Where have all the heroes gone?

[scipio]

In my most recent game, I've been having trouble getting the party involved in the plot. It's your basic conspiracy to overthrow the benevolent ruler, with the party framed as assassins. Unless they find out who is responsible, they're likely to be tracked down and killed. Now, I've hashed through my specific problem over and over again, but it really boils down to this: rather than take a chance, this group wants to run away - flee the country (but with their current means would almost certainly be captured first), ignore the plot hook, abandon party members who are interested in clearing their names, and are acting generally...unheroic. This isn't just in my game either - this group is just plain danger averse. I started the game at 8th level, and from my standpoint, if you want to behave as their PCs are, you never should have taken up adventuring. You should stay home, become a farmer, cast spells that make better crops and thicker wool on your sheep. Leave the adventuring to folks who are interested in taking the calculated risks that bring fame, fortune, and glory. In short, you wouldn't get to 8th level. You'd be churning butter, forging weapons, researching some esoteric magical point, becoming a beaurocrat, or learning embroidery. Am I wrong here?

 

[Crothian]

You and the players are not on the same page game style wise. You want one things nthey want something els.e I'd talk to them about it out of game and see where they stand.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

What's the penalty for character death in your game? If it is pretty nasty then that might explain their actions. Speaking of action, try giving them action points like in d20 Modern and Eberron. That tends to bring out a little more derring-do.

Of course, this could just be their way of asking for a little more roleplay-heavy, combat-lite game. Try setting the encounters at CR7 instead of 8 and see where that gets you.

 

[shilsen]

What Crothian said. There are so many different ways to run and play a D&D campaign, some of which can be very mutually exclusive, that it's very important to make sure your players and you have the same expectations. Talk to them, tell them what kind of game you want, find out what kind of game they want, and see if you can't come up with something which'll please both parties.

 

[Arnwyn]

rather than take a chance, this group wants to run away - flee the country (but with their current means would almost certainly be captured first),

Maybe in this case they don't understand the implications and consequences of running away - it seems to me that they think that it's the easier thing to do (but it apparently is the harder thing to do, since you say that they "would almost certainly be captured first").

You could mention/explain/hint/show to them that running would be more problematic... could get you the result you want.

Am I wrong here?

Nope. But maybe you have some hope, here.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Actually finding an assassin purely to clear your own name doesn't sound particularly heroic to me. It's pure self-interest. So you had self-interested PCs from the start. Now to me, fleeing the country sounds a lot easier than trying to find a criminal while simultaneously being pursued by the authorities. It's what any non-good character would most likely do. And indeed any good character that felt doing the task you wanted them to was beyond their capabilities.

If you'd said at the start you wanted good characters only then instead of having them framed for murder you had them approached by some sympathetic or friendly NPC who'd been framed for the crime, you might be on to a winner.

The problem with your setup is it's not immediately clear to the players what the adventure is. For all they know, getting the Hell out of Dodge might be the adventure.

 

[NewJeffCT]

In my most recent game, I've been having trouble getting the party involved in the plot. It's your basic conspiracy to overthrow the benevolent ruler, with the party framed as assassins. Unless they find out who is responsible, they're likely to be tracked down and killed. Now, I've hashed through my specific problem over and over again, but it really boils down to this: rather than take a chance, this group wants to run away - flee the country (but with their current means would almost certainly be captured first), ignore the plot hook, abandon party members who are interested in clearing their names, and are acting generally...unheroic. This isn't just in my game either - this group is just plain danger averse. I started the game at 8th level, and from my standpoint, if you want to behave as their PCs are, you never should have taken up adventuring. You should stay home, become a farmer, cast spells that make better crops and thicker wool on your sheep. Leave the adventuring to folks who are interested in taking the calculated risks that bring fame, fortune, and glory. In short, you wouldn't get to 8th level. You'd be churning butter, forging weapons, researching some esoteric magical point, becoming a beaurocrat, or learning embroidery. Am I wrong here?

In my opinion, if you are playing D&D, you should be at least making an attempt to be some sort of hero, especially if they are coming in at 8th level. While roleplaying styles may differ, players should try to overcome obstacles put in their path by the DM. While retreat is always an option, I would hope it is an option where you retreat and come back when ready for more. If they do not want to be heroes, they should try something else.

