Captain Lamequest
I like to imagine that Fighter sublets a corner of Fort Kickass from Krieger. It’s probably an adversarial tenant/landlord relationship.
The thing about players is that, if you can get them invested in a setting, they’ll fight tooth and nail to defend it. Give them a tower, titles of nobility, or a spot on the king’s council and suddenly they’re all about protecting the kingdom. Attack their family members or wise mentors; kick their dogs or burn their guildhalls; steal so much as a gold piece of their loot and the murder hobo will come out with a vengeance. While this makes PCs easy to manipulate within a certain narrow bandwidth, the downside is that they tend to care ever so slightly less about the rest of the world. We can only assume that Fighter’s last name is Kickass, and that he comes from a long and noble line of Kickasses.
The really tough bit is that you never know who or what the party will latch onto. The party might adopt that goblin baby as a mascot or kill it in cold blood. They might try diplomacy on that behir, and now you’ve got to adjust encounter difficulty to offset the party’s new lightning lizard. They might even decide that your lisping unicorn is hilarious rather than annoying, and suddenly you’re stuck lisping for the rest of the campaign. Even after the unicorn in question turns evil, begins rubbing it’s hooves together menacingly, and starts muttering about “betwayal,” the players will inevitably—inexplicably!—love the derpy thing. Right, Laurel?
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well yeah, why is it your problem if some random ass kingdom can’t secure it’s own borders? they want mercenaries they’re gonna have to pay mercenary rates, not try to guilt trip you into doing it free while sitting on a golden palanquin carried by whipped commoners
The real trouble comes in when Cleric and only Cleric has a tie to the location. Great, we’re going to go and save your order’s local chapel. Why should the rest of us risk life and limb for these no-name acolytes?
Two-words for why: Party Cohesion.
If only one PC is emotionally invested in following the Plot Hook, the rest might bitch ‘n’ moan, but at the end of the day unless that PC is either just that annoying or just that suicidal unless there’s some other sort of time table the PCs are keeping to the rest will follow where the one goes if only because the one in question has been useful, and so it’s best to keep them around if possible. At least, that’s my experience.
You’re right of course. That is absolutely what happens. Unfortunately, that can lead to a sense of fatigue when it keeps happening. When all of your creative energy goes towards the mental gymnastics required to justify keeping your dude in the plot, you can burn out and lose enthusiasm for a character.
So yeah, party cohesion is a fine fall-back, but I think it’s best practice to try and give players a little something more, even when it’s not “their story” at the moment.
True and agreed. I feel like my point has more to do with something you mentioned in a previous commentary about how “you all meet in a tavern” is fantasy writing on ‘easy mode’. It’s just… A player specific version of that rather than a GM version. And honestly, in most campaigns I’ve played if the party’s been through more than 5 sessions together and one of my new buddies shows up saying ‘guys, I got a family thing I absolutely NEED to deal with right now, but if you’d be willing to come along and help I’d be super grateful’ even my most antisocial PCs tend to be like ‘oh sure, dude, I’m happy to help’. I figure it’s the fantasy (or whatever genre your campaign is) version of helping your buddy move a couch.
I know I personally am a fan of roleplay and sticking my grubby PC nose where it’s not been invited on the off chance said nose’ll catch on a dangling plot-hook, and not everyone is that way. So I’d say it is a good idea to – when the backstory significant NPCs get going – throw in a ‘and as thanks for helping when you’re not personally related to this scenario, I’m willing to pay some cash money for my thanks’ but that sort of thing is only really something I use as DM if otherwise the party seems to be getting bored.
Once, my party adopted a mimic. Well, a human cursed to be a mimic. He ate metal, and I fed him all my money because he was really sad and stress-ate. Unfortunately, he got adopted by a different NPC who was pissed at us for failing to save her husband (The tiefling that taught our fighter Hellish Rebuke)
Betwayal!
I’m betting that NPC was suddenly party enemy #1.
Ah indeed. It can be hard getting players invested in a plot, but I always try to be light on with personal stakes. And avoid “destiny” like the plague. If players can’t create characters who can see the good (or ethically unaligned benefit) in stopping some great evil, then quite simply they have not created protagonist material.
I remember one of my own PCs, who was perfectly content in following the DM’s fairly generic evil-stopping plot because, tbh, who wants to live in a world where evil has won? But the DM was unhappy that I didn’t have a “personal stake” in the campaign – unlike the other four, who kept pulling us in four different directions.
Perhaps this is why, cliched though itnmay be, the party of good heroes is usually the most functional. As in the above example, enlightened self-interest should be a reasonable substitute for good, but for some reason a lot of players don’t seem to care enough about their own caracter to get that motivation.
I’d rather have a party of boring heroes than a party of standoffish lone wolves any day of the week.
I remember an incident from running Rise of the Runelords.
he players encountered an unusual corpse in a magical laboratory and decided to resurrect it. The adventure gave a vague idea of who the corpse used to be, but not much. I promptly ended the session to stat her out and write a blurb about personality and whatnot, expecting the players to recruit her as an ally/cohort/something.
They followed her directions to her old boss and left her there.
The trick is to be proactive with the NPCs. My go-to phrase for dudes rescued from the dungeon is, “According to the ancient law, I pledge to serve you for a year and a day.” That’s how my megadungeon party got their ogre bodyguard anyway.
With the expectation that the players would choose to recruit her as an ally, cohort, or other role, I immediately ended the session to stat her out and write a brief description of her personality.
@super mario bros