D&D 5E I Am SO Over The "Rootless Vagabond" Archetype

[I'm A Banana]

Why would you want to join the thief's guild? A thief's guild arranges protection rackets and organized bribery of constables in exchange for a healthy cut of the profits. (And criminal organizations don't pay well; coke dealers have quit to work at McDonald's, because it pays better.) An adventuring thief has little need of their services and little desire to get entangled in whatever they're doing, or paying their fees. Maybe your view of a thief's guild is more cheerful but it just doesn't have the ring of a noble order or wizard's guild.

Perhaps this is a more fundamental breakdown, but it always struck me that any broader organization gives the player all sorts of benefits!

For a thieves' guild helping out the rogue in particular, you're looking at....

• Access to fences for treasure recovered from the local dungeon that might otherwise be hard to unload.
• Access to sellers for things like thieves' tools and forgery kits that wouldn't be available at your local goods shop.
• Contacts that can provide leads to great treasure, knowledge of "jobs that need to be done".
• Useful NPC hirelings like court advocates, bribe-able town guard members, corrupt city officials, and guys "on the inside" in prisons and the like.
• Training in skills and tools relevant to their profession (stealth, thieves' tools, traps, daggers, etc.).
• Contact with magic-item procurement and crafters that are friendly to thieves and rogues.

...among other things.

So overall, as a gamer, my preference as player and DM is to let the ties between the PCs and the setting emerge organically from play.

That makes some sense, I guess I just see the order of operations a bit differently -- the PC should already have a reason they're going on adventures and a connection to the game world because their character already would, from 1st level, from their initial appearance. That gives me the stuff I need as a DM to make adventures that interest that specific character, rather than Generic Adventurer #64.

 

[fuindordm]

It would be frustrating for me also as a DM if none of the PCs bit on any of the setting-rich bait I was laying out, and preferred to remain rootless. It is hard to build a satisfying story around that. But as long as a couple of PCs bite, and the rest are happy to go along with the more story-driven characters, then it works out fine.

 

[MasterTrancer]

Why would you want to join the thief's guild? A thief's guild arranges protection rackets and organized bribery of constables in exchange for a healthy cut of the profits. (And criminal organizations don't pay well; coke dealers have quit to work at McDonald's, because it pays better.) An adventuring thief has little need of their services and little desire to get entangled in whatever they're doing, or paying their fees. Maybe your view of a thief's guild is more cheerful but it just doesn't have the ring of a noble order or wizard's guild.

Well, what about the thieves in the Guild? Are they willing to part with some of their profits and still do nothing? Won't the Guild enforcers go after the rogue Rogue (pun intended)? Associations come with both perks and fees, if freelancers are allowed to work untouched then the Guild has no sense to exist whatsoever.

Just my little intervention

 

[MasterTrancer]

On to the OP: I prefer to master (and play) PCs with some background; they give me a sense of fullness within the setting, motivates them and give a broader scope to the adventures (but then again I prefer sandbox campaigns to so-called Adventure Paths, and I think the two things are different sides of the same coin).

Given that, I won't tear my hairs out for the lack of backgrounds, but I definitely encourage them (and will, in my soon-to-start comeback campaign).

 

[Quartz]

Short of the amnesiac, even vagabonds have roots. Where were they born? Who helped them grow up? How did they learn to be what they are now? Why did they leave? Why do they keep moving?

 

[Dausuul]

A little story.

A few months ago, one of the guys in my group decided to run a one-shot adventure. The plan was to go maybe 2-3 sessions. I created a character who was pretty much the textbook example of a Rootless Vagabond PC: Loyal to his friends, hated the rest of the world, no ties, motivated mostly by personal gain. To spice things up a bit, I gave him an evil alignment. I figured on playing devil's advocate, challenging my good-aligned companions to defend their beliefs by urging cold-blooded, expedient solutions to our problems.

Well, I advocated a little too well. Turns out my companions weren't all that committed to being good guys. Between me pushing the party to deal ruthlessly with obstacles, and a couple of the other PCs being chaotic instigator types, we shot the DM's planned adventure straight to hell. What started out as a fairly scripted one-shot has morphed into an ongoing sandbox campaign, with the party more or less charting its own course. And now I am scrambling to retrofit my character with a back story and goals.

So, what changed? Why did I create a rootless vagabond at first, and now I'm writing up a back story? Simple: Now, back story matters. In a one-shot adventure, there's not a lot of point devising a back story, because you know what's going to happen. The DM is going to present you with a mission. You're going to accept the mission. You're going to go on the mission. Coming up with back story reasons to go on the mission is a meaningless exercise--it doesn't affect anything. But in a sandbox campaign, your character's decisions make a difference. If you want to pursue your nemesis across the earth instead of diving into the dungeon of the week, that's what you do. If you don't have goals, you're going to either sit around doing nothing, or tag boringly after the PCs who do have goals.

