Power and Responsibility

[robconley]

And in the typical D&D world there are quite a few nations ruled by obvious tyrants. So why don't they topple those nations and strive to make them a better place - or rule them as tyrants themselves, if they are so inclined?

This is a hallmark of my personal DM Style. High level play in my game revolves around the impact of the characters on campaign world rather than going plane tripping or finding bigger and badder monsters to slay.

I don't think you see this often because you really have to be detail oriented history fanatic as a DM to make this work. Your kingdom, cultures, and religion can't be window dressing on the way to the dungeon because now those elements are the focus of the adventure itself.

And a lot of people don't enjoy sitting down and making king's lists, culture customs by the dozen, religous ritual by the bushels. Figuring out that Lord Able hate Lord Baker because their grandfathers got into it during the 4th Salic conflict a hundred years ago. Then you have to take that mass of detail and distill it for your players in a fun and engaging way.

Some will argue why you need that detail. It is needed because in the type of play you are thinking about it is about people. Human beings in all their complexity. People just don't do things for no reason.

The detail is needed to give the NPCs reasons for their actions and more importantly generate CONFLICT. The more stuff you have going on your background the more conflicts you will be able to find and conflicts means adventure in a people centric setting.

For example if you just had say Set versus Mitra for your religions then all you have are two sides. But throw in the Druids and their Ranger allies, maybe a bunch of mages and priest worshiping Thoth the god of knowledge, and the Merchants who split three ways between Set, Mitra, and the goddess of wealth. Throw all these in you will have at lot more points of conflicts.

But piling detail upon detail is hard to go and pull off at the table for most people. And without the detail you most often feel like you dealing with sterotypes and npcs with cardboard personalities. So while the style you are talking is a lot of fun it is a lot of work. So people go with other types of plot that are easier to do for the fun they have.

 

[JDJblatherings]

They can justify it by having the wisdom to know they are not the ones to create something better. Its easy to destroy "evil," but good will not automatically fill the void. It is much harder to create and implement the government that will fill that vacuum.

There have been real world incidents where someone with power has thought they could impose a new government without direct support of the people, and no real idea of how to get the people to take responsibility for their own governance. The results is usually a major mess, or governance by force that is not much better than what was there before.

It is one thing for high level PCs to come to aid of a weak or fledgling rebellion, it is another to decide that they know what is best for others and impose that upon them.

since the PCs may indeed have folks with CHA 20, WIS 22 and INT 23 ...why wouldn't they be the folks able to introduce an age of enlightenment for a realm?

I find it awfully boring having campaign after campaign where PCs are super-powerful vagabonds.

 

[robconley]

What if he didn't threaten them directly, but simply minded his own business of oppressing his peasants?

I mean, if the PCs visited them, he might even give them the red carpet treatment. Those are some powerful people, after all, and it doesn't pay to antagonize them. But still, he won't stop oppressing the peasants until the PCs dethrone him.

But what makes them "adventurers" in the first place? And why should that coincide with a motivation to just seek the next monster to kill, instead of actually creating something new?

I realize that part of this is simply a genre convention. But like any other convention, this one should be examined a bit more closely - and perhaps given a good shake.

I am a total history geek and one of the rare few who like making up king's lists, list upon list of dates, events, battles, etc. I also cared about the players I DMed and learned over the years how take my detail and translate into something that fun and generates adventure.

Here is a paraphrased conversation about one aspect of my world.

J: Rob how come mages just don't take over everywhere like they do in this city.

Me: Well I thought about that. There is a couple of reasons.

Me: First if you are talking about one of the cultures that went from barbarians tribes to civilization. Like my world's version of Egypt, Greece, Babylonia, etc. The mages are subordinate to the priesthood. The priests are the only ones that ever had the time and resources to study and learn. This goes back to the time of shamans.

Me: I figured traditional D&D style mages rose when something happened to an existing civilization that caused the social structure to collapse. All of sudden you got a hierarchy of learned people without any structures. Some of them would take the knowledge of magic and use it to survive. Some would have alturistic motives and some not.

Me: However if I guarentee you that during this "Time of troubles". That the fighters, surviving priests, etc would not like these mages at all.

J: Why that, wouldn't they try to use them?

Me: Sure some one, at first. But remember mages are more powerful. A fighter needs items, and who makes the items. The people who cast magic. Priest could counter them but in a "Time of Troubles" they have their own problems. Likely mages would be used at first, and then when a few took over, the rest of society would just try to kill them as a threat.

