"If this problem is so bad, why aren't YOU doing it, NPC?"

[Umbran]

"I'll be doing something more important" is a lame answer that deprotagonises the PCs.

It only deprotagonizes the PCs if you somehow make those other stories the stories you are dealing with. "Heroness" is not a limited resource - having someone else also be a hero does not mean I am not a hero. If the focus remains on teh PCs, they remain the protagonists.

How often are your PCs sitting around without an agenda, without some problem that they're dealing with? How often could they legitimately say, "I'm bored"? Any NPCs of higher level are going to be roughly the same - their dance cards should be as full as the PCs'.

 

[LostSoul]

In my campaign, in general:

There are no good NPCs or large organizations. They are selfish at best.

There are no world-shattering threats that would force them to take action.

The orcs are gathering again? Burn all the villages so they won't have any food and then they'll turn on themselves. Crisis averted. Oh, that means the peasants won't have enough to eat? That's fine, I have a magical soup bowl that feeds my army. It'll just cement my control over the population, who were getting too uppity for their own good.

 

[Janx]

Watch a few cop shows.

Are the 2 cops featured in the show the ONLY heroes in town?

Or is it that they are the ones to be assigned a case or discover a case, so they work to resolve it. While their peers work on their assigned cases and duties.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

My solution to this from a backward perspective...

In my campaign, at lvl 20 the players gain divine essence (it comes from old dead gods)...they become demigods and have very limited spells/prayers they can grant. After lvl 20, they alternate between a lvl 5 character (their "high priest") and their lvl 20 character.

Here the players actually are the ones sending their "minion"...i.e. themselves on the "lesser" adventures. The gods are travelling around the world fighting the evil demigod forces while the lvl 5 priests are spreading news of their coming, acquiring ancient holy artifacts of the gods from before, etc.

Reasons why the gods themselves don't do it include:
1. They're busy.
2. They can't be everywhere at once.
3. It's sometimes good to have others talk about how great you are rather than self aggrandizement.
4. Some of the story is that "the faith of a mortal must renew" the old temples, artifacts, etc. With gods, faith of followers matters.



It's like "why don't ceo's just run the whole company?" or "why don't doctors do everything in hospitals (since they have more training than nurses, orderlies, physician's assistants etc)."

If I do my job well in a company, and I succed at a great challenge, impressing my boss and peers, I've done something to be proud of. It doesn't matter what "level" I am in the company. The pride is about equal.


More specifically, in D&D (both 3e and 4e) the game sorta changes across tiers. The degree and type of investigation, combat, exploration, dungeon delving, etc changes...the character of the game changes at different levels...so some things are just too time consuming or no longer in the focus of a given character.

E.G. Here's an adventure...maybe I'll use it in my campaign. The god pcs go and kill a dragon. They loot the majority of its wealth, but they leave the huge and heavy piles of copper...as well as some very heavy but valuable statues. The low level guys could go in and organize a dangerous expedition to haul all of that treasure out...perhaps enough to build a temple! Course, there might be some traps the high level guys bypassed that are still active. There may be some enemies (kobolds?) too scared to even fight back against the other heroes who are now pretty mad, etc.

In the above advenure idea, the "original" adventure never need happen. It could be written as a one shot adventure that has npc "The big heroes" return to town and say..."that dungeon's pretty picked over, but there's still some serious wealth in there...maybe as much as 3,000 gold...but we're on to the next town, so it's up to you all if you want to get it."

 

[ExploderWizard]

PC's have something that most other people in the world do not; freedom.

The majority of NPC's even those with adventuring powers, have duties and obligations that prevent them from wandering about doing heroic deeds. The leader of a small town might be an experienced fighter but what happens to all the people who depend on him if he constantly runs off or even gets himself killed?

Aside from free roaming heroes such as the PC's the only other experienced adventurers without duties and responsibilities tend to stir up trouble and become villains. There may be other heroes out in the world somewhere but what is important is that the PC's are in a position to take action here and now. Thats what really matters.

 

[amerigoV]

I'll apply real life here - why am I not out there saving the world? Too busy doing mid-year reviews to keep the HR folks from firing my team and me.

The other approach I have used is not everyone agrees with the actions or that there really is a rising threat. We all look back at Hitler and the Nazi's as evil, but there was not much stomach to confront him early in his regime (still wounds from WWI, horrible economy, it just Czechs so who cares, etc). PCs might get sent on the sly since the "Big Name NPC" has to be seen back home trying to convince everyone of the rising menace.

Finally, Eliminster is like a nuclear missile, you only use him when you have too, cuz the other size will use their nukes too!

 

[Barastrondo]

All kinds of creative solutions are available! This thread is replete with them. Here's the ones I tend to use most often.

