rob to become corrupt and cruel, and for Jim and Dave to oppose and eventually defeat him. This begins as a player vs player scenario, but can be leavened by, as above, letting Rob make a new character - ideally a victim of Rob's despotism - to join them. Now Rob is playing against himself, and though it could go either way, likely his wizard ruler will become increasingly an NPC/ plot device. If this happens gradually enough, with his occasional input still sought, the game could have a great tragic/heroic ending, with Rob facing his former comrades and justifying himself just before they (including Rob 2) regretfully blow him away.

If Rob wants to end up playing a wargame or politics/diplomacy boardgame, then I don't have any suggestions.

If Rob wants to keep playing fairly standard D&D, then you need adventures that let Rob exercise his PC's power - so adventures where (for example) he is able to send a squadron or army to do XYZ, where XYZ is not actually played out at the table (ie we don't switch from D&D to wargaming) but where the decision to XYZ or not makes a difference to how things at the table do play out (eg if the army is invading the neighbours, then the neighbours' castle has its population depleted, which facilitates Rob's raid).

If it becomes important not only to have Rob initiate XYZ, but to randomly resolve the success of XYZ, then use Rob's skills (Diplomacy, Profession (Government), perhaps a skill challenge in 4e) rather than the stats of the army/squadron. In effect, Rob's PC's army becomes part of his equipment/resources (and this needs to be factored into wealth by level or similar reward guidelines).

I think the real challenge here is not building adventures for Rob, but building adventures for the whole group of players. In the past I've done this by linking the successful exercise of power to the heroic aspect - for example, the hero is hoping to restore the kingdom's army to its former standard as the greatest and most honourable military force in the world, and this can't happen until Rob ressurects the kingdom from its current decay and inaction.

As OnPugetSound suggests, this sort of game has a natural endpoint, where the goals of power and heroism can no longer be reconciled. Playing that out will require maturity and co-operation from the players in question. In D&D 4e terms, I'd try to link it to the Destiny Quest issue - at the climax, unless the players can come up with some pretty clever reconciliation of their PCs' opposed orientations, only the hero or Rob realises his epic destiny.

In play, I've found that players will work hard to make a degree of reconciliation possible. And the vicissitudes of play will also make a difference. Some examples from the high level RM game I GMed where this sort of issue was highly relevant: the player more heroically-oriented anti-slavery PC was also keen to achieve political power in his home city, in part so that he could implement his political agenda and in part so he could overcome his own low-status birth - this gave him a reason to cooperate with the power-seeking PC, who could deliver that power. A long run of bad luck, which cost this PC a lot of treasure spent on healing, items etc also left him in debt, which further cemented his reliance on the power-seeing PC. On the other hand, when the power-PC's patron turned out to be a racial supremacist, the power-PC secrety opposed this particular aspect of his patron's policy, thereby keeping faith with the more heroic PC - he was able to reconcile this with his power goals on the basis that (i) racial supremacism is inefficient from the point of view of amassing power, and (ii) he was going to have to turn on his patron eventually anyway, so a little bit of a headstart was a good trial run.

If the players won't cooperate together in this sort of way, or if the GM isn't prepared to let the players take the lead in setting the tone and direction of the game (eg the GM wants to use heavily prescripted modules, an adventure path, etc) then I'm not sure that it can work. In that situation you're better off being up front to Rob at the start, I think, and explaining that power fantasies are off the agenda for this campaign.

Funny how it is always the wizard class that attracts this type of player, as it does in your example.

Looking back at the old Greyhawk campaign featuring Tenser, Mordenkainen et al, you notice they all went this way. Perhaps because its a natural extension of DnD's wargaming roots. Entering the political "level" of play seems like a natural thing once you achieve a certain level of power. The response taken in that campaign is that the political level of play is not a power vacuum - there are older, more established players already there. Sort of like your third solution, I guess, only these power players mostly act behind the scenes, thus never forcing you to leave the kingdom.

A big problem with such a setup is the leveling speed of 3E/4E. When you level up every four sessions or so, no enemy can keep pace unless they also level up at the same rate. Introducing Mordenkainen as a check on a player's ambition only works until they kick his ass. Political machinations become a lot less appealing when you can just clear out a dungeon and outlevel your adversaries, then kick their butt without bothering with intrigue. So if you want this kind of game, I suggest you reduce leveling speed at high levels.

Another problem is when different players have different expectations. If two of your players want to face the next dungeon and the third wants to build an empire, there is a collision of interest among the players. Sit down and talk about it and about what you're all expecting from the game. Perhaps the first two will be happy as generals and hitmen of the empire builder, or perhaps the empire building character needs to retire to run his empire and the player take up a more adventuresome hero.

Have you tried putting Rob in charge of something?

Pathfinder's Kingmaker for instance puts PCs in charge of building and running a kingdom (at least starting with the 2nd module).

I've also ran one campaign, and I'm running it again with a new group, where the PCs are "in charge" of a colony (the primary diplomats/troubleshooters/elite security). They have authority, and they are representatives of the colony, and thus have the responsibility of taking care of the citizenry.

In both cases, the cleric will be motivated to make the lives of the citizens better/save them if they are threatened/so on. The fighter will no doubt get to slay many things that threaten the organization the PCs are over. And Rob gets his authority fix, being able to call the shots.

You still have adventures. You still get to deal with things. The PCs are the biggest, baddest guys in the community, that's why they're running the show, and that's why the community depends on them to take care of it.

Solution 3 does seem to be the best option, it basically works like the original series of Star Trek with Rob's PC as Captain Kirk. Even though he's in charge of a starship, he always beams down and gets into fist fights with lizardmen.

My group has exactly the same problem. There are a couple of players - Chris and John - who love to be leaders of organisations while the rest of us don't care for it. I particularly dislike it in fact. When Chris GMs the PCs are forever being given responsibility - we've been in charge of a crime gang and whole fleets of pirate ships. One session we had to run a hotel in Sigil.

In the last game I ran, which was superhero, John's first PC was a member of a Sapphire & Steel/MI6-type organisation. His second went even further and was a space captain from a Warhammer 40K-type galactic star empire. That's John.

The problems with this are two-fold, I find:
1) The leader player gets to talk too much. He just takes up too much table time dealing with organisation stuff, while the other players aren't involved. This was the case with the Sapphire & Steel org, which was highly secret ofc. I can see how a more public organisation can work better as the other players can get involved in it. But what if, like me, they don't want to?
2) The leader PC has too much power compared to the non-leader PCs. This can be solved by making the important parts of the game revolve around high powered man-to-man combat, which is traditional in D&D. But otoh there is the LotR/First Fantasy Campaign tradition of the culmination of a campaign being a huge battle with thousands of troops. And there's still the problem of the leader PC being too potent out of combat, with his spies and so forth.

What does Rob's player want from the game btw? How does he envisage gameplay continuing once he's a ruler? Will the other PCs be involved?

Doug McCrae said:

What does Rob's player want from the game btw? What's his vision of continuing gameplay once he's a ruler?

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This is a good question. Have you talked to Rob?

Another solution would actually be basically doing some side gaming with Rob. Granted, schedules might not permit. But giving Rob some minor authority and letting him do it outside of Party Time might fulfill Rob's needs.