Does anyone else feel that their players kinda fetishize Royalty?

[paladinofshojo]

Okay so I have been DMing for almost a decade now and I seem to notice that whenever the party is introduced a king/queen then they immediately grant them more leeway, is that normal for most gaming groups or is it just mine?

Several examples include the following:

1) My party had killed many a Robin Hood type thief in at least four different settings that I remember, two of the times they didn’t even do it for a reward but rather to “restore order”

2) I’ve once had one campaign where the main antagonist was an Evil Empress who bathed in the blood of children and made pacts with demons. When they finally confronted said Empress, she would give the usual “evil villain monologue” about her “divine right to rule” and how without her, her “Empire will fall apart” and off about social order and the need for a class hierarchy. Keep in mind, this sorceress consorted with devils and BATHES IN THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN, but after she “explained herself” everyone but the Paladin were tempted to take her side, and I am pretty sure that the Paladin player would have tried to join her too if I didn’t threaten him with an automatic fall.

3) On two separate occasions, my party had absolutely no problem on destroying entire communities of peasants if a king told them to, they literally killed women and children because they refused to pay taxes/harboring magic users. I was once planning on starting a campaign loosely based on the American Revolution or the German Peasant’s War but I decided against it because I feel like I know which side my players will lean towards.

4) There was one encounter where a King once had my party “deal with” a Count who refused to pay his taxes… This Count was objectively richer than anyone else in the Kingdom due to literally having a goldmine on his land, when the party confronted said Count, he offered to pay triple what the King was offering if they spared him, but nope… they didn’t even humor the Count, they decapitated him and offered his head to the King.

There are a couple more examples I can name, but you guys can get the gist right? Is this normal behavior? Granted my players are pretty normal in their lives and they never act like sociopaths whenever they are fighting regular monsters. But for some reason whenever I introduce a concept of a feudal social order to the game they will immediately throw all morality out the window in the name of the King.

[Lord Raziere]

No my experience is that players I play with give royalty and nobility and authority in general no respect whatsoever and are liable to kill them at the drop of hat if they do something less than morally upright.

[The Glyphstone]

Maybe they just like playing Lawful characters, or at least characters uninterested in defying the social hierarchy when that rarely results in massive phat lewt?

[Batcathat]

I don't think anyone I've played with have done that (at least not to such a degree that I've noticed it), but I do think fantasy in general tend to be rather royalistic (as long as it's the rightful monarch, of course. Which usually means the one with the right parents) so maybe your players are influenced by that?

[Xervous]

When in elf games the queen can have the strength and skill to turn you inside out with her bare hands, or has a magic lapdog who can accomplish the same thing by uttering profanity, players tend to walk carefully around those that inspire fear and/or offer great power.

Ye olde monarchy worked as a cascading series of social obligations wherein Lord A feared the king only because he knew lords B-X would make an example of him if the king ordered it. Make the king superhuman, or the queen a sorcerer, and this all changes. You’re not in the room with an individual whose power comes from the cooperation of their peers. You’re in the room with the guy who will crisp you with lightning before elbow dropping you into a crater for asserting that he isn’t a demigod blessing the people with his presence. That or he’s the good cop normal dude and his witch sister who hates being distracted from her studies is the bad cop.

Even ignoring the fantastical stuff, lord A is probably quite dead if he stabs the king without support of lords B-X. Players understand threatening the system will mobilize the entire system against them, which may be suicidal and/or campaign wrecking.

[Berenger]

Have you given thought to the possibility that maybe you kinda fetishize unlawful underdogs?

I am under the strong impression that you and your players operate under different genre conventions. More precisely, black-and-white morality and romantic fairytale or superhero genre conventions on your part and shades-of-grey morality and a notion of "gritty realism" on their part. Both are totally valid for an RPG, of course, but maybe you should talk about that with your table to better manage expectations for specific campaigns.

[Mastikator]

Many players have moral blind spots where suddenly everything is OK. I've seen players sell the souls of their enemies for a small profit when the enemies stole from the PCs employer, but when a devil offers huge quantities of gold for a VIP it's out of the question and no amount of gold is worth it.

However I don't think I've ever seen a monarch get special treatment from players.

[Slipjig]

Your examples don't seem THAT out of bounds for normal PCs. The whole "bathing-in-blood" thing is pretty extreme, but there is a strong tradition in contemporary fantasy that sometimes the Lesser Evil is the best option (or is at least a valuable tool against the Greater Evil).

As for the Count, attempting to bribe the PCs in order to spare him sounds like standard villain behavior. I'd actually think less of the PCs if they took him up on his offer. If he'd argued that the taxes were unjust it would be a wholly different matter...

[Satinavian]

The only slightly strage one is number two. Bathing in children's blood is a bit excessive for non-villains to accept. The rest seems like regular "loyal servants of the crown" roleplaying which, while not the only option, is certainly a viable and attractive one.

[Anonymouswizard]

Yeah, rejecting the Count is probably the 'correct' choice for most PCs, and most PCs who'd seriously consider earning the monarch's wrath probably aren't taking the quest.

The Empress of Blood is weirder, but still not the most evil alliance I've seen s player agree to. Plus every player is secretly a follower of Khorne anyway, and he cares not feel where the blood flows (most of the time).

[Vahnavoi]

This is completely normal... for Lawful Evil people who prioritize keeping society stable in manner that keeps the right people at the top and the wrong people at the bottom. :smallamused: So congratulate your players for playing that alignment right.

I rarely see this in my players. It's more common for my players to be principled anti-authoritarians or completely uncaring of social stability, so often they're planning assassination or overthrowing of royalty, nobility or whatever other force in their way.

[Segev]

Maybe they'd enjoy a game where The Good King has a Beautiful Noble Daughter and the kingdom needs heroes to save them from the ravages of the demon-worshiping hordes?

[Telok]

I rarely see this in my players. It's more common for my players to be principled anti-authoritarians or completely uncaring of social stability, so often they're planning assassination or overthrowing of royalty, nobility or whatever other force in their way.

Mine are unprincipled anti-authoritarians who are completely uncaring of social stability, start wars, run away from consequences, and deny responsibility to the point of blaming the victims.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is completely normal... for Lawful Evil people

Who decides what is evil? Heck, one of the more popular gaming settings out there managed to justify the sacrifice of thousands of people daily just for more efficient interstellar travel.


Honestly, most of them people I've played with kind of don't care about authority, in the way that the characters will get their orders and then only bother to check in if they have something to report or need anything. The most interaction we've ever had with royalty was when the GM of one group agreed a druid GMPC to the group who just happened to be a prince of the kingdom.

The group was split over how to deal with druidprince. I favoured slitting his throat in his sleep, the rest of the party favoured getting into his will and then slitting his throat in his sleep. Although honestly that was more the whole GMPC thing.

[KorvinStarmast]

Have you given thought to the possibility that maybe you kinda fetishize unlawful underdogs? THere's a lot of that going around in books, comics, movies, TV shows, video games, etc.

Many players have moral blind spots where suddenly everything is OK. I've seen players sell the souls of their enemies for a small profit when the enemies stole from the PCs employer, but when a devil offers huge quantities of gold for a VIP it's out of the question and no amount of gold is worth it.

However I don't think I've ever seen a monarch get special treatment from players. Me neither, unless the in-context consequences of incurring the monarch's wrath (most kings had assassins on their payroll) give the PCs pause.

In my brother's campaign, we are working to overthrow the monarch ... who we see as the usurper ... and help put the "rightful" king back on the throne. Along the way, however, it's been tough to get to the capital as we keep getting side tracked in our search for loot and combat, and, because the DM has not yet put together the whole bit about where the king and his grand vizier are.

But we are getting there.

[icefractal]

Three possibilities:
1) The players are actual monarchists.
2) The players have decided that since their characters live in a feudal world, they should strongly believe in "divine right of kings" for accuracy. An oversimplification, but not absurd.
3) The players don't really care who rules the fictional world, they just want to Do The Quest™. The king gave them a quest to kill Robin Hood? Great, let's do it. Maybe if the Robin Hood type had given them a quest first then they'd do that instead.

Is it typical? IME, sort of, although your players seem more loyal to the crown than most.
Many players are happy to be loyal knights as long as the royalty is telling them to do things they're already willing to do. Go kill this dragon, and be rewarded? Great, long live the king!
As soon as the royalty throws their weight around in a way that's detrimental to the PCs (collecting significant taxes from them, not letting them carry weapons, telling them to do things they don't want to, telling them not to do things they do want to), then they quickly become anarchists. Down with the tyrant!

So if you want them less king-friendly: "That's an amazing magic sword you have - so amazing it should be part of the royal arms. Hand it over." might very well lead to anti-monarchist feelings. :smalltongue:

[ngilop]

stuffs.

Sounds like you have a pretty standard group of lawful neutral people.

[paladinofshojo]

I don't think anyone I've played with have done that (at least not to such a degree that I've noticed it), but I do think fantasy in general tend to be rather royalistic (as long as it's the rightful monarch, of course. Which usually means the one with the right parents) so maybe your players are influenced by that?

Ohh another point, the party had at one point ended a civil war against the “rightful” king who basically acted like Joffrey from Game of Thrones….. against his uncle who actually had the best interests of the people in mind and a member of the Lawful Good clergy.

They sided with the tyrant because his claim was “more legitimate” never mind the fact that he was starving the peasants and unjustly executing members of his court on a whim.

Like who does that? I thought it would be a nice deconstruction of the “rightful king” trope but all it did was shown that my party simply double downed on their character’s beliefs in monarchy.

Hell, in another adventure, a king hired them to hunt down a group of “disloyal nobles” who in reality were tired of unjust taxes and had sent the King a Magna Carta Charter. Once the Party met with the leader of this Rebellion, they were given the choice to join them, the party refused and at the end of the adventure, they killed all the nobles and presented their heads to the king who rewarded them with all the titles and lands of the nobles they vanquished.

[Iamyourking]

One way you could determine if they are specifically monarchists or just generally pro-authority would be to introduce a rival monarchy and republic that are pretty much morally equal. If they still consistently side with the monarchy, then you have your answer.

[Quertus]

I can't say I've seen it to that extent, but… yeah, it's a thing.

Myself, I'll usually work with the temporal powers… and overthrow the celestial ones.


Maybe they'd enjoy a game where The Good King has a Beautiful Noble Daughter and the kingdom needs heroes to save them from the ravages of the demon-worshiping hordes?

Indeed. Sounds like the game you should run for those players.

[GeoffWatson]

I usually see the opposite.
No respect at all to nobles or royalty. Which isn't good for the setting.

Especially at higher levels - Why should they respect the king, when they can defeat the king and all his armies easily?

[paladinofshojo]

I am under the strong impression that you and your players operate under different genre conventions. More precisely, black-and-white morality and romantic fairytale or superhero genre conventions on your part and shades-of-grey morality and a notion of "gritty realism" on their part. Both are totally valid for an RPG, of course, but maybe you should talk about that with your table to better manage expectations for specific campaigns.

I feel like it’s kinda the opposite here, my players seem to justify their actions with the Disney concept that the “rightful king deserves to rule” when I try to put them in a world where the “rightful” monarchs don’t always have the best interests of their people at heart…. I kinda want them to rebel against monarchy or at least advocate for someone morally deserving instead of whoever has the right bloodline.

When they get involved with conflicts the main factor that decides their action is “who has more authority”. If a Lord tells them to put down a bunch of rebelling peasants or exterminate a town carrying the plague, the party will do so without hesitation.

Interestingly, they use more restraint when interacting with non-humans, as when there was hostility with an Orc clan in the mountains on the borders, instead of going in and killing indiscriminately like I expected, they tried to solve the issue diplomatically instead.

When I asked about that, the party said that “since they aren’t part of the kingdom they cannot attack them without it being seen as a war crime”… when I asked about how they at that point already destroyed entire human towns for less, the paladin (who is now fallen btw) said “that’s different, they are part of the kingdom and had displeased their rightful king”.



I usually see the opposite.
No respect at all to nobles or royalty. Which isn't good for the setting.

Especially at higher levels - Why should they respect the king, when they can defeat the king and all his armies easily?

That’s honestly what I was expecting… but apparently my party prefers to roleplay as fascist goons instead of anarchic psychotic murderhobos…..

I am wondering what’s up with that. It doesn’t seem like something a “normal group” would do… is it my campaign or is it something else?

[Vahnavoi]

Like who does that?

Already told you. Lawful Evil people do that. :smalltongue: Excusing social misery by social stability, prioritizing the right sort of people over the right sort of behaviours - they're a textbook case.

So maybe it isn't what you expected. Maybe you expected them to be goody-two-shoes who prioritize elimination of suffering and happiness for all the people, or chaotic folks who prioritize their individual sense of morality over social stability, or egoist mofos who only chase short term gains for their own selves. So? There doesn't seem to be any actual problem here. As far as I can tell, your players happy little Stormtroopers batting for Team Empire. Do you need them to change?

[Ameraaaaaa]

I feel like it’s kinda the opposite here, my players seem to justify their actions with the Disney concept that the “rightful king deserves to rule” when I try to put them in a world where the “rightful” monarchs don’t always have the best interests of their people at heart…. I kinda want them to rebel against monarchy or at least advocate for someone morally deserving instead of whoever has the right bloodline.

When they get involved with conflicts the main factor that decides their action is “who has more authority”. If a Lord tells them to put down a bunch of rebelling peasants or exterminate a town carrying the plague, the party will do so without hesitation.

Interestingly, they use more restraint when interacting with non-humans, as when there was hostility with an Orc clan in the mountains on the borders, instead of going in and killing indiscriminately like I expected, they tried to solve the issue diplomatically instead.

When I asked about that, the party said that “since they aren’t part of the kingdom they cannot attack them without it being seen as a war crime”… when I asked about how they at that point already destroyed entire human towns for less, the paladin (who is now fallen btw) said “that’s different, they are part of the kingdom and had displeased their rightful king”.




That’s honestly what I was expecting… but apparently my party prefers to roleplay as as fascist goons instead of anarchic psychotic murderhobos…..

I am wondering what’s up with that. It doesn’t seem like something a “normal group” would do… is it my campaign or is it something else?

Technically they could monarchist goons rather then fascist ones. There are some differences philosophically speaking. Both ideologies do suck tho.

So yeah i agree with icefractal on the possible whys and with iamyourking for the possible way of finding out. Though honestly I'd just ask the players about why they always side with the monarchy.

[Vahnavoi]

Who decides what is evil?

For their game, the original poster does, duh. :smalltongue: I'm just pointing out the obvious judgement call based on alignment guidelines.


Heck, one of the more popular gaming settings out there managed to justify the sacrifice of thousands of people daily just for more efficient interstellar travel.


Most people who play in that setting are perfectly fine with saying that in the grim darkness of the far future, there are only bad guys.

[The Glyphstone]

It definitely sounds like you keep trying to run a plot that your players aren't interested in, and doubling down ever harder on how evil the kings are isnt going to fix that any time soon.

[paladinofshojo]

It definitely sounds like you keep trying to run a plot that your players aren't interested in, and doubling down ever harder on how evil the kings are isnt going to fix that any time soon.


Technically I am a firm believer of sandbox campaigns… And most of the time when my party is doing “small scale” adventuring like say… fighting bandits that are terrorizing towns in the countryside or delving into dungeons they tend to behave more or less like a typical party, almost Lawful Good.

It’s only when they begin involving themselves with the larger political power structures within the world that they tend to move towards their monarchists world view….

[Hytheter]

Who decides what is evil? Heck, one of the more popular gaming settings out there managed to justify the sacrifice of thousands of people daily just for more efficient interstellar travel.


Which setting is that? :smalleek:

[paladinofshojo]

Which setting is that? :smalleek:

Warhammer 40K I believe

I am assuming they are referring that to keep the comatose Emperor alive and able to hold up the psychic interstellar webway which allows them to use “hyper space” to travel the universe….. that they have to sacrifice millions of psychic humans to the machine keeping the Emperor alive.

[Mastikator]

Which setting is that? :smalleek:

Warhammer 40k, which is super evil. Like a lot evil. Mega evil. Double giga evil. Not even remotely "morally grey", just over the top evil.

[paladinofshojo]

Already told you. Lawful Evil people do that. :smalltongue: Excusing social misery by social stability, prioritizing the right sort of people over the right sort of behaviours - they're a textbook case.

So maybe it isn't what you expected. Maybe you expected them to be goody-two-shoes who prioritize elimination of suffering and happiness for all the people, or chaotic folks who prioritize their individual sense of morality over social stability, or egoist mofos who only chase short term gains for their own selves. So? There doesn't seem to be any actual problem here. As far as I can tell, your players happy little Stormtroopers batting for Team Empire. Do you need them to change?

I mean… it does make it hard for me to come up with decent world building or even character development if all they do is side with one royal family/ ruler over and over again… Like how am I supposed to flesh out villains, side characters, or settings if my party seems to operate on such a black and white level of who is and isn’t worthy to live?

[Vahnavoi]

Based on your examples, it sounds to me you haven't actually had that problem. :smallconfused: You have fleshed out your settings, side characters and villains just fine. It's your players who have become unable to break from type, but in your examples you didn't really have any problem adjusting to their behaviours and keeping on adjucating the game.

If there's one change I could recommend, it's embracing the fact that your players are playing the villains. Actually point out to them that they are functionally playing Lawful Evil. If they keep doing their thing, show some public outcry against them. Have villagers pool their wealth to hire adventurers to protect them from the "King's evil enforcers". Instead of villains, start fleshing out heroes who wish to challenge and destroy the player characters and the monarchs they serve.

Maybe it will change nothing. Again, your players look to me like happy little Stormtroopers, I'm not sure if merely pointing that fact out to them will make them unhappy about it. I mean, if I was deliberately playing a religious zealot doing atrocities for King and country, I would not react to someone crying in horror "You are playing a religious zealot doing atrocities for King and country!" with "Oh no, I must change my character", I would react with a satisfied "great, you noticed, I'm doing my job right then!". :smallamused:

[Hytheter]

Warhammer 40K I believe

I am assuming they are referring that to keep the comatose Emperor alive and able to hold up the psychic interstellar webway which allows them to use “hyper space” to travel the universe….. that they have to sacrifice millions of psychic humans to the machine keeping the Emperor alive.

I did think of 40k, but the comment I replied to seemed to suggest a setting that was not perceived as evil. 40k is 100% evil and that's kinda the point.

[Satinavian]

Ohh another point, the party had at one point ended a civil war against the “rightful” king who basically acted like Joffrey from Game of Thrones….. against his uncle who actually had the best interests of the people in mind and a member of the Lawful Good clergy.

