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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 2647191" data-attributes="member: 11697">After a comment on the thread about what PrCs don't work well within a party, I had a question about one idea therein.The idea was about not allowing PrCs that had a PC do evil acts or simply be evil as a requirement, and that not fitting within the context of a so-called 'Heroic' game.What does that actually mean to those of you that go that route? Do any of you guys as a DM actively mold the tone of their campaign to exclude anything except archetypal 'good' characters, mold the plots and scenarios open to the PCs to only include fighting evil, or otherwise emphasis a role as 'heroes' for the PCs? How do you go about enforcing that tone, and what benefits and/or problems has this ever caused?For myself, I don't set an overall tone for a campaign outside of perhaps being -DARK-, but I don't specify what the PCs can be or how they'll react to that. I take what PC ideas the players present to me and then I present them with multiple plots that make sense based on who they are and where within the game world they happen to be. I guess it just seems a bit foreign to me to emphasize 'heroic' rather than 'realistic' in a game. The PCs are in a complex world that has obvious blacks and whites, but it's all floating in a gray ocean in which being a 'hero' isn't always as clearcut as superman in a superhero game. You've got the Blood War going on to starkly contrast with the Good of the upper planes, but Good isn't monolithic either. The Archons and Eladrin see one another as repugnant on the Law/Chaos axis but as beings of Good they won't butcher one another like the fiends. Then you've got raw Law and Chaos as well, and everything in between. Where does a 'hero' fit in so perfectly in there as a PC?The BBEG frequently might not be evil, and frequently might not even be wrong rather than simply opposed by another person or group, with the PCs on one side or the other. The PCs might happen to work with fiends just as often as they end up fighting them. Everything depends on what they seek out and what is there within a dynamic, very deep game world they're set within rather than a rose colored world of heros doing heroic things.For instance this past week I had one PC getting into a serious argument with a number of good aligned faiths and some evil clerics as well. Essentially the PC and his associated clergy was effectively doing too much to help the poor in a certain area of the Hive Ward in Sigil, and by extension was ruining business for some people and making other people look terrible by comparison. He had more conflict with some of the 'good' faiths in the end than the evil ones. The PC was being very heroic in a sense, and the same game session he and the other PCs accepted a job from what might have been a risen Abyssal Lord seeking to have a specific Nalfeshne abducted alive from the 400th layer of the Abyss, for a very -very- grisly fate.Some of the PCs are good, some of them are evil, most of them are neutral. Alignment has less to do with them being together than does opportunity, money, friendship, and shared goals. I won't force heroism upon the party if they don't go out of their way to seize that role. They could go white hat if they wanted, and I'd also allow them to descend into utter depravity if they so wished (heck, one of the PCs is half yugoloth).Perhaps it's a combination of how I run, what the players want, and frankly the setting. 3e Planescape, and Planescape and planar games in general, seem to be very morphic on alignment and can take and support all sorts. Other settings might, by their very nature just support PCs being heros right from the start. Dragonlance comes to mind whereas say Shadowrun just wouldn't.But back to the overall question: Do you encourage a specific tone to your campaigns to emphasize good, or even go so far as to restrict anything outside of a rubric of good and heroism? How do you do it, and why? Has it ever conflicted with what the players wanted? Has it ever seemed to not quite fit within the game world? I'm curious.</blockquote>

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