Where have all the heroes gone?

[altier]

Here is what I do to help prevent this. First of all I always ban evil alignments (I also find this helps the party work together better). Second I encourage the party members to write a background and reward them with xp when they do write a background (this not only helps them to have more personalty in their pcs, but also gives me great ideas for the campaign, which make a personal difference for the pcs). Third I reward players for unique ideas and playing in character with a small xp reward (about 25-50 xp, it doesn't sound like much, but it really gets my players excited and makes them think harder about whats going on in the game and gives them a mind set of "What would my character do in this situation?")

This has worked very well for me, I hope it helps!

 

[kigmatzomat]

Something to think about here (in support of what you just wrote), and this is my opinion: Interesting characters are not characters with a bizarre and improbable or dramatic backstory. Yeah, your ranger's family was killed by orcs and you hunted them in the mountians and then were lost in a blizzard and healed by a monk who taught you the virtues of forgiveness, etc, blah blah blah. Great. That would make an interesting story if written well. But it doesn't make your character interesting now.
...
Interesting characters are created by those choices. It is the courage and honor and virtue (or sometimes their failings in those virtues) in actual gameplay that make characters interesting. Without that, a character with an interesting backstory is just a dull character with an interesting backstory.

Hear, hear. I played one of those "my life was pretty good but I wanna be a hero" characters. Yeah, I gave him one traumatic event with a quirk (always wears gloves to cover the scars from a serious burn when he was a blacksmith's apprentice) but it wasn't a defining moment, other than being an adverse situation he didn't let slow him down.

The character resulted in a new skill in our campaigns (carousing: the art of being pleasant in social situations and generally improving the mood), tended to invest modest amounts of coin with various bakers & cooks to take on apprentices so he could be sure to have his favorite treats in the future, and generally felt a bar fight (subdual weapons only) was a great way to make friends.

I won't call him the focal point of the party but he was pretty darned integrated into the setting and far from forgettable.

 

[Harmon]

It's difficult where I live.

Where do you live?

 

[Scarbonac]

Greetings…

A
”First of all, it’s ‘your liege', not 'Mr. King’. Second…I don’t know why I’m even going to bother to explain this to you. In fact… if you wish you can leave right now. -- Oh, you haven’t left yet? Okay, then I will explain it to you. Why? Because they are peasants. My son is a prince of the realm.

“Tell you what, evidently you don’t know what it is to be noble. Since you don’t want this noble mission and you think it’s more important to save a few peasants on the fringes of the kingdom, from some goblins. Instead of securing the freedom of the heir-to-be, I’ll just have you outlawed, and have every two-bit greedy mercenary bounty-hunter like yourself come looking for your head, unless you want to be shot down like dog right here?“

How's that for an answer?

So totally yoinked for the next time my players have their PCs act like punks with Quality.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Nahh, that's too heavy handed. A proper king will let his chancellor (aka "the bad cop") be the mean man who threatens to gut the party like fish so the King can be the nice guy and "merely" banish the party from the royal city and look like a generally nice guy to one and all. A king with a really good court will have everyone from the court jester on up making suggestions. If the king is lucky his heir will be the one to urge a rational response, thus furthering the hold of the clan on the throne.

 

[Kristivas]

Where do you live?

Poplar Bluff, MO. There a card-gaming shop here, but not much in the way of gaming.