Me: Remember mages have one big vulneribility they need time and resources to learn. Basically the same requirements for the priest. However unlike the priest there is not god providing them with an ideology or a religion to rally the people too. Who does a mage owe alliegence too? Not to a god? The fact the mage has the power and is a free agent makes him a threat.

J: So how come we have mages at all.

Me: Because not all mages are out for power and conquests. And the fact my world's history has gone on long enough that some have found ways of integrating into society. There are several ways mages done this but basically they agreed to abide by a few simple rules in exchange to be left alone to pursue their studies. In the case of this city-state. They were invited in by the city fathers and basically rule with a light hand. Also they are not overly expansionstic and in an area where there are a lot of small realms and kingdoms. In most other lands it is the priesthood that provides the ultimate check against the mages. In my world god power trumps mage power everytime.

--------------------------------

By thinking things through like this I have several things that generate adventure. I have several limitations that even the most powerful mages have to overcome that aren't just a case of something powerful they need to kill. Plus it isn't a total bleak situation as the background gives PC mages several avenues to pursue if they want greater power in the campaign world.

Do this for religion, culture, races, etc then you have a rich tapestry for your players to adventure in.

Rob Conley

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

But piling detail upon detail is hard to go and pull off at the table for most people. And without the detail you most often feel like you dealing with sterotypes and npcs with cardboard personalities. So while the style you are talking is a lot of fun it is a lot of work. So people go with other types of plot that are easier to do for the fun they have.

I actually had the opposite experience. In 1983 I got burned out on trying to provide greater and greater challenges through plane-hopping. When I started DMing again in 1987 I took the decision to remove planar adventuring. PCs would have to either retire from adventuring and play politics or retire altogether at high levels. I ran two "political" campaigns, '87-'90 and '94-'97 which were more fun than any of the traditional campaigns I ran from '77 to '83 and '92-'94.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it easier to weave a political campaign for 10th level or higher characters than it is to challenge them with monsters — even more so in 3rd edition than any previous edition. I guess what might be the key to my success has been that the campaign starts off political at 1st level. I don't wait until the PCs are 10th level to introduce them to the "real world." As PCs progress in levels, they gain a reputation and fame (or infamy). And in turn, nobles, guilds, etc. try to recruit them or utilize them in some way to further their own gains whether it's fighting wars or toppling governments or even just to neutralize them politically.

 

[Umbran]

Yet somehow it still seems to be taken for granted that the PCs ride into the sunset/visit the next pub and simply let the governments of the world alone - no matter how corrupt or inefficient they might be...

Just for the edification of the thread - where do you get this impression? Clearly, there's a base assumption here, and respondants might be well-served to know the source of the assumptions.

Because, as usual, it isn't like there's reliable market research about how folks play the game in this level of detail. So why does it seem like this to you?

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

By thinking things through like this I have several things that generate adventure.

Thinking things through is the key. I find it more enjoyable to think through implications of my campaign than to try and design high level encounters.

 

[robconley]

since the PCs may indeed have folks with CHA 20, WIS 22 and INT 23 ...why wouldn't they be the folks able to introduce an age of enlightenment for a realm?

I find it awfully boring having campaign after campaign where PCs are super-powerful vagabonds.

They can try. But the actual situation is more complex than that. If you want to play it realistically. Typically you want to give your players a fair challenge. Which means unlike Thornir pessimistic view, you should cut your PCs a break if they overcome all the challenges you throw in their way. Then if you want to continue the campaign, make a new chapter with its own challenges.

For example I had a long running campaign. Where PC fighter type rose to being mercenary captain, then a duke, finally a king. He conquered a neighboring kingdom and had to deal with its religions, cultures, factions. And he dealt with everything threw his way. I knew enough about history and stuff to keep forever embroiled in the things he did. But from a game standpoint the player would not be having fun as I beat him over the head with history. And some of solutions and actions he came up with were pretty good in their own right. So I gave him the happy ending, he had his kingdom.


However he still wanted to play on and also some of the other players still had some unfinished business. So I came up with this new threat. He has his kingdom all settled. But now from the desert to the west of him comes these fanatical dervishes worshiping Horus as the one true god and death to any who don't convert. One of the problems is that between him and the desert were several realms under the rule of tyrants and despots. Many of them WELCOMED the followers of Horus as an alternative to what they had. So not only the PCs had to deal with fighting the dervishes they had to somehow keep the remaining western realms from falling before the army of Horus became too strong.

