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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5714071" data-attributes="member: 27160">Well, a meaty thread I had overlooked completely...Trying to address the OP, to restrict the length of my reply: I think the "ubiquitous bandit attack" grew out of the early development of D&D and sort of took hold as a trope.My (personal) summary of the early development of D&D is that it started out as a wargame, which made it principally a contest (to win the battles against the monsters) but with a "realist" streak that came from the strong feeling in wargaming of that time that the "system" should be faithful to the (received wisdom about the) combat of the historical period being covered.  Forgetting that the "period" was actually "fantasy", rather than "medieval europe", per se, the game took off on an assumed "truth" that the system had to model the game world in order to have any validity.  This assumption seems to be pretty much alive and well to the present, in many quarters.This all went swimmingly, until the presence of "characters" and such created a vogue for making "stories".  The player characters, naturally, were expected to be the main protagonists, but this created a bit of a problem.  RPGs were, by this time, a geek hobby (I say as a proud geek).  Talking about character motivations and personality were therefore a taboo - you were naturally too clever to need to actually communicate about this stuff, so "we" weren't going to insult you be bringing it up...Sadly, given that any story is created around a protagonist that has a dramatic need/motivation, this left a gap.  The solution was to provide some easy/standard/no-brainer motivations as "placeholders" to get the game rolling until the players cottoned on to the setting and situation and created motivations of their own - at which point, we would finally have "game on"!Caravans, missions involving trouble and encounters with bandits were all nice, easy tropes to coin in order to get this going.  The PCs are skint?  An employer needs a mission done and offers riches untold (yeah, right)!  Don't know the other characters from Adam?  No problem - you need to travel to this other place - you can get to know each other on the way.  Hey - some Bad Men (TM) attacked you for no reason (well, to rob the guy you are travelling with, but, hey) - you must fight them!Nice, easy motivations with no real thought required.  Hopefully, by the end of these "prods", the players will have expressed some motivations for their characters - specific goals, or simply curiosity or outrage about the banditry hereabouts.  If not - well, add more easy motives and (cattle) prods to action until they do; they must just be a bit thick to miss it, so far.Am I being unfair or a bit lighthearted - yeah, sure.  But I do think that is at least part of why the "bandit encounter" trope came about.</blockquote>

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