Where have all the heroes gone?

[Ace]

on Topic

Tell players up front what you want, set restrictions and guidelines. Be prepared NOT to play if you want what your players don't want. To do otherwise is to court bad gaming. If you have misfit player you can accomdate don't invite 'em.

Now drifting a bit

IMC Kings usually cast Detect Good before hiring adventurer types. No Good? No Hire. The reason ? Neutrals usally have to be paid (a lot) or threatened (ala the horse thief bit)

with Evil ones you either kill them or ignore them. Mess with the ones that that are stronger than you you get this --

King: Did you find my son

ADv1 -- yep

A zombie, its face a rictus of utter horror shambles in

Adv2 -- I belive thats him

King (in shock) How could you, you monster guards! guards !

Adv3 Sorry Kingy -- all dead. They died faster than the kid did. he screamed a long time. Oh and don't bother with you high priest or vizier

ADV4 tosses a pair of heads on the ground.

Suddenly a terrible roaring and screaming his heard

The king lunges from his chair only to be grappled by ADV5 "Siddown Kingy"

ADV1 Ahh the lovely wife and your oh so young daughter just about to be married yeah ? -- looks like the Nalfashnee found them

ADV2 -- Now I recomend that you give us the key to your treasure vault.

The king sobbing hands over the key

ADV 4 Very Nice

The nalfashnee appears "Hey Joe"

ADV3 "hey FSNARGRITHI'll Have Fun?"

The nalfashnee grins a toothy grin -- "virgins souls are good eats"

ADV2 Aint that the case. L8r Bro

Nalfashnee "later guys"

The king now broken whispers "what do you want"

ADV1 "To make a point, which we just did. Kingship means squat in a world where only real experience and magic power counts -- nothing else matters but power. we got it, you don't.

Suddenly a slamming is heard

ADV 6 "looks like the pallies -- lets get out of here"

ADV 3 Hasta

ADV2 " Greater Teleport"

D&D doesn't work like a real world does. You don't get the same kind of experience managing a kingdom as you do for risking your life in the normal system -- sure a king may be 10th
Aristocrat at age 45 but the 24 year old adventurers may be near Epic -- Power tells all

 

[Brother MacLaren]

D&D doesn't work like a real world does. You don't get the same kind of experience managing a kingdom as you do for risking your life in the normal system -- sure a king may be 10th
Aristocrat at age 45 but the 24 year old adventurers may be near Epic -- Power tells all

That super-rapid ascension that PCs go through? It is so unbelievably improbable that it should be almost unheard of. It's not something a king should need to seriously consider in my opinion. NPC "adventurers" should have a MUCH higher mortality rate -- the game assumes many things to tip the odds heavily in the PCs' favor. Most importantly, they typically face "appropriate challenges" and have a "fair" number of encounters per day.

When PCs escape from dungeons carrying loot, they are NOT instantly attacked every time by bandits (as would be the most logical place for bandits to stake out). They are NOT repeatedly ganked by higher-level NPCs as soon as they get anything worth taking. Most players would quit a game if you did that to them. "Sorry, I know you're only 8th-level, and you haven't done anything to annoy the Dead King, and he's a 17th-level lich, but the four of you do have about as much GP worth of stuff as he has, so it makes sense that he'd try to kill you all for it."

Imagine an MMO with full PVP allowed, no respawn or easy Rez, no true "safe zones," a FINITE number of monsters and opponents to kill (so once one party has wiped out the kobolds and goblins, the next party has to go straight to the orcs), and in the wilderness wandering monsters at a wide variety of power levels. That's what the world looks like to NPCs. Most of them get killed at low levels by monsters that outclass them. Some get killed by rivals for their loot. If you have a million NPCs and classed humanoids, and they fight each other to advance levels, they have to win 3 "50-50" fights to advance, that's 1 out of every 8 advancing to the next level. At the end, you have .5 8th-level characters.

So, the king can probably sit content that there isn't some 24-year-old kid who just discovered the power to gate in balors. Because what are the odds of that happening?

 

[Voadam]

So I tell my players when you make your characters figure out what is special about you that would attract a platinum dragons attention.

****

then I get this.

I am going to play a necromancer who was an ally of Tiamat before he realized that he would rather rule the world himself but he can't take out Tiamat and her spawn on his own so he is going to use Bahumt and his do gooders to do it and then turn on them and wipe them out. :\

Well such an ally of tiamat might attract Bahamat's attention, though in a wanted dead or alive sort of way, so he did technically comply with your request to make something special to attract a platinum dragon's attention.

 

[sniffles]

He thinks it is cool role playing and so do some of the DMs they say it makes for a gritty game. I don't agree it makes for a lot of angry players. Its has gotten to the point that no matter what he plays in a game none of my characters will ever trust him. He could bring in a paladin and my character would be waiting for the betryal.