They sided with the tyrant because his claim was “more legitimate” never mind the fact that he was starving the peasants and unjustly executing members of his court on a whim.

Like who does that? I thought it would be a nice deconstruction of the “rightful king” trope but all it did was shown that my party simply double downed on their character’s beliefs in monarchy.
Someone who defends the monarch because of legitimacy won't be convinced with the monarch being an unpleasent or inept person. After all, they do it for the institution not for the individual.

Also trying to push the group to go against their preferrence does regularly fail. No surprise by the doubling down here.


Hell, in another adventure, a king hired them to hunt down a group of “disloyal nobles” who in reality were tired of unjust taxes and had sent the King a Magna Carta Charter. Once the Party met with the leader of this Rebellion, they were given the choice to join them, the party refused and at the end of the adventure, they killed all the nobles and presented their heads to the king who rewarded them with all the titles and lands of the nobles they vanquished.Don't see any problem with that.


On the whole, stop pushing your players to be rebels. They obviously don't want to. And if you are really running a sandbox, such heavy preferrence for whom they should side with is not good.


I mean… it does make it hard for me to come up with decent world building or even character development if all they do is side with one royal family/ ruler over and over again… Like how am I supposed to flesh out villains, side characters, or settings if my party seems to operate on such a black and white level of who is and isn’t worthy to live?


But you could present your players more with monarchies that explicitely are less absolute. Where people can point to laws, traditions and established explicit limits of royal rule when they complain about the king.

Or, if you could do an elective monarchy for a change. Have a king or emporer and either make the important dukes electors like in the HRE or go even with the Polish model. Then have a king die and the PCs be involved with deciding the next one and lobbying for them. Let them experience the difficult mix of things people want the next king to be (strong enough to rule and get things done, not strong enough to centralize power, from an important and respected family, ideally related to the last king, not related to the most poferful duke to avoid his duchy getting prefferential treatment, related to the voter in question, old enough, not too old, vituous and with a good character, but not someone who financially ruin the country to give to the poor/to the church, someone willing and able to lead the countries in wars and win, but not someone likely to get into too many wars)

Or instead of making the king just evil and corrupt, you could e.g. make him indecisive and timid so that all the important things are actually run by his various advisors. Which should be an acceptable target for your players.

What might be another good way would be to make your PCs direct retainers of the king or landed nobles if they like playing support so much. And then have the king load off his huge problems to them without telling them how to solve those. Let them indirectly do at least part of the "ruling a country" stuff and make the necessary compromises, knowig full well that if they fail, weaken the crown or make people unhappy, it will threaten the king.

[Berenger]

I feel like it’s kinda the opposite here, my players seem to justify their actions with the Disney concept that the “rightful king deserves to rule” when I try to put them in a world where the “rightful” monarchs don’t always have the best interests of their people at heart…. I kinda want them to rebel against monarchy or at least advocate for someone morally deserving instead of whoever has the right bloodline.
But "the rightful king deserves to rule" isn't a "Disney" concept. It's the most plausible and valid conviction for the vast majority of characters born and raised in a society whose politics and history are rooted in monarchy. Because, of course it is, without broad buy-in (and adherence to the law and custom) of the people the monarch wouldn't be perceived as rightful (or even as a monarch).

Rulers not always having the best interests of all their people at heart in any given moment is, to be honest, perfectly normal for all types of government, even without any incompetence or malice involved. Managing the needs, expectations and desires of a society is kind of hard, after all, and often quite subjective business. Even the best guy imaginable on the throne will ultimately have to make sacrifices that will make someone unhappy. Circumstances have to be extremely bad to justify regicide or rebellion, not just because of the personal risk for the perpetrators (and their families, friends and allies) but because the resulting chaos, upheaval and civil war have the potential to muck up the country as a whole far worse than a few more years of rule by a subpar king or queen.




I mean… it does make it hard for me to come up with decent world building or even character development if all they do is side with one royal family/ ruler over and over again… Like how am I supposed to flesh out villains, side characters, or settings if my party seems to operate on such a black and white level of who is and isn’t worthy to live?
I don't really get your problem here - as in, why is this problematic for your world building? I do get why this would impact your ability to make varied plots and storylines. Character development sounds more like a job for the players than a GM responsibility, anyway.

That said - exactly how do you promote your campaigns before character creation? Do you present them as sandboxes and accept any character your players come up with? Do you give guidelines for suitable classes, alignments, motivations or factions the characters should belong to? For example, when our group does Star Wars, we decide in advance whether this will be a jedi / smuggler / rebel / empire / bounty hunter / pirate campaign and whether light side / neutral / dark side concepts are appropriate (instead of everyone showing up with a random character). Did you, at any point, straight up ask your players to make characters with backgrounds and motivations suited for the campaign you imagine? If so, what were their reactions?

[Altheus]

I think you have a case of "This is what the GM has prepared so this is what we are going to do". They expect a story to develop and don't want to derail it.

Also, players seem to do what the most powerful person in the environment tells them to do, very rarely do they push back on moral grounds usually because that results in bad things happening to them.

[Anonymouswizard]

Most people who play in that setting are perfectly fine with saying that in the grim darkness of the far future, there are only bad guys.

Don't say that to Tau fans :smalltongue: although to be fair, a lot of them about that they look like good guys in comparison, rather than just being straight up good.

In all seriousness though, the are good guys. It's just that anybody with any actual power is at best ruthlessly pragmatic.


Warhammer 40K I believe

I am assuming they are referring that to keep the comatose Emperor alive and able to hold up the psychic interstellar webway which allows them to use “hyper space” to travel the universe….. that they have to sacrifice millions of psychic humans to the machine keeping the Emperor alive.

The astronomicom that allows them to use the Warp for more reliable travel. The Imperial Ernest project got permanently put on hold due to a minute rebellion.


I did think of 40k, but the comment I replied to seemed to suggest a setting that was not perceived as evil. 40k is 100% evil and that's kinda the point.

It's also a comedy setting. Many people seem to forget that.

But that was more about justification than morality. The Imperium has managed to bodge itself into a position where many of it's horrific actress, including the routine sacrifice of thousands of psykers per day and the relatively common use of Exterminatus. The Imperium is evil, but it can make a legitimate case for being the slightly lighter shade of black.

[Vahnavoi]

Don't say that to Tau fans :smalltongue:

I said "most people". Tau fans aren't people. :smalltongue:

*insert WH40k meme image of your choice here*

[Xervous]

I said "most people". Tau fans aren't people. :smalltongue:

*insert WH40k meme image of your choice here*

I was going to go with Tau rhymes with [something that has one less syllable than Meow]


I’ll echo the question of what’s the pitch. If I join a campaign with a hard premise you’ve got my expectations and world view aligned. If I join a sandbox and the GM starts presenting situations that should be solved a certain way according to [worldview] that few or no characters hold, then I will feel lied to. We the players showed out desires with this ‘good deeds wherever there’s coin’ party. We dismantled the bandit slave mining operation because that got us the mine. I’m not running off to find some peasant’s lost boyfriend, I don’t care about the penniless sob stories for this character. No, stop shoving it in front of me, I won’t eat it... NO, “here comes the airplane” won’t work!

[paladinofshojo]

I don't really get your problem here - as in, why is this problematic for your world building? I do get why this would impact your ability to make varied plots and storylines. Character development sounds more like a job for the players than a GM responsibility, anyway.

That said - exactly how do you promote your campaigns before character creation? Do you present them as sandboxes and accept any character your players come up with? Do you give guidelines for suitable classes, alignments, motivations or factions the characters should belong to? For example, when our group does Star Wars, we decide in advance whether this will be a jedi / smuggler / rebel / empire / bounty hunter / pirate campaign and whether light side / neutral / dark side concepts are appropriate (instead of everyone showing up with a random character). Did you, at any point, straight up ask your players to make characters with backgrounds and motivations suited for the campaign you imagine? If so, what were their reactions?

My main problem is that they will kill indiscriminately anything that someone with authority tells them to, without even trying to think through of any less hostile way to settle disputes.

For instance, in the middle of a war, a town has not paid taxes for almost three months and the lord of the region assumes that they had defected to the enemy and orders the party to exterminate them.

When they get to the town, I make a GREAT EMPHASIS to show how the town already looks war torn and destitute, if they bothered to ask any of the dozen unique NPCs I created in this village they’d know that a band of hobgoblins had been raiding their harvest.

The party didn’t seem to notice and slaughtered the entire town, down to the last man. I am not even sure that the players knew about the hobgoblins.

As for my expectations as a DM, I consider myself very lax in that as long as you don’t cheat, follow the majority of the rules pertaining to your class (I do allow homebrew so long as it’s not too game breaking) or make any one else uncomfortable then you can pretty much do whatever you want, hell, I don’t mind the way they play, I just don’t get why they do it. I mean, if they are going to play evilly why not be psychotic murderhobos instead? At least that way the campaign adventure would be more interesting right?


I think you have a case of "This is what the GM has prepared so this is what we are going to do". They expect a story to develop and don't want to derail it.

I am more of a sandbox DM, the only reason that my party seems to end up becoming feudalism enforcers is that as soon as they find an opportunity, they ingratiate themselves with the lords or king by doing their dirty work…


Also, players seem to do what the most powerful person in the environment tells them to do, very rarely do they push back on moral grounds usually because that results in bad things happening to them.

Technically I’ve never had a king who could physically pose much of a threat…. Of my adventures I’ve run, the first king was a paranoid old man and the second one is a literal knockoff of Joffrey Baratheon…

And given the party’s lack of imagination it seems pretty clear that they’d probably keep on serving whoever is “legitimate” even at their high levels.


I’ll echo the question of what’s the pitch. If I join a campaign with a hard premise you’ve got my expectations and world view aligned. If I join a sandbox and the GM starts presenting situations that should be solved a certain way according to [worldview] that few or no characters hold, then I will feel lied to. We the players showed out desires with this ‘good deeds wherever there’s coin’ party. We dismantled the bandit slave mining operation because that got us the mine. I’m not running off to find some peasant’s lost boyfriend, I don’t care about the penniless sob stories for this character. No, stop shoving it in front of me, I won’t eat it... NO, “here comes the airplane” won’t work!

Actually, I’d prefer players who are willing to work exclusively for coin. My party never once accepted a bribe from anyone, and I’ve tried bribing them, A LOT… The most “greedy” thing I’ve ever seen any of them do is to take possession of a fallen enemy’s home and lands, and even then they asked for permission from the lord they were serving.

Their characters seem to legitimately believe that the awful people they serve are entitled to their loyalty because of feudalism.

[Batcathat]

As for my expectations as a DM, I consider myself very lax in that as long as you don’t cheat, follow the majority of the rules pertaining to your class (I do allow homebrew so long as it’s not too game breaking) or make any one else uncomfortable then you can pretty much do whatever you want, hell, I don’t mind the way they play, I just don’t get why they do it. I mean, if they are going to play evilly why not be psychotic murderhobos instead? At least that way the campaign adventure would be more interesting right?

I suppose it's a matter of taste, but in my opinion it sounds like your players have — intentionally or not — found a way to portray non-conventional (from an IRL perspective) morality without going the exaggerated murderhobo route. As has already been pointed out, obeying the local monarch can make sense from both an ideological and/or a pragmatic point of view. I agree that your players' behavior does seem rather odd, but not really in a bad way.

(Granted, my approval is probably at least partly because I tend to prefer pretty much anything of the traditional knights in shining armor heroes).

[Lord Raziere]

Warhammer 40K I believe

I am assuming they are referring that to keep the comatose Emperor alive and able to hold up the psychic interstellar webway which allows them to use “hyper space” to travel the universe….. that they have to sacrifice millions of psychic humans to the machine keeping the Emperor alive.

See, your PC's character behavior almost wouldn't be out of place for WH40k.....except for the parts where they get diplomatic with people outside of the kingdom. I think your players just really don't want to involve modern morality in their games. You've found a group willing to engage with the culture and respect authority, right or wrongly.

so here is what you do: stop caring about their morality. care only about what their rulers morality is supposed to be regardless of what they do. don't adjust the rulers behavior thats reacting to them not being good guys. instead if the ruler is intended to be evil let them naturally be evil according to the rulers own rules and if the ruler eventually screws them over sooner or later because of that natural course of them doing evil, well the PC's will have no one to blame but themselves and if the ruler doesn't screw them over, they don't. they've seen the warning flags and have disregarded them, so whatever results of them obeying being evil people you've originally designed to screw people over because they're evil (not suddenly adjusted to screw people over because you didn't like how they roleplay) is what results.

[Psyren]

Okay so I have been DMing for almost a decade now and I seem to notice that whenever the party is introduced a king/queen then they immediately grant them more leeway, is that normal for most gaming groups or is it just mine?

Several examples include the following:

1) My party had killed many a Robin Hood type thief in at least four different settings that I remember, two of the times they didn’t even do it for a reward but rather to “restore order”

2) I’ve once had one campaign where the main antagonist was an Evil Empress who bathed in the blood of children and made pacts with demons. When they finally confronted said Empress, she would give the usual “evil villain monologue” about her “divine right to rule” and how without her, her “Empire will fall apart” and off about social order and the need for a class hierarchy. Keep in mind, this sorceress consorted with devils and BATHES IN THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN, but after she “explained herself” everyone but the Paladin were tempted to take her side, and I am pretty sure that the Paladin player would have tried to join her too if I didn’t threaten him with an automatic fall.

3) On two separate occasions, my party had absolutely no problem on destroying entire communities of peasants if a king told them to, they literally killed women and children because they refused to pay taxes/harboring magic users. I was once planning on starting a campaign loosely based on the American Revolution or the German Peasant’s War but I decided against it because I feel like I know which side my players will lean towards.

4) There was one encounter where a King once had my party “deal with” a Count who refused to pay his taxes… This Count was objectively richer than anyone else in the Kingdom due to literally having a goldmine on his land, when the party confronted said Count, he offered to pay triple what the King was offering if they spared him, but nope… they didn’t even humor the Count, they decapitated him and offered his head to the King.

There are a couple more examples I can name, but you guys can get the gist right? Is this normal behavior? Granted my players are pretty normal in their lives and they never act like sociopaths whenever they are fighting regular monsters. But for some reason whenever I introduce a concept of a feudal social order to the game they will immediately throw all morality out the window in the name of the King.

I can't speak to what's "normal" as I haven't done any polls, I can only speak to my own groups. But your players definitely seem a bit too willing to leverage any semblance of authority they can in order to murderhobo.

If you want them to cut back on that, you need a few more consequences for their actions in going this route (say, that empress who consorts with demons ends up betraying them in some way), and a few more rewards for not making violence the first resort (say, making it clear that convincing the greedy Count to pay his fair share instead of killing him is an option, and hint that that route might lead to better rewards or more sidehooks while still giving all the XP killing him would have.)

Alternatively, they might just want to be Knights Templar, LN/LE my-country-right-or-wrong this campaign. Consider tailoring the campaign to their actions if so, and have the ultimate "big bad" be the resistance movement that their participation in the system of oppression helps to spawn.

[paladinofshojo]

I can't speak to what's "normal" as I haven't done any polls, I can only speak to my own groups. But your players definitely seem a bit too willing to leverage any semblance of authority they can in order to murderhobo.

That’s what I thought too…. However they don’t really do much “murderhoboing” unless sanctioned by someone of authority.

Even when the party lead gets ennobled he doesn’t use it as an excuse to loot and pillage with impunity as killing a serf of another lord’s lands would cause a war.

I am kinda surprised how they understand that there are consequences for their actions but so callous in the act of killing innocent people for their own convenience at the same time…. As you would expect parties to either be one or the other, not both.

[Vahnavoi]

My main problem is that they will kill indiscriminately anything that someone with authority tells them to, without even trying to think through of any less hostile way to settle disputes.

Ummm... you play these authority figures, don't you?

So, have you tried an authority figure:

1) ordering less than lethal measures towards rebel peasants and what have you?

2) ordering lethal measures, but then getting horrified when they are actually executed, because the authority figure didn't think it through and seeing the massacre makes them visibly regret giving the order?

3) ordering lethal measures, then when there's predictable public outcry, scapegoating and ordering lethal measures towards the player characters?

4) being indecisive and flip-flopping between lethal and merciful solutions?

You might not be able to make your players act less predictably Lawful Evil, you can at least make their kings act less predictably Lawful Evil.

EDIT:



I am kinda surprised how they understand that there are consequences for their actions but so callous in the act of killing innocent people for their own convenience at the same time…. As you would expect parties to either be one or the other, not both.

You really seem to have some trouble wrapping your head around this "Lawful Evil" thing. :smallamused:

[paladinofshojo]

Ummm... you play these authority figures, don't you?

So, have you tried an authority figure:

1) ordering less than lethal measures towards rebel peasants and what have you?

2) ordering lethal measures, but then getting horrified when they are actually executed, because the authority figure didn't think it through and seeing the massacre makes them visibly regret giving the order?

3) ordering lethal measures, then when there's predictable public outcry, scapegoating and ordering lethal measures towards the player characters?

4) being indecisive and flip-flopping between lethal and merciful solutions?

You might not be able to make your players act less predictably Lawful Evil, you can at least make their kings act less predictably Lawful Evil.

I mean I was initially hoping that the party would act more independently when they are ordered to brutalize peasants in the name of their feudal lords.


You really seem to have some trouble wrapping your head around this "Lawful Evil" thing. :smallamused:

I honestly never thought that players would be interested in playing that alignment….

[Lord Raziere]

I mean I was initially hoping that the party would act more independently when they are ordered to brutalize peasants in the name of their feudal lords.



I honestly never thought that players would be interested in playing that alignment….

Okay, did you originally specifically INTEND a "lets take down evil nobility" campaign and got the most lawful evil party by bad luck or did you intend something more general?

either way let them know how uncomfortable you are with this out of character at the very least, this is probably a communication issue.

[paladinofshojo]

Okay, did you originally specifically INTEND a "lets take down evil nobility" campaign and got the most lawful evil party by bad luck or did you intend something more general?

either way let them know how uncomfortable you are with this out of character at the very least, this is probably a communication issue.

Well I was originally wondering what they would do. I made the world as terrible as I can, with roving bandits and mercenaries stalking the roads, Orcs and hobgoblins in the woods, and the Royals and nobles too busy with their own power plays and wars with each other and other kingdoms to do anything about it. Kinda like Game of Thrones or Berserk.

I was sort of expecting the party to be disillusioned with the King after forced to commit war crimes and head off to do more “party specific” adventures but nope…. They are perfectly okay with being enforcers.

[Easy e]

Spitballing here..... but have the king ask the PCs to delicately handle a matter that actually puts the Kings bloodline to rule in question or expose that the King is outright illegitimate. I.e. handle some documents, kill witnesses, eliminate a child that is the actual king, etc.

