Alternatives to "Save the World"

[Walknot]

Prevent the party's Alienist wizard from consummating his marriage to the Lethe-dipped spawn of Baalzebuul who is unknowingly masquerading as a pretty halfling girl who is unaware of her true form: a giant maggoty-beetle thing.

Are you talking OOG here?

 

[Toben the Many]

One of the best campaigns I ever ran was a Ravenloft campaign in which the PCs saved a village. That was it.

What made the campaign have a cinematic and "full" feel was that throughout the campaign, they got to know all of the families of the village and the people who ran it. So once the campaign was over, the victory felt that much more potent, because they knew each and every person that they had saved. And those people came up to them and were able to say, "Thank you. You saved us."

In fact, it made the end of the campaign rather touching.

 

[roguerouge]

Make a better world. Fight corruption. Better the lives of the commoners somehow. Build lasting humanizing institutions.

Be the best at something trivial. Build the best tavern, for instance. Maybe that means traveling around the globe to find new recipes, ingredients, and things to put on the wall. Maybe you decide you want to make your tavern travel the planes and serve exotic customers.

Wage a crusade against a single foe. I've often thought it'd be amusing to making a goal of exterminating goblins from the world, for instance.

Prevent a war. This could involve lots of intrigue, espionage, assassinations, sagotage, influence, etc.

Colonize the moon. With magic it'd probably be possible.

Create a zoo. Seek out exotic new species to dominate and bring them to your menagerie.

Run a city/barony.

All excellent ideas.

 

[roguerouge]

I think that my next campaign is going to have the PCs be part of a colonizing party on a newly discovered continent.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I like the angle of 'get the players involved in the campaign world' that has been mentioned above. It works, no matter what you do. Have NPCs, organisations, nations (and nationlaism) that that the players get into. Doesn't matter what you do then, they'll be invested in the story and enjoy it that much more. It takes a bit of work to get everyone to the place where this will happen but its well worth the effort.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

They, the PCs, could set out to destroy the world.

Make a better world.
Be the best at something trivial.
Wage a crusade against a single foe.
Prevent a war.
Colonize the moon.
Create a zoo.
Re-colonize "Moria."
Run a city/barony.

Edit: Most DMs, or GMs if you prefer, do not allow a party to accomplish any of the things you describe here. With at least three or four of the former GMs I’ve played under, it was purely a matter of the PCs were just supposed to be killers and destroyers, doing the bidding and suffering the abuse of the GM – and that was all. Any attempt to do anything else was at least sabotaged. The inn and tavern we bought was burnt to the ground, “to keep us adventuring” said the GM. “Good aligned” NPCs stopped us from distributing blankets and food to poor people in winter because “that was not our job.”

Further, most of these other things are not supported by the DMG or PH. However, being mass murderers, thieves, butchers and all-round destroyers of everything they can… well, that is supported by the books.

--Save yourselves; watch the world burn.
--Destroy the world yourselves.
--Save the world... so you can crush it under your boot and rule it with blood and iron.
--Kill even bigger, more powerful things and take their stuff; who cares about the world?
--Epic ale and whores.

That is what the game is about. That is what people do at their most honest.

 

[Greg K]

High level epic games are also lame.

No, its DND above levels 10-12 in all edtions that's lame (4e included) ;P

 

[Greg K]

Saving the world is fine. The key is not to force it on the players as the direction for the campaign.

If the PCs discover the threat as the campaign progresses, then let them decide whether to investigate and stop it. If they choose to ignore the threat, that is fine too. Let someone else, if anyone, attempt to deal with it and let the PCs go their own way and focus on their own interests.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

The key is not to force it on the players as the direction for the campaign.

Based on experience, the job of a DM is to force a plot of the players and to dictate the direction of a campaign.

Give how many people are josing for post-apoco stuff, and given that the world is a rotten place full of horrible people, why not let it die and make a buck off of it?

 

[Greg K]

Based on experience, the job of a DM is to force a plot of the players and to dictate the direction of a campaign.

Give how many people are josing for post-apoco stuff, and given that the world is a rotten place full of horrible people, why not let it die and make a buck off of it?

The best experience that I had was not forcing the players to save the world, but allowing them to decide to do so on their own. I always let the players choose where the characters were going based on their motivations (the exception being the first adventure when I brought them together,. However, it was still done using the backgrounds and motivations of the individual characters and threading them together).

Along the way, the party occassionally encountered undead or a plague. However, they party pretty much ignored following up on the undead and the plague. Oh, they would destroy the undead creatures and cure townspeople if they encountered them. They just never went out of their way to investigate it. They were too busy following other things that they deemed more important.

That is until they realized the plague and undead were spreading towards their homelands. Suddenly, the players had their characters abandon other plotlines to save their homes and NPCs that they had deemed were important to them.

Discovering that an enemy that they had made earlier in the campaign and everyone had grown to hate was behind the plague and undead just fueled their desire to stay on the path.

Now, when questioned by the players as to why I didn't force them to investigate the plague and undead, I replied that I wanted the players to decide on their own if and when it was important. I was willing to let the players continue on any path they chose even if it meant that campaign setting be completely altered. This took them by surprise, but they really liked the idea.