Where have all the heroes gone?

[buzz]

I think it's something about DnD that brings out the mercenary streak. IMO - Metagame speaking - it's an artefact of tying a large degree of character power to expensive gee-gaws. Leads to craving money to get the things?

The default setup of D&D is that PCs are professional adventurers who live outside of the normal social structure. Given that there is no default reward for "heroism" other than possible XP in D&D, I don't see any reason why people should be surprised that "What's in it for me?" is a common question heard from a player. D&D PCs need XP and loot to function.

If you want altruistic heroism, you need to encourage it.

• Work with the players to create PCs that have connections to society. Minor noble families, thieves' guilds, churches, knightly orders, wealthy patrons etc. It's hard to ask "What's in it for me?" when it's your father asking you to rescue your infant cousin.
• Give them a default budget for equipment using the wealth-by-level table; i.e., eliminate the need to loot every dead body.
• Make use of the Affiliations rules from PHB2 to reward them for working for the people I mention in my first point above.

Anyway, Elf Witch seems to have realized this, but, basically, if you as DM have made clear the tone of the game you want to run, and the group has bought into it, then any player who doesn't want to play the same game needs to be shown the door.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I can recall a reverse sentiment from a game I played in:

Just for once, could an employer actually pay us. Not turn out to be a vampire, welch, get bankrupted, abducted or flee the country. And could something we fight, just once, have gear. Of any sort.*

Sounds like our Shadowrun campaign.

A year or two of games like that does leave an impression. It takes me a real effort of will nowadays not to ask 'how much?', generally followed by 'what, each?'. And - is the orcs underwear in the right size?

Definately not how any of my D&D campaigns have run, but this one player has played every character like this for the almost 20 years he's been in my group. He's the one that's writing down the BBEG's flaming sword and magic armor then asking how many normal spears the henchman had.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

If you want altruistic heroism, you need to encourage it.

• Work with the players to create PCs that have connections to society. Minor noble families, thieves' guilds, churches, knightly orders, wealthy patrons etc. It's hard to ask "What's in it for me?" when it's your father asking you to rescue your infant cousin.
• Give them a default budget for equipment using the wealth-by-level table; i.e., eliminate the need to loot every dead body.
• Make use of the Affiliations rules from PHB2 to reward them for working for the people I mention in my first point above.

All good suggestions, although the player I'm referring to would spend his allowance and still try to strip the bodies of the fallen for every copper he could get.

 

[edemaitre]

Heroes

I agree that there have always been many gamers who prefer to play Chaotic Neutral (selfish) or non-Good characters because they seem "cooler" than their more heroic options. I also agree that D&D, which bases advancement on the killing of monsters and amassing of loot, is partly responsible for this. In contrast, other rules systems and much fantasy literature reward teamwork, problem-solving, and information-gathering with things other than treasure. Many computer games have only reinforced the trend toward munchkinism.

However, a creative Game Master has other recourse besides forcing the role-players into doing something they don't want to do. Make magical treasure scarce, so they have to work for it. I agree with the suggestion to make contacts and allies important, assassins something to be feared, and moral consequences applicable to random mayhem. True antiheroes are still fighting for a good cause, so those would be O.K. in an otherwise heroic campaign with shades of gray.

While I urge new players to bring in non-evil P.C.s for the sake of party harmony, there's nothing to prohibit them from turning evil in the course of their adventures. Of course, a party should also be able to police itself. I prefer each party to develop its own code of honor, guided by P.C. and N.P.C. Clerics. Merely amassing power works in the short term, but there's always someone willing to backstab or betray you in the end...

 

[Illirion]

All the real heroes are behind a DM screen .

- Illirion

 

[Emirikol]

I am going to play a necromancer
So I write back and say no that I don't want to run a game
So I get back but that is so boring how
So I tell him that maybe this is one campaign he should just sit out
But this has got me thinking why is so hard now a days to find a game where the players want to be heroes not just powermad looters

EW:

Probably now you see where I'm coming from in my general posts of late eh? You've discovered that there is a significant portion of players out there who are concerned with two thing and two things only: loot and levels!

