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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Numion" data-source="post: 3902184" data-attributes="member: 124">Hi, just musing here about the nature of D&D..Most of my experience with D&D is about foolhardy adventurers that go on adventures for the personal gain in power and wealth. Adventurers also seem to enjoy the thrill of combat; kicking ass seems to be a value in itself. The premise for most adventures is that some evil has risen / has been recently noticed / bad stuff happens, and evil has to be vanquished. In essence, to do good. In this sense the goals of the adventure (vanquish evil / save the commoners or natural order of things) and adventuring (gaining personal power and wealth, kicking ass) are somewhat divergent. Kicking evil behind seems to be the common factor. Due to the divergent goals of the adventure and the ones executing the adventure, there's also divergence in the results. Most of the time it's minor - if the adventurers aren't complete dicks, the net effect of pursuing personal power and kicking ass will result in completion of the adventure with minimal negative consequences. In short, good has been done, whatever the motives were.Sometimes the nature of the adventure and adventurers clash more. For example, we were playing Banewarrens (spoilers will follow) where the premise is to enter a long-sealed warehouse (dungeon, really) of evil magical items that somebody had opened, find out whats the deal, and seal it again. Now, that was the adventures idea. We went in as neutral aligned adventurers, into a warehouse full of magic items - hmm .. we started to crack open the storerooms, bagged the items as we went, and later sold them to highest bidder. We did 'complete' adventure. The evil people who opened the Banewarrens were killed, and the place was sealed again. However, a large portion of the Banes were now outside of the secure storage    <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" /> We even forgot to put one really bad item* we couldn't even sell back inside before sealing the place. We secretly threw it in the Ptolus river gorge. Problem solved - but that was just us being dicks, and not wanting to lose face in front of the people that hired us for the job.Well, never send a goat to watch cabbage patch (or hows that in english). Also, there's been some instances where a place X has been run over by evil humanoids, and we're tasked in exterminating them so the rightful owners can return. In executing the adventure the PCs have without second thought looted the original inhabitants' (who hired them for the task, no less) remaining valuables. If questioned on this, sometimes we've returned some of the stuff, and sometimes made excuses and kept the stuff. While I consider the Banewarrens stuff (selling evil items) as neutral, this is a bit more iffy. Not outright evil, since without the adventurers the valuables would've been gone forever anyway.It's collateral damage, when the motivation is to loot and gain power. Then there's the stuff that's evil. Once the PCs wnated to sell a Deck of Many Things. I was the DM, and decided to make it a bit more difficult, and decided the buyer wanted proof it really was a Deck of Many Things. So the PCs fetch a beggar, invite the buyer (a Red Wizard of Thay) to watch, and promise the beggar 50 gp if he announces he's taking three cards and takes them - without telling the beggar of the life threatening nature of the Deck. The beggar lost his most prized possession, gained a powerful enemy from the abyss and gained a lot of money (which he was allowed to keep, surprisingly - I guess outright robbery is morally out, while acquiring unattended items is not  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" />).Eventually the ex-hobo, now one of the richest men in town, was so thankful to the PCs he held a big party in honor of the PCs. Later he went missing as one pissed off demon acquired  his due**. Collateral damage for pocketing 200k for the Deck.Do you have any examples of stories where the 'just doing the adventuring stuff' without much thought leads into a somewhat compromised result for the adventure? Or do you play more of a do-gooder adventurers? Do I have a too bleak view of adventurers .. I do find China Mievilles characterization of adventurers the best one yet <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Share your stories or opinions! * Don't bring an active undead generator to your townhouse. It's a mess.** The PCs had taken a liking to the ex-hobo, and investigated his disappearance, finally bringing him back from the abyss, vanquishing a Demon Lord of one layer in the process.</blockquote>

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