- Mentor NPCs aren't necessarily tough, just smart and well-informed. Zhuge Liang cannot beat up as many people as Zhao Yun can, so he gives Zhao Yun a silk bag with a plan inside instead of going and fighting the enemy himself. The Imperial Spymaster doesn't have to be a 20th-level rogue to have the skills necessary to get the job done (presumably... some systems may disagree). Maybe the Sage of Shadowdale is... simply a sage. Not much hit points, no access to fireballs, but man, he has an eidetic memory and he has read everything.

- If communication and transportation are fairly limited, the PCs are usually the best hope for something because they're around. This is a more old-school approach, but if NPCs can't scry or teleport very often, that cuts down on what even powerful ones can do from afar.

- My favorite: There are other NPCs around, but there are also a lot of potential quest threads available. So the PCs chase after the story hooks their players find most interesting, and the NPCs can be deputized to take care of the ones that don't engage the player much. (I'm not terribly fond of world-shattering adventures that would be so important that it's obvious all the PCs and NPCs have to focus on this one thing.)

 

[maddman75]

How is it that a simply hobbit was able to resist the taint of the ring far longer than him?

The ring gives people what they want. Gandalf wants to defeat Sauron. Boromir wants to save Gondor. Aragorn wants to claim his kingship and his elf princess. Gimli and Legolas want to defend their people. Hobbits? They want a full belly and a full pipe. It takes the ring longer to work its mojo on them. Remember the scene where it promised Sam that it would make him a king and everyone would cheer for Samwise the Great and whatever? He laughed at the idea and gave it back to Frodo.

For the problem at hand, the issue is you should show, not tell. I have no use for the wizened old mission giver. Let the PCs determine their own missions. If there's a growing orc horde in the east, don't have some high level NPC tell them about it - let them see the effects. Maybe the wizard can't get some spell components because the trade route has been cut off. The town is full of beggars - refugees from the advancing hordes. The can ignore it if they like, but that may have consequences as well.

Show, not tell. If there's an Evil Threat Brewing, show the PCs the signs and let them figure out what to do.

 

[Celebrim]

"If this problem is so bad, why aren't YOU doing it, NPC?"

My stock answers:

NPC #1: "Because there is an even worse problem, and I don't have time to do both."
NPC #1: "Things have gotten worse, I need you to handle this other small problem for me."
NPC #2: "NPC #1 died trying to handle the problem. Oh where are we going to find a hero the like of NPC #1?"
NPC #2: "Help us PC's, you are our only hope!"

Hopefully this eventually leads to:

PC #1: "I can't do two things at once. NPC #3, you are going to have to take care of this small problem by yourself."

I want to note that this does not 'deprotagonize' the PCs IMO. At each stage, they are percieved as 'the hero' by those below them that they help and eventually they graduate to being 'the hero' for everyone inheriting and eventually transcending those that from their initial perspective seemed so powerful and heroic.

It's like being told, "You are a greater hero than Batman ever was." You can't do that unless you have a 'Batman' to measure yourself by.

There are a few 'nuclear missiles' (as someone called them) in my campaign world who probably would help in event of end of the world threatening destruction: Jace Merlkin the Dragon Hunter, King Averthas, The Lord of Dee, the Provost Council, the Master of the Mystic Isle, etc. but I don't really know that 'world threatening destruction' is my style of play. The only real 'epic level' play I've done was as a PC. It takes years and years of play to get up to 'save the world level' and I've moved around alot IRL. I'm not even sure what the 'save the world' level threats would be. I know several ways you could literally destroy the world - cut the Orichalcum Thread, recover the 'Power Word: Apocalypse' spell, return the Art Mages from their imprisonment - but not really who the nemesis's would be who would set the 'end of the world' scenario in motion. I'd probably invent a nemesis to suit the players if it came to that, but at this point in my life I doubt I'll ever spend 2000 hours playing one campaign again. Heck, at this point in my life, I'd settle for 20.

In any event, if the real problem with a 'destroy the world' plot isn't so much why aren't the NPC's helping, but that the gods would almost certainly intervene directly before it reached a certain stage. Which transforms every practical 'destroy the world' plot into some variation of 'Trigger a breaking of The Compact' and thereby destroying the world, because any plot that didn't threaten The Compact would just get outright squashed (see the aforementioned Art Mages).

Actually, now that I think of it, this might be the reason I've always shied away from a 'end of the world' scenario. For any given scenario, the real problem is, "If this problem is so bad, why aren't YOU doing it, Divine NPC?" At least twice in the past the dieties have joined forces to prevent the destruction of the world, simply because even most of the evil deities want to rule the world not destroy it. I have a hard time envisioning how any destroy the world plot can get around that basic problem. However, it's then easy to explain why gods don't directly intervene alot in smaller problems - they don't want to escalate the problem to a 'destroy the world' crisis.

 

[CharlesRyan]

There's an interesting article here: Roleplaying Tips for game masters for all role-playing systems

This answers a slightly different question: Why does the BBEG keep sending minions out to defeat the PCs (who inevitably keep failing to do so), instead of just doing it himself when he's high level and they're still a bit lower level? Different question, but the suggestions might offer something to the OP's query.