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Ranting Fool
2013-10-08, 05:27 PM
This morning before work I came across a thread which touched on sexual assault within RPG's this is now closed so lets not get back into that but it got me thinking about emotional trauma for an adventure.

Specifically one of my groups most loved NPC's keeps trying to retire because... well he's died 3 times within a year. and been reincarnated each time going from Dwarf to Kobald to Half-Orc and now to Gnome. Now since he is a rather Good (exalted even) dwarf/kobald/Half-Orc/Gnome the PC's have managed to convince him to keep helping in the past and some of them seem rather irritated that he doesn't want to keep adventuring with them or even hang around their settlement and protect it (Him being a ranger would rather go off into the wilderness and leave all the conflict behind)

Anyway my question to the playground is this.

"What experiences have you had with PC's or NPC's who have just decided that this whole adventure lark is getting a bit much and how have you played/shown this without just saying X retires and never mentioning them again?"

nedz
2013-10-08, 05:33 PM
Non fatally ?

I've frequently had NPCs associate with the party (no not that sort) for a while, and then go off to do something else. It's like a chapter in the campaign.

It's not so common with PCs, unless the player leaves, but it does happen occasionally — normally due to an IC falling out.

The Oni
2013-10-08, 07:06 PM
Maybe you ought to have your resident Grim Reaper/Shinigami/friendly death deity show up and tell the NPC that he can't keep abusing the reincarnation system - and that the next death is gonna be curtains for him? That way if the players want to keep him around they'll have to keep him from getting ganked again.

The Dark Fiddler
2013-10-09, 12:19 AM
I, uh, I once had my Imperial Psyker go against everything he believed in and commit a heretical act. It was for the good of everybody, the only way the billions of people on the ship (er, the thousands who survived the previous turmoils) would make it out of the warp alive. Unfortunately, it meant firing up a heretical piece of warp technology. Further, he'd always been against heresy with good intentions, since he'd seen so many people fall straight down that slippery slope.

So he powered it using his own soul, killing himself in the process. Saved everybody (that was left) and prevented himself from succumbing to future corruption.

mucat
2013-10-09, 03:20 AM
"What experiences have you had with PC's or NPC's who have just decided that this whole adventure lark is getting a bit much and how have you played/shown this without just saying X retires and never mentioning them again?"
I've rarely played PCs (or portrayed NPCs) who think of themselves as "professional adventurers". Most of them have jobs, families, and lives that they're interrupting in order to deal with the events of the campaign. So for these characters, bowing out of adventures temporarily or permanently isn't "retiring"; it's the opposite. "Because I'm not retired, and because we've got the immediate crisis under control, I have to get back to work now."

The character can remain very much a part of the game world, keep in close touch with the other PCs, and even be willing to jump fully back into the fray if things get bad enough. The rest of the time, though, they're getting on with their own life...which shouldn't feel forced or hard to justify, as long as they had a life that didn't center around an adventuring party.

CombatOwl
2013-10-09, 05:28 AM
This morning before work I came across a thread which touched on sexual assault within RPG's this is now closed so lets not get back into that but it got me thinking about emotional trauma for an adventure.

Specifically one of my groups most loved NPC's keeps trying to retire because... well he's died 3 times within a year. and been reincarnated each time going from Dwarf to Kobald to Half-Orc and now to Gnome. Now since he is a rather Good (exalted even) dwarf/kobald/Half-Orc/Gnome the PC's have managed to convince him to keep helping in the past and some of them seem rather irritated that he doesn't want to keep adventuring with them or even hang around their settlement and protect it (Him being a ranger would rather go off into the wilderness and leave all the conflict behind)

Anyway my question to the playground is this.

"What experiences have you had with PC's or NPC's who have just decided that this whole adventure lark is getting a bit much and how have you played/shown this without just saying X retires and never mentioning them again?"

My usual method is to have X point out that continuing to act offends against his morals/religion/goals in life, then refusing to take on the quest for those stated reasons.

CombatOwl
2013-10-09, 05:40 AM
I've rarely played PCs (or portrayed NPCs) who think of themselves as "professional adventurers".

I try to avoid playing professional adventurers too, but it's kind of hard to logically support the idea that the character is actually a professional innkeeper even though he spends most of his time slogging through dank dungeons killing undead for fun and profit. Given how lucrative adventuring is if you follow the WBL guidelines, it's kind of hard to logically support characters being anything but "professional adventurers." If they had to declare their income for tax purposes, the vast majority of their income would be from adventuring. Does that not qualify them as professional adventurers? I don't care how good a cobbler you are, you're going to make more money from that fancy crown you found on the skeleton king's head than you'll ever make in the rest of the quiet career you may prefer doing shoe cobbling in your home village.


