Power and Responsibility

[robconley]

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.

Good point for a game. But realistically, you may want to leave the world alone, but will the world leave you alone.

In a previous post, I related about a PC that became King. However the campaign started out more as a merchant ship campaign where the PC was a flunky to another PC playing the merchant. Due to circumstance the PC who became king found himself in a situation where he made enemies. Solving that situation made him bigger enemies, and solving THAT? Well it went on for a while. He told me once

"Rob, I got to say this. On one hand I am sick and death of this and the only way I figure I ever going to be done with this if I become a king myself. On the other hand, I can't blame you because everything been a result of my decisions and you didn't screw with me once."

 

[Doug McCrae]

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

My point is there's very little difference between whacking Lord Elmer and whacking a beholder or a high level drow priestess. All three are morally wicked, have minions, live in well defended lairs and have a large amount of personal power. The only distinction is that Elmer lives above ground.

But what makes them "adventurers" in the first place?

1) The default assumption when you begin a game of D&D is that the PCs are motivated to go down holes, kill the nasties that live there and take their stuff. Ie are adventurers. There's no reason to stop going down holes just cause your 10th level.
2) All PC classes are adventurers. A minstrel who never goes down dungeons is an expert, not a bard. A cleric is a holy warrior, not someone who delivers church services. Rulers are aristocrats, not fighters.

 

[Doug McCrae]

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?

What do the non-casters do?

 

[robconley]

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.
S

Here is my secret sauce. While you are correct in that not every person wants to deal with politics in a game. However just about every player had a BIG GOAL for their character. One of my players BIG GOAL was to open a potion shop. The work done on a campaign's background can be scaled high or low and high level details can have an impact on low level details.

For example during the campaign where a PC became King, I developed all these cultures. The main city of my campaign had two of these cultures (Call them theta and gamma).

Now comes the campaign where a PC wanted a Potion Shop. During the course of typical dungeon style adventures he makes friends with a lot of theta who also rule the city. The dungeons were interwoven other adventures done for the party's theta friends, some of which were against the gamma. Then PC gets his potion shop in the city. Now he finds that he has friends and enemies because what he did in the past. That to keep his potion shop from getting trashed he had to interact with the different theta, gamma, and other people around him. And like my king campaign, there came a point where he done enough to get the happy ending owning his potion shop.

In a corner of my city-state if you ever see a potion shop with a sign WE SELL POTIONS CHEEP! You will know who it is.

Enjoy
Rob Conley

P.S. CHEEP Is intentional. The player was setting a woodshop in his garage and decided to make sign for his potion shop. He comes to the game with it all wrapped up. He proudly rips off the cover. And in the midst of this beautiful sign is carved;

WE SELL POTIONS CHEEP!

We howled in laughter for an hour afterwards.

 

[robconley]

What do the non-casters do?

Kill them as fast as they can before they lose power ;-)

 

[JDJblatherings]

What do the non-casters do?

Use the leadership feat to round up a host of folks able to manage the realm while he is gone. Or ..the horror-...get by with scores of 12-18.

 

[JDJblatherings]

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 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.

That's when the good guys "miraculously" find the good spirited and unusually capable bastard son of the ex-ruler living in a cattage next to the blacksmith and put him on the throne.

or

don't have the PCs manage the borig stuff, that's why kings have viziers, prime-ministers, seneschals and all that lot hanging about. John Carter was pretty darned big yet always managed to adventure, Conan (and mnay other claissical fanatsy fiction heroes) were also leaders of their lands and yet we never got bored with the adventure where they double counted all the coins in the treasury just to be sure.

 

[cougent]

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?

I am going low tech and simple here, the tyrants have forces that are as yet unknown / unseen that keep them in power so that a single epic character *CAN'T* topple them. Whether that is they are actually epic tyrants, they have epic henchmen, or some type of god / demon backing.

Basically, PCs should consider the Big Picture if and only if the GM is going to make the Bigger Picture an issue.

What if the PCs themselves are going to make it an issue?

The PCs will find it impossible to make it an issue without the DM's collusion. The DM represents the entire non-PC universe, after all. There is no such thing as a repercussion or a broad-ranging effect without the DM's say-so.

I have to go with Umbran here, and getting slightly off-topic for a second this sounds like the whole DM power thing, which has actually never been an issue for me, and never would be. The minute my players "revolt" or decide to take power or take control is the minute they "fired" me and they find a new DM. Back on topic, as Umbran said, the DM and his world can easily come up with equalizers for god complex epic characters in the form of actual gods, other god complex NPC's, shifts in the very fabric of reality, any number of things in the *universe* that can overwhelm 4-6 even epic PC's. Because in the universal scheme of things, they really aren't so epic after all.

 

[Victim]

How does personal ambition relate to toppling or forming governments? As a general rule, adventuring confers intrinsic personal power - the power to do something. Politicing provides institutional power - other people do things for you because of your position. If the PCs have the ability to overthrow nations in themselves, then they're already outside and above conventional social structures.

Is becoming a ruler a way to fullfill ambitions, or is it a dangerous distraction from the process of improving one's personal abilities?

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Moreover, just because a party can agree that thing X is bad - be X a monster or tyrant - doesn't mean they'll all be able to agree on the replacement if they get involved in such matters.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I have to go with Umbran here, and getting slightly off-topic for a second this sounds like the whole DM power thing, which has actually never been an issue for me, and never would be. The minute my players "revolt" or decide to take power or take control is the minute they "fired" me and they find a new DM. Back on topic, as Umbran said, the DM and his world can easily come up with equalizers for god complex epic characters in the form of actual gods, other god complex NPC's, shifts in the very fabric of reality, any number of things in the *universe* that can overwhelm 4-6 even epic PC's. Because in the universal scheme of things, they really aren't so epic after all.

To be honest, to me this sounds like the PCs can't make a difference after all.

And what's the point of reaching levels of 20 or higher if you can't make a difference?