When heroes lose their heroism

[Lord Vangarel]

We played our 37th session of our current campaign last night and it has occured to me as DM that the characters are no longer heroes.

During the campaign some player's have voluntarily changed characters others have had to do so because of character death. When we started the alignment of the party was predominently good, now the majority of characters are chaotic neutral (3), one is neutral, and one is chaotic good but is going insane.

What can I do? Except for the occasional alternative campaign/adventure over the years I've always strived for the characters to be good and be the heroes of the story. I have been planning the finer details of their next adventure, they were going to be asked to transport an important magical item to an elven fortress (all in the name of good of course) but it occurs to me that they really wouldn't be inclined do this playing to their alignments. I'm now coming round to thinking that perhaps it would be interesting to run a non heroic campaign. The story backdrop can continue but instead of asking the pc's to transport the item they will find it has been given to others deemed more trustworthy.

Does anyone else have experience with character motivations like this? Who has run campaigns that are non-heroic and what have you learned? I'm hoping you guys can offer some advice and possibly some pointers?

 

[the Jester]

The group I run started RttToEE. They were a mostly evil party. After two attempts to storm one of the evil dungeons, both of which ended very poorly for the pcs (two captured, some killed), they decided to join the evil cult. They actually watched their two captive companions be sacrificed. Ick!

They played the module, as far as they followed it, in reverse- helping to advance the villainous plot, etc... while pursuing their real goal, which was to find the apprentice of the wizard who'd cast geas on them. Once they found him, they bailed out to try to tell his master so the geas would end, but the activities of the cult are still going on in my campaign- no doubt fodder for a future group of pc adventurers.

In general, you just have to adjust your plot hooks to accomodate a non-heroic party. One thing that always motivates you no matter what your alignment is, is self-interest. If you need to escape a curse, if your interests are threatened, good or evil or neutral, you're going to get involved.

Rewards of money and magic work for everyone. Keep in mind that perhaps the forces of chaos will take interest in the party rather than those of good; it sounds like a nicely chaotic group. Give them a singing slaad "familiar" [see the homebrews board] and have it talk them in to causing chaos.

 

[Eben]

Common enough problem I think.
A lot of published modules start from the assumption that PC's tend to be good and will do the right thing. I never thought this was very realistic (insofar fantasy can be realistic!)Modern fantasy literature sometimes strugles with the same problem. We've been seeing a lot of heroes that originally had no inclination to be a heroe whatsoever, but just happend to be caught up in events.
As DM faced with a neutral party, this should be your goal in designing you adventures as wel. The best way to achieve this is by incorporating stuff from theri background: a love-interest, a former mentor, an old debt, family, religious motives, clan loyalty, ...
This is more work for you as the DM, because a simple statement like: bring this ancient arifact to yonder forest lest all elvenkind be doomed won't cut it.
But maybe one of the PC ows somebody a favour? There might be a liege lord commanding one of the PC's to fullfill his duty? In saving the Elves, maybe an ancient shrine to the god of one of the PC's might be saved as well?
If you can't think of any method, maybe you should refocus your campaign for a while to put in some of these hooks you can use on the PC's.
Two important rules to remember:
1.try to give the PC's the impression the choice is theirs
2.Accept it when the PC's don't do what you wanted and have a contigency plan to let them face the consequences.

Hope my ramblings help, good luck.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Make heroism worthwhile (NPCs looking up to the PCs, their good reputation helping them, etc).

A lot of DMs take advantage of the PCs heroism (set them up for ambushes, cheat them out of treasure, etc), then act surprised when new characters aren't heroic.

Geoff.

 

[madriel]

It's a challenge dealing with characters motivated by self-interest and not the greater good. They won't transport that artifact just cause somebody asked them nicely, and might even try to take it for their own purposes.

Appealing to their greed might work, by offering a generous reward or future considerations. CN characters care about themselves and their personal friends and interests. You'll need to show them a concrete benefit or threat to their interests to get them to do it (IME).