Most of them have jobs, families, and lives that they're interrupting in order to deal with the events of the campaign.

Unless their "job" is being a noble collecting taxes from the people living on their land, they're going to make way more off an adventure--hell, possibly single dungeons--than they'll make doing their job. Especially given how little the D&Dverse pays people for doing honest labor (as opposed to grave robbing).


So for these characters, bowing out of adventures temporarily or permanently isn't "retiring"; it's the opposite. "Because I'm not retired, and because we've got the immediate crisis under control, I have to get back to work now."

It begs the obvious question of what your character's family is doing that costs so much money that they can't just sit back and smoke cigars for the rest of days with the "pocket change" your fifteenth level fighter has stuffed in a bag of holding. Seriously, lifestyle costs aren't that high, and no jobs pay very well in the d&dverse (again, other than grave robbing). Is the handful of gold your character can earn every day from honest work really necessary for securing his family's future at that point?

A d&d adventurer is kind of like someone who wins the lottery--they didn't get killed taking insane risks in a dungeon, therefore they came back home with such a pile of treasure that they should never need to work again in their lives. It's honestly not hard to justify a character deciding to spend his wealth rather than risking death for more, but it's a little hard to figure out exactly why they would keep doing normal work once they got done.

Lorsa
2013-10-09, 05:53 AM
If the player feels his character is done with adventuring and the other characters can't convince him then why not simply let him go? Is he invaluable to the story in some way? Is it impossible for another character to join the group?

SethoMarkus
2013-10-09, 08:31 AM
In a campaign I was part of the primary party was split up. Instead of breaking the group of players up, we each took on additional "side" characters so that we could participate in the session each week.

I created a Gnome Bard as my side character, a bit of comic relief through his compulsive lying and pranks. In the end, he became a successful entertainer (and assumed avatar of a minor deity, after rolling a high enough bluff check that everyone in ear-shot believed him to be the avatar, including himself...), so that when the main party reunited the little Gnome Bard retired from adventuring and opened a bardic college.

In the same campaign, another player retired his side-character when the main party reunited by having his character, who was a prince, assume the throne when the king fell ill.

A third player retired his side-character when they rescued his character's sister, the reason he was adventuring in the first place- though, the character technically isn't retired (since he was a rogue/thief), but is laying low in the country and enjoying life reunited with his family.

The fourth player's side-character died when he forgot he was playing a cleric and neglected to heal himself... but that is another story.


None of us have retired our primary characters in the campaign, however, and the campaign itself is in limbo as we wait to confront the final BBEG. Graduating college and moving away puts a hamper on these things...

supermonkeyjoe
2013-10-09, 08:40 AM
That nearly happened with me in one campaign.

I was playing that universes equivalent of a dwarven merchant who was very focused on social skills, the final stretch of the campaign looked to take us past the countries largest city and out west where there was nothing but wasteland, my character decided that this was in no way his scene, being accustomed to soft beds and toilet paper so he announced that he was staying behind... that lasted about a couple of hours until he found out that the king was willing to award noble status and a boatload of money to the characters if they finished the task he'd set.

Moral of the story is, everyone has their price

Jay R
2013-10-09, 09:43 AM
Ornrandir has retired from adventuring. He is now the Earl of Devon, and works for the good of the county.

The last "adventures" have included a civil war to secure the king's throne, and a trip across the continent to meet the pope, with incidents along the way. The next one will include his wedding, and a tournament, with visitors from every rival fief and every kingdom. I'm told it will be include battles.

There's a religious schism coming, a nearby kingdom is breaking down into lawlessness, and there's still an interplanetary slaver ring to stop.

Yes, he's "retired from adventuring". But medieval life is still active and dangerous.

mucat
2013-10-09, 11:34 AM
I try to avoid playing professional adventurers too, but it's kind of hard to logically support the idea that the character is actually a professional innkeeper even though he spends most of his time slogging through dank dungeons killing undead for fun and profit. Given how lucrative adventuring is if you follow the WBL guidelines, it's kind of hard to logically support characters being anything but "professional adventurers."
[snip]
A d&d adventurer is kind of like someone who wins the lottery--they didn't get killed taking insane risks in a dungeon, therefore they came back home with such a pile of treasure that they should never need to work again in their lives.
That's an excellent point...though very specific to D&D/d20 type systems, where the game mechanics just don't work unless adventurers (the ones who live, at least) get insanely rich. Not just as one last big score at the culmination of their adventures, but right from the beginning, if they are to pull their weight in the story.

