My group is full of smart-***es; or "The good guys aren't evil enough."

[RangerWickett]

The PCs in my game don't like any of the NPCs who are in positions of authority. I wonder if perhaps we're all somehow unhappy about authority figures, and that they inherently think that anyone who has any sort of position is incompetent.

Of course, it might be that I'm not showing them as competent. Or it might be that the players think that 'competent' means 'brutal.'

I've got this organization in my game, and they work to keep magic's existence a secret. But their two main offices are in New Orleans and Savannah, places where people believe magic exists. So the Bureau doesn't go out of its way to completely conceal that magic, since most outsiders think it's just superstition. I think the PCs expected the Bureau to send in a SWAT team after they spoke with the owner of a magic bookstore.

It amuses me that they give s**t to anyone in the Bureau. It's an odd situation, in that I made the Bureau be at sort of a weak point so that the PCs' assistance would be needed, and now that they've been asked for help, the PCs just assume the Bureau is staffed by morons. Also, because I'm so conscious of this sentiment among the players and their characters, I'm kinda uncertain if there's a way to change the Bureau's image without it seeming like I just want to make them look cool.


I think part of the problem is how to create dramatic tension necessary for a good game while also showing that these other folks are competent. I mean, I probably just need to get the group away from the Bureau so they can have their own adventures, but I wanted them to see what the world was like. I may have had them get too involved too soon.



What do the Bureau do?

Well, if you're a violent human spellcaster, they take you down and after briefly checking to make sure you weren't being mind-controlled, they'll probably kill you.

If you're a violent human who's not a spellcaster but who knows about magic, they'll be good samaritans and take you down, then leave you for the cops to deal with. If somehow you manage to convince the cops that magic exists, they either kill or discredit you and the cop, whichever seems easiest.

If you're a non-violent human spellcaster, they try to recruit you, or offer to train you in exchange for you keeping quiet about magic. Then they'll probably hire you for the occasional service, but they'll make it clear that if you blab to anyone, they'll kill you.

If you're a non-violent human who learns about magic, if the knowledge is recent they'll wipe your mind and deal with whoever told you about magic. If you've known about magic for a long time, they'll tell you to not tell anyone or else they'll kill you, but otherwise they might treat you as a valuable contact or ally.

If you're fey and you do anything wrong, they take you in and hand you off to the fey who assist the Bureau. Politics suck, and the fey do not like humans killing their kind.

If you're a magical monster (i.e., a fey creature that is not sentient), they can kill you.

If you're undead, they can destroy you, since the dead have no rights. Resurrection rarely is an issue they have to deal with, but they generally consider you alive, since you're not a zombie or a vampire.



Well, that's the end of my thinking for tonight.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Is the characters or the players themselves that hate the authorities? What is the nature of their relations and disdain for the magical authorties? Does their disdain relate to the player's own personalities?

One thing to look at might be how they have interacted with the Bureau. How has it actually helped them? From what you have describe, it seems like they primarily work to restrict the knowledge of magic MIB-style (using mind-wipe, murder, and other methods that might be seen as morally questionable). What sort of ethics code governs this organization?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Most players as far as I can tell don't like the folks in power, pretty much regardless of what those folks are. The BEST case scenario for the powerful NPC agencies is either (a) admit their incompetence and plead with the PC's for help, or (b) be competent offscreen and make it more convienient for the PC's to get powerful elsewhere.

Being head of an agency is like being an adventurer who's not badass enough to compete with the PC's party. It's what the Great Wizard's nerdly little brother went into.

 

[S'mon]

This is a bureaucracy, you should present it as competent within its standard areas of expertise but somewhat inflexible and rigid when faced with threats beyond its standard remit. The 2e Complete Villains' Handbook has good ideas about designing bureaucracies, and how they differ from informal networks. I suggest creating a small number of competent but non-Mary-Sue ish bureau field personnel (what the CVH calls "professionals") the PCs can interact with repeatedly. Have them be at least as good as the PCs in most respects - and superior when performing eg standard take-down ops - but lacking in whatever area the PCs are supposed to be special.

 

[Runesong42]

I'm competely with RangerWickett.

I have an organization IMC called Okami Enterprises. It originated in Japan and started a partner company in Canada. Its original purpose was to be the first media mega-giant. They have their hands in all forms of media -- movies, television, magazines, newspapers -- and produce quality (and oftentimes terrible) shows and products for all ages. Canada's portion has a separate goal -- to monitor and assist Shadowkind wherever needed.

