D&D 5E feeling dissatisfied - need some advice

[pukunui]

Hi folks,

Lately I've begun feeling a bit dissatisfied with certain aspects of my homebrew campaign.

First, as I am running an episodic campaign, I had envisaged the PCs wandering from place to place, from one adventure location to the next. One session they might be in a desert, while the next they're on a ship headed for a jungle or something. Unfortunately, at the start of the campaign, I gave my players the option of having a patron, and they way I set that up resulted in us basing the campaign around one location. Now that we're coming up on our twelfth individual adventure, I'm starting to feel rather limited in what adventures I can run. It would be much easier for me to be able to run adventures without having to try and shoehorn them into the little world we've built up around the PCs' starter town.

Now, admittedly, this issue is fairly easily resolved: I can just have their patron tell them they've outgrown this region and it's time for them to head out into the world. However, it gets a little more complicated when you add in the other issue I have:

Second, I had originally envisioned the campaign world as having distant gods who may or may not exist. I wanted to have religions be more like the real world - or other fantasy settings like Eberron and Game of Thrones. But now that I've got both a cleric and a paladin in the party, I'm struggling to really emphasize that idea. It's hard to say that the gods may not exist when you've got people walking around performing miracles in their names.

Yes, I know that in Eberron, clerics get their powers from the strength of their faith rather than directly from their gods, but that still doesn't quite do it for me. I'd prefer it if it was more like in Game of Thrones, where most priests don't use magic and those that do would probably be more accurately portrayed in D&D terms as sorcerers and warlocks and the like. Similar to how the various elemental cult priests are all sorcerers in Princes of the Apocalypse.

I feel like it's not a good idea to foist a whole bunch of changes on a group mid-campaign. I feel like I'd need to do a sort of "soft reboot" of the campaign world and start again, this time with no fixed location and no clerics or paladins. Unfortunately, some of my players only recently made new characters (including the paladin), and others I know are really enjoying theirs, so short of a TPK, I'm not sure how to go about changing things to ease my dissatisfaction.

Anyone got any suggestions? Anyone else ever go through this? What do you do when you aren't entirely happy with how a campaign has worked out over a period of time and you feel you want to make changes?

And yes, I have brought up these issues with my players. I just thought I'd seek some advice from my fellow DMs as well.


Thanks in advance!
- Jonathan

 

[Zardnaar]

I generally start over. It's also hard to have PCS wandering all the time as they tend to not care about the locals and NPCS as much as a new set is just around the corner.

 

[steeldragons]

I'm confused what it is you have to change...Or what your #2 issue has to do with stopping their patron from sending them further afield.

The gods are distant. Ok, so the gods are distant. You can't tell the cleric and paladin (or any of the other PCs, for that matter) that that is what they believe. They're the faithful. They "know" their deity is on "their" side. Good for the players and their RP investment in their characters' spiritual side. If the other players want to have their characters accept the cleric and paladin's characters as "proof" of the deities existence, that's for the players to decide.

You CAN have NPCs disagree with them. Laugh at, bully or otherwise persecute them. Debate, refuse to do business with them, talk smack behind their backs. Ignore them as lunatics if they want to get preachy about the reality of the gods, "Pfft. Who believes THAT anymore?" Treat them as charlatans or pariahs.

You CAN still run the campaign world the way you want to. You can have villages, kingdoms/nations, entire temples or church hierarchies (of their own deities, even, possibly) condemning and hunting them down as heretics for their "clearly supernatural and unholy associations" which fly in the face of the accepted/given religion.

All I'm seeing here is tons of fun potential for the DM of the setting...and plot hooks. SCADS of juicy plot hooks!

 

[pukunui]

I generally start over.

How do your players feel about it? My last few campaigns ended in TPKs or near-TPKs. I think they were kinda hoping this one would last the distance. To be honest, I'm not sure I can. I get bored too easily. Sometimes I even find myself getting bored of my players' PCs.

It's also hard to have PCS wandering all the time as they tend to not care about the locals and NPCS as much as a new set is just around the corner.

I'm not too worried about that, and there are ways to mitigate it, should it become a concern. (Such as making sure the PCs are generally good people who aren't likely to dick around with NPCs just because they won't ever see them again.)


EDIT: [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION]: My issue is that I feel like my campaign world would be more how I had envisioned it at the start if there were no clerics or paladins displaying divine powers. Yes, I can let them encounter people who don't believe they've got their powers from a deity, but from my perspective, as the DM, I'd rather they just didn't have those powers. But I don't want to single out the guys playing a cleric and a paladin and tell them they have to make new PCs. I'd rather start over and have everyone make new PCs, sans clerics and paladins.

 

[MechaPilot]

I've had players in a homebrew campaign settle in one location instead of wandering the world as originally intended. There are a couple of options that are available to rectify that:

1) Lure them away. This might require a significant piece of bait, perhaps one more significant than you're willing to hand out, but it's probably the least intrusive option.

