DeviousQuail
Hero
One idea that I briefly tried was having my group play as two characters each. One character for each player would be their story character. The story characters were each a member of a council overseeing a small far flung town on the border of civilization. Their characters could "adventure" but the rule was they leveled up by completing major objectives for the town. What constituted a major objective was up to the players with a little help from me as the DM.
Their other character was an adventure character that could be hired to go on quests, defeat villains, and clear out dungeons. They were a revolving cast that handled the dangerous stuff so that the council could oversee the town. One was an apprentice to a story character who never got switched out while the others came and went with each adventure.
The story characters could hire more experienced and better equipped adventure characters by upgrading the town. We did 8 sessions and covered about 1.5 years in game time. Out of game stuff killed it unfortunately and by the time we regrouped others wanted to run their own campaigns and it was time for me to step down and be a player for a while.
Thinking back on it the motivations for the adventure characters were all very one note. Gold and/or glory for most but for some it was freedom from a geas, unravelling the truth about their family, or wanting to do some magical experiments away from bystanders. It was a sentence at most and then they were off. But the motivations for the story characters were wildly different. Sometimes it was the ultimate goal of raising an army to free a neighboring country from a tyrant, while other times it was just trying to come up with a plan to keep everyone fed for the winter. Balancing each character's personal goals with the other characters and the general well being of the town required some inspired play and decision making.
Their other character was an adventure character that could be hired to go on quests, defeat villains, and clear out dungeons. They were a revolving cast that handled the dangerous stuff so that the council could oversee the town. One was an apprentice to a story character who never got switched out while the others came and went with each adventure.
The story characters could hire more experienced and better equipped adventure characters by upgrading the town. We did 8 sessions and covered about 1.5 years in game time. Out of game stuff killed it unfortunately and by the time we regrouped others wanted to run their own campaigns and it was time for me to step down and be a player for a while.
Thinking back on it the motivations for the adventure characters were all very one note. Gold and/or glory for most but for some it was freedom from a geas, unravelling the truth about their family, or wanting to do some magical experiments away from bystanders. It was a sentence at most and then they were off. But the motivations for the story characters were wildly different. Sometimes it was the ultimate goal of raising an army to free a neighboring country from a tyrant, while other times it was just trying to come up with a plan to keep everyone fed for the winter. Balancing each character's personal goals with the other characters and the general well being of the town required some inspired play and decision making.