It could start with small stuff like burning documents and destroying records. As the PCs accomplish the easy stuff, the King has them ramp up their campaign to murdering actual members of the royal family. This culminates in the King eventually asking them to kill either the rightful heir and prince, or some small innocent child that does not know he is the "true" king of the land. By then, they will have to decide where their loyalty lies.

That will force them to put their conviction about Monarchy and who has the right to rule to the test.

[TheStranger]

I mean I was initially hoping that the party would act more independently when they are ordered to brutalize peasants in the name of their feudal lords.
Well there’s your problem. Your party, for whatever reason, has great respect for the feudal hierarchy. Which is maybe a little unusual but not totally unreasonable. Either way, it’s clear at this point that your players are going to defer to what they see as rightful authority, and any adventure ideas that rely on them questioning or opposing that authority are doomed to fail.

So there’s a few ways you can play this. You could make authority figures mostly-benign questgivers, so that your players do what they want and mostly have a positive impact on the world. There’s nothing wrong with playing the tropes straight sometimes.

Or you can lean into their evil, as suggested above. Whether they think they’re doing good or bad, make them basically the Sheriff of Nottingham in-world.

Or have the authority figures realize that the PCs would make excellent minions in any number of schemes, since they can apparently be relied on to accept everything at face value and do what they’re told. This makes them valuable as both enforcers and patsies, depending on the needs of the nobility in question.

Or you can try to force your players away from blind obedience by not giving them the authority figures they want. Make it clear that all of the various factions have a plausible claim to legitimacy, but also that none of them actually care about that. After they do horrible things for the apparent authority, reveal that that person was relying on a false claim, and have the rightful ruler horrified by their actions. Basically, keep jerking them around until they give up on trusting or obeying anybody and choose something for themselves. Note that this may have unintended consequences next time you want the players to respect an authority figure.

Probably the thing to do is have an OOC conversation about what the players want from the game. Obviously they want to uphold law and order. Do they have preferences for whether that results in peace and prosperity? Do they want complicated, morally-gray scenarios, or do they want a more straightforward setting? Do they care whether they’re heroes or villains in the eyes of the people?

[Xervous]

Or you can try to force your players away from blind obedience by not giving them the authority figures they want. Make it clear that all of the various factions have a plausible claim to legitimacy, but also that none of them actually care about that. After they do horrible things for the apparent authority, reveal that that person was relying on a false claim, and have the rightful ruler horrified by their actions. Basically, keep jerking them around until they give up on trusting or obeying anybody and choose something for themselves. Note that this may have unintended consequences next time you want the players to respect an authority figure.


Not discussing the matter with players beforehand can have this tactic lead to horror stories. Are the players on board with what the GM is trying to do? Forcing reactions and worldviews in something billed as an open sandbox will strike some players as false advertising.

[Psyren]

That’s what I thought too…. However they don’t really do much “murderhoboing” unless sanctioned by someone of authority.

Even if they don't really do it unless they have a (paper-thin) excuse, they're still doing it. Like come on, a noble not paying his taxes is not a capital offense, nor even is attempting to bribe the guys who come to sanction him over it. That was an opportunity for you, acting as the king, to lay into them with a What The Hell Hero (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhatTheHellHero) speech and show IC how their actions will have destabilized the region - a bloody succession, organized crime or monsters seizing the mine, more suffering for the townsfolk etc.

My point is that if you want to discourage this kind of behavior you need to actually discourage it. Alternatively, if you're okay with the darker routes they're taking, lean into it and make the campaign about that.

Also, the paladin doing nothing while his compatriots decapitate the guy - or worse, actively participating - is likely fall-worthy.

[TheStranger]

Not discussing the matter with players beforehand can have this tactic lead to horror stories. Are the players on board with what the GM is trying to do? Forcing reactions and worldviews in something billed as an open sandbox will strike some players as false advertising.

I agree. The next paragraph of my post suggested an OOC discussion about what the players want out of the campaign.

[Berenger]

My main problem is that they will kill indiscriminately anything that someone with authority tells them to, without even trying to think through of any less hostile way to settle disputes.

For instance, in the middle of a war, a town has not paid taxes for almost three months and the lord of the region assumes that they had defected to the enemy and orders the party to exterminate them.

When they get to the town, I make a GREAT EMPHASIS to show how the town already looks war torn and destitute, if they bothered to ask any of the dozen unique NPCs I created in this village they’d know that a band of hobgoblins had been raiding their harvest.

The party didn’t seem to notice and slaughtered the entire town, down to the last man. I am not even sure that the players knew about the hobgoblins.
The only thing I found really strange in that example is that the lord ordered them to eradicate an entire town based on a mere assumption. I mean, that's not evil or ruthless but plain paranoid and stupid; he just deprived himself of a major source of revenue because he neglected to take into account the very obvious possibility that there are complications with the payment due to the war. Telling the characters to investigate and act based on their findings would thus have been the rational course of action for any competent lord, irrespective good or evil alignment.

So here is an angle you might be able to leverage: vassalage means you are obligated to aid your liege lord with deeds and counsel. That last bit is actually a vital part of the feudal system, formally recognized in oaths and such. This means that that truly loyal characters of a certain social standing are allowed and expected to speak up (in a face-saving manner, of course, depending on the cultures etiquette) if they are sent to carry out some ill-conceived stupid evil scheme to which there are clearly superior options. Of course, this assumes that your players are more interested in roleplaying being loyal vassals than in meting out sadistic violence under the guise of faithful service.



Their characters seem to legitimately believe that the awful people they serve are entitled to their loyalty because of feudalism.
The thing is, as long as the king or lord fulfills his own obligations towards the characters as his vassals, he totally is entitled to their loyalty because of feudalism. This is just how that system works, after all. The only honorable way out of this bond is when said awful people violate it first. Maybe a quite shaky point could be made that this is the case as soon as the characters are asked to clearly besmirch their own honor by acts way outside the accepted mores of their shared culture and religion, but razing a city and putting everybody inside to the sword might very well not suffice for that, despite being a war crime from a modern point of view.

[Telok]

Replace the king with a doppleganger or other shapeshifter that can manage the drception.

[Batcathat]

It could start with small stuff like burning documents and destroying records. As the PCs accomplish the easy stuff, the King has them ramp up their campaign to murdering actual members of the royal family. This culminates in the King eventually asking them to kill either the rightful heir and prince, or some small innocent child that does not know he is the "true" king of the land. By then, they will have to decide where their loyalty lies.

That will force them to put their conviction about Monarchy and who has the right to rule to the test.

Would it? Because it sounds like that king would be neither a good king nor the rightful king, thus enforcing the whole mentality that a "rightful" king is the optimal choice.

If it were me, I'd do the complete opposite and have the rightful king be the worst sort of tyrant and an aspiring usurper be a much more skilled and just ruler. That should test their convictions.

[Easy e]

Would it? Because it sounds like that king would be neither a good king nor the rightful king, thus enforcing the whole mentality that a "rightful" king is the optimal choice.

If it were me, I'd do the complete opposite and have the rightful king be the worst sort of tyrant and an aspiring usurper be a much more skilled and just ruler. That should test their convictions.

He tried that, and they killed the Usurper without hesitation.

[paladinofshojo]

Would it? Because it sounds like that king would be neither a good king nor the rightful king, thus enforcing the whole mentality that a "rightful" king is the optimal choice.

If it were me, I'd do the complete opposite and have the rightful king be the worst sort of tyrant and an aspiring usurper be a much more skilled and just ruler. That should test their convictions.


Already tried that… during the crisis… the party would crown the 15 year old King Rupert VI to the throne… whom the players affectionately named “Prince Joffrey” for unfortunate reasons…. Rupert’s claim is that he is the son of the last king whereas his Uncle, the Archbishop Constantius, was the bastard half brother of the Last King. Constantius’s mother was a common woman whom the Late King had taken “liberties” with, which had never sat well with him seeing as he seemed to have some moral compass unlike the rest of his kin.

My players decided that “Rupert is more legitimate” after which, the party was turned into the boy King’s personal enforcer’s and made to hunt down any of his Uncle’s supporters. Constantius’s head would eventually be dipped in tar and presented to Rupert who laughed gleefully.

[Batcathat]

Accept he tried that, and they killed the Usurper without hesitation.

Ah, right. I thought I read something about that but only went back to the first post and figured I misremembered the part about the rich count. Still, I don't see how your suggestion would make them question anything, since it just plays into their seeming conviction that the most legitimate should rule.

[Lord Raziere]

Already tried that… during the crisis… the party would crown the 15 year old King Rupert VI to the throne… whom the players affectionately named “Prince Joffrey” for unfortunate reasons…. Rupert’s only claim is that he is the son of the last king whereas his Uncle, the Archbishop Constantius, was the bastard half brother of the Last King. Constantius’s mother was a common woman whom the Late King had taken “liberties” with, which had never sat well with him seeing as he seemed to have some moral compass unlike the rest of his kin.

My players decided that “Rupert is more legitimate” after which, the party was turned into the boy King’s personal enforcer’s and made to hunt down any of his Uncle’s supporters. Constantius’s head would eventually be dipped in tar and presented to Rupert who laughed gleefully.

I think they're having a laugh at you. This behavior reminds me of modern ironic humor: they're being ironically terrible by going "hm, what would an ACTUAL feudal servant do?" and reveling in the dark comedy of it.

[paladinofshojo]

I think they're having a laugh at you. This behavior reminds me of modern ironic humor: they're being ironically terrible by going "hm, what would an ACTUAL feudal servant do?" and reveling in the dark comedy of it.

They started a war against the Church of Lathander…. Killing every and any cleric who did not denounce the archbishop and swear fealty to Rupert, even an elderly monk who had trained the Archbishop who would stand proudly and frail, staring down the party and claiming he could not be bullied by “thugs”….

Rupert even ordered the party to parade a priory of nuns naked before the streets of the capitol in a mad display of his power over his subjects…..

What’s even more messed up is that the party’s own cleric worshipped Lathander….and was trained by the Archbishop

[Psyren]

Already tried that… during the crisis… the party would crown the 15 year old King Rupert VI to the throne… whom the players affectionately named “Prince Joffrey” for unfortunate reasons…. Rupert’s claim is that he is the son of the last king whereas his Uncle, the Archbishop Constantius, was the bastard half brother of the Last King. Constantius’s mother was a common woman whom the Late King had taken “liberties” with, which had never sat well with him seeing as he seemed to have some moral compass unlike the rest of his kin.

My players decided that “Rupert is more legitimate” after which, the party was turned into the boy King’s personal enforcer’s and made to hunt down any of his Uncle’s supporters. Constantius’s head would eventually be dipped in tar and presented to Rupert who laughed gleefully.

It sounds like you're not just allowing but actively encouraging their baser impulses. If you all are having fun doing that, there's no need to change anything.

[Berenger]

In light of this; I feel your players kinda fetishize Sandor and possibly Gregor Clegane.

[Lord Raziere]

They started a war against the Church of Lathander…. Killing every and any cleric who did not denounce the archbishop and swear fealty to Rupert, even an elderly monk who had trained the Archbishop who would stand proudly and frail, staring down the party and claiming he could not be bullied by “thugs”….

Rupert even ordered the party to parade a priory of nuns naked before the streets of the capitol in a mad display of his power over his subjects…..

Yup, that sounds like a long term dark joke based on being ironically terrible to me. are they being facetious while they state all this, do they crack jokes while they do this, like how non-serious out of character are they about this because if they refer to the king as Prince Joffrey they know what they're jokingly referencing. the question is whether your simply not in on the joke, or whether they are actually taking all this seriously. if they're being dead serious about their belief he is the legitimate ruler without clarifying that they really just like getting into a non-modern mindset or break character to say "this is just my character being lawful evil" or whatever, run.

so above all, get OOC confirmation how serious they are taking all this and what their logic is, don't keep feeding us horror stories, just ask them and have a conversation about what their logic is and how serious they are.

[paladinofshojo]

It sounds like you're not just allowing but actively encouraging their baser impulses. If you all are having fun doing that, there's no need to change anything.

To be fair, Rupert wasn’t supposed to be an obvious Joffrey Baratheon from the start… he was originally charming and dashing, to further drive his manipulative and sociopathic nature home.

As his Uncle (who was the mentor of the party’s Cleric btw) began to make his own bid for the throne… Rupert begins to show his true colors and becomes more and more cruel.

At first I was subtle, having Rupert stare into the fire place with a strange gleam in his eye, but I grow more and more apparent about his madness as the crisis drew out, Rupert ordered all stray cats in the city killed because they were probably “spies” and began to brutalize members of his own court…. Especially the ones who were responsible for “raising him” since his father had lost a war to a coalition of lords and had given Rupert as a hostage to them since he was his third born son.

I was hoping that the party realized that they might have made the wrong choice in an absolute ruler…. But nope, none of the party members seemed to mind the little psychopath enough to do something about him being in charge.

I think they only began to call him “Joffrey” after he became King and now firmly established in power.

[Psyren]

so above all, get OOC confirmation how serious they are taking all this and what their logic is, don't keep feeding us horror stories, just ask them and have a conversation about what their logic is and how serious they are.

I'm starting to think that might be the real point behind the thread, rather than seeking advice.

[paladinofshojo]

I'm starting to think that might be the real point behind the thread, rather than seeking advice.

To be fair, I don’t really mind the group’s peculiarities… I just find it odd since I’ve DMed for a while and I usually get LG/NG parties or CN/CE parties…. I just thought that their behavior is somewhat strange and deserves to be shared.

From what I gather, most people’s parties don’t act like this…


Edit:

But if you guys want I’ll ask them why they play the way they do.

[TheStranger]

But if you guys want I’ll ask them why they play the way they do.

“Hey guys, some people on the internet want to know what the heck is wrong with you.”

If everybody is having fun, don’t rock the boat on our account.

[Batcathat]

“Hey guys, some people on the internet want to know what the heck is wrong with you.”

If everybody is having fun, don’t rock the boat on our account.

True. But I think a nice "What made you decide to act like that?" should leave the boat quite seaworthy. Granted, I don't know anything about the group in question but the fact that paladinofshojo seem to react to the party acting completely opposite of the expected with mild confusion rather than annoyance or stress makes me think they have some pretty good group dynamics.

Personally, I'm mostly curious about whether it was a conscious role play decision by one or more players or some sort of subconscious reaction to perceived legitimate authority.

[Psyren]

My own curiosity ended when I realized there wasn't actually a problem to be solved here. Asked and answered in other words.

[icefractal]

Well I was originally wondering what they would do. I made the world as terrible as I can, with roving bandits and mercenaries stalking the roads, Orcs and hobgoblins in the woods, and the Royals and nobles too busy with their own power plays and wars with each other and other kingdoms to do anything about it. Kinda like Game of Thrones or Berserk.
IDK if this is really a factor (they may just enjoy playing LE enforcers regardless), but it might be. Personally, if I joined a game and the premise was "everything is terrible and most people are ****ty", I probably wouldn't play a heroic character. More likely to go amoral than LE personally, but obviously tastes vary.

But isn't a heroic light in the darkness, maintaining their code against all odds, a classic? Yes, but it can also be exhausting. And there's no guarantee of a pay-off either - the GM might very well decide to stay in the gritty-grimdark space and say that all my actions couldn't help in the end, the world remains crap and most people I helped got ****ed over later anyway. And that's not inherently wrong, but personally speaking: no thanks.

Or, I could play a character who doesn't consider the state of the world to be a problem, and then it's a relaxing journey through (hopefully interesting) events. Even if my PC ends up dying horribly - eh, he kind of deserved it, not too depressing.

I realize that from an actor-stance where tragedy and angst are positives, this sounds crazy, like "I figured out how to save time eating - throw 90% of the food away first!" All I can say is that there's a lot of different ways to engage with an RPG.

[TheStranger]

By far the most interesting answer is that this is an epic trolling of the DM by the players, which they’ve somehow managed to avoid giving away at the table.

Sadly, unquestioned loyalty to perceived legitimate authority is by far the most likely (and most boring) answer. Anything else requires the PCs to be acting in concert based on reasoning that they’ve apparently never openly discussed and are actively concealing when the party discusses what to do next. (I assume they’re not beheading people with zero discussion, at least)

[NichG]

Play Tyranny as a Tunon/Kyros loyalist for some inspiration about what sorts of things you could do to play into the concept and make it interesting...

[paladinofshojo]

By far the most interesting answer is that this is an epic trolling of the DM by the players, which they’ve somehow managed to avoid giving away at the table.

That would actually be pretty funny but my current group of players don’t seem like the type to do something like that, they’re all polite and well mannered people.


Sadly, unquestioned loyalty to perceived legitimate authority is by far the most likely (and most boring) answer. Anything else requires the PCs to be acting in concert based on reasoning that they’ve apparently never openly discussed and are actively concealing when the party discusses what to do next. (I assume they’re not beheading people with zero discussion, at least)

I agree with that too…. I also don’t think they actually understand the concept of a “sand box” in where their actions impact the world… or at the very least it hasn’t sunk into their minds yet. Most of the players are only used to structured plots. I also don’t give them too much feedback on what they should or shouldn’t do, at most I just ask “are you sure that’s the action you wish to take” or “why exactly you want to do that again?”

My biggest fear is that I made the world too “boring” for them and they cannot actually engage with anything because they’re not seriously invested into the story.

I am trying to make them think independently and be in charge of their own stories, not be the pawns in someone else’s.

[Faily]

Well I was originally wondering what they would do. I made the world as terrible as I can, with roving bandits and mercenaries stalking the roads, Orcs and hobgoblins in the woods, and the Royals and nobles too busy with their own power plays and wars with each other and other kingdoms to do anything about it. Kinda like Game of Thrones or Berserk.

I was sort of expecting the party to be disillusioned with the King after forced to commit war crimes and head off to do more “party specific” adventures but nope…. They are perfectly okay with being enforcers.


I mean... it kind of sounds like to me that the players are playing exactly to the setting presented to them.

[paladinofshojo]

I mean... it kind of sounds like to me that the players are playing exactly to the setting presented to them.

But they don’t have to…. It’s a sandbox style world where they can play however they want…

[TeChameleon]

But they don’t have to…. It’s a sandbox style world where they can play however they want…

Honestly, from what you've been saying, it sounds like that's pretty much what they're doing.

If you're still unsure, talk to them. Doesn't have to be confrontational, could just be 'hey guys, this is sorta getting outside my comfort zone as a DM, are you enjoying this enough to wanna keep going this way, or could we try something different?', or something of that nature.

Sometimes, people just want to play the bad guys.