At some point, however, someone from Okami Japan decides to stage a bureaucratic coup and severs ties with its Canadian partner. Discreetly, they are planning to create a Golden Age for Japan by being the first country to produce mecha.

As such, I made Okami Canada "the good guys" who try to keep the veil over Shadowkind and Okami Japan as "the bad guys" who are making weapons of mass-destruction.

Well, my PCs encounter men from Okami Canada, unaware of any backstory as of yet. Almost instantly, they decide that, because they're a mega-corporation, everything Shadow-related is their fault, and thus must be taken down.

It took me a long time to direct the PC's attention away from Okami Canada -- any bad thing that happened to them was unquestionably something to do with the megacorp. And what was worse, I had them meet a former employee of OkamiCan who went insane after a flubbed attempt to summon and control an "outer-planar entity". They assumed Demon (it was an elemental), and thus the torches were lit and the pitchforks sharpened...

 

[Rel]

We have a guy in our group who occasionally GM's and this is a problem with a lot of his plotlines. The NPC's are always way more powerful than the party and yet they never seem to do anything to further their own goals. I suppose that provides a basis for the adventures but it also strains credibility.

What I decided based on this is that NPC's who employ or ask for the help of the PC's should either be weak or lack something that the PC's have. If the NPC they are helping is frail old lady then it is obvious to the PC's that she needs their help and they feel valuable for rendering that help. Likewise if the NPC's contact the party and say, "We've heard of you guys and what you're capable of and we need your assistance."

If the NPC's appear to be capable of everything the party can do (and particularly if they do it better) then the PC's will naturally start saying "What do they need us for?" The good news is that this shows that the players are actually immersing themselves in your world instead of casting that question aside and just saying, "Who cares about logic or credibility, let's just go on the adventure."

As for your particular situation, I think that one good explanation as to why the organization needs the PC's is Plausible Deniability. Have one of the members of the leadership lay it out for them, "Why do you think you're here? Do you think you're special? Do you think you can do things that we can't do or haven't seen? Don't be stupid. You're here for the simple fact that you're disposable. We are paying you very well to take risks and one of those risks is getting caught. Now if you get into a minor scrape with the cops while trying to do a takedown then we might pull a few strings or maybe make a couple people disappear. But if you get into a full blown Law Enforcement Fiasco then we can just walk away. Got it? Now here's the check for your next assignment, which will be to...."

The PC's may not like that guy but it is pretty clear that he's acting as an authority figure. And the players can probably identify with (or at least recognize) the whole "I hate my boss but the pay is good so I put up with his crap" situation. I know that I could deal with this as a player. The part that I hate is when the NPC's act like jerks to us and then expect us to help because we've either done so in the past or "it's for the greater good".

 

[BigTom]

I'm competely with RangerWickett.

I have an organization IMC called Okami Enterprises. It originated in Japan and started a partner company in Canada. Its original purpose was to be the first media mega-giant. They have their hands in all forms of media -- movies, television, magazines, newspapers -- and produce quality (and oftentimes terrible) shows and products for all ages. Canada's portion has a separate goal -- to monitor and assist Shadowkind wherever needed.

At some point, however, someone from Okami Japan decides to stage a bureaucratic coup and severs ties with its Canadian partner. Discreetly, they are planning to create a Golden Age for Japan by being the first country to produce mecha.

As such, I made Okami Canada "the good guys" who try to keep the veil over Shadowkind and Okami Japan as "the bad guys" who are making weapons of mass-destruction.

Well, my PCs encounter men from Okami Canada, unaware of any backstory as of yet. Almost instantly, they decide that, because they're a mega-corporation, everything Shadow-related is their fault, and thus must be taken down.

It took me a long time to direct the PC's attention away from Okami Canada -- any bad thing that happened to them was unquestionably something to do with the megacorp. And what was worse, I had them meet a former employee of OkamiCan who went insane after a flubbed attempt to summon and control an "outer-planar entity". They assumed Demon (it was an elemental), and thus the torches were lit and the pitchforks sharpened...

I think the best way to handle a situation like this is to let them destroy an important part of The Good Guys organization, then encounter Shadowkind who are immediately horrified at what they have done. Then have The Bad Guys start moving in unopposed because The Good Guys no longer have the resources to hold them off because someone trashed their HQ.

