Piracy And Other Malfeasance

[payn]

I'm a little surprised there's any doubt D&D player characters are supposed to be heroes in the modern sense of the word. At least the entire time I've been playing D&D it's been about good player characters "Kicking butt for goodness," as Minsc would say.

I miss the open options that came with alignment and the PCs starting out as average Joes and not the fantasy justice league.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Assassin is one of the crew types¹. There’s also a cult crew type. We played an assassin crew that eventually started leaning into the occult. Note that a “score” is more than just a heist. It’s closer in scope to “adventure”. We did steal a few things, but most of our 60+ scores were about other things (killing people or factions, negotiations, kidnappings, etc). We also caused a few plagues (though I think those were accidental or a product of circumstances).

Were we “bad guys”? Perhaps to some. We generally treated our friends and allies pretty well. The game was about struggling to survive and fighting for power. Sometimes, that’s not going to be pretty. If you want to be “good”, then you have to do things that would be considered good. It’s not a given. The basic structure of the game is to put that to the test, so you can see who the characters really are.

---

[1]: There are six crew types (plus myriads of third party ones): assassins, bravos (mercenaries and thugs), cult, hawkers (vice dealers), shadows (thieves and spies), and smugglers.

I think this is one of the reasons I like Blades in the Dark, and games like it, so much. The world isn't really divided so easily into "good" and "evil". While there are certainly characters whose behavior can be described as one or the other at times, most of the people in the setting are just people. They're trying to get by in their messed up world.

Spire is similar... the PCs are all members of a clandestine group of insurrectionists, and their overall cause is just... but how far will they go for that cause? The game has a tighter premise than just "adventurers", and yet it generally yields a wider array of character journeys.

Where do some of you feel that "shades of gray" end and turn to black?

I think it depends. Of course everyone has different thresholds for these kinds of things. In our game of The Between, both @Campbell 's and my character have done some very questionable things. But both have also done good things. Do the good deeds outweigh the bad? I don't know... I think my thoughts of my character have shifted as the game has gone on. I began thinking of her as a victim, but as her past as come to light, we've learned that she's at least as much to blame for her situation.

I think this works when this kind of thing... a character's struggle against themselves... is the intended focus of play. The game's not really about hunting monsters, when you get down to it.

A protagonist is a character whose dramatic needs drive the story forward. A protagonist may be a hero, and hero can be used to refer to a (kind of) protagonist, but I wouldn’t use the two interchangeably.

Like I said before in post #62, my Blades in the Dark character was no hero. I would not describe the PCs in my campaign as heroes either. They’re adventures who ultimately want to loot the fallen capital. To force either into a heroic narrative would be overly reductive, and I fear it would rob the characters (PCs and NPCs alike) of depth.

Yeah, they definitely shouldn't be used interchangeably.

It's all a matter of preference, but I'm glad there are games that push things in a different direction than what's being put forth as the norm in this thread. I mean, there is a place for "good vs. evil" fiction and gaming, of course, but I don't think everything should fall into that bucket.

 

[MGibster]

I miss the open options that came with alignment and the PCs starting out as average Joes and not the fantasy justice league.

That would be prior to 1989, right? I know where you're coming from though. FASA introduced the clans to Battletech circa 1991 and I only just recognized them late in 2023.

 

[MGibster]

It's all a matter of preference, but I'm glad there are games that push things in a different direction than what's being put forth as the norm in this thread. I mean, there is a place for "good vs. evil" fiction and gaming, of course, but I don't think everything should fall into that bucket.

I'm in agreement. While I prefer my D&D games to be G vs. E, I don't want all my games to be D&D.

 

[Umbran]

Pretty much every time a thread about evil characters comes up, there'll inevitably be posts in it along the lines of "We play heroes because that's what the game tells us to do".

So, setting aside how you have quietly slid from talking about marketing to what they game tells us to do. Also setting aside how pre-emptively insulting people as a rhetorical tool is lame...

Do you regularly use d100s for to-hit rolls? Or do you do what the game tells you to do?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm in agreement. While I prefer my D&D games to be G vs. E, I don't want all my games to be D&D.

Though you don't have to be D&D-centric to prefer to lean toward the white-hat side. I do the latter and I've played in one D&D game in the last quarter century.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'm in agreement. While I prefer my D&D games to be G vs. E, I don't want all my games to be D&D.

Tangent: G vs E was such a fun show.

 

[Lanefan]

So, setting aside how you have quietly slid from talking about marketing to what they game tells us to do.

In this case I'm treating them as one and the same. Those "play heroes" guidelines in the post-1e PHs come from the marketing dept., not the designers; who I think would more likely just say "play characters" and leave the rest up to the end users.

Also setting aside how pre-emptively insulting people as a rhetorical tool is lame...

Do you regularly use d100s for to-hit rolls? Or do you do what the game tells you to do?

I do what the nuts-and-bolts side of the game tells me to do in order to play or run characters in the game. I don't, however, let the marketing side of the game tell me how to play or run those characters.

 

[GrimCo]

I'm a little surprised there's any doubt D&D player characters are supposed to be heroes in the modern sense of the word. At least the entire time I've been playing D&D it's been about good player characters "Kicking butt for goodness," as Minsc would say.

To be honest, personaly, never got that vibe from D&D. Even back in HS days, most of the peps i played with opted for CN. LG was only for paladins and even then, there were heavy debates about moral relativity. To be fair, even back then, we used custom home brew setting. We barley if ever touched published settings and i always found Forgotten Realms silly. Also, both of my GMs at the time ran VtM and Vampire Dark Ages games so maybe something translated to their style of DMing D&D. Dunno. Also, late 90s, early 2000s were all about that edgy cool. Playing cringe edgelords was in fashion then.

 

[Reynard]

I miss the open options that came with alignment and the PCs starting out as average Joes and not the fantasy justice league.

How can alignment be more open than without it?

And first level characters haven't been average joes since 1974.