... granted, I'm not one of those people, but I'm pretty sure they exist :smalltongue:

[Lord Torath]

So... how did Lathandar react to one of his clerics killing his archbishop and torturing his female clerics?
Here I display how much I've forgotten about The Forgotten Realms - Lathandar IS male, right?

[Felhammer]

My group of delightful players always wind up playing very anti-authority type characters, so they go out of their way to not ingratiate themselves into the good graces of powerful people... Often to their own long term detriment :smallbiggrin:

In my Starfinder game, I used the Starfinder Society organization as a narrative tool to help the group as a whole learn the system and provide an easy excuse for the PCs to go off on quick, one shot adventures. The plan was to break away from that narrative device after a few levels, letting the PCs go off on their own and do their own thing. Yeah, no. First conversation in the first session, one of the PCs goes full "Among Us Sus" on the Venture Captain, infuriating the man quite a bit. The party goes on the Captain's quest, which sees them off to a newly discovered world to grab some survey data from a lost Starfinder party. While returning back to the Captain, one of the PCs convinces the party that the Captain is super shady and that it would be better to "sell the data rather than just hand it over to that "obviously evil" Venture Captain. The party agrees, so they copy the survey data. Before giving the data over to the Venture Captain, the PCs leak that they have the data to some underworld people, which causes many corporations and wealthy entrepreneurs to contact the PCs about acquiring the data. The PCs wind up selling the data to a Corporation for a 10 story apartment (with a robot butler), a fast car and an unregistered ship.

Needless to say, that campaign veered off - hard - into a direction I had not envisioned :smallbiggrin:

[paladinofshojo]

So... how did Lathandar react to one of his clerics killing his archbishop and torturing his female clerics?
Here I display how much I've forgotten about The Forgotten Realms - Lathandar IS male, right?

Lathander turned his back on the cleric, as he was now no longer able to cast or prepare any divine spells.

To mitigate this, the cleric begins to proclaim to now worship Amaunator, the Lawful Neutral aspect of the Sun… Since he viewed that Rupert was the legitimate king and his temperament and personality doesn’t change that.

The Cleric also begins to claim that Lathander’s church is a corruption of Amaunator’s older church and that he did nothing wrong for putting a stronger emphasis on law and order over concepts like “mercy” and “kindness”, which is technically correct.

As for the torturing of the nuns, the Cleric claims that it had nothing to do with him. Since technically Rupert did that without the party’s involvement. The whole reason I included that was to make them think that “maybe supporting this kid wasn’t a good idea”…


Honestly, from what you've been saying, it sounds like that's pretty much what they're doing.

If you're still unsure, talk to them. Doesn't have to be confrontational, could just be 'hey guys, this is sorta getting outside my comfort zone as a DM, are you enjoying this enough to wanna keep going this way, or could we try something different?', or something of that nature.

Sometimes, people just want to play the bad guys.

... granted, I'm not one of those people, but I'm pretty sure they exist :smalltongue:

My main gripe is that they’re not necessarily doing what they or at least their characters want.. their characters don’t have any goals, dreams, or aspirations in their backstory.

They’re not progressing their own stories, they’re just progressing the agenda of some apathetic noble or some sadistic king. Said characters who are controlled by me, so I feel it kinda breaks the spirit of a sandbox world when they are willingly playing the game as if there is an over-encompassing plot that is completely controlled by me. They’ve literally railroaded the game for themselves

I feel like I can’t tell them that because I’ve already told them that they can play however they want and this is how they like to play, I also don’t want them to try and change the way they enjoy the game to “please me”, so I am trying to gently nudge them to actually develop some sort of individuality and personalities.

[noob]

Who decides what is evil? Heck, one of the more popular gaming settings out there managed to justify the sacrifice of thousands of people daily just for more efficient interstellar travel.


Some people arguably considers that in the world of warhammer 40k all factions are evil (individuals can be not evil but the faction as a whole is an evil thing)

[Hytheter]

But they don’t have to…. It’s a sandbox style world where they can play however they want…

To me it seems like they ARE playing how they want, and the only issue is that they aren't playing how YOU want.

[paladinofshojo]

The only thing I found really strange in that example is that the lord ordered them to eradicate an entire town based on a mere assumption. I mean, that's not evil or ruthless but plain paranoid and stupid

That’s the point…. I am trying to put the idea that “maybe people who’s only qualification is an inbred bloodline aren’t the best rulers”. The kingdom’s royal bureaucracy is ripe with corruption and incompetence seeing as almost everyone in a position of power seems to be there due to nepotism or bribery. This shouldn’t be news to my players but they just don’t care and seem to just shrug and accept it. One of them even said, “well the real world is also like that…. And if we can live and accept that level of systemic corruption, then our characters should be able to cope with that too” which is a fair point, but kinda ignores the fact that said character is a wizard who can shoot fire and lightning out of his hands.



The thing is, as long as the king or lord fulfills his own obligations towards the characters as his vassals, he totally is entitled to their loyalty because of feudalism. This is just how that system works, after all. The only honorable way out of this bond is when said awful people violate it first. Maybe a quite shaky point could be made that this is the case as soon as the characters are asked to clearly besmirch their own honor by acts way outside the accepted mores of their shared culture and religion, but razing a city and putting everybody inside to the sword might very well not suffice for that, despite being a war crime from a modern point of view.

But the obligations aren’t really getting fulfilled, I made sure that there have been famines, food riots, and even necromancers who were able to gain literal armies by promising “the gift of a peaceful death” to masses of starving and desperate villagers.


To me it seems like they ARE playing thow they want, and the only issue is that they aren't playing how YOU want.

That may be, but what’s the point of giving them the freedom to explore a world and make their own adventures when they’re just going to expect me to give them a main quest? I hate being railroaded as a player, and I don’t want to railroad them as a DM.

[Ameraaaaaa]

That may be, but what’s the point of giving them the freedom to explore a world and make their own adventures when they’re just going to expect me to give them a main quest? I hate being railroaded as a player, and I don’t want to railroad them as a DM.

That's what we call a player and gm mismatch. There's 3 solutions. 1 continue as is. 2 adjust as a gm. 3 change groups. The 3rd one is an extreme solution but if you don't want to adjust for your players and you don't want to continue as is then That's your only choice.

4 you can talk to your players which i recommend.

[Quertus]

I usually see the opposite.
No respect at all to nobles or royalty. Which isn't good for the setting.

Especially at higher levels - Why should they respect the king, when they can defeat the king and all his armies easily?

Sounds like the problem with the gods, and why they usually need to be taken down, tbh: why should they respect humanity, when they are able to defeat them all?

[Vinyadan]

To be honest, if the King is loyal towards them, I don't see why they shouldn't roll with it. It sounds like a steady gig. Having a job is the opposite of murderhoboing, you are murderemployed with a murdercareer. The count gives them three times as much, the King can give them three more jobs AND peace of mind.

In other cases, it sounds like maybe you could shove the info a bit better into their faces, like "as you approach the village, the taverns are filled with rumors of the destitution of the town of XXXX. Goblin armed bands have been attacking the men in the fields. Now the peasants don't dare to leave the farmsteads, and the harvest is rotting on the land." And then you can add something like "A message about the situation in town is en route to Lord Questgiver". This would mean that the Lord will know what's up, and react to how the PCs handle the situation: should they assume that he just wants his orders thoughtlessly executed, or that he prefers his town to survive and the goblins to be defeated? And, if they kill everyone and tell him "but you said to do so", should they expect further employment, or will the lord assume they should be discharged, and put around news of how they handled it? Can they deceive the lord and pretend they didn't know about the goblins?

This emphasis on taxes is a bit odd, though. Maybe the PCs all have deadbeat dads in their backstory and really hate people who don't pay their dues?

About the Empress, you may have gone a bit too realistic there: either there is something like Sense Motive, or the setting explains clearly that there is a perfectly good alternative to the Empress, or the characters have good reason to believe that killing her would destroy the fabric of the country and lead to a neverending civil war, which, unless she had a very large bathtub, sounds numerically worse than sacrificing children. Or maybe they just like the idea of a hierarchy they can also ascend.

Actually, it's worth asking: do good rulers get speeches that justify their existence or ascent, like the evil ones do?

[Anonymouswizard]

So... how did Lathandar react to one of his clerics killing his archbishop and torturing his female clerics?
Here I display how much I've forgotten about The Forgotten Realms - Lathandar IS male, right?

Honestly Lathandar's gender identity shouldn't come into it. But yeah, this screams 'fallen Cleric'.


Lathander turned his back on the cleric, as he was now no longer able to cast or prepare any divine spells.

To mitigate this, the cleric begins to proclaim to now worship Amaunator, the Lawful Neutral aspect of the Sun… Since he viewed that Rupert was the legitimate king and his temperament and personality doesn’t change that.

The Cleric also begins to claim that Lathander’s church is a corruption of Amaunator’s older church and that he did nothing wrong for putting a stronger emphasis on law and order over concepts like “mercy” and “kindness”, which is technically correct

Eh, this is just my personal view, but switching deities should not be easy for a Cleric. Especially to a Lawful deity. This Cleric has broken an alliance with Lathandar because they think Amaunator gives them a better deal, but how does Amaunator know they won't jump ship to Asmodeus or whoever when it suits them? Got to resume that divine trust.


Some people arguably considers that in the world of warhammer 40k all factions are evil (individuals can be not evil but the faction as a whole is an evil thing)

Yeah, the discussion ended like two pages back. Again my point want that the sacrifice is moral, it's that the setting manages to justify it (primarily because if Warp heaven becomes harder most hive world's begin to starve and likely riot, putting them blood of potentially quadrillions on your hands).

Although it wouldn't be justified if the Adeptus Mechanicus was less anti-research and had come up with techno-navigators already. So really it's the Omnissiah's fault.

[Lord Torath]

Honestly Lathandar's gender identity shouldn't come into it. But yeah, this screams 'fallen Cleric'.Lathandar's gender comes into it only insofar as I don't want to misgender him. Or anyone else.

[paladinofshojo]

Eh, this is just my personal view, but switching deities should not be easy for a Cleric. Especially to a Lawful deity. This Cleric has broken an alliance with Lathandar because they think Amaunator gives them a better deal, but how does Amaunator know they won't jump ship to Asmodeus or whoever when it suits them? Got to resume that divine trust

It usually isn’t, however, the crux of his argument here is that Lathander is nothing more but a modern aspect of Amaunator as they are both solar deities, and many regions and scholars within Faerun (and the D&D fandom as a whole) seem to debate over whether they are one in the same, as Amaunator is the sun god of the ancient Netherese civilization who predated modern Faerun by a couple thousand years. With some cultures even using both names interchangeably. So he technically does have a strong case for pulling this….

Honestly, the reason why I allowed this is because it is pretty brilliant and shows that the character and the player are very knowledgeable in the theology and history of the setting.

The cleric even shows some “character growth” as he decides that the Church of Lathander is a “corruption” of Amaunator’s true faith and is now on a personal mission to restore Amaunator’s “true dogma”. Which I view as an improvement as this is the only time any of my players had their characters show any goals or personal quests of their own outside of “whatever the king wants them to do today”.

[Faily]

The wild idea would be to have them be loyal to someone actually nice.

The rightful king with a good claim and all, who is actually just and nice (think noblesse oblige to the extreme I guess). And the ones trying to usurp them actually are the bad guys with less claim to power.

I dunno, just live the fantasy that in a world of powerful mages and interfering gods (Forgotten Realms is full of that) there are nobles and royals who are good and nice, but also competent enough to have stayed in power.

[noob]

The wild idea would be to have them be loyal to someone actually nice.

The rightful king with a good claim and all, who is actually just and nice (think noblesse oblige to the extreme I guess). And the ones trying to usurp them actually are the bad guys with less claim to power.

I dunno, just live the fantasy that in a world of powerful mages and interfering gods (Forgotten Realms is full of that) there are nobles and royals who are good and nice, but also competent enough to have stayed in power.

The creator of the thread did not even say if he included a kind and nice rebel that have great plans for the kingdom that sacrificed his life for defending a rebellion with a good cause and just got resurrected and is trying to make sure to overthrow the corrupt and evil royals.
Without a super good and nice and kind alternative to royalty how would the players decide to go against it?

[Segev]

Am I correct in reading that the OP wants his players to rebel against authority, and is introducing increasingly-wicked royals to see what it takes?

If so, the advice given in this thread about making it personal is good: have the king take from the PCs. Demand shares of their loot.

When he's rewarding them for taking down "disloyal nobles" by making them the nobles' replacements, consider the things that the nobles rebelled over, and have the king double down on those with his new PC nobility.

[noob]

Am I correct in reading that the OP wants his players to rebel against authority, and is introducing increasingly-wicked royals to see what it takes?

If so, the advice given in this thread about making it personal is good: have the king take from the PCs. Demand shares of their loot.

When he's rewarding them for taking down "disloyal nobles" by making them the nobles' replacements, consider the things that the nobles rebelled over, and have the king double down on those with his new PC nobility.

ex: demand completely unfair tithes the nobles that rebelled could barely pay while making their peasants works themselves to death.

[paladinofshojo]

The wild idea would be to have them be loyal to someone actually nice.

The rightful king with a good claim and all, who is actually just and nice (think noblesse oblige to the extreme I guess). And the ones trying to usurp them actually are the bad guys with less claim to power.

I dunno, just live the fantasy that in a world of powerful mages and interfering gods (Forgotten Realms is full of that) there are nobles and royals who are good and nice, but also competent enough to have stayed in power.

Putting aside the fact that I loathe the idea of the “good king” archetype as a symbol of legitimate authority. There are two reasons why I won’t go this route.

1) If you have a benevolent monarch that is actually competent, chances are your setting is idealistic where there is little to no corruption or abuses of power, no infighting, no turf wars between nobles. And that just sounds way too boring. Why would a stable nation need morally compromised mercenaries?

2) This is supposed to be a sandbox game where the players decide their own stories, if I introduce some “big good” character then it stops being about the player characters and starts being all about the “big good” character and how they plan on creating change to establish more equality and justice for all.


The creator of the thread did not even say if he included a kind and nice rebel that have great plans for the kingdom that sacrificed his life for defending a rebellion with a good cause and just got resurrected and is trying to make sure to overthrow the corrupt and evil royals.
Without a super good and nice and kind alternative to royalty how would the players decide to go against it?


I’ve had a Robin Hood styled rebel leader of peasant soldiers and yeoman that had been shafted by the wars they fought in the name of their lords and king appear at least once or twice in my campaigns.

But instead of joining them, the party usually sides with the King…

[noob]

Putting aside the fact that I loathe the idea of the “good king” archetype as a symbol of legitimate authority. There are two reasons why I won’t go this route.

1) If you have a benevolent monarch that is actually competent, chances are your setting is idealistic where there is little to no corruption or abuses of power, no infighting, no turf wars between nobles. And that just sounds way too boring. Why would a stable nation need morally compromised mercenaries?

2) This is supposed to be a sandbox game where the players decide their own stories, if I introduce some “big good” character then it stops being about the player characters and starts being all about the “big good” character and how they plan on creating change to establish more equality and justice for all.
Imagine the players believing there is absolutely no good person in the entire setting and that fundamentally any who would end up ruling would be evil and corrupt.
That does not makes them want to overthrow the current evil and corrupt kings.
So you need people with good goals to be here and to prove that if the current evil is overthrown that it can be replaced by better people.
Ex: some rebels that says that if in power they would not murder people for fun, stop making ritual sacrifices every day and reduce taxes enough for commoners to live instead of them dying of overworking.

Tldr: If there is no good people to replace the bad people then there is no reason to do stuff against the bad people thus leading to the situation you are experiencing.
It is the "if there was only life hating skeletons would destroying life hating skeletons still be good" situation and the answer is "No"

sorry did not read your answer because it was not here when I started writing

An interesting concept would be the peasants rebelling more and more over time without even necessarily anybody that instigates anything because over time they are more and more hungry and desperate eventually there is no peasants left and no food production and the dead peasants starts coming back to life and attacking.

[paladinofshojo]

Imagine the players believing there is absolutely no good person in the entire setting and that fundamentally any who would end up ruling would be evil and corrupt.

Technically there are a lot of good people in the setting, hell, most of the mayors and town guards that the party encounter are usually just normal people trying to live their lives….

But like I said earlier, they live in a feudal monarchy, as such their land is owned by aristocracy and the overarching government of the country is compromised solely of whichever aristocracy the crown appoints, which is usually done via nepotism or bribes….





That does not makes them want to overthrow the current evil and corrupt kings.
So you need people with good goals to be here and to prove that if the current evil is overthrown that it can be replaced by better people.

They don’t have to, it’s a sandbox game, as such they can play however they want…. If they want to eschew the Crown’s politics and just focus on dungeon diving or hunting monsters in the wilderness then they are free to do so.



Ex: some rebels that says that if in power they would not murder people for fun, stop making ritual sacrifices every day and reduce taxes enough for commoners to live instead of them dying of overworking.

I’ve had several Robin Hood rebel characters who were making such humanitarian promises during my games, but for some reason my party do not like this archetype… at all.

This type of character has been brutally killed whenever I tried to “reboot” the concept.




An interesting concept would be the peasants rebelling more and more over time without even necessarily anybody that instigates anything because over time they are more and more hungry and desperate eventually there is no peasants left and no food production and the dead peasants starts coming back to life and attacking.

I actually do have something akin to that, a powerful lich had been training necromancers and began preaching about “the justice of the grave” in which his necromancers promise that “in undeath all are equal, noble and peasant, king and commoner” and “there is no pain, no hunger, only unity” and had started gaining a rather large following of disgruntled starving peasants eagerly allowing the Lich’s acolytes to transform them into undead with the goal of turning the entire kingdom into a land of death

[noob]

Technically there are a lot of good people in the setting, hell, most of the mayors and town guards that the party encounter are usually just normal people trying to live their lives….

But like I said earlier, they live in a feudal monarchy, as such their land is owned by aristocracy and the overarching government of the country is compromised solely of whichever aristocracy the crown appoints, which is usually done via nepotism or bribes….






They don’t have to, it’s a sandbox game, as such they can play however they want…. If they want to eschew the Crown’s politics and just focus on dungeon diving or hunting monsters in the wilderness then they are free to do so.




I’ve had several Robin Hood rebel characters who were making such humanitarian promises during my games, but for some reason my party do not like this archetype… at all.

This type of character has been brutally killed whenever I tried to “reboot” the concept.

I am sorry when I answered I was replying to an incomplete version of your post and I realised it right now.

[Segev]

I suppose my question is, if it's a sandbox...why are you so upset that they're choosing a side?

