How selfish are your PCs?

[Dagger75]

I"ve seen it all.

The rogue campaign I ran the party basically pooled money. Usally they all had hidden caches of gold they kept to themselves in case of emergancy.

I am the same when I play, I will pool money but not all of it. I will always keep some for myself. You never know when you have to hire an assassin to get the money back you just threw into the party pool.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Selfish no,

Greedy yes.

Ever since finding out how much doors & shutters cost in the Stronghold Builder's guidebook, they take everything not nailed down. The the break out the crowbar & get to work.

I mean, literally they have invested in as many Bags of Holding, Portable Holes, etc as they can. In one case they took all the silverware, all the pots and pans, the marble tiles on the floor, every door they came across, a cast iron stove (with sivler engravings), paneling, chairs, desks.... I mean everything. One of these times they will think to just pull the place apart brick by brick & they'll take the whole dungeon.

Uberlich: "Ummmm, where my dungeon of despair? The one I use to lure greedy adventureres to their doom?"

Goblin Underling: "Well..... some advetures came by and stole it."

Uberlich: "All 18 levels! What about the underground sea!"

Goblin : "They were well organized boss. Just started taking it apart brick by brick. Even used spells to carve out those passageways with the carvings on it. Said something about a stable sale."

Uberlich: "Do you know how much gold it cost to build this place?"

Goblin: "The elf in the robe figured around 6 million gold pieces."

Uberlich: "How would you like a promotion to zombie?"

 

[Elf Witch]

Our group is mixed and it depends on the characters we are playing. Mostly we play middle of the road. With one or two going one way or the other.

We have had a selfish wizard who lied about what items did and kept the majority of magic items for himself to a character who would give everything she had to help someone.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

When I saw the "what's in it for me" choice I thought you must have sat in on one of my games. Too many of my players use that as their mantra - drives me nuts as it seems to be used most often to derail plot hooks.

 

[Nighthawk]

I tend to play unselfish characters in playing groups filled with middle-of-the-road characters.

Now I am wondering why. Hmm...

 

[Henry]

We have a mix of players in our group.

We have some players whose characters' selfishness or selflessness is based very much on the character. We have other players who are altruistic all the time, even when they try to play a selfish character. We have some who NEVER play altruistic characters, and whose PCs do not voluntarily set foot on the path without promise of some monetary reward.

One player we have I keep saying is the Robin Laws textbook definition of a "Power Gamer." It's his term for a player whose primary goal for a game session is for his character to accumulate some form of wealth or power, and see it realized in-game. If the party went to rescue a penniless princess in a desert, and received NO loot from the journey whatsoever, only the satisfaction of being heroes, he'd be the most unhappy of the group. It's not "playing wrong" per se - it's just the kind of reward he plays the game for.

OTOH, We have a player who has a very hard time playing anything but a basically good hero. He could set out with the goal of playing Neutral Greedy, and end up having his character have a moral epiphany, because he got tired of being an evil sod. I tend to be the same way, though I can keep playing "greedy" if I keep concentrating on it - otherwise I tend to backslide towards altruistic subconsciously.

Most of the group plays it by alignment though.

 

[kirinke]

Heh. In the game I'm playing in, we're insanely goody-goody types. I mean, we even turned down 200 platinum pieces for defeating a nighthag that was terrorizing the local town. Truth be told, we had a fairly good reason. The locals were using a fair to lure in sacrificies to her, so she wouldn't demolish said town.

As for items, we generally give them to the character that can get the most use out of them, the money is pooled, save for a little we keep for ourselves. But then, three of our characters are good aligned priests. Soooo morally ambiguous our group is not.

I'd peg us between the walk into the tomb of horrors to fetch a kid's cat and help the poor, rescue ugly damsel in distress. Leaning heavily towards walk into the tomb of horrors. Like I said, I seriously think that the collective group mentality is crazier than.... llamma's hopped up on cranberry sauce.

 

[Wombat]

Collectively? They are right in the middle.

Individual PCs run the range -- one is on adventures only for the money, another gives away almost everything he gets. **shurg**

Of course I award XP for keeping in character, so that might also have some influence...

 

[palleomortis]

I have some selfish ones, true. But the funniest thing is that one of my MOST selfish PC are playing a paladine. Funny stuff. He isn't really selfish i guess, but he will do ANYTHING for the extra copper peice.

 

[Wish]

When given a choice by the DM,* most groups I've played in divide things according to who needs it. Folks who didn't get something useful get things that they can sell for cash. We don't tend to pool resources except for specific purposes; one group just got some land and we're pooling to build on it, for example, or Bob needs to be ressurected and we'll pool to pay for it. But loans and gifts are common, and we're willing to spend resources on each other or on NPCs in need.

*One DM insists that we split everything evenly, so that the characters stay balanced. Very strange.