Now the party has the problems of:
1) Saving the Shadow folk who the party put in harm's way in the first place
2) Fighting The Bad Guys
3) Mending fences with The Good Guys after attacking them.

 

[RangerWickett]

The situation in game is that the Bureau normally shifts between two parallel worlds -- Terra (humans) and Gaia (fey). Their main offices are on Gaia, but they do a fair share of enforcing on Terra. Due to plot elements, right now nobody can cross over except the PCs, because of an item they have. The Bureau on Terra wants to get in touch with its folks on Gaia and make plans on how to solve this problem, and they're offering to work with the party in exchange for the Bureau clearing the records of some of the PCs who are being pursued by the FBI.

Honestly, I think what would work best is for the Bureau to become antagonists now. Not villains per se, but not friends either. They take the item the PCs have, clear their records, and tell them to not trouble them. The PCs will, inevitably, trouble them, and the one friend the PCs have made in the Bureau will have to work to keep them from getting mindwiped or killed.

What I want to get the party to do -- i.e., what the 'main arc' I had in mind for the campaign -- is to have them investigate the mystery of why people can't cross over between the two worlds. A friend of theirs has already been killed by people who wanted the party's plane-shifting power, and I kinda hoped that would motivate them. I suppose I'm just going to have to keep on trying to kill them.

 

[BigTom]

The PCs in my game don't like any of the NPCs who are in positions of authority. I wonder if perhaps we're all somehow unhappy about authority figures, and that they inherently think that anyone who has any sort of position is incompetent.

Of course, it might be that I'm not showing them as competent. Or it might be that the players think that 'competent' means 'brutal.'

I've got this organization in my game, and they work to keep magic's existence a secret. But their two main offices are in New Orleans and Savannah, places where people believe magic exists. So the Bureau doesn't go out of its way to completely conceal that magic, since most outsiders think it's just superstition. I think the PCs expected the Bureau to send in a SWAT team after they spoke with the owner of a magic bookstore.

I think the trick in these situations is to get the party into a situation where they really do need a swat team, then actually have the cavalry show up. Afterwards, have the grizzled veterans deride them, "see, if we waste our forces chasing every guy with a few bad books, we would never be able to assemble this sort response when real trouble comes along. That's why we hire pups like you, to handle the small stuff so we can take care of the real threats. Maybe someday you'll move up, but I doubt it if you get scared by a guy with a bookstore!"

If you want a less heavy handed approach, have them meet a grizzled veteran who starts talking about all of the friends he's lost in the fight. This can give them an understanding that the organization really has been fighting and paying a price for a long time.

The other option is to have them have to deal with an area where The Organization is not available at all and start to discover just how much routine stuff the organization has to handle to keep the world safe. Dealing with one big thing is bad, but dealing with 20 small things all going on at the same time, any of which could become a big thing, is a lot harder. That's the real goal of these organizations, watching the small stuff to make sure it doesn't get to be a big problem.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Here's some generic tips on organizations.

The NPCs who the PCs come in contact with and run things arn't terribly high level. If they're higher level than the PCs, it won't last long. They have members (thugs, mercenaries, operatives, etc) that might be higher level than the PCs, but these are the minority in the organization and arn't generally the ones with any real power. The power the organization wields shouldn't be a direct physical threat to the PCs unless that is their purpose (city guard, MIB, etc), it should be power of control over the PCs' environment. If the PCs mess with them suddenly they find their lives harder, contacts leave them, prices rise for them, they find themselves under servelence, etc. If they really mess with the organization, then they might start running into assassins and such, but it is impossible for the PCs to take on the whole thing unless they are very dedicated.

NPCs react to the organization as the DM sees fit. If the first contact with an organization is the organization itself, the DM has done himself a disservice. NPCs should talk about it in hushed tones, loud its ability to protect them, express their desire to join it, or any other emotions you want associated with it. If the PCs see everyone around them acting a certain way toward it, that will influence their oppinion of it. Paranoid players might still dislike an organization everyone seems to love, though.

Have help go both ways, if they have similar motives. The PCs occasionally need help from the group, the group occasionally needs help from the PCs. Heck, if they have dissimilar motives, having them work together can be just as fun! Don't make it so that your organization is in constant need of the PCs. Make it so the PCs find themselves in a situation where they need help too!