It seems to be a side that rewards them. Perhaps they're not playing paragon heroes, but rather mercenaries?

[noob]

I suppose my question is, if it's a sandbox...why are you so upset that they're choosing a side?

It seems to be a side that rewards them. Perhaps they're not playing paragon heroes, but rather mercenaries?

Especially since nobility that crushes the poor under the taxes tends to make anyone outside of that nobility have little ability to reward in cash mercenaries.

[paladinofshojo]

I suppose my question is, if it's a sandbox...why are you so upset that they're choosing a side?

It seems to be a side that rewards them. Perhaps they're not playing paragon heroes, but rather mercenaries?

The main gripe I have is that they aren’t actually developing their characters or even coming up with their own character goals… but rather expecting someone with authority (who is controlled by me) to give them a quest to do…

It kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the freedom to explore and impact the world when all they are going to do is willingly get railroaded by their DM.

I am not asking for them to play as “paragons” I just want them to actually have some developments. Right now, their characters are right above RPG video game silent heroes in terms of actual personalities.

I feel like that’s the problem here, they are playing this game like Dark Souls or Skyrim where they see a systemic problem but feel like the only option they have is to hit it really hard with a sword or fire bolt.

[Satinavian]

Putting aside the fact that I loathe the idea of the “good king” archetype as a symbol of legitimate authority. There are two reasons why I won’t go this route.
So instead of the trite archetype of the legitimate virtuous and competent king you give them the equally trite archetype of the incompetent decadent escessive tyrant.

How about some average ruler as should be pretty much the norm ?


The main gripe I have is that they aren’t actually developing their characters or even coming up with their own character goals… but rather expecting someone with authority (who is controlled by me) to give them a quest to do…

It kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the freedom to explore and impact the world when all they are going to do is willingly get railroaded by their DM.
That is a completely different problem and actually pretty common.

This can only be solved by lengthy OOC discussions.

[Batcathat]

It kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the freedom to explore and impact the world when all they are going to do is willingly get railroaded by their DM.

Are they, though? The fact that they don't act the way you expect them to (and you let them do so) seems to me like the opposite of being railroaded. Sure, they obey in-universe authorities but that's hardly the same thing as being railroaded.

[TheStranger]

Putting aside the fact that I loathe the idea of the “good king” archetype as a symbol of legitimate authority. There are two reasons why I won’t go this route.

1) If you have a benevolent monarch that is actually competent, chances are your setting is idealistic where there is little to no corruption or abuses of power, no infighting, no turf wars between nobles. And that just sounds way too boring. Why would a stable nation need morally compromised mercenaries?

2) This is supposed to be a sandbox game where the players decide their own stories, if I introduce some “big good” character then it stops being about the player characters and starts being all about the “big good” character and how they plan on creating change to establish more equality and justice for all.

1) The existence of Ned Stark, legitimate Hand of the King and lord of Winterfell, doesn’t make Westeros a nice place. You could have PCs work for someone like that.

2) After Ned Stark gets himself outmaneuvered and killed, that would be a good time for the PCs to take some initiative before they join him.

Or just put the PCs in the Ned Stark role, trying to hold things together for a well-intentioned king (okay, that might be giving Robert too much credit) who isn’t great at the job. “The PCs have to act on their own initiative to hold the kingdom together on behalf of the rightful king while his enemies try to eliminate them” is a perfectly cromulent campaign concept, IMO.

[Theoboldi]

The main gripe I have is that they aren’t actually developing their characters or even coming up with their own character goals… but rather expecting someone with authority (who is controlled by me) to give them a quest to do…

It kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the freedom to explore and impact the world when all they are going to do is willingly get railroaded by their DM.

I am not asking for them to play as “paragons” I just want them to actually have some developments. Right now, their characters are right above RPG video game silent heroes in terms of actual personalities.

I feel like that’s the problem here, they are playing this game like Dark Souls or Skyrim where they see a systemic problem but feel like the only option they have is to hit it really hard with a sword or fire bolt.

Quite frankly, this is something you should have outlined as important for them before the campaign started. Characters for a sandbox campaign need to have long term goals starting out. To the point that you should not have accepted characters that did not have a genuine long term goal to start out with. You can't just toss them into the world and then expect them to find something that their characters want afterwards.

The problem isn't that they're unable to see any solutions to the world other than violence. It's that there's no reason for them to want anything else in the first place! With no pre-established character desires, they're going after the one thing that's meaningfully valuable to them (money) and that provides them with content (adventure).

At this point, you need to take them aside out of a character and tell them what you want. If you want their characters to have explicit goals other than just becoming as rich and powerful as possible, tell them they need to give their currently existing characters these new goals. And if you want characters to be proactive, tell them to make characters that are proactive, who have goals that require being proactive, and then provide them opportunities to be proactive rather than missions from rich patrons. But do that last point only once you've cleared up what kinds of characters you expect them to make.

[Xervous]

To me it appears you’ve been repeating a test (scenario) with the same inputs (players) and expecting different results. Address the players directly if you want a change or clarification.

[Segev]

The main gripe I have is that they aren’t actually developing their characters or even coming up with their own character goals… but rather expecting someone with authority (who is controlled by me) to give them a quest to do…

It kinda defeats the purpose of giving them the freedom to explore and impact the world when all they are going to do is willingly get railroaded by their DM.

I am not asking for them to play as “paragons” I just want them to actually have some developments. Right now, their characters are right above RPG video game silent heroes in terms of actual personalities.

I feel like that’s the problem here, they are playing this game like Dark Souls or Skyrim where they see a systemic problem but feel like the only option they have is to hit it really hard with a sword or fire bolt.

Give them multiple quests hooks at once, and let them pick which one(s) to take. Build hooks off of what's already happened. They're nobles now, right? How are they paying the taxes the king demands? Does the king have further quests for them? Are there crises facing their lands they must address? Do these conflict with the king's demands on their time and resources?

They're happy following the quest hooks you've given. They're happy sticking to their contracts/goals rather than taking what you thought would be "better" options. They're definitely not being railroaded; if you were railroading them, you'd have forced them to side with the Robin Hood guy or the Not So Bad Nobles. There's a definite character to them from what you've described.

Are they having fun? If so, that part's great. Are you not having fun? If not, why not?

[icefractal]

It seems that while you're running a sandbox, you have a fairly specific narrative arc in mind:
1) The PCs work for a corrupt king and are well-rewarded; it is entirely in their self-interest to continue doing this.
2) They realize how bad the king is and have a "What have we done?!" moment.
3) They turn against the king, either actively becoming rebels or at least no longer serving him.

Because none of the first part has to be true - the king doesn't have to hire them, the king doesn't have to be rewarding or even reasonable to work for, and for that matter the king doesn't have to remain in power - what would happen if other nobles stage a successful coup against the king the PCs were serving and now demand they transfer loyalty (to a group with zero claim to any hereditary connection) or be declared outlaws?

And I do grok that "doing the right thing when it costs you and the wrong thing is easier" is a different beat than "the wrong thing sucked for us as well, so we stopped doing it", but you can't force people to believe / act on the former, and it doesn't seem that your players are inclined to. Or that they even agree what is the right/wrong thing (IC at least).

[ngilop]

Oh, I do believe that I understand the entirety of the complaint. You see, the OP has a sandbox and completely hates railroading whether he is the player or the DM. But, because the players are not playing the rebel anti authoritarian that the OP wants them to be. He sends them into contact with increasingly more horrific rulers and other bad people of authority. This stems from the fact that the OP believes that there is no such thing as a good and/or benevolent rulers can not exist, and even of they do..they are boring because only evil is fun.


The OP is angry the players are not doing what he wants, and is unsure why free will is a thing that exists.

[Faily]

Putting aside the fact that I loathe the idea of the “good king” archetype as a symbol of legitimate authority. There are two reasons why I won’t go this route.

1) If you have a benevolent monarch that is actually competent, chances are your setting is idealistic where there is little to no corruption or abuses of power, no infighting, no turf wars between nobles. And that just sounds way too boring. Why would a stable nation need morally compromised mercenaries?

2) This is supposed to be a sandbox game where the players decide their own stories, if I introduce some “big good” character then it stops being about the player characters and starts being all about the “big good” character and how they plan on creating change to establish more equality and justice for all.



I’ve had a Robin Hood styled rebel leader of peasant soldiers and yeoman that had been shafted by the wars they fought in the name of their lords and king appear at least once or twice in my campaigns.

But instead of joining them, the party usually sides with the King…



In a fantasy-world with magic, gods, and supernatural powers, a benevolent ruler that is competent is just as believeable as a cruel ruler that is competent. Both can be interesting stories. For the benevolent ruler, the challenge is more often "what can we do without compromising our morals?".


You say it is a sandbox, but you clearly have a specific idea of what sort of story you want the players to engage in. Just because the king is a Big Good instead of a Big Bad, it doesn't make it less about the PCs anymore than it was with a Big Bad. You say it is a sandbox, which means that the players should be free to pursue whatever story they want, but you make it clear that you want them to bring change to establish a more equal and just society for all, and to do this they must rebel against an Evil Overlord.

EDIT: I'd recommend looking at the War For The Crown adventure path (Pathfinder). It sets the PCs in focus for helping the legitimate heir to the throne who also happens to be a good person, mostly.

[Grim Portent]

The GM in me would actually lean towards throwing the legitimacy of the king into question in a way that could directly benefit the party to test their loyalty, or that would enable things to escalate to a full blown civil war in which they can participate. Having players who tie themselves to a specific person or group is a good opportunity for big things involving that group, in this case the loyalists to the wicked king.


If you were to dangle information that one of the party is a descendant of an older, mostly forgotten branch of the royal family, and is by technicality more legitimate than the king, or introduce a rarely invoked mechanism by which the king can be chosen by other methods than direct lineage which the party could use to gain a claim themselves. Rite of combat, elective monarchy, there's a lot of ways to choose a king, especially if the current king can be convinced to abdicate in favour of a challenger.


Another interesting possibility could be to have a foreign noble with a claim based on having a different form of succession law. Say that in the main kingdom inheritance priotitises sons > daughters > brothers > sisters > distant relatives. Direct male preference succession, kids of the monarch are always the highest in line.

But if a previous monarch's brother got married off to a foreigner a generation or two back, and that kingdom has inheritance that goes sons > brothers > daughters > sisters > distant relatives, then that line would take precedence according to the customs and laws of their land, and would have a claim to the main dynastic branches throne.


EDIT: Figured I'd add that I've played several characters who would probably fit in quite well with your players. Sometimes it's very fun to be the frenzied guard dog of an evil master, or just to be evil in general and respond to sob stories and people in need with a cruel laugh or a dismissive comment. As long as it doesn't make you unconfortable, I'd say just keep having the king act like any of a number of historical and fictional insane sadistic monarchs, history and fiction are full of fun lunatics and the players seem to be enjoying working for 'King Joffrey'.

For a more low key scenario that could happen, having the king invite all the notables in the realm (including the players since they're nobles) to a theater which is booby trapped with something dangerous, like poisonous snakes, as a cruel prank for example. Have the king in a box seat above the main seating area where he can giggle as nobles, priests and wealthy merchants alike suddenly find their ankles surrounded by aggravated venemous serpents. The PCs have to deal with getting away from the snakes and with a stampede of panicking people while in an area ill suited to moving around.

[paladinofshojo]

Oh, I do believe that I understand the entirety of the complaint. You see, the OP has a sandbox and completely hates railroading whether he is the player or the DM. But, because the players are not playing the rebel anti authoritarian that the OP wants them to be. He sends them into contact with increasingly more horrific rulers and other bad people of authority. This stems from the fact that the OP believes that there is no such thing as a good and/or benevolent rulers can not exist, and even of they do..they are boring because only evil is fun.


The OP is angry the players are not doing what he wants, and is unsure why free will is a thing that exists.

No my main problem is that they’re not engaging the world and are just doing whatever the king tells them to… with little to no character growth or building.

This is a roleplaying game and their characters should have their own backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations.

They aren’t making rivals, personal enemies, friends, lovers, merchant-customer relations with anyone in this world.

All they seem to care about is “whatever the King/Lord/noble authority currently in charge of where the party is standing wants them to be”

It’s basically playing tabletop like a video game. They are perfectly okay with having no agency in directing the outcome of the story so long as they are given loot and money for their troubles.

This story stopped being about their Player Characters and the World and more about “the chronicles of King Rupert the Mad”. Who actually enjoys playing their entire campaign revolving around a CE teenage NPC instead of their own PCs?



EDIT: Figured I'd add that I've played several characters who would probably fit in quite well with your players. Sometimes it's very fun to be the frenzied guard dog of an evil master, or just to be evil in general and respond to sob stories and people in need with a cruel laugh or a dismissive comment. As long as it doesn't make you unconfortable, I'd say just keep having the king act like any of a number of historical and fictional insane sadistic monarchs, history and fiction are full of fun lunatics and the players seem to be enjoying working for 'King Joffrey'.

They don’t play their PCs as evil though… They don’t act like Gregor Clegane or Sandor Clegane, as they don’t seem to enjoy brutalizing people for the sake of it. They seem to play their characters as protagonists of JRPGs, in that the story is a linear narrative and they have no control over outside of gameplay.

The beginning of this campaign they were a typical party of low level adventurers who were helping small outskirt towns and delving into dungeons. Since the highest authority they dealt with was a town guard or a village headman the tasks they did were moreso “find sheep stealers” or “hunt down goblins” which they did no problem. However they use that same level of indifference towards whatever crazy order that their new employers give them…. Like “kill upstart peasants”, “put down rebels to the last man”…. They don’t seem to care about who or what gives them orders, only that someone is actually telling them what to do.

[Lord Raziere]

No my main problem is that they’re not engaging the world and are just doing whatever the king tells them to… with little to no character growth or building.

This is a roleplaying game and their characters should have their own backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations.

They aren’t making rivals, personal enemies, friends, lovers, merchant-customer relations with anyone in this world.

All they seem to care about is “whatever the King/Lord/noble authority currently in charge of where the party is standing wants them to be”

It’s basically playing tabletop like a video game. They are perfectly okay with having no agency in directing the outcome of the story so long as they are given loot and money for their troubles.

This story stopped being about their Player Characters and the World and more about “the chronicles of King Rupert the Mad”. Who actually enjoys playing their entire campaign revolving around a CE teenage NPC instead of their own PCs?

Okay if you really don't like them obeying the king, simply kill the king and have a civil war between nobilities break out with everyone lying that they're the legitimate heir without any way to confirm otherwise and have the kingdom descend into chaos. let the world burn, see what happens.

[Berenger]

Who actually enjoys playing their entire campaign revolving around a CE teenage NPC instead of their own PCs?
Your players?


One thing I just noticed... you seem to genuinely think that a king that is both benevolent and competent would be both unrealistic and make for a boring setting in which no heroes are needed. If you players are aware of this: why would they ever go to the trouble of supporting your noble, well-intentioned pretender? That would be a literal no-win scenario - either the new king would turn out to be incompetent, evil or both upon his inauguration or their success would wreck the setting. It's clearly an exercise in futility.

[paladinofshojo]

Okay if you really don't like them obeying the king, simply kill the king and have a civil war between nobilities break out with everyone lying that they're the legitimate heir without any way to confirm otherwise and have the kingdom descend into chaos. let the world burn, see what happens.

Putting aside the fact that this is a world with magic and divination so it’s not like you can make a claim of legitimacy and no one will fact check you on it….

What you’re basically suggesting is that I remove the current king from the narrative and the party will just have to decide who is the most “deserving” of their help due to their arbitrary views of legitimacy based on male primogeniture and their magical abilities, after which they’ll serve this new claimant as ruthlessly as they did the last….

They seem to serve the “royal bloodline” because that’s what Rupert and his predecessor preached along with the divine right of kings and for some reason the party internalized that instead of being skeptical about it.


Your players?


One thing I just noticed... you seem to genuinely think that a king that is both benevolent and competent would be both unrealistic and make for a boring setting in which no heroes are needed. If you players are aware of this: why would they ever go to the trouble of supporting your noble, well-intentioned pretender? That would be a literal no-win scenario - either the new king would turn out to be incompetent, evil or both upon his inauguration or their success would wreck the setting. It's clearly an exercise in futility.

Putting aside the fact that I don’t believe that no one is entitled to absolute political power because of who their parents were… a king that is both benevolent and competent and legitimate is relying on the fact that not only did they happen to be born into a position of power but they end up becoming absolutely deserving of said power. History and Crusader Kings II has taught me that no matter how great an empire you are able to build, your descendants will always eventually ruin it in a couple generations.

As for boring, the reason why I wanted them to support the bastard half brother of the old king is because it would have put them against all the evil nobles with whom they are currently working for. It would have caused much more tension because said pretender is half a peasant and that would strain relationships between the kingdom and its allies who see this as a dangerous precedent or a sign of weakness and invade…. Also the party probably would have been playing a much more active role in the campaign if they sided with the Archbishop, rather than just being the lapdogs used on any sort of resistance they are now.

[Lord Raziere]

Putting aside the fact that this is a world with magic and divination so it’s not like you can make a claim of legitimacy and no one will fact check you on it….

What you’re basically suggesting is that I remove the current king from the narrative and the party will just have to decide who is the most “deserving” of their help due to their arbitrary views of legitimacy based on male primogeniture and their magical abilities, after which they’ll serve this new claimant as ruthlessly as they did the last….

They seem to serve the “royal bloodline” because that’s what Rupert and his predecessor preached along with the divine right of kings and for some reason the party internalized that instead of being skeptical about it.

Oh thats simple.

The wizards and diviners are either get corrupt, dead or mysteriously vanished, all the claimants see the party as remnants of the old regime, as goons that that did the kings bidding to stomp their boot on them and thus want to kill them on sight, so it doesn't matter who is the legitimate ruler to them if all the claimants don't like them and don't want their help anyways because they're symbols of the old king oppression, when they already have their own goons to be symbols and enforcers of their brand of oppression.

[paladinofshojo]

Oh thats simple.

The wizards and diviners are either get corrupt, dead or mysteriously vanished, all the claimants see the party as remnants of the old regime, as goons that that did the kings bidding to stomp their boot on them and thus want to kill them on sight, so it doesn't matter who is the legitimate ruler to them if all the claimants don't like them and don't want their help anyways because they're symbols of the old king oppression, when they already have their own goons to be symbols and enforcers of their brand of oppression.

This sounds a lot like railroading… which I am against on principle. I’d rather have my characters play as fascist lapdogs then to contrive scenarios which don’t make any sense but to corner them into being forced to play a certain way or force a certain outcome.