I see that as a serious problem with the system, actually. But how to fix it (for those who agree that it needs fixing) is beyond the scope of this thread...

Even when I'm playing in a standard-WBL d20 campaign, though, I still usually gravitate toward characters who plan to return to a recognizable facsimile of their old lives, not to a rock-star multiple-lottery-winner fantasy.

The priest might plan to give everything to his church, the druid to buy up land for a nature preserve. The archaeologist has been saying all along, "This stuff belongs in a museum"; turns out he meant it.

It helps if the character is already used to handling expensive equipment but not viewing it as "MINE!" A university-based wizard, even before getting dragged into some crazy adventure, might have spent her days working with a state-of-the-art arcane lab worth a thousand times her salary, then gone home to the equivalent of microwaved ramen in a studio apartment. If she finds cool stuff on her adventures, she's more likely to think "upgrade the thaumic spectrometer!" than "upgrade my ramen!" :smallsmile:

...and yeah, she probably gained more wizard levels and Knowledge:Arcana ranks during that one-semester sabbatical with the adventurers than in her whole career before then. Like the WBL madness, I think of that as a potentially verisimilitude-breaking glitch in the system. As GM, I might try to fix those glitches, or work around them with narrative sleight-of-hand, or poke affectionate fun at them...but unless I'm going for intentionally silly parody, the world is not really on a murderhobo-based economy, its greatest scholars and craftspeople did not all get that way by killing orcs, and that research wizard can say "I need to get back to the lab, guys; I've got work to do" and actually mean it. ;-)

Deadline
2013-10-09, 11:51 AM
Just have him tell his party that he is weary of the pain and death, and that the next time he dies, he won't be coming back. You can't revive someone if they don't want to come back, right? Just have him choose not to.

CombatOwl
2013-10-09, 04:25 PM
That's an excellent point...though very specific to D&D/d20 type systems, where the game mechanics just don't work unless adventurers (the ones who live, at least) get insanely rich. Not just as one last big score at the culmination of their adventures, but right from the beginning, if they are to pull their weight in the story.

It's one of many, many reasons I'm becoming less willing to run d20 games over time. There are so many systems that handle this sort of stuff better.


Even when I'm playing in a standard-WBL d20 campaign, though, I still usually gravitate toward characters who plan to return to a recognizable facsimile of their old lives, not to a rock-star multiple-lottery-winner fantasy.

I usually try to resolve that by having my characters note their dreams for things they can do with the vast wealth they acquire--which will probably never happen. Though this whole discussion really makes me want to throw in a has-been ex-adventurer who blew all his money on whores, drugs, and over-the-top luxuries for my next game.


...and yeah, she probably gained more wizard levels and Knowledge:Arcana ranks during that one-semester sabbatical with the adventurers than in her whole career before then. Like the WBL madness, I think of that as a potentially verisimilitude-breaking glitch in the system.

"Okay, my elf wizard spent the last 60 years learning everything there is to know about magic... to acquire his first level in wizard. This other ******* did it in three days while questing through a dungeon swinging a sword."


unless I'm going for intentionally silly parody, the world is not really on a murderhobo-based economy, its greatest scholars and craftspeople did not all get that way by killing orcs, and that research wizard can say "I need to get back to the lab, guys; I've got work to do" and actually mean it. ;-)

Honestly, I find the intentionally silly parody to be the only way to reconcile the insanity of d20 mechanics. So I play it up in my games. Just like every setting I have has some crazy 20th level wizards who do insane projects--and fund it by becoming the monopoly suppliers of sovereign glue and other disproportionately leveled items.

Ranting Fool
2013-10-09, 06:58 PM
I was more thinking along the lines of...

"This week I've been stabbed, burnt, cursed, frozen, bludgeoned, shot with arrows, fallen down pits, almost drowned, mind-controlled and forced to attack my friends, driven insane by dark energy, swallowed whole, seen horrors from beyond the grave and faced off against hordes screaming for my blood and monstrous creatures 10 x my size. I have made more money then a small kingdom and spent it all within a few days. Since I know a priest there isn't a mark on me... but I know the scars are there" :smalltongue:

We all know adventures are made of hardy stuff but you have to wonder how many would suffer from Post-Adventurer-syndrome :smallbiggrin:

The Oni
2013-10-09, 07:08 PM
If that's how you want to do it, do it.

