Piracy And Other Malfeasance

[Umbran]

To believe otherwise is to have a completely fantastical view of history.

Um... D&D isn't history.

 

[Scribe]

Han shot first, and thats OK.

If the players are down for being scoundrels, thieves, and hey maybe a little murder on the side when 'nothing personal kid, its just business'? Fine. Play it straight and make sure that they have to keep their heads down when the law comes around.

Straight up murderhobo action (or worse) just doesnt really fly for me, but you can play even something as 'evil' as Chaotic Evil, without being a brainless whirlwind of destruction.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don't think this is the great moral solution you think it is. You forcing PCs to act within an arbitrary set of acceptable responses is just railroading by another name.

Thats a wild take on what you’re replying to.

Well, it depends on why they want to kill you. Like, if you are threatening innocent civilians, then the minions trying to kill you might have a point.

Of course. That would make you the guys needing shooting.

(emphasis mine) Well, yes, exactly. That's part of making the antagonist worse.

As one example, absolutely. But part of my point is that the empire is “even worse” than the rebels. The empire is evil and the rebels aren’t.

He said he had, "one or more premise that inspires". Last I checked, inspiring and forcing are not the same thing.

Thank you.

Like I said, it’s about what you reward and how you set up the scenario.

To steal from Brennen Lee Mulligan in the Critical Role DMs fireside chat, the PCs are like a river. They want to get to the destination by the most efficient possible path. However, the players don’t want efficiency, they want an adventure, so the DM construct the topography of the campaign in such a way that the efficient path, the most natural and honest path to take, is an interest one that will go toward certain things. At no point are the players forced to follow the topography, and they will at times just drill a colvert through your nice little hill that was there to invite them toward XYZ, but it’s fairly easy if you know your players and talk to them about their characters to set the scene so that it goes toward interesting winding pathways, rather than a straight line.

Or in this case, have important things they care about rather than just dangling gold coins in front of them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There have been a lot of comments on how much evil is too evil.

What about the other side of the spectrum?

How little evil is -for you- not evil enough for an antagonist?

You can have antagonists who are not evil in any real sense, but just on the wrong side of things. Soldiers working for a bad government for example.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think this is the great moral solution you think it is. You forcing PCs to act within an arbitrary set of acceptable responses is just railroading by another name.

Eh. The idea that PC personalities should be open-ended in every game, no matter what, is a plague. Its no better than the idea that the only legitimate idea for a campaign involves free-roaming adventuers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Eh. The idea that PC personalities should be open-ended in every game, no matter what, is a plague. Its no better than the idea that the only legitimate idea for a campaign involves free-roaming adventuers.

Yeah, and like, I wasn’t even suggesting forcing any specific personality? Like, literally I was talking about incentivizing and inspiring. Most of my games just don’t have dungeons full of treasure.

If a player isn’t inspired by the premises and story elements of the campaign in a way that leads to a character with hooks in the world, that’s often fine, since I don’t play with players that make “lone wolf” characters, so that pc would just end up being a friend of another pc or something to explain why they’re in the group, and the pc will develop interesting ties and goals and whatnot during play.

But by setting the scene so that the campaign start is full of places to be from, people and things to care about, conflicts and tensions, organizations and institutions to be part of and/or oppose, etc, most players IME make a character that cares about things other than “burn towns get money”.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah, and like, I wasn’t even suggesting forcing any specific personality? Like, literally I was talking about incentivizing and inspiring. Most of my games just don’t have dungeons full of treasure.

If a player isn’t inspired by the premises and story elements of the campaign in a way that leads to a character with hooks in the world, that’s often fine, since I don’t play with players that make “lone wolf” characters, so that pc would just end up being a friend of another pc or something to explain why they’re in the group, and the pc will develop interesting ties and goals and whatnot during play.

But by setting the scene so that the campaign start is full of places to be from, people and things to care about, conflicts and tensions, organizations and institutions to be part of and/or oppose, etc, most players IME make a character that cares about things other than “burn towns get money”.

That's one method. I've used it, it works.

I also like games where the motivation is built in - a conceit of the setting and/or the game mechanics.

• Star Wars: Members of the Rebel Alliance, or the Jedi Order
• Star Trek: Starfleet Crews, or Primary Action Teams, or even a Klingon or Romulan Crew.
• Dune: members of the great houses, or the leadership of a Heighliner...
• Traveller: active duty Army, Marine, or Scout campaigns, or Ducal, Archducal, or Imperial troubleshooters. Or a group of guys saddled with a ship and debt for it. Or even a research project.
• Twilight 2000: get home alive. Or die trying. Or maybe, settle down and help locals rebuild.
• Legend of the Five Rings: All my campaigns have been magistrate focused. By player choice.
• Alien: Mercs, space truckers, or colonists, together by other's actions and decisions.
• Vaesen: members of a particular society.
• Pendragon: you all serve the same Liege. Get along and/or get dead. Both is not that uncommon.

A pirate or privateer campaign can certainly justify non-officer PCs as having been press-ganged. And the ship's charter and the ship's standing orders can clearly spell out the premises and justify unfamiliar PCs together... it's worth noting as well, pirates were largely democratic; privateers often were aristocrats with a letter of marque, fellow aristocrats in the officers, with only semi-volunteer crews.

For those who don't share my "no evil PCs" table condition, organized crime groups are also a an option. Or, as a friend did for Dark Sun, his party was a group of templars of their local dragon-king.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sanction has literally no bearing on whether the activities are evil. Slavery has been sanctioned many times throughout history. Is it not evil?

Maybe we should all start using the points system from The Good Place. no one on that show seemed to have a problem with it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Um... D&D isn't history.

It can be based on history, and supernatural elements aside I prefer that it is generally speaking. It's the only metric on human behavior we have.

 

[Lanefan]

Or in this case, have important things they care about rather than just dangling gold coins in front of them.

Hey - those gold coins ARE the important things we care about!

Everything else is secondary.