Justifying adventuring when you're the Boss

[Rechan]

This is all good stuff. I'm sure this issue has arisen for others, so let's keep the ball rolling.

 

[Rechan]

Another solution:

It's Personal.

The reason for the adventure has to do with an individual personally. Be it family related ("Your dad in Over There lay on his deathbed, and needs you, at which point he gives you a quest he could not finish and thus it is passed on to you"), or other issues of hereditary. It could be related to the PC's past. It could be a prophecy that requires themselves.

 

[Victim]

Putting powerful adventuring guys in primarily political positions seems like a classic example of promoting people until they're outside their areas of expertise.

 

[Stoat]

Naked greed. The PC's learn the location of some extraordinary treasure, possibly an artifact. Whatever it is, it's worth trusting the colony to the grand vizier while they go and get it.

 

[LostSoul]

Let the players control multiple characters, though only one per session.

Have a "Table of DOOM" that you roll on when NPCs go adventuring. Add things like "Gained confidence; believes he should be leader of the colony and will start plotting a rebelling", "Replaced by doppleganger assassin", "Pulled a sword out of a stone; by all rights he's the king now", "Possessed by demon", "Brainwashed by cult", "Found treasure, going to start his own competing colony", "Gone native", etc. If you want to send out NPCs to do your job for you, it might come around to bite you in the ass.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

[James Earle Jones]

Destiny.

[/James Earle Jones]

 

[Stormonu]

"If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself"

Frankly, sending subordinates in to a job tends to result in dead subordinates; think about it, in just about every story or movie, the bad guy loses in the end because he lets his subordinates deal with matters rather than take care of the heroes himself. Quite simply, the reverse would likely be true - if the heroes sit on their can, the bad guys will run rampant until the hero steps in to put a stop to the problem.

And of course, there are always those subordinates who may come to question why they aren't in charge if they're the ones risking their necks to save everybody's skin while the PC just sits around.

 

[delericho]

If my PC is in charge, why the hell should he be leaving to deal with Adventures/outside threats? He can't be away when he has duties.

If he's king because he's the highest-level guy around, then it may well be the case that there isn't anyone else who can deal with these problems.

Also, in a feudal system, the various nobles received taxes from the peasantry in return for protection from the various threats. Under such a system, it may well be that dealing with those outisde threats are the PC's duties.

But you see it in fiction. Case in point: Star Trek. Rather than the Captain sending out an exploration team, the most important people on the ship go on every single away mission.

Well... depends which version of Star Trek. Picard seemed less prone to go on away missions than Kirk.

However, ignoring that nitpick, why not just do the same, and ignore 'realism'?

Or, you could say right back: "The campaign is about the adventurers in this kingdom. If your character isn't an adventurer any longer, it's time to retire him and bring in a new character." Make the character's motivations the player's responsibility. It is their character, after all.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Haltherrion]

Seems like there are three main ways to handle it:

• The Star Trek method: forget whether it makes sense for the king/lord/whatever to be running around and adventuring and just go with that. This requires cooperation with the players. Yours seem to object to that, as frankly, I might as well although you could cast it as the leader finding themselves not really suited to ruling and leaving the day to day affairs to others while they go out and "play".
• Significant threats face the realm which require their attention due to either the severity or the fact that they can't trust anyone else. This could certainly work for a few scenarios but seems like it might get contrived after a while. Probably best for a campaign that is winding down after the players have achieved their holding but where you still want to do a little more before moving on.
• They are deposed. They were in charge and an internal (coup) or external threat kicks them out. So basically, they aren't in charge anymore which can irritate the players but from a story point of view is an effective vehicle. You can always start with the first two and keep this in your pocket, to pull it out if they leave too much power in the minions hands in the first option (and then are usurped by the ones they left in charge) or they fail to deal adequately with a threat in the middle. Some care is needed to execute this without losing the players and it might even take some meta discussion with them but it is an option and it is certainly dramatic.

Other options when a campaign reaches this point:

• The campaign ends. The PCs achieve riches and crowns, there is much cheering and rejoicing, on to the next campaign while the PCs move on without their players, and vice versa.
• The players play their original PC's offspring.
• The players play the lieutenants of their original PCs.