That said, I would not try to railroad them into staying in town. However, there should be consequences to attempting to assassinate a king – I think you said they were almost surely to be captured.

Let them get captured, dragged back into town in chains and put on trial. Maybe there is something that is not too silly to have them pull a Perry Mason moment where the PCs are revealed as innocent pawns or the bad guys is revealed. Certainly, a cleric trusted by the king could cast a spell on the PCs to see if they were honest.

 

[The Shaman]

I started the game at 8th level, and from my standpoint, if you want to behave as their PCs are, you never should have taken up adventuring. You should stay home, become a farmer, cast spells that make better crops and thicker wool on your sheep. Leave the adventuring to folks who are interested in taking the calculated risks that bring fame, fortune, and glory. In short, you wouldn't get to 8th level. You'd be churning butter, forging weapons, researching some esoteric magical point, becoming a beaurocrat, or learning embroidery. Am I wrong here?

Some players are highly risk averse with regard to their characters, and on one occasion I suggested that a player retire his character and find something else to do with his time if his adventurer didn't want to adventure.

One question to ask is this: as GM, do you spring too many difficult challenges on your players? Do they have assassins stalking them in their beds every night, and dragons swooping down upon them every day? Are the risks they face reasonable, such that the characters' lives between adventures...well, do they have lives between adventures at all?

IMX some GMs go totally overboard with too many traps, too many encounters, too many this, too many that, too many the other, and never give the characters a chance to come up for air. The players become risk averse due to the sense that literally the whole world is out to kill them all the time. It's one thing to ratchet up tension - it's another thing to have an otyugh waiting in the bottom of every outhouse in the land. Players screwe by bad GMs tend to be the most cautious, IMHO.

As a GM I try to reward acts of derring-do, rather than punish them by making every action so dangerous that there is little hope of survival. Some encounters are cake-walks, some are comic relief, and a few are extremely challenging - the characters get to build up their confidence before its tested. I also try to use the "v-word" (verisimilitude) to guide my encounters - would a room really have a dozen traps in it? how did the occupants remember to deactivate and then reset them all - stuff like that.

You might try talking with your players about this and see how they feel. If they insist on running away, let them find a safe place to hide, and then fold up your notes and go home, explaining that they've avoided the assassins and now the characters are free to live out their lives in the back of the cave/under the floorboards of the house/whereever.

 

[Rel]

Sometimes you find the adventure and sometimes the adventure finds you.

I've played an "anti-hero" before and had fun with it. Generally speaking I went on the adventure because I was being leveraged into it by other NPC's but I still engaged the storyline. But there came a point where my character managed to get out from under their thumbs and he then proposed to do exactly what he'd wanted to all along: Escape to somewhere that he could start over and become the Manipulator rather than the Manipulated. And so he sailed away...

...and his ship was wrecked on an island filled with danger.

My point is that I wanted my character to have an adventure because that's what is fun. But because I don't always like to play the Paladin type who can't wait to risk his neck for no pay and little recognition, hoping only that Right will be done, I sometimes play a little "hard to get" with the plot. But this has usually meant playing the Han Solo archetype who says, "To hell with this. Get yourself killed if you want but I'm leaving!" only to return when he sees that the more idealistic PC's in the party mean to go through with the heroics.

Now if they are bound and determined to escape then you can follow through with your threat and have them get nabbed. Then it becomes an adventure about escaping captivity and getting revenge (or simply trying to get far away and not get caught again).

Or if you want to get really nasty you can give them what they want. Let them escape to the land of fluffy towels and easy jobs. Then let news trickle in about how bad things have gotten back where they fled from and how an entire new, horrible regime is in place torturing the population and ruling with an iron fist. Make it clear that the world needs heroes and that "If then now, when? If not us, who?". Have this evil empire start to spread and make war on its neighbors.

Who knows, maybe you'll get them to figure out that "All Evil requires to succeed is to have Good men do nothing."

 

[Jdvn1]

If a heroic party thinks the danger is higher than what they can handle, and they don't run away, they're probably not very smart.