For starters, why wouldn’t a claimant to the throne want the old king’s enforcers serving him? It adds to his own legitimacy…

Secondly, my party apparently understands the concept of ransoming and “chivalry” in that you don’t mistreat highborn enemies or prisoners of war. Which leads to them being politically savvy enough to know that “anyone above a Knight on the feudal scale deserves humane treatment” as they only seem to butcher peasants indiscriminately. So it’s not like they had made any powerful enemies.

[Lord Raziere]

This sounds a lot like railroading… which I am against on principle. I’d rather have my characters play as fascist lapdogs then to contrive scenarios which don’t make any sense but to corner them into being forced to play a certain way or force a certain outcome.

For starters, why wouldn’t a claimant to the throne want the old king’s enforcers serving him? It adds to his own legitimacy…

well okay.

then lets back up and do this: the king is mad right? and they serve him unquestioningly right? well what if the king's insanity was getting worse to the point of delusion, and thinks that if they kill him he will ascend and become immortal and godlike and thus orders the party to kill him and serve no one but him even after he ascends? but he is completely wrong and it just screws up everything.

[paladinofshojo]

well okay.

then lets back up and do this: the king is mad right? and they serve him unquestioningly right? well what if the king's insanity was getting worse to the point of delusion, and thinks that if they kill him he will ascend and become immortal and godlike and thus orders the party to kill him and serve no one but him even after he ascends? but he is completely wrong and it just screws up everything.

To be fair… the King is currently a teenager so I sincerely doubt he will be THAT mad… yet

I can see him gain that level of delusion after a couple more decades of his mind eroding from paranoia and mistrust.

[Lord Raziere]

To be fair… the King is currently a teenager so I sincerely doubt he will be THAT mad… yet

I can see him gain that level of delusion after a couple more decades of his mind eroding from paranoia and mistrust.

I mean sure if your feeling patient, but your completely able to speed it up however you feel is plausible.

Point is: you don't like the status quo? do something to shake it up.

[paladinofshojo]

I mean sure if your feeling patient, but your completely able to speed it up however you feel is plausible.

Point is: you don't like the status quo? do something to shake it up.

As a DM I have to at least have some respect for the integrity of the world I’ve created… If I don’t then why should my players?

That doesn’t mean I can’t subtly influence them to go a certain way but to outright force the plot to fold to my preference is the sign of a terrible DM

[Berenger]

History and Crusader Kings II has taught me that no matter how great an empire you are able to build, your descendants will always eventually ruin it in a couple generations.
To be fair, that's hardly unique to empires and kingdoms. Every large political entity seems to get wrecked by inadequate leadership every few generations.


Okay, how can I express it... At the core of the problem, you seem to have an extra-strong aversion towards the concepts of nobility and the divine rule of kings. That's only sensible, from a modern point of view. But I am under the impression that your strong feelings on the matter render you incapable or unwilling to grasp the internal logic of the political system you chose to portray. This, in turn, makes it hard for you to emphatize with someone born into that fictional pre-modern world and to portray its kings and nobles in a sympathetic way because rooting for them would offend your real life convictions. Is that about right or am I on the wrong track?

[paladinofshojo]

To be fair, that's hardly unique to empires and kingdoms. Every large political entity seems to get wrecked by inadequate leadership every few generations.

The usual criticism against inadequate leadership in any setting, real or fictional, is that your leaders end up growing “out of touch”, elitist, and stratified against the masses.

My personal opinion is that monarchy is the logical conclusion of this trend as there is nothing more socially stratified than the concept that you have one individual with a hereditary right to rule appointed by God himself…




Okay, how can I express it... At the core of the problem, you seem to have an extra-strong aversion towards the concepts of nobility and the divine rule of kings. That's only sensible, from a modern point of view. But I am under the impression that your strong feelings on the matter render you incapable or unwilling to grasp the internal logic of the political system you chose to portray. This, in turn, makes it hard for you to emphatize with someone born into that fictional pre-modern world and to portray its kings and nobles in a sympathetic way because rooting for them would offend your real life convictions. Is that about right or am I on the wrong track?

That is technically correct, however, it’s not the main reason I choose to portray the kings and nobles as either incompetent inbreds or vicious power hungry thugs.

The main reason I do so is because a kingdom in decline is a much more interesting and nuanced world to play in than a kingdom that is well managed and organized.

If the King or even his ministers were competent than where would all the conflict and social strife which causes the need for adventurers arise from?

Let’s say hypothetically if my Players did kill the evil king or any sadistic noble they come across….then what? They’ll be considered murderers and guilty of regicide. Even if they supported a decent leader, the last king’s detractors would see them as usurpers and cause another civil war.

The reason why Game of Thrones is set at the end of the Targaryen Dynasty when the Iron throne of Westeros is at its most politically unstable position is the reason why it’s so intriguing. There’s chaos, and you should never let a good crisis go to waste.

[Mechalich]

If the King or even his ministers were competent than where would all the conflict and social strife which causes the need for adventurers arise from?

For all the normal reasons, plus the fantasy ones on top.

The state has limited communication capabilities, information resources, bureaucratic expertise, financial resources, governing powers, and military capabilities among others. Competent ministers may disagree, often vehemently, upon the proper direction to take a state, which options to prioritize, how to treat foreign powers, or other considerations, sometimes to the point of being executed for their convictions. Pre-industrial states were often particularly limited, and feudal ones doubly so. Many medieval states struggled to even undertake tasks as fundamental as taking the census. The Ming Dynasty famously believed their population was shrinking even though it was in fact growing due to mass evasion of the census to avoid (admittedly crippling) tax burdens.

Kings attempting to actively ruin the state they rule are historically very rare, because even the most sadistic individual is generally aware that should the state collapse they are among the most likely people to go down with the ship, and hereditary rulership actually provides a greater inducement to try and keep the state stable in order to maintain their legacy. Kings may be incompetent in their efforts to preserve their rule or they may just make drastic policy mistakes, especially in foreign relations (fight/surrender being a nice common one) that ruin their nation. Even a large percentage of historical atrocities were conducted in an intent to break rival power structures or to intimidate third-parties into capitulation. The efficacy of such measures is highly dubious, but mass fill-in-the-horrible-thing was rarely conducted on a whim.


The reason why Game of Thrones is set at the end of the Targaryen Dynasty when the Iron throne of Westeros is at its most politically unstable position is the reason why it’s so intriguing. There’s chaos, and you should never let a good crisis go to waste.

Game of Thrones is an unreasonably chaotic scenario. That's a key part of why the novels are perma-stuck and the show crashed hard: Martin generated a scenario in which 'ice zombies, everyone dies' was the only logical outcome without massive deus ex machina intervention. It's also worth noting he had to take multiple active measures to cause such an outbreak of chaos, such as having a highly placed minister actively engaged in bringing down the state (Varys) including through assassination, and placing a mad king on the throne (Joeffery) and allowing that king to defy his councilors and start a war by executing Ned Stark.

[Faily]

For all the normal reasons, plus the fantasy ones on top.

The state has limited communication capabilities, information resources, bureaucratic expertise, financial resources, governing powers, and military capabilities among others. Competent ministers may disagree, often vehemently, upon the proper direction to take a state, which options to prioritize, how to treat foreign powers, or other considerations, sometimes to the point of being executed for their convictions. Pre-industrial states were often particularly limited, and feudal ones doubly so. Many medieval states struggled to even undertake tasks as fundamental as taking the census. The Ming Dynasty famously believed their population was shrinking even though it was in fact growing due to mass evasion of the census to avoid (admittedly crippling) tax burdens.

Kings attempting to actively ruin the state they rule are historically very rare, because even the most sadistic individual is generally aware that should the state collapse they are among the most likely people to go down with the ship, and hereditary rulership actually provides a greater inducement to try and keep the state stable in order to maintain their legacy. Kings may be incompetent in their efforts to preserve their rule or they may just make drastic policy mistakes, especially in foreign relations (fight/surrender being a nice common one) that ruin their nation. Even a large percentage of historical atrocities were conducted in an intent to break rival power structures or to intimidate third-parties into capitulation. The efficacy of such measures is highly dubious, but mass fill-in-the-horrible-thing was rarely conducted on a whim.


And a lot of the "terrible rulers" are more likely to have been painted with a political brush to cast them in a bad light by rivals, as history is always written with a bias too (Caligula is one, but it's more popular to cling to the stories of the crazy stuff he did). Not to mention how Roman Emperors for a good while lived by the grace of the kingmakers that were their guards


Game of Thrones is an unreasonably chaotic scenario. That's a key part of why the novels are perma-stuck and the show crashed hard: Martin generated a scenario in which 'ice zombies, everyone dies' was the only logical outcome without massive deus ex machina intervention. It's also worth noting he had to take multiple active measures to cause such an outbreak of chaos, such as having a highly placed minister actively engaged in bringing down the state (Varys) including through assassination, and placing a mad king on the throne (Joeffery) and allowing that king to defy his councilors and start a war by executing Ned Stark.

Yep. GoT is basically Wars of the Roses on magical steroids with an ice-zombie apocalypse + dragons added on top, and people who were all about causing as much chaos as possible (Littlefinger) pretty high up in the hierarchy. And the tv-show's ended kind of glossed the ending into "and then everything was fine and they set to rebuild stuff", with very little about contention surrounding the new monarch, remnants of other factions being out for revenge/sabotage, political fallouts, restoring peace to a pretty war-torn kingdom, etc...

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm just thinking that it sounds like Magna Carta time. Have the nobility revolt with the intention of setting up a ruling body higher than the monarch.

[TeChameleon]

If the King or even his ministers were competent than where would all the conflict and social strife which causes the need for adventurers arise from?

...

Undead, monsters, demons, devils, abberations, incursions from the Far Realms, dimensional instabilities (do you want bits of the Elemental Plane of Fire in your backyard?), cultists, evil gods, good/neutral opposing gods, enemy nations, political intrigues against the crown (just because the king and most of his ministers are good and competent doesn't mean that there isn't some yutz who thinks s/he could be doing a better job or that they deserve it more or whatever), ancient conspiracies, dragons, holy wars between bickering gods and their followers, outbreaks from the Underdark (seriously, that place is less of a food chain and more a food blender), magical plagues, leftover superweapons from some ancient war waking up, an order of druids deciding that the kingdom has messed up the balance of nature, merfolk attacking shipping routes, hostile giants, once-a-century migrations of some species with more teeth than brain cells, tarrasque mating season, the kingdom being designated as a clandestine hookup spot between archons and succubi...

Human and demi-human politics don't have to be much more than background noise for a gigantic adventure if you want to go that direction.

[Batcathat]

No my main problem is that they’re not engaging the world and are just doing whatever the king tells them to… with little to no character growth or building.

This is a roleplaying game and their characters should have their own backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations.

They aren’t making rivals, personal enemies, friends, lovers, merchant-customer relations with anyone in this world.

While I understand your complaints, I'm not sure how much of it has to do with their relation to royalty. If they had done what you expected and turned on the king, would that really have fixed their lack of "backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations" or given them more relationships with the world?

[Xervous]

I think I’m finally starting to see the real conflict here. The OP expects drama but the players expected, enjoy and pursue beer & pretzels. Were expectations of drama established at session 0?

The players are deriving enjoyment just from engaging with the game. Just like tossing a frisbee around at a party there’s no expectations or much in the way of structure, it’s just something you can enjoy on idle. Going for a walk, playing solitaire or watching a sports game are other examples. OP instead assumes the premise of frisbee means Ultimate Frisbee and is disappointed.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think I’m finally starting to see the real conflict here. The OP expects drama but the players expected, enjoy and pursue beer & pretzels. Were expectations of drama established at session 0?

I somewhat suspect that there was no session 0.


The players are deriving enjoyment just from engaging with the game. Just like tossing a frisbee around at a party there’s no expectations or much in the way of structure, it’s just something you can enjoy on idle. Going for a walk, playing solitaire or watching a sports game are other examples. OP instead assumes the premise of frisbee means Ultimate Frisbee and is disappointed.

Pretty much this. There isn't anything wrong with getting the job, kicking in the door, and killing the things or other genres along those lines. Despite the name theres nothing about role-playing games that actually requires role-playing except for maybe a few niche systems.

I mean, despite the fact I might sometimes use it as an argument for why you shouldn't run certain things in D&D, there's nothing wrong with not playing the game either. To me role-playing head been at least half an excuse to hang out with friends, we'd have still meet up even if it was for Carcassonne (but we all liked RPGs, so we played them).

At the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with how the OP's players want to play make believe unless they're not making anybody uncomfortable.

[Xervous]

Carcassonne

Carcass one? Sounds like a neat transhumanist system.

[King of Nowhere]

The usual criticism against inadequate leadership in any setting, real or fictional, is that your leaders end up growing “out of touch”, elitist, and stratified against the masses.

My personal opinion is that monarchy is the logical conclusion of this trend as there is nothing more socially stratified than the concept that you have one individual with a hereditary right to rule appointed by God himself…


my personal opinion is that monarchy is the logical conclusion of a subsistance economy without public schools.
nobody is teaching you to make bread. the only way to learn is to apprentice to the baker; the baker teaches his son, who then inherits the bakery.
nobody is teaching you to make shoes. the only way to learn is to apprentice to the cobbler. the cobbler teaches his son, who then inherits the shop.
the king teaches his son to administer the kingdom, and the prince then inherits the kingdom. and he may be good or decent or terrible, but at least he's been trained since young age for the task. which is more than you could say for everyone else in the kingdom.




Let’s say hypothetically if my Players did kill the evil king or any sadistic noble they come across….then what? They’ll be considered murderers and guilty of regicide. Even if they supported a decent leader, the last king’s detractors would see them as usurpers and cause another civil war.

all good reasons, but modern fantasy is less idealistic in that regard, and more rooted in realistic hystorical reconstruction. hystory is full of situations where there was a bad leader, and the bad leader is deposed, and the country plummets into anarchy, and things get worse (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilPowerVacuum). Or maybe the corrupt despot was ousted by a revolution, and the revolutionary leader turns out to be just as bad, or worse (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FullCircleRevolution). Or perhaps the evil despot is ousted, and then it is discovered that the despot was actually a decent person, that the problems of the country were caused by other factors, and that anyone else trying to fix them is going to make a worse mess. Perhaps the corrupt despot if the only one who knows how to keep stuff running (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VetinariJobSecurity).

And yes, I am using tvtropes links. they are most appropriate to this discussion.

so, while kings and nobles should not be held as sacred, one should also eschew the extreme opposite of using "murder the nobles, overthrow the system" as the standard solution to any problem is also wrong.
personally, i prefer to have some complex moral decisions, and i support those kinds of dilemmas. Do you kick out the tyrant who makes the trains run on time, knowing that things will get worse in the short run, but hoping they'll eventually get better with the villain removed? or do you try to make an alliance with him, use his skills as administrator for a worthy cause?

in any case, your players specifically may have too much of a thing for royalty. the part about bathing in blood and the other about killing civilians suggests so. You, on the other hand, judging by the large number of "robin hood-esque" figures and corrupt nobles you threw at them, are probably leaning too much on the other side.

[Berenger]

You seem a little caught up in the idea of all monarchies as absolute monarchy, in which the monarch is omnipotent and can de facto and / or de jure act on a whim and unrestrained by the support the population, the high-ranking nobles, the churches, the state of the royal treasury, military considerations, technological constraints, laws or customs. Are you aware that this is not an accurate portrayal of kingship during the european middle ages (since those seem to be what you try to to emulate), 'divine right to rule' notwithstanding?

[Anonymouswizard]

You seem a little caught up in the idea of all monarchies as absolute monarchy, in which the monarch is omnipotent and can de facto and / or de jure act on a whim and unrestrained by the support the population, the high-ranking nobles, the churches, the state of the royal treasury, military considerations, technological constraints, laws or customs. Are you aware that this is not an accurate portrayal of kingship during the european middle ages (since those seem to be what you try to to emulate), 'divine right to rule' notwithstanding?

Yeah, even absolute monarchs only rule due to the agreement of their subjects and even the worst tyrants have to keep the nobility on their side. And while I've never finished even the first book of ASoIaF I'm fairly certain it's the exact problem Joffery faces.

[paladinofshojo]

While I understand your complaints, I'm not sure how much of it has to do with their relation to royalty. If they had done what you expected and turned on the king, would that really have fixed their lack of "backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations" or given them more relationships with the world?

At the very least they’d have to start making their own decisions instead of just mindlessly following someone else’s orders…

If they want to play evil characters that’s fine, but they can at least have their characters be evil in their own agency instead of just blindly following orders.




Undead, monsters, demons, devils, abberations, incursions from the Far Realms, dimensional instabilities (do you want bits of the Elemental Plane of Fire in your backyard?), cultists, evil gods, good/neutral opposing gods, enemy nations, political intrigues against the crown (just because the king and most of his ministers are good and competent doesn't mean that there isn't some yutz who thinks s/he could be doing a better job or that they deserve it more or whatever), ancient conspiracies, dragons, holy wars between bickering gods and their followers, outbreaks from the Underdark (seriously, that place is less of a food chain and more a food blender), magical plagues, leftover superweapons from some ancient war waking up, an order of druids deciding that the kingdom has messed up the balance of nature, merfolk attacking shipping routes, hostile giants, once-a-century migrations of some species with more teeth than brain cells, tarrasque mating season, the kingdom being designated as a clandestine hookup spot between archons and succubi...

Human and demi-human politics don't have to be much more than background noise for a gigantic adventure if you want to go that direction.

The question goes is that why would the Kingdom need random mercenaries off the road to fight their battles against these existential threats instead of doing it themselves?

If the village is protected by the king’s personal elite paladins and knights then why do they need a party of random vagabonds to deal with those Orcs or bandits?

That’s the main problem with trying to have an adventure in any setting, there has to be some level of chaos and anarchy or else a bunch of outsiders would not be able to be in the middle of such politically and socially important events….

If you had a problem involving criminals harassing you, chances are that unless you live in a part of the world with no institutions or infrastructure, you wouldn’t hire a bunch of random goons you’ve met at the local bar to take care of it for you…

That’s why the settings in games have to have at least SOME level of corruption or decline in them, otherwise your characters won’t be able to monopolize a crisis to gain fame and notoriety for themselves…. The Kingdom’s armed forces would solve the problem themselves.


my personal opinion is that monarchy is the logical conclusion of a subsistance economy without public schools.
nobody is teaching you to make bread. the only way to learn is to apprentice to the baker; the baker teaches his son, who then inherits the bakery.
nobody is teaching you to make shoes. the only way to learn is to apprentice to the cobbler. the cobbler teaches his son, who then inherits the shop.
the king teaches his son to administer the kingdom, and the prince then inherits the kingdom. and he may be good or decent or terrible, but at least he's been trained since young age for the task. which is more than you could say for everyone else in the kingdom.