If you really just want him to get fed up and retire...I dunno, have him develop a phobia or something. Look for a similarity in the last three situations where he died, and then have him really freak out over that one thing to the point that he's got no desire to adventure.

If you want him to still be allied with the party and on good terms though, take Jay R's suggestion and have him go back to his "day job." He'll keep in touch and perhaps work behind the scenes with the characters to help them out in less direct ways (with more influence now that he's been a big-shot adventurer for a while). If he's serving a vital role in the party right now, have him find a replacement. You could even turn that into a brief sidequest if you want.

veti
2013-10-09, 08:06 PM
"I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow to the knee (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-took-an-arrow-in-the-knee)."

An arrow-to-the-knee can be mental trauma, phobia, PTSD, maybe full-blown screaming insanity. Maybe he got religion of a sort that's not compatible with the violence and lawlessness inherent in the adventuring lifestyle. Or maybe he just fell in love, and doesn't want to leave home.

The character doesn't have to be written out of the campaign. A high-level character might become a lord, or leader of some important faction, or in extreme cases a god. (I've seen examples of all three of those.) Or they could just stay in one place, and the party can return to them as often as they like to score cheap Resurrections or whatever, until their own cleric gets to a high enough level.

Jay R
2013-10-10, 05:01 PM
Part of the problem here is that modern D&D has taken away most of the requirements to spend real time away from adventuring. There's always a dungeon or wilderness well-stocked with walking experience points, and the money found can be turned into magical power.

1. Get rid of magic shops. Random magic items can be sometimes be found, or specific ones can be researched over a long period of time.

2. Get rid of the cornucopia of stealable stuff hanging around in the wilderness in CR-appropriate chunks. The ability to adventure should only occasionally present itself. Yes, Frodo went on an adventure and wound up with a magic sword, mithril chain, phial, cloak, and elvish waybread, but he was the first to get that much in a single adventure in centuries. It's just not reasonable for there to be more money in the forest than in the city.

3. Give the characters actual concerns - parents, masters, land, etc.

4. Make them spend time learning skills and spells.

In the last major campaign I took part in, establishing a colony across the sea. We had an adventure, followed by three months of getting the colony set up. Then we went into the wilderness for a month, came back and were called back to the home kingdom to solve a problem, uncovered a slavery ring, and met the king. Then a month's rest, followed by a quest back to the new world, find the king's grandson, and bring him back. The old king died, and we had a civil war, before crowning his heir. He made my character an Earl, another King's Champion, a third was given a court mage position, etc. Then we had a year and a half to consolidate our new positions, memorize spells, etc. We had a long sojourn across the continent (with several small encounters), followed by 2 1/2 years of off-time. The next adventure will center around the marriage of two PCs, with many rivals visiting.

We aren't murderhobos. We have actual positions that involve occasional adventuring - always with a specific goal in view.

3E has many worthy aspects, but if the rules are almost entirely about combat, looting, and buying magic items, then you'll just fight, loot and buy.

Acatalepsy
2013-10-10, 11:43 PM
In Eclipse Phase, death is a disease - one that has been cured. Die, and you get resleeved from your stack. If your stack is lost, or you're irreversibly crazy, then you get resleeved from backup - and if you're smart, you back up any time you're about to do something stupid and dangerous (like go on an adventure).

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't incentives to, well, quit while you're ahead. Or before you get farther behind. Bad rep, lack of credits, etc, could easily wind up with you stuck in a simulation space, unemployed and without so much as the ability to feel the wind in your face. And for those characters who value their mental continuity, there's nothing like an encounter with deadly bioweapons and insane killbots to make you question your choice of career.

Thus far, I haven't had anyone actually chicken out - but I do have PCs that continually want to not go on adventures and just stick around the habitat doing science, and are growing increasingly wary of doing anything ever that involves risk to them (to my also-increasing annoyance).

Sith_Happens
2013-10-11, 03:39 AM
Frodo went on an adventure and wound up with a magic sword, mithril chain, phial, cloak, and elvish waybread, but he was the first to get that much in a single adventure in centuries.

*cough*The Hobbit*cough*