I have told him that I won't allow it in any game I run and that one of my house rules is that characters who go evil become NPCs.

I have to say, this guy sounds like a selfish jerk and I wouldn't want to play with him either.

I like playing heroes. The one time I played an evil character was not nearly as much fun for me. I guess I'm lucky that my group is pretty much of the same opinion.

One point regarding the above, though: Elf Witch, I hope you don't really mean that your character won't trust this guy's character even if he plays a paladin. I can understand if you don't trust the other player, but your character shouldn't know that about his character. At least not until there's some in-game evidence that the character is going to be untrustworthy.

 

[haakon1]

A step in the right direction, I think, would be giving xp rewards for doing good things that don't involve killing monsters, and in giving gold/item rewards when they are not asked for.

This seems natural to me. XP awards for "story actions", and in world benefits to the characters (free training from people they've helped, free stay at the inn).

I think it's always important to DM NPC's from the NPC's point of view, not from a PC point of view. It's more interesting if the NPC's have personalities and ideas of their own . . . like giving the PC "cops" free "coffee and donuts" because it's good to have people like that around your tavern in a dangerous world.

Or a ruler deciding that free horses and a writ of "aid these guys as they are on the king's business" is a good investment for on-call contractor special forces.

Yes, I'm calling for a bit of "method acting" DMing of NPC's. ("What's my motivation?", as the guy playing the tomato in the Fruit of the Loom ad in "Tootsie" said, before getting fired by the exasperated director!)

 

[haakon1]

wanted me to let him play a kua-toa rogue

Not a kuo-toa ninja? Gaah, mere kuo-toa ROGUES are boring!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think heroes are great girls and guys.

Too bad that, in 25 years of playing, I hardly ever saw a hero or heroine played, in any roleplaying game of any type, be it D&D or otherwise. Those few actual heroes and heroines I *did* see didn't last very long.

No, the above wasn't meant as a joke. It is all too ghastly true.

I have really got to restart my lost-to-the-board-crash Story Hour. Emmerson and company are absolutely heroes and, even if they have differing opinions about things, their hearts are always in the right place.

 

[haakon1]

ADV2 " Greater Teleport"

D&D doesn't work like a real world does. You don't get the same kind of experience managing a kingdom as you do for risking your life in the normal system -- sure a king may be 10th
Aristocrat at age 45 but the 24 year old adventurers may be near Epic -- Power tells all

D&D doesn't work like that, in my campaign.

If somebody tried to take on the ruler, they'd discover, just among the things I've thought about:
- The chief adviser is a 10th level druid. That's relatively high level in my campaign.

- The ruler, who is usually out in the wars, is a 14th level Ranger. And a high member in the Knights of the Watch, a regional transnational organization of several thousand knights, who are not aristocrats, but paladins, fighters, clerics, rangers, and (in the sneaky subchapter) rogues. The Knights would bring a world of hurt on anyone who acted the ruler.

- The ruler's castle is proof against teleportation, of course. The main gate has built in Detect Magic, Detect Evil, See Invisibility, and Zone of Truth to aid the guards. They also have a Wall of Force panic button, operated by a grunt using a permanent clairvoyance "security camera" over the enclosure between the drawbridge and the portcullis.

- My highest level retired PC -- a 21st level high priest of Heimdall, the god of defense -- has been visiting the castle during the war, helping with healing. One of his old adventuring buddies, a 20th level wizard, is there too, having stayed after he finished the gate in the basement of the dunjeon to the party's secret stronghold in a distant land. Next to the gate sleeps an adult gold dragon, who has 12 levels in paladin.

- A player's retired 9th level ranger is often visiting.

- A giant who was made a nobleman is often visiting.

Like I said, that's just what I know about being there . . . I'd have no hesitation to make up on the spot that the throne has an automatic Wall of Force and Sphere of Invulnerability that goes up whenever magic is detected in the throne room, and that it has 1st edition psionic telepathy -- for any distant instant thought connections with close friends and allies -- built in.

Bottomline: Kings aren't stupid or weak, and PC's who try to mess with them should meet the full fury of the DM, assuming the DM doesn't want munchkin players. Much more fun to throw a 20th level party at the 15th level know-it-alls then to just rule the gods instantly annihiliate them all for challenging the divine right of kings, or you could have the king press the "teleport them to the Isle of Apes/City of Brass/666th level of Hell" button.

 

[Cedric]

Pure opinion here, please don't take offense.

If you are incapable of finding a hero or a "good guy" that can capture your interest and feed your imagination...then maybe RPGs aren't for you.

Go find a nice, boring desk job that doesn't require you to strain your brain too much, get an XBox and knock yourself out....at home...alone.

 

[Gold Roger]

I've got a bit of a reverse problem: My current character pretty much slipped from LG to N because there wasn't any real way to be Good with a capital G yet.

And that in a game that was supposed to be heroic in a capital G way.

But two PC's turned evil.