It was hard, and the PC suffered some defeats. The resolution of this took the campaign to the end and fun was had by all.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Actually, I understand this perfectly well - most of the campaigns I was involved in until very recently were the same.

But running an Exalted campaign has really opened up my eyes to the possibilities. "You guys are among the most powerful people in the world. The world has serious problems - not just extradimensional enemies, but also social and political inequalities and injustice. So if you aren't going to put things right, then who else will?"

The crushing weight of responsibility for tens of thousands of people has added a whole new dimension of drama to the campaign - and thus made for some rather novel (to us) and fun roleplaying. On one hand, you want to improve the lives of all your citizens. On the other hand, if you screw up, lots of people will suffer. But walking away from it all does not mean that the suffering will stop - to the contrary, things will likely get worse for most people.

So now the PCs are busy plotting, scheming, running their own social engineering projects and work to create something that will stand the test of time (one PC, in fact, wishes to alter the mechanisms of reincarnation in the world so that people will actually remember their past lives). They might disagree over some of the particulars, but they all agree that something needs to be done - and they can't just hand over this responsibility to other people who are less qualfied for that burden.

Maybe it's the fact that the career of "most" D&D characters starts off as mere adventurers that earn fame and fortune by slaying monsters and looting their remains. Given the speed of character leveling that 3E instilled into D&D, the changed possibilities simply don't register much before the players decide to retire the characters and try out a new build in the next adventure path?

I've been part of a DSA campaign the last 3.5 years, and we started out on level 1 with a murder at a coronation festival in the capitol, and went ass-deep into intrigue, politics (church and worldly), wars and finally an uprising against the emperor over the course of 12 levels. We got into the service of a duke, started a public school in the village we lived in, offered stipends, got involved in a schism in the most influential church in the land, courted and married, and had children before we stopped the campaign...our characters went from 17-19 to 24-26 years of age. We didn't turn into the most powerful characters of the continent "yet", but we were pretty influential none the less, and it was tremendous fun.

I bet that if you start with something as small as a murder mystery with political/religious ties at 1st level, and keep it as a red thread in the campaign, it will take a wholly different direction from the standard "adventurous dungeon-crawlers for hire". I remember the Karameikos Gazetteer containing adventure seeds that could involve the characters in the contant traladaran/thyatian unrest that plagues the duchy. On the other hand, it requires a pretty solid background setting and a DM who knows his way around it without having to browse through 400 pages of world book every time.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

since the PCs may indeed have folks with CHA 20, WIS 22 and INT 23 ...why wouldn't they be the folks able to introduce an age of enlightenment for a realm?

I never said they couldn't if they were interested in doing it. I was just respsonding to the question of how a good party could justify leaving a tyrant in place.

I find it awfully boring having campaign after campaign where PCs are super-powerful vagabonds.

I don't disagree with you, but at the same time, I have no desire to play out a campaign where I have to establish a replacement government for the despot I toppled. I like having a connection to the world, a home location to work from, but not being saddled with running a land.

 

[jmucchiello]

The problem is that politics is not fun for the general populace. If your players didn't start the campaign with the goal of being political movers and shakers, their characters will not work well at politics later in the game. Done correctly, you should have the PCs acting as pawns of some political entity by the time they are high level. Done really well, they should be unaware of their pawn-ness.

Second, most RPGs are group oriented. Is the party going to rule the world as an oligarchy? If not, once you say one of the players is King, everyone else is suddenly second rate. The king sits on the throne. Makes the decisions. And he delegates everything else. Delegating is not fun RPG activity. How much XP do you get to sending someone to take care of the 40 orcs bandits terrorizing a small village?

The day to day challenges of rulership are just not the kinds of challenges designed for taking on with the standard 4 party archetypes.

OTOH, is the DM going to be able to generate hours and hours of petititons to parade before the king looking for help. Of course the hilarity of how the group solves problems might be amusing:

Petitioner: "Sire, the merchants of Zenor refuse to pay to complete the bridge over the river Jores and we haven't the funds to complete it."
Party Mage: "I know that bridge, hold on." Disappears. Teleports in, finishes bridge with Wall of Stone. Reappears. "Don't worry about it, the bridge is now complete."