D&D 5E (2014) I Am SO Over The "Rootless Vagabond" Archetype

[Hussar]

The 3e Affiliation Rules weren't a bad way to go either. From the PHB 2. Nice crunchy system for dealing with affiliations without getting to bogged down in minutia.

 

[dd.stevenson]

I think part of my confusion is that I don't have a clear view of what is "screwing them" and what is just part of what you sign up for when you play a game of heroic action. PCs are in a constant state of threat, and if the antagonists aren't slackers, so is everything else. At what point have we done something too awful?

I prefer to approach the question with the attitude that the character's background is just as sacrosanct as any other part of the character sheet. Would I allow the villain to steal 2 points from their strength score and prepare to sacrifice it as part of an evil ritual? Well, maybe, but there would need to be a clear sequence of PLAYER decisions that brought this to pass. I would never just spring that on a player, without at the very least giving them multiple warnings that such a thing was in the works, and allowing them the chance to intervene before forcing them to use their character stats as adventure stakes.

The same with the players family, friends, and other background stuff.

This is obviously a fairly conservative approach, and some players won't mind if you play a bit looser with their background. But, when in doubt, this is the attitude that I consider "best practice", as it's the least likely to end up with a sense of having been screwed.

 

[pemerton]

I in fact played a superhero game where our characters were working for the government. And I thought it was such a cool idea until I played two of the games, where it was just used for railroading purposes and nothing else.

I've seen a lot of "railroading" by the government in super hero games. It's not that the DM is necessarily trying to railroad things, it's just a fairly common conception of how the government works. The government is paying for the team, so someone in the government orders someone else to order someone else to order the PCs to do something. It seems to be a fairly common element of the genre.

I think a large part of why players don't want their PCs working for large organizations is simply that we get so much of that in our real lives

<snip>

D&D is a chance to leave all that behind and enter a world where nobody can tell you what to do, where any problem can be solved with a cunning mind and a sharp sword.

I think that the truer Dausuul's point, the more attractive the "rootless vagabond" becomes to the players.

But I think there are approaches to working with big organisations that can ameliorate some of the issues.

If the problem is railroading, well that is a metagame issue. You can solve that without having to change the ingame situation: that is, it can be true in the fiction that the organisation is giving the PCs orders, without that meaning that, at the table, the GM is railroading the players via directives from NPCs. The easiest way to do this is to have the NPCs tell the PCs to do the stuff that the players want to do anyway!
[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], upthread, gave one exampe of how this sort of approach can be taken up mechanically. But even without clever mechanics like that you can still take this sort of approach. The last time I ran a campaign in which the PCs worked for a big organisation (the Imperial Government of the Great Kindgom in Greyhawk) it was done through a combination of metagame - as GM I had the organisation assign tasks to the PCs that they wanted to do anyway, and it had overall objectives that fit more-or-less with the objectives the players had for their PCs - and ingame - the PCs were relatively high level and powerful, and so had a reasonable amount of influence on the organisation's policy.

When taking this approach there is also nothing to stop the GM using the organisation as a source of adversity for the PCs - there can be rival factions in the organisation, and their missions for their faction bring them into conflict with the aspirations and activities of other eements within the organisation. This helps immersion - the organisation is not just an extension of the PCs, and is not monolithic - without railroading.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So I'm beginning to understand why people have kind of a visceral "eeeehhh...." reaction when the issue of organizations or suchlike is brought up. I'd wonder how a game that wanted to use that more could overcome those reactions? How can we make organizations that characters WANT to join? That are useful, used, not abused, and attractive? That are not coercive?
[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] 's idea from Atomic Robo is a curious place to start, if a little too meta for me in practice. How could those who prefer the rootless vagabond be persuaded to adopt something else, if even for a single campaign?

 

[dd.stevenson]

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION] 's idea from Atomic Robo is a curious place to start, if a little too meta for me in practice. How could those who prefer the rootless vagabond be persuaded to adopt something else, if even for a single campaign?

Just throw in that the organization has a members-only magic item shop. That'll learn 'em.

 

[BigVanVader]

I'd only join an organization if it was the nWo.

ORRR, the nWo Wolfpack.

 

[KarinsDad]

So I'm beginning to understand why people have kind of a visceral "eeeehhh...." reaction when the issue of organizations or suchlike is brought up. I'd wonder how a game that wanted to use that more could overcome those reactions? How can we make organizations that characters WANT to join? That are useful, used, not abused, and attractive? That are not coercive?

These are the pertinent questions.

As I mentioned earlier, I try to do it by a) only using them if the players seem interested (I introduce the organizations, but they have to show interest), b) be light handed in the requests that the organization makes to the PCs (which could also be as pemerton mentioned by having the organization make requests for things the players already want to do), and c) often have the organizations as allies as opposed to the PCs being members (unless the players want the PCs to be members).

 

[Umbran]

Not a big fan of "oops" rules. Kind of glad 5E only has a few of those (like a few rerolls).

Don't confuse my narrative explanation for it being an Oops rule. When I explained it, perhaps it looked like the narrative gets rewritten after the fact. That's not how it works in play.

In play, the players know there is some amount of damage coming in. They simply put it where they want it - Each character can take so many levels of Stress, and can take Consequences on top of that. The organization can also take Consequences. It is like saying each PC has their own pouch of gold, and the party also collectively keeps a War Chest to draw upon when someone needs extra cash. It isn't an Oops Rule, it is just another resource.

In addition, the Consequences the Organization takes will have meaning in future play. It isn't like the players can have the Org take the damage for them, and they can just ignore it and not care in the future. Organizations can change their fundamental nature through this system.

 

[KarinsDad]

Don't confuse my narrative explanation for it being an Oops rule. When I explained it, perhaps it looked like the narrative gets rewritten after the fact. That's not how it works in play.

In play, the players know there is some amount of damage coming in.

No, I understand. It's how one views different rule mechanics. Being able to move damage off of the characters and to an organization doesn't really make sense. Hence, the reason I view it as an "oops" rule. The PCs would be dead without the rule and the rule only makes sense from a metarule perspective, not an in character perspective. The characters do not think that they are moving the damage from one pot to another, the players are.

 

[BigVanVader]

It also makes sense from a narrative perspective, as the heroes randomly dying from a random missile, and not from something like a final battle with the evil boss himself, also doesn't make sense.