To get players to invest in back story, you have to give them a reason to. Most of us aren't all that excited about writing up back story just for the sake of doing it. If we're going to be going on the same dungeon crawl regardless, why bother? Might as well stick with the tried and true: "Wander around, kill some sentient creatures because they have green skin and fangs and we don't, and then take their stuff." It's only worth coming up with goals if you have the freedom to pursue them.

 

[MasterTrancer]

A little story.

A few months ago, one of the guys in my group decided to run a one-shot adventure. The plan was to go maybe 2-3 sessions. I created a character who was pretty much the textbook example of a Rootless Vagabond PC: Loyal to his friends, hated the rest of the world, no ties, motivated mostly by personal gain. To spice things up a bit, I gave him an evil alignment. I figured on playing devil's advocate, challenging my good-aligned companions to defend their beliefs by urging cold-blooded, expedient solutions to our problems.

Well, I advocated a little too well. Turns out my companions weren't all that committed to being good guys. Between me pushing the party to deal ruthlessly with obstacles, and a couple of the other PCs being chaotic instigator types, we shot the DM's planned adventure straight to hell. What started out as a fairly scripted one-shot has morphed into an ongoing sandbox campaign, with the party more or less charting its own course. And now I am scrambling to retrofit my character with a back story and goals.

So, what changed? Why did I create a rootless vagabond at first, and now I'm writing up a back story? Simple: Now, back story matters. In a one-shot adventure, there's not a lot of point devising a back story, because you know what's going to happen. The DM is going to present you with a mission. You're going to accept the mission. You're going to go on the mission. Coming up with back story reasons to go on the mission is a meaningless exercise--it doesn't affect anything. But in a sandbox campaign, your character's decisions make a difference. If you want to pursue your nemesis across the earth instead of diving into the dungeon of the week, that's what you do. If you don't have goals, you're going to either sit around doing nothing, or tag boringly after the PCs who do have goals.

To get players to invest in back story, you have to give them a reason to. Most of us aren't all that excited about writing up back story just for the sake of doing it. If we're going to be going on the same dungeon crawl regardless, why bother? Might as well stick with the tried and true: "Wander around, kill some sentient creatures because they have green skin and fangs and we don't, and then take their stuff." It's only worth coming up with goals if you have the freedom to pursue them.

Exactly my point of view.

Well said Dausuul

 

[ExploderWizard]

The lack of attachments by people who engage in dangerous activities is a classic staple. Who wants a family when they are busy doing things that may get them killed or worse, their family killed?

Aside from that, there are other reasons why players may not connect themselves to the game world. Some of these reasons might be connected to system issues. A rules heavy game tends to encourage interaction with the rules instead of the setting. Players fixate on their builds and what their characters are mechanically capable of because the system rewards that. A better built mousetrap means more success in the game. What does getting connected to the setting gain the player? A rules oriented player is going to be concerned with the results to be gained by applying diplomacy, intimidation, and so forth because experience tells them that these interactions produce results but just conversing with NPCs and building relationships don't. If you add to this, the absence of support for acquiring followers, and building keeps, temples, towers, and the like, perpetual murderhobos is what you get.

If you as a DM require interaction with the setting to enable successful play then more players are going to do it. This happens more naturally in rules light systems without builds. Randomly generated stats and class choice provide little to no mechanical customization, which can be a GOOD thing when you realize that characters can only individualize themselves through their interactions with the setting, thus providing a compelling motive to do so. The player playing Fytor the fighter can sit back and be generic or make his/her character memorable not by choosing rules mechanics from a list, but by the connections and relationships formed through playing in the setting.

If players have the rules to engage with and are perfectly happy with just that, the setting won't matter.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

This is interesting because it meshes with my impression that this may be a table-level style thing more than a player-level thing. Some DMs/campaigns have no need and no patience for anything more than a party of murderhobos, the less they talk about themselves the better, and that can certainly be a fun game. But I find myself wanting a bit more these days than Joe the Fighter in the games I have that lean more toward a narrative (meaning, with only an outside chance of permanent PC death). Joe's fine, but part of my fun as a player and a DM is digging into the flavor nuggets the setting offers, and for one year of play, Joe's lacking in depth and complexity.

Its a player/table thing. None of us are looking for more than fun adventure gaming. We do role-play but we aren't playing D&D to examine the issue of a particular campaign world or stuff like that. The players are looking to overcome obstacles, be they traps, orcs, puzzles, or even figuring out how to talk an NPC into doing something they need him to do. None of the players or myself are interested into trying to tell a detailed story from the get go, though one always arises form the results of play. So things like the social issues of a PC's background aren't a focus, getting up the nerve to rappel down into the foul pit of hell is. Not to say such things can never come into play but they are rarely the primary focus.

We are old school hack and slashers at heart I suppose.

 

[Umbran]

Perhaps this is a more fundamental breakdown, but it always struck me that any broader organization gives the player all sorts of benefits!

My thermodynamics professor was very clear on something: There is no such a thing as a free lunch.

Yes, you get benefits, but those benefits have some cost. The association comes with responsibilities. The players are likely used to fiction, where any association with an organization winds up being a plot hook/detriment for the character, rather than a strength. Basically - they're afraid the GM will use it to screw them.