Is D&D About Having Power Without Responsibility?

[drothgery]

I have to agree with others who have suggested that maybe the rules were following the trends in this case. The groups I played in never used the 1e/2e stronghold & followers rules, except to say, "OK I have a stronghold and some followers somewhere (because the rules say I do) which will never be used in the game."

Yup. Though the 2e games I played in took forever to reach 'name' level in the first place (and only got there after the DMs bowed to the inevitable and switch to arbitrary XP awards rather than following the rules), and never lasted much beyond that because, well, 3.x is complicated at high levels, but 2e was utterly unplayable.

 

[Rechan]

It just so happens that right now I'm watching the first season of Babylon 5. And a pertinent quote just came up in the show:

"Where's the Commander [of the enormous space station/ship]?"
"He took out a [fighter space ship] to check out a damaged transporter vessel."
"Isn't that job usually delegated to someone else?"
"Commander's a hands on kinda guy. He'll grab any chance he can to get off-ship."

This made me I realize that practically every story/movie/whatever where one of the main characters is in charge of something? That character is going to jump into the thick of action.

Iron Man - Tony Stark, CEO of a weapons company, kicking ass.
Air Force One - The President, kicking ass.
Independence Day - The President climbs into a jet fighter to fight the aliens.
Lord of the Rings - Aragorn, next in line of the throne, still off adventuring until the Steward died.
Star Trek - The captain and first officer of the ship does all the action.
King Arthur - King of Camelot kickin' ass.

 

[kitsune9]

Well, we play to have fun. And "duties" aren't, generally speaking, seen as fun. I don't believe it's about power, specifically, but about progress; and the measurement of progress in D&D is pretty much quantified as "gaining levels".

That's not to say that progress can't be defined in other ways - plot advancement, characterisation, and so forth - but D&D certainly has mechanical advancement hard-coded into it.

Morrus echoed my sentiments.

 

[iwatt]

One has castellans, clerks, marshals, seneschals, stewards, et al., to attend to such minutia of accounting as might be beyond the book-learning of a barbarian baron.

Any competent manager learns soon enough that trusting subordinates is a good idea, but trusting blindly is a bad one. Unless you can be fully confident that you won't be betrayed, you'll have to provide some oversight yourself. When you don't, your economy collapses, either through ineptitude of your mangers, or because of corrruption. History is full examples where rampant corruption or generalized ineptitude lead to revolutions. Sure, there were additional factors, but crappy leadership is one of the main ones (see French revolution, see Russian Revolution for some examples).

 

[Ariosto]

iwatt: Yes, but there is no reason that should entail endless toil in the dull and quotidian rather than such notable crises and opportunities as to make for interesting sessions of play. I have certainly found no such burden in playing Pendragon -- much less old-style D&D!

 

[Umbran]

Riddle me this - if the characters aren't actually doing the ruling (since we are assuming some castellan or the like is doing all the actual grunt work), or even the supervising. The character is still off doing what he or she does normally...

... how is this responsibility? They aren't actually responsible for anything!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Any competent manager learns soon enough that trusting subordinates is a good idea, but trusting blindly is a bad one. Unless you can be fully confident that you won't be betrayed, you'll have to provide some oversight yourself.

Why are you suggesting that there should be hyper-realism in ruling a nation and performing diplomacy when D&D isn't exactly full of hyper-realism in combat?

If D&D can be about heroic (and superheroic) combat, allowing the PCs to perform feats above and beyond human norms, does it seem so strange to have heroic (and superheroic) ruling of domains?

 

[Zaruthustran]

Riddle me this - if the characters aren't actually doing the ruling (since we are assuming some castellan or the like is doing all the actual grunt work), or even the supervising. The character is still off doing what he or she does normally...

... how is this responsibility? They aren't actually responsible for anything!

Sure they are. They have a responsibility to choose a competent delegate. If the castellan screws up, the character is responsible for the mess. "The Buck Stops Here", and all that. Responsibility flows upward until it hits the person in charge.

 

[AllisterH]

Isn't Birthright officially the most UNSUCCESSFUL campaign setting TSR/WOTC has ever produced?

When that came out, the whole schtick/ad campaign was mass battle and ruling domains and it pretty much crashed and burned...

 

[Ariosto]

"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Count Trocero of Poitain to remain as the Secretary of Defense."

Life is no bed of houris for the newly-crowned King Conan. He has fractious nobles to contend with, petitions of redress from his people, and diplomatic requests from other nations. Conan appeals to Aquilonian tradition by holding court in the old capital of Tamar, residing in the palace of the popular King Vilerus. He wins the love of the people by lowering taxes and curbing abuses at the hands of the nobility. He institutes land reform to ease the pressure on the western frontier. Some of the noble families in Aquilonia are still quite restive, and King Conan must put down the occasional civil insurrection.

"He traveled widely, not only before his kingship, but after he was king." -- R.E. Howard