Frustrating isn't it!

A recent show on the DOC channel regarding Bret "The Hitman" Hart documented how professional wrestling has gone from good-guy vs. bad guy to "everyone's a tough guy" and there are no more good guys and bad guys. Each guy's out for himself to gain as much power and glory as possible without any regard for right and wrong (..beyond good and evil...if you've ever read the book).

Hard to believe that wrestling mentality is so pervasive even in our little hobby.

Here's a solution for you: DEMAND certain things out of your players. You will run a certain type of campaign for a while and your next one will probably be different.

If someone doesn't want to be in this campaign SO BE IT. If you keep a perpetual "D&D Players Wanted" advertisement up a the local game store and ENWorld and WIZARDS.COM, you'll not want for players.


jh

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A little under half of the (large) group of Midwood players wanted to create antiheroes (although all of them are comic book fans, and it's safe to say they all enjoy old-fashioned heroes, too, when done right). The campaign eventually split in two, with the good guys staying behind in Midwood to save the barony (there's a lot it needs saving from) while the others are on the run from the law across the Tarsisian Empire.

If I can make a baseless assumption, was the necromancer a younger player, Elf? There's this whole "I have to be cynical because optimism is for suckers" thing that teenagers and young twentysomethings cling to a lot of the time that I don't find very often in older adults (or younger kids) unless they've had some "stuff" going on their lives.

 

[Emirikol]

The first step I've come to acheiving this goal (when I run D&D) is to ban evil alignments. This always causes some grumbling in at least one of the players.
It's still not a really good fix, though. I think most people are just in love with the anti-hero concept.

I went the extra step: I banned alignments entirely. We have a simple rule: Figure out WHY and HOW your character gets along with all the other characters.

Here's another option: Make your players ROLL their alignments: TBA in another post.


jh


..

 

[Joshua Randall]

Well, I skimmed the thread, so this may have already been said, but...

As with all situations of this nature, I think the key is communication. Make everything out in the open and don't rely on tacit understanding. There may be other players who don't fully grok that you want a heroic fantasy game.

Also, different players are motivated by different things. Some are motivated by story or role-playing elements such as getting to be the hero and save the day. Others are motivated by power-gaming elements like getting new feats and spells. It sounds like this player may fall into the latter camp. Your challenge is to find a way to fufill that motivational desire within the confines of a heroic game. Which shouldn't be too hard, right? Heroes are usually pretty uber, after all.

 

[Dykstrav]

Most campaigns I've ever been in have outright banned evil alignments for PC's. I've only seen a handful of evil characters (outside of villain-themed games) and most of them were petty, shallow, and boring. I don't know if that's because the idea of an evil character is seen as being exotic in its own right or it has more to do with the players themselves.

I can count the number of people that have asked me to play evil characters on one hand.

One was just out for the shock value, he openly wore a pentagram at the table and several rings with demonic symbols and all that. He just wanted the attention and went out of his way to try and offend people by describing how he wanted his characters to go around killing babies and defiling good shrines with his bodily fluids. We kind of felt the best thing to do was not kick him out, but just ignore his Halloween-evil shenanigans. The idea was to lead by example, but he got bored with the game after two sessions and left.

Another was a video game fan that could not make any character whatsoever unless he based it on a video game character (Homeboy brought action figures to the game and even ripped off the names of the characters). He later "broadened his horizons" by making clones of anime characters too, and genuinely thought he was being a constructive player and sharpening his D&D skills. There were several sessions where he skulked through the game when he couldn't play his latest writeup of Sephiroth, Shang Tsung, or Vegeta. To this day I still wonder why he ever picked up D&D in the first place.

I've never had any other players directly ask to play evil characters, so it's never really been an issue. But I have nothing but sympathy for the desire for more heroic characters. I do see players meticulously tracking loot and wanting to torture prisoners and the like.