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Message: <blockquote data-quote="imurphy943" data-source="post: 5866593" data-attributes="member: 6672709">I'm speaking here as someone who once had much the same problem, and a Christian who recently had a renewal of faith via The Screwtape Letters. I was once frustrated by the amorality of the characters my players portrayed (this was before my 'renewal of faith'). I got so frustrated that I actually considered quitting DMing for good. No more, though; I actually played in somebody else's campaign. Most of the players there were similarly amoral, only concerned with their own survival. When, due to one nasty encounter, fibers started sprouting from my body in the middle of the night, the cleric and fighter on watch decided that I was a danger to the party and killed me in my sleep. Then burned the body. The mage helped when he woke up.  And you know what? It was fun. I realized, once I had rolled up a new character, that this style of play is really fun. The NPCs aren't real at all, and unless the players get a tangible benefit from helping them they are likely not to. Odds are the players are actually pretty okay people. I got really freaked out when I got so concerned about the characters' behavior that I started grilling the players on their own morality, and they didn't take me seriously. If I were them, I wouldn't have taken me seriously either.  If you want to give hooks to the players, try setting out a few rumors. That DM I mentioned would just drop us a line about what was going on, like 'Okay, there's this dungeon out in the middle of the desert and this pharoah dude is sending men into it, there's a pirate raiding along the coast, one local lord wants another one assassinated, there's been a strange metal man seen walking in the highlands, and there's a new band of highwaymen in the south.' If you've spent a lot of time mapping out a magic forest or a dungeon or something and have no idea what's going on elsewhere, there's also nothing wrong with saying "Okay, this dungeon is the adventure for tonight. This is where the fun is, okay?". As long as there are still meaningful choices to be made within the location, it isn't railroading any more than it would be railroading to say, "No, you can't sail to the west hoping to discover a new continent, there isn't anything over there and it would just waste everybody's time".</blockquote>

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