Except that cobblers and bakers don’t hold the literal power of life and death over 99% of the population….



so, while kings and nobles should not be held as sacred, one should also eschew the extreme opposite of using "murder the nobles, overthrow the system" as the standard solution to any problem is also wrong.
personally, i prefer to have some complex moral decisions, and i support those kinds of dilemmas. Do you kick out the tyrant who makes the trains run on time, knowing that things will get worse in the short run, but hoping they'll eventually get better with the villain removed? or do you try to make an alliance with him, use his skills as administrator for a worthy cause?

That’s kinda the point, I want my players to start to have philosophical dilemmas over the outcomes of their actions…. Right now they are safe from any kind of responsibility as both players and characters because all they do is follow the words of the King, as such it’s the King who directs the story and the world… not the players.

I want them to think about the long term consequences of their actions, I want them to think “should my character do this?”, I want them to be deal with moral conundrums on questions of utilitarianism. Hell, I’d settle for them being anti-authoritarian murderhobo outlaws who are dictating their story with their own antics.

It’s THEIR story they should start playing it for themselves, not for some Joffrey knock off.

[Theoboldi]

At the very least they’d have to start making their own decisions instead of just mindlessly following someone else’s orders…

If they want to play evil characters that’s fine, but they can at least have their characters be evil in their own agency instead of just blindly following orders.

If you want them to make their own decisions, you need to do three things.

First, check with them out of character if that is the kind of game that they want and that they're going to work with you to make it happen.

Second, demand they create characters that have goals of their own starting out. Work together with them to craft a party that has meaningful, long-term goals that they can then proactively pursue. If they start out without any character goals, they will not suddenly find them in play. Do not permit any character that does not have some form of long-term goal, even if it is only assisting another character with their own.

Third, instead of providing them with missions, provide them with situations and opportunities that will let them act on those long-term goals. Your first session can be a linear adventure to get them situated in the world and introduce their immediate surroundings, but after that they need to become their own quest givers if a sandbox is what you're after.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

1) My party had killed many a Robin Hood type thief in at least four different settings that I remember, two of the times they didn’t even do it for a reward but rather to “restore order”
My take: This might not be royalty worship. Being against theft under all circumstances is weird for adventurers (who tend to be thieves, grave-robbers, pillagers, etc) but unless these Robin Hood thieves were explicitly also revolutionaries I wouldn't jump to "this is Royalty worship".


2) I’ve once had one campaign where the main antagonist was an Evil Empress who bathed in the blood of children and made pacts with demons. When they finally confronted said Empress, she would give the usual “evil villain monologue” about her “divine right to rule” and how without her, her “Empire will fall apart” and off about social order and the need for a class hierarchy. Keep in mind, this sorceress consorted with devils and BATHES IN THE BLOOD OF CHILDREN, but after she “explained herself” everyone but the Paladin were tempted to take her side, and I am pretty sure that the Paladin player would have tried to join her too if I didn’t threaten him with an automatic fall.
This is sort of baffling to me. Did they have a reason to think the Empire would fall apart? Did they have a reason for wanting to stop them Empire from falling apart? Did they honestly believe the generic ****ty self-justification of every dictator ever? The fact that she explicitly went on about preserving the government and the need for social hierarchy makes it even worse, IMO.
My take: This is definitely Royalty worship. Cringe.


3) On two separate occasions, my party had absolutely no problem on destroying entire communities of peasants if a king told them to, they literally killed women and children because they refused to pay taxes/harboring magic users. I was once planning on starting a campaign loosely based on the American Revolution or the German Peasant’s War but I decided against it because I feel like I know which side my players will lean towards.
There's no polite way to say this, but "my players will slaughter whole communities for crimes that aren't worthy of death" is deeply messed up. Being that willing to automatically follow a King's orders sounds like a weird amount of devotion to monarchy to me...

4) There was one encounter where a King once had my party “deal with” a Count who refused to pay his taxes… This Count was objectively richer than anyone else in the Kingdom due to literally having a goldmine on his land, when the party confronted said Count, he offered to pay triple what the King was offering if they spared him, but nope… they didn’t even humor the Count, they decapitated him and offered his head to the King.
Killing a greedy Count who was refusing to pay his taxes for no damn reason doesn't have to be royalty-worship, but in light of your previous examples I'll agree with you.

Your examples suggest that you're 100% correct, and that your party does indeed have a strange devotion to royalty and social order.
To avoid this, I suggest you play with people whose IRL politics are very different. That bit about the queen's speech on the need for hierarchy being accepted uncritically suggests that this is more than just "Kings are cool and are in stories I like", and is more of a difference between how you view society's structure and how they do.

Some examples in the other direction:
For example I regularly play with French people, and maybe 70% of the time they start with "all royalty is illegitimate and should be guillotined" at the back of their heads, judging royalty extremely harshly when anything bad happens in the Kingdom and not being especially motivated by "save the King from assassins" type plotlines. From time to time I have to remind them that most historical Kings just didn't have the state capacity to resolve every injustice, and that "he says nice things but his Kingdom isn't great" might be a sign of weakness and not of hidden evil :smallbiggrin: Sometimes it goes even further - many of my players will automatically side with peasant rebels even if they're very obviously pawns of an evil cult or whatever. I have "eat the rich" players who sympathised with murderous bank robbers ("Lenin robbed ban and helped them when I'd expected them to fight them (although this became a really fun adventure focused on breaching bank vault security, stealing what they could carry, and then falsifying paperwork to let them "legally" retrieve even more money they'd never deposited in the first place). One of these players is currently playing Crusader as a class (3.5 game), immediately said "my character is devoted to the ideals of anarchism", and now causes problems like insulting Fey royalty to their face at very low level despite the risk of imminent party kill this represents.
My take on this is that in-game behavior often reflects IRL politics simply because the value systems of your players don't change when they pick a character to play, or when they make judgements (even trying to be "in-character"). When players deliberately try to roleplay something very different from what they believe this might not be a problem, but unless they're doing it on purpose it's unlikely they'll break this pattern as it likely reflects deeply- or unconsciously-held views. You should either change the IRL values of your players somehow (or at least get them used to thinking critically of monarchist propaganda whwen it's obviously being used to defend evil), or adjust your expectations and plotlines accordingly.
I suggest adjusting your expectations and plotlines, it's easier :smallsigh:

Incidentally, anyone who says that feudalism is "the only option" for the period being emulated by D&D is completely wrong. Not only did non-european political systems often function differently IRL, but D&D has the communication systems that facilitated centralization of power in Europe due to magic and whatnot. Just remember that you have other choices than "Louis the 14th with wizards" !
Some possibilities: "medieval Europe" struggles between Kings and strong local noble leaders, absolute rulers, priest-kings (or priest-nobles), local peasant communes, tribal governance coexisting with an independent theocratic social class, a more technocratic and bureaucratic system ripped off China, city-states copies from various stages of Greek Antiquity (democracy, oligarchy, populist dictatorship - lots of stuff is easy to make work at this scale), systems where land ownership isn't even a concept and most basic things are communal except for what is effectively a sign of wealth and social/military "clout", systems that run a straight-up palace economy and centralize distribution of goods like food or high-grade metals/reagents... My current campaign's main polity's political system is 50% decentralized feudalism, 50% "East India Company town", and I think the players enjoy the change of pace. And yes, I picked that last one because I knew they'd enjoy messing with Big Business, so I built a campaign setting in which Big Business worked both as allies, employers, and enemies depending on the situation.

[Berenger]

The question goes is that why would the Kingdom need random mercenaries off the road to fight their battles against these existential threats instead of doing it themselves?

If the village is protected by the king’s personal elite paladins and knights then why do they need a party of random vagabonds to deal with those Orcs or bandits?

Because the king's personal elite paladins and knights are not stationed at random villages on the outskirts of the realm just on the off chance that some orcs or bandits might appear there. Maintaining a strong military presence is super expensive and knights and paladins are rare. Given a fairly realistic demographic, one in a hundred persons might some type of warrior by profession and one in a thousand might be an elite warrior such as a paladin or knight. Even fewer will be elite veterans or, in game mechanics, mid or high levels. Even if those are not kept at court as counselors, or in service as bodyguards to some VIP, or busy going to war or on crusades or on a heroic quest or managing their own landholdings - there just aren't enough of them to station them at every village. You are basically saying "Nah, who needs adventurers, just call in a SWAT team or the Navy SEALs!" in a world where the only way to actually do so is physically travel to some police station or military base several day's march away, without knowing whether the guys are even there or otherwise occupied.

[Xervous]

This is sort of baffling to me. Did they have a reason to think the Empire would fall apart? Did they have a reason for wanting to stop them Empire from falling apart? Did they honestly believe the generic ****ty self-justification of every dictator ever? The fact that she explicitly went on about preserving the government and the need for social hierarchy makes it even worse, IMO.
My take: This is definitely Royalty worship. Cringe.


My observation is a lack of investment, not royalty worship. Path of least resistance + no moral weight attached to this make believe elf game makes it more akin to GTA than anything. Mission is to steal a military cargo helicopter? That’s what you direct the guy on screen to do. Keep the woman’s purse you got back from the thief? Saves time getting to something else you wanted to do. Work for the queen of blood? Simple enough so far let’s see where this plot line leads.

I’m not thinking favorably of RL organ harvesting when I suggest rimworld. Heavy pollution speed run on an Eco server doesn’t have me endorsing such policies. So why should players who are casually engaging with the sandbox like it’s GTA be anywhere near monarchists for acts that clearly carry no moral weight? This is in the same bucket of logic that leads people to say violent video games make kids violent.

[paladinofshojo]

Because the king's personal elite paladins and knights are not stationed at random villages on the outskirts of the realm just on the off chance that some orcs or bandits might appear there. Maintaining a strong military presence is super expensive and knights and paladins are rare. Given a fairly realistic demographic, one in a hundred persons might some type of warrior by profession and one in a thousand might be an elite warrior such as a paladin or knight. Even fewer will be elite veterans or, in game mechanics, mid or high levels. Even if those are not kept at court as counselors, or in service as bodyguards to some VIP, or busy going to war or on crusades or on a heroic quest or managing their own landholdings - there just aren't enough of them to station them at every village. You are basically saying "Nah, who needs adventurers, just call in a SWAT team or the Navy SEALs!" in a world where the only way to actually do so is physically travel to some police station or military base several day's march away, without knowing whether the guys are even there or otherwise occupied.

And you don’t consider any of this to be clear sign of neglect of infrastructure and mishandling of military logistics?

Being part of a kingdom means that the crown is obligated to protect you correct? Otherwise why are you even bowing before the king and paying him a percentage of your crop yield?

[Berenger]

And you don’t consider any of this to be clear sign of neglect of infrastructure and mishandling of military logistics?

Being part of a kingdom means that the crown is obligated to protect you correct? Otherwise why are you even bowing before the king and paying him a percentage of your crop yield?

I think you vastly overestimate what can be physically done by a society with a roughly medieval tech level. It would be, for example, flat out impossible for such an agrarian society to maintain a standing army large enough to station even a handful of low-level infantry within running distance of each little settlement. This has nothing to do with neglect or mishandling and much with the hard practical limitiations of administration, economy and logistics. In a medieval context, it's the job of a king (or a local noble) to protect the community as a whole, not every single individual, since that is flat out impossible with the resources at hand.

Of course, you can keep throwing magic at the problem - some god that boosts the crop yields by 1000% of what is natural so that not 10% but 90% of your population are available to do stuff other than agriculture for a living. You can have nearly instant long-distance communications facilitated by legions of bound djinns. You can have emergency teams of supernaturally enhanced elite knights standing in constant vigil, awaiting to be summoned to the magic circle installed at the center of each village in case of an emergency. But at that point, you are not playing in a world comparable to anything medieval.

[Satinavian]

Otherwise why are you even bowing before the king and paying him a percentage of your crop yield?You basically get what you pay for.

Feudalism is relatively cheap because it forces its warriers to also do all the bureaucratic stuff when they are not fighting and thus can work even if most of your farmers produce barely beyond subsistence. It generally has comparably minimal tax rates.

If you want a every random village to be protected by several paladins/knights, the taxes of that village need to pay for those paladins and knights. And squires. And their families. And equippment. And horses. And then you still haven't paid anything for infrastructure or the organisation of the country.

[Berenger]

It generally has comparably minimal tax rates.
To elaborate: it generally has comparably minimal tax rates because higher tax rates (comparable to those of modern industrial nations) would kill medieval peasants dead. Production is so inefficient that there just isn't that much surplus over the subsistence threshold that can be taxed, even if you want to. Combine this with a society that has to live spread out over a large, thinly populated area (because it's agrarian) and low travel and communication speeds (hard limit: the speed you can force out of a horse on a cobbled road on a sunny day, gods help you if there is heavy rain or, you know, winter, or worse: spring).

[King of Nowhere]

That’s kinda the point, I want my players to start to have philosophical dilemmas over the outcomes of their actions…. Right now they are safe from any kind of responsibility as both players and characters because all they do is follow the words of the King, as such it’s the King who directs the story and the world… not the players.

I want them to think about the long term consequences of their actions, I want them to think “should my character do this?”, I want them to be deal with moral conundrums on questions of utilitarianism. Hell, I’d settle for them being anti-authoritarian murderhobo outlaws who are dictating their story with their own antics.

It’s THEIR story they should start playing it for themselves, not for some Joffrey knock off.

wait, maybe the problem is not that they follow kings, maybe the problem is just that they are pushovers? do they just accept missions from anyone paying them high enough, and perform those missions without thinking twice? maybe they don't want to face difficult choices, they want instead to just be given a mission, go somplace, slay some enemies, take the loot, minimal roleplaying involvement, rinse and repeat?

i don't know enough of your table from your description, but it may just be this.

[Faily]

Having standing armies, historically speaking, is actually a pretty modern thing. It's nothing about "mismanaging the funds of the realm", it is just that having a standing army was waaaay more expensive than to bring in levies and mercenaries in times of need. Some kingdoms didn't even have armies but instead paid out for mercenary armies (which was more expensive to shell out right then and there, but saved them a ton of money in the long run).

Not having a standing army and fighting forces is the more fiscally responsible solution in medieval times.

Soldiers are expensive. Trained soldiers are even more expensive.

PCs (as mercenaries, adventurers, fortune-seekers, bounty hunters, etc) in a fantasy-medieval setting excellently fill in the role of "we need someone to go investigate/search for/fight/save [insert plot], we will hire you as you have good recommendations/belong to the guild, and pay you for your services". PCs can also be deniable external assets in case of shady work too.




Recommended reading: Prussia's history as an "army with a country" is an interesting view on how a mercenary army becoming a nation's army revolutionized how nations thought about armies on the whole for their time period.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Honestly I've had more issues with parties randomly trying to fight monarchs of any variety...

[Anonymouswizard]

This thread has got me thinking about the Empire in Warhammer. They are significantly better off than many societies of their technology level would be because they have magical support (a lot of money goes to Jade Wizards in particular), but because there's never a time when some part of the Empire isn't at war. If not with anybody outside their borders than with the Beastmen and Skaven inside them.

[HidesHisEyes]

Well I and most of the people I play with are British, and it’s well known that all British people want to **** the queen, so yes.

[Mechalich]

This thread has got me thinking about the Empire in Warhammer. They are significantly better off than many societies of their technology level would be because they have magical support (a lot of money goes to Jade Wizards in particular), but because there's never a time when some part of the Empire isn't at war. If not with anybody outside their borders than with the Beastmen and Skaven inside them.

Warhammer is a deliberately grimdark setting. It is essentially impossible for things to get better.

Now, it is certainly possible to think of a world at a medieval tech level as grimdark, since by modern standards there aren't any 'good guys' - even the most virtuous of medieval characters is fairly horrifying by modern standards. And it's certainly possible for fantasy to have the right combination of magic, gods, non-human species, and rampaging monsters to be actually grimdark. 'Who do I support?' becomes a rather tricky question in a grimdark world, and may have counter-intuitive answers. It's possible the PCs mentioned in this thread are operating at least partly on grimdark principles, such as prioritizing stability above all because all rulers will inevitably become corrupt tyrants so minimizing civil wars is the best option for the common people.

[Clistenes]

Warhammer is a deliberately grimdark setting. It is essentially impossible for things to get better.

Or course it can get better! All you have to do is wait until everybody is dead!

After the IoM, the Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos, the Orks, the Tyranids, Necrons and small factions like the Tau, Fraal, Hrud, Khrave...etc., have wiped each other and the rest of the galaxy out, the Immaterium will quiet for a few millions years thanks to the disappearance of the cuatrillions of sentiences feeding Chaos, combined with the quieting effect of a galaxy-spanning Tyranid Shadow in the Warp, and whatever shenanigans the Necrons pulled to kill the other factions.

The few thousands of surviving humans, hidden in stasis in vaults deep inside barren planets will then emerge and timidly start to rebuild...

[Wizard_Lizard]

Or course it can get better! All you have to do is wait until everybody is dead!

After the IoM, the Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos, the Orks, the Tyranids, Necrons and small factions like the Tau, Fraal, Hrud, Khrave...etc., have wiped each other and the rest of the galaxy out, the Immaterium will quiet for a few millions years thanks to the disappearance of the cuatrillions of sentiences feeding Chaos, combined with the quieting effect of a galaxy-spanning Tyranid Shadow in the Warp, and whatever shenanigans the Necrons pulled to kill the other factions.

The few thousands of surviving humans, hidden in stasis in vaults deep inside barren planets will then emerge and timidly start to rebuild...

And undoubtedly start fighting each other...

[paladinofshojo]

wait, maybe the problem is not that they follow kings, maybe the problem is just that they are pushovers? do they just accept missions from anyone paying them high enough, and perform those missions without thinking twice? maybe they don't want to face difficult choices, they want instead to just be given a mission, go somplace, slay some enemies, take the loot, minimal roleplaying involvement, rinse and repeat?

i don't know enough of your table from your description, but it may just be this.

That sounds like them, except sometimes it’s not even about the reward, one time the King was in one of his moods beating one of his concubines so the party decided to NOT ask for payment for the mission. And they seemed to be okay with that.

I asked them, “wait, what was the point of fighting that gnoll tribe if you didn’t get paid for it?”

The party lead just looked at me confused and said, “well…. What else are we supposed to do?”

They seem to lack imagination and narrative agency and are just trying to progress some linear plot that doesn’t exist.

[Cluedrew]

The party lead just looked at me confused and said, “well…. What else are we supposed to do?”Did you look them in the eye and tell them "Overthrow the king."