2) Burn it down! The players probably won't stay in a location that is completely destroyed by an army, a dragon, a natural disaster, or some other catastrophe that destroys the location in question. This is undeniably heavy-handed, but you can also tie it into option number one by making vengeance against the destroyer(s) the lure.

3) The PCs' patron owes another NPC wealth or favors, and sends the party off to help her creditor. You could then create some kind of incentive to dissuade them from going back to the original location.

4) The patron betrays the party for some reason (which should make sense in the story you've established thus far), giving the party less incentive to stay in that location.



With regard to the deities and religion aspect, that's a bit harder. In the ubiquity of magic thread I recall posting that it's hard to make magic seem rare when you allow magic users as character choices. If you want the deities to be distant and their influence to be rare, clerics and paladins should probably not be allowed as PC choices. However, you have allowed that. So, unless you want to ask them to write up new characters that ship has sailed.

Now, that's not to say that you're screwed on this one. The influence of the gods is not going to seem rare to the players when they have a cleric and paladin among them. However, you can still play up this rarity when they perform miracles in the eyes of NPCs. A cleric who casts a divine spell in sight of average people could easily find herself overwhelmed with people proclaiming her to be a deity or a prophet who speaks with a deity, or some kind of witch/trickster who must be dealt with via mob justice.

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION]: That's why I'm leaning towards a reboot. We can start over, without any clerics or paladins.

I'm OK with druids, because that's more nature magic than magic derived from the gods. I know that by default, paladins don't have to worship a deity in 5e, but they still have things like divine senses and divine smite and such that I would prefer isn't in the game. Someone could still play a holy warrior, they just wouldn't have any divine powers to back up that claim. It would be more a roleplaying thing (eg. they could belong to an organization akin to the Knights Templar or whatever).


I just feel like a) it would be unfair to force two of my players to make new PCs when no one else has to and b) it would be too jarring to make such sudden changes in an on-going campaign. I would be much more comfortable just starting over. I'm just not sure how my players would feel about that. One of them has said he's pretty flexible and doesn't mind. Still waiting to see what the others say.

[MENTION=6788732]cbwjm[/MENTION]: The patron is actually a silver dragon posing as a half-elven innkeeper in a frontier town. The PCs also don't yet know she's a silver dragon, although some of my players suspect she might be. She has no obvious political connections. In fact, there aren't really any politics of any kind in the area we've set up. It's in the middle of a wilderness area that's not part of any kingdom or barony or anything. The town is governed by a mayor but that's as high as it goes. So the best I could do with this particular patron is have her tell them that they've done a great job making this area safe and now it's time for them to go out into the wider world.

But, this point is somewhat moot if I decide to start over.

 

[steeldragons]

Sooo, because you want to play the world you "envisioned", everyone else should make up new characters, without any clerics and paladins.

You do understand that the players are the ones that are supposed to be effecting the campaign setting, right? You understand that, from time immemorial, the players are NOT going to play the game/use the world the way the DM has envisioned, right? ...and that the way to remedy that is not to, just, declare, "DO OVER!"

How 'bout this...instead of rewriting/ruining everyone else's fun for your own satisfaction, just don't use any clerics or paladins in the world...that's your prerogative and purview, as DM.

These PCs, these two guys here, are the first/new/perhaps "only ones ever" to display divinely inspired magical powers. There, problem solved. Your gods are as distant as they come. So, now, who are these PC guys with powers?! Where'd they come from?! It can't possibly be the gods [to the common and political establishment understanding/perception]...cuz no one else, not even the Highest High King-Priest of the Church/nation of Dumdeedum can do what they do...They are/must be dangerous!

 

[pukunui]

[MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION]: So I should just suck it up and keep running a game that I'm not entirely enjoying running anymore because the players are more important than I am? I'm allowed to have fun, too, you know. And at the moment, my campaign is not feeling as fun as it was at first.

 

[steeldragons]

[MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION]: So I should just suck it up and keep running a game that I'm not entirely enjoying running anymore?

Personally, and granted solely based off of this thread, I would recommend you not DM anymore because you are not entirely enjoying it.

But, to answer your question...Yes. That's your job. To run the game for the players. You're not going to or supposed to "entirely enjoy" it. If you're just going to dump any campaign or plot because you're not "entirely enjoying it", then it's little wonder you've had a run of very short lived campaigns.

Instead of saying "I'm not liking this. You guys [the players] need to change this" I would strongly recommend you be the one to examine the situation and make the changes, in your own perceptions/expectations, to increase your enjoyment.

It's not the players' fault (as far I we've been told/I can tell) that you don't like how things are going. There's a cleric and paladin in the party...the world doesn't really acknowledge the direct presence/believe [universally] in the reality of the gods...take those things...and, yeah, "suck it up" and deal with it...as a DM.

 

[Psikerlord#]

With regard to the deities and religion aspect, that's a bit harder. In the ubiquity of magic thread I recall posting that it's hard to make magic seem rare when you allow magic users as character choices. If you want the deities to be distant and their influence to be rare, clerics and paladins should probably not be allowed as PC choices. However, you have allowed that. So, unless you want to ask them to write up new characters that ship has sailed.

sorry duplicate post