Actually what have you told them about what they are supposed to do/what the campaign is about?

[TeChameleon]

And you don’t consider any of this to be clear sign of neglect of infrastructure and mishandling of military logistics?

Being part of a kingdom means that the crown is obligated to protect you correct? Otherwise why are you even bowing before the king and paying him a percentage of your crop yield?

I... er...

As far as I can tell, you seem to be operating on an odd mix of modern expectations and knowledge of medieval times.

Even in the most stable, happy, good-aligned kingdom, there are three major limiting factors on how far and how effectively the king can project his power.

1) Resources are limited. Unless the king has a magic warrior-spawner that pops soldiers out of thin air with no investment, it takes significant time, money, and manpower to produce even a single standard footsoldier. Remember, each soldier requires a support infrastructure behind them in order to be able to function, so every soldier you have means that the army infrastructure has to grow, which means multiple fewer people producing food, which in a subsistence economy is a major, major investment. That adds up quickly, and if your standing army/police force starts to add up to even a moderately significant percentage of your population, you get this fun little side effect known as 'widespread famine and starvation', which tends to reduce armies in ways they can't exactly fight, and paying more money doesn't help with in any noticeable way (unless you start buying food from outside your kingdom, but then you're looking at an open invitation for invasion).

2) Communication and travel are not instant. With point (1) taken into consideration, the king's elite troops are most likely going to be stationed at the capital or a central fortress during peacetime, since he can only afford a few of them and a central location is a necessity if you want to be able to get optimum use out of them. Unless the kingdom is tiny, it's going to take at a minimum several days to several weeks of marching to bring a significant armed force to any given point in the kingdom.

There will most likely be smaller garrisons stationed at major towns, or local lords sponsoring their own guard (although that's likely limited by law, since the king won't want them getting ideas), and what have you, but they'll have limited manpower to throw at problems, especially as they have to defend the area they're stationed in and can't go multiple days' march away to deal with peasants being eaten by hobgoblins or whatever.

Add in the fact that the person reporting the trouble will almost certainly have to travel multiple days or weeks to reach a position to even report a problem- either a garrison with messengers of some description, or a large enough town to have some form of magical long-distance communication- and you can have problems that fester for weeks or months before anyone 'official' is physically able to do the slightest thing about it.

And finally, compounding everything else,

(3) People are strange and complicated. They will often do things that make sense to themselves (as long as they don't think to hard about it) that look... erratic, at best... from the outside. Maybe a local lord is looking to earn the king's favour by dealing decisively with a problem without the king's forces needing to get involved, and pulls a 'the buck stops here' with a report that might have gotten royal help. Maybe a sheriff is in danger of demotion or worse because he has handled problems poorly in the past, and is desperate to save his position and tries to keep word from getting out. Perhaps the local peasantry has superstitions about some monster that is eating them every other weekend and thinks the king will turn into one if his men interact with it. Or a wealthy merchant has paid off a minor functionary to keep their werewolf daughter quiet, even though dozens of people are getting mauled every full moon.

Could even be that one of the local deities has decided that the king snubbed them in some half-remembered ritual that nobody knows how to perform correctly anymore and is messing with communication chains, or has straight-up possessed the person who's supposed to be sounding the alarm, or one of any number of other magical threats is doing similar.

Point is, add all those things together, and the heavily-armed randos in the tavern who don't need anything other than money to deal with the problem, and who are, y'know, right there, start to look a lot more attractive, no matter how sure the king's (eventual) justice might be.

[paladinofshojo]

Did you look them in the eye and tell them "Overthrow the king."

That sounds an awful lot like railroading, if I am playing a game I would not be comfortable if my DM is literally telling me or another player to “correct” some sort of behavior unless it is causing drama or making someone uncomfortable. As such I feel like if I did something like that I’d be a hypocrite.


Actually what have you told them about what they are supposed to do/what the campaign is about?


The story started out pretty ordinary, they met at a well known Tavern on the outskirts of the Kingdom and simply drinking ale and minding their own business until there was screaming and townsfolk running away from an attack by a bunch of hobgoblins.

The other tavern patrons either ran or hid under the tables while the 6 players being armed decide to band together…

And so they fight their way out of the attack and decide to stick together for survival.

[Satinavian]

They seem to lack imagination and narrative agency and are just trying to progress some linear plot that doesn’t exist.
Ignoring all the royalty stuff because it is irrelevant, you could do three things :

- Talk out of game with them how their way of playing doesn't mesh with your idea of running a sandbox.

- give them not one hook after another but half a dozen at once. Preferably at the end of session so that you can flesh out their choice until next time.

- Give them a task that is missing all the details and also is long term. Thex need to find their own approach, the questgiver is only interested in results. "Stabilize province X". "Solve the feud between family Y and Z". "Pacify the orc steppe and make a duchy out of it. Also choose who of you gets to be duke later".

Or course it can get better! All you have to do is wait until everybody is dead!
I think this was about the Warhammer Fantasy Empire. WHF is still quite dark and full of ridiculous exaggeration but significantly less so then 40k. At least if you ignore Endtimes which was meant to end the franchise.

[Anonymouswizard]

Warhammer is a deliberately grimdark setting. It is essentially impossible for things to get better.

Now, it is certainly possible to think of a world at a medieval tech level as grimdark, since by modern standards there aren't any 'good guys' - even the most virtuous of medieval characters is fairly horrifying by modern standards. And it's certainly possible for fantasy to have the right combination of magic, gods, non-human species, and rampaging monsters to be actually grimdark. 'Who do I support?' becomes a rather tricky question in a grimdark world, and may have counter-intuitive answers. It's possible the PCs mentioned in this thread are operating at least partly on grimdark principles, such as prioritizing stability above all because all rulers will inevitably become corrupt tyrants so minimizing civil wars is the best option for the common people.

Eh, Warhammer is somewhat less grimdark than 40k. While the Empire's most advanced technology is just as irreplaceable as the Imperium's it's because they're marvels centuries ahead of everybody else who's creators have died. The Empire itself just needs to hold out one to two hundred years to most likely hit an industrial Revolution.

Don't get me won't, still grimdark, and Chassis still eventually wind. But not too the extreme extent of 40k.


Or course it can get better! All you have to do is wait until everybody is dead!

After the IoM, the Eldar, Dark Eldar, Chaos, the Orks, the Tyranids, Necrons and small factions like the Tau, Fraal, Hrud, Khrave...etc., have wiped each other and the rest of the galaxy out, the Immaterium will quiet for a few millions years thanks to the disappearance of the cuatrillions of sentiences feeding Chaos, combined with the quieting effect of a galaxy-spanning Tyranid Shadow in the Warp, and whatever shenanigans the Necrons pulled to kill the other factions.

The few thousands of surviving humans, hidden in stasis in vaults deep inside barren planets will then emerge and timidly start to rebuild...

I see not a single Warhammer faction. Plus why are you spelling orcs with a k?

Oh, wait, you thought I meant Warhammer 40,000? I thought I made it pretty clear I was talking about Warhammer.

[Batcathat]

They seem to lack imagination and narrative agency and are just trying to progress some linear plot that doesn’t exist.

Yeah, that does seem more worrying than if they just followed the king without questions, at least that could be a somewhat unusual but fairly interesting roleplaying choice. As have already been suggested, the best thing is probably to just talk about it with your players. It does sound like your playstyles doesn't quite mesh but it's also possibly that they don't understand how much freedom they have been given and will use it if they do.

[King of Nowhere]

That sounds like them, except sometimes it’s not even about the reward, one time the King was in one of his moods beating one of his concubines so the party decided to NOT ask for payment for the mission. And they seemed to be okay with that.

I asked them, “wait, what was the point of fighting that gnoll tribe if you didn’t get paid for it?”

The party lead just looked at me confused and said, “well…. What else are we supposed to do?”

They seem to lack imagination and narrative agency and are just trying to progress some linear plot that doesn’t exist.

yeah. pushovers. they are indeed just trying to follow a plot.

i've had players like that. i'll risk linching saying it in this forum, but generally those kinds of players need to be railroaded. they want to be railroaded. not in the bad way of forbidding them from doing things, but in the decent way of giving them clear objectives, and planning a campaign that does not expect them to take initiative on their own.

now, that's often a case for new players - i've been a pushover myself. generally people start like this because they don't know much what to do, then when they get confident with the system and the world and the table they start timidly taking some initiative, and they gradually become expert players capable of driving a campaign.

but from your list of stuff that happened, it seems you've been playing with them for a long time. either that impression is wrong and all those encounters were condensed in a half dozen one-shots, or.... well, there are players who don't like to make decisions and prefer to be pushed around, even when they get expert. you may have such players.

[Xervous]

There may also be a bit of ‘main quest slog’ mindset in play where they simply do not care about the sideshows you’re currently offering and are pushing the path of least resistance to get to the next scene in hopes of finding something that’s interesting. Unlikely, my vote is still on beer & pretzels.

Again I’ll ask what founding premise of the game leads to the assumption that the players should be rejecting the king as presented? In their eyes this GTA NPC gives them quests and doesn’t threaten their characters. If you want to drive for reactions you’ll need to give them consequences. Given that expectations were never set they probably don’t give a hoot about political drama. Recognize that your audience would much more enjoy something immediate and personal in the vein of John Wick. Discuss with your players what everyone expects from the game and look for common ground rather than testing your players with scenarios like they’re a black box.

[Cluedrew]

The story started out pretty ordinary, they met at a well known Tavern on the outskirts of the Kingdom and simply drinking ale and minding their own business until there was screaming and townsfolk running away from an attack by a bunch of hobgoblins.That is just how the campaign got started. That is not what I was asking: What have you told them about your expectations for what this campaign is about and how they should approach it. Speaking very generally, not in terms of any particular decision.

On Railroading: Its not railroading if you have player buy-in, its just a linear adventure. It is the difference between providing a path and forcing them to stick to it. In fact forcing them to leave the path would be railroading.

[paladinofshojo]

Yeah, that does seem more worrying than if they just followed the king without questions, at least that could be a somewhat unusual but fairly interesting roleplaying choice. As have already been suggested, the best thing is probably to just talk about it with your players. It does sound like your playstyles doesn't quite mesh but it's also possibly that they don't understand how much freedom they have been given and will use it if they do.

The most egregious act IMO was like in our fourth or fifth session when the rogue player realized, “wait… we can get information by talking with the NPCs?” When they were trying to infiltrate a cult that worshipped an ancient lich.

The party lead asked, “well yeah… how else are we going to figure out where the cult is located?”

The rogue player answered with a shrug and rather casual look “I figured we would just kill villagers and a couple of them would drop clues, thatÂ’s how it works right?”

I wanted to bash my head against the table as the party lead explained to him how this isn’t pen and paper Skyrim…


That is just how the campaign got started. That is not what I was asking: What have you told them about your expectations for what this campaign is about and how they should approach it. Speaking very generally, not in terms of any particular decision.

There are no expectations…. It’s a straight sandbox and I had told them that this is a living breathing world that reacts according to their choices and actions….


On Railroading: Its not railroading if you have player buy-in, its just a linear adventure. It is the difference between providing a path and forcing them to stick to it. In fact forcing them to leave the path would be railroading.

I didn’t offer them a path… they are literally told in the beginning that this is a living world and that they are given complete freedom to make their own quests and goals…

There are plotlines INSIDE my world but they have to find them themselves because I feel it’s not a DM’s place to decide which quest the players take and which they don’t.

There is a quest line involving a Lich trying to gain dominion of the kingdom in a bid to attain godhood.

There is a rumor about children going missing in a village near a swamp which is said to be the home of an evil hag.

The fortresses that make up the border guard seem to be getting concerned with the large number of Orcish tribes settling on the outskirts of the kingdom...

Plot hooks are there, but apparently they seem to like hanging out in the capitol and doing the King’s bidding.

Edit: On Valentine’s Day I even added a silly Romeo and Juliet story in which the King’s Cousin was murdered by some noble named Tybalt and so the King decided that his entire family must be murdered…

They ended up killing the entire Capulet Clan as the Montague family aided them… With Benvolio being named the new Prince of the City Verona….

It was only when they found the two dead lovers in the crypts where the last Capulets were hiding did they realize… “wait… was this Romeo and Juliet”?

[Xervous]

So you 100% haven’t cleared up expectations if it takes one player to explain to the other that this isn’t being run as tabletop Skyrim. You said sandbox game, Skyrim is a sandbox game. Don’t try to change OOC understandings and expectations with in game methods, just reach out and talk with your players. You’re clearly missing out on some of your expected fun, the GM gets to have fun too! 10, 30min of just talking about what everyone likes/wants/hopes to do with the game may help you find common ground with your group.

[Psyren]

I didn’t offer them a path… they are literally told in the beginning that this is a living world and that they are given complete freedom to make their own quests and goals…

There are plotlines INSIDE my world but they have to find them themselves because I feel it’s not a DM’s place to decide which quest the players take and which they don’t.

Even open-world sandbox games are better for having a main plot of some kind though. Look at GTA, or Breath of the Wild, or Skyrim/Fallout, or Assassin's Creed, or Dragon Age Inquisition. All the side stuff and vignettes spread throughout the world are improved by the existence of a critical path, rather than diminished.

And if that's what your players want, then insisting on a "pure," directionless, make-your-own-fun sandbox is just going to leave them dissatisfied as they hunt in vain for something that isn't there. It's not enough to make the game you want to run, you have to make the game they want to play too.

[paladinofshojo]

So you 100% haven’t cleared up expectations if it takes one player to explain to the other that this isn’t being run as tabletop Skyrim. You said sandbox game, Skyrim is a sandbox game. Don’t try to change OOC understandings and expectations with in game methods, just reach out and talk with your players. You’re clearly missing out on some of your expected fun, the GM gets to have fun too! 10, 30min of just talking about what everyone likes/wants/hopes to do with the game may help you find common ground with your group.

I am kinda nervous about that because I’d rather have them naturally progress as players instead of me having to “correct” their behavior.

They don’t cheat on their dice rolls, they don’t do anything to female NPCs that would be considered “offensive”, all they do is play the game mechanically. The way they talk to each other OOC as players seem to be as if they are discussing a show. As if they don’t have any agency in the narrative.

When the King orders the execution of the hilarious halfling jester for referencing how a visiting princess kicked him in the balls I assumed the players would be attached to the clown and save him, or at the very least leave the King’s service, but they simply said “RIP Juggles” as their characters began beating the clown as he was begging for his life and trying to plead to them with all the “laughs they shared over the years”….

They are not sociopathic players, when they are sent to raid towns and villages I make it an effort to make it as unpleasant I can for them… the last one as they arrived into the town I had a little peasant girl chasing a ball towards them.

When she saw the men she just looked up and smiled at them and said, “hello! We don’t get strangers in town too often!” They will see that a few of her teeth have fallen out, suggesting that she is around 6.

The players looked at me kinda annoyed and angry. Then the rogue shook his head begrudgingly and rolled to slit her throat.

I asked him, “are you sure?” and he said, “well yeah… the story has to proceed right?”


Even open-world sandbox games are better for having a main plot of some kind though. Look at GTA, or Breath of the Wild, or Skyrim/Fallout, or Assassin's Creed, or Dragon Age Inquisition. All the side stuff and vignettes spread throughout the world are improved by the existence of a critical path, rather than diminished.

These are all video games though… They are focused entirely on telling a story, not player immersion….

You can’t start a business or make a family in GTA can you? In Breath of the Wild, Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed you are literally railroaded into doing a quest line which the entire game is based on, Skyrim is arguably better at it than all your examples, but even it is a “dumbed down railroad” version of TES’s best RPG game, Morrowind, in which your actions have weight as whichever faction you join forces you to be excluded from others and their quests…. Which will impact your entire game… also information wasn’t as readily available as it is in Skyrim…. You actually had to collect and read books to figure out what’s going on. And EVEN with all of that, there are still limitations to immersion because you are not surrounded by actual people but coded sprites with scripted responses.

Point is, videogames aren’t the benchmark to what tabletop RPGs should be held to because the two are run by different metrics.

[TheStranger]

Even open-world sandbox games are better for having a main plot of some kind though. Look at GTA, or Breath of the Wild, or Skyrim/Fallout, or Assassin's Creed, or Dragon Age Inquisition. All the side stuff and vignettes spread throughout the world are improved by the existence of a critical path, rather than diminished.

And if that's what your players want, then insisting on a "pure," directionless, make-your-own-fun sandbox is just going to leave them dissatisfied as they hunt in vain for something that isn't there. It's not enough to make the game you want to run, you have to make the game they want to play too.

Seconding all of this, and most/all of what others have said too. Clearly your players want to be given quests to complete, as evidenced by the fact that they’re faithfully doing the quests you’re giving them.

If everybody (yourself included) is having fun and you started this thread just to talk about some unexpected directions things have gone, then carry on. There’s no particular problem here.

If you’re getting frustrated and your players are getting confused, then you should take a step back and have a lengthy OOC discussion about what they expect from you and what you expect from them. And the goal of that discussion isn’t to get them to play the game the way you think they should. It’s to figure out what’s going to work for everybody at the table.

[Psyren]

I asked him, “are you sure?” and he said, “well yeah… the story has to proceed right?”

The fact that they are hunting for "the story" to "proceed" - evidently by any means necessary - illustrates my point perfectly.



These are all video games though… They are focused entirely on telling a story, not player immersion….

No offense but this is a very narrow view. Game design is game design, you shouldn't discard good lessons simply because they are from a different medium, rather you should look at the similarities.

Yes video games have a narrower possibility space than tabletop (though you can absolutely start a business and make a family in a game like Skyrim.) But having a world of theoretically infinite possibility that ends up being an unfocused mess with bored and directionless players isn't superior. Did you even ask your players if "starting a business" and "making families" are things that interest them? That's what people are trying to get across to you, you find these features to be amazing selling points of your world but your players appear to be looking for a plot, not to play pretend house somewhere without working towards anything in particular.

And the idea that "telling a story" and "player immersion" are at odds from each other makes no sense. You can't seriously believe a game like Breath of the Wild isn't immersive.

[paladinofshojo]

Seconding all of this, and most/all of what others have said too. Clearly your players want to be given quests to complete, as evidenced by the fact that they’re faithfully doing the quests you’re giving them.

If everybody (yourself included) is having fun and you started this thread just to talk about some unexpected directions things have gone, then carry on. There’s no particular problem here.

If you’re getting frustrated and your players are getting confused, then you should take a step back and have a lengthy OOC discussion about what they expect from you and what you expect from them. And the goal of that discussion isn’t to get them to play the game the way you think they should. It’s to figure out what’s going to work for everybody at the table.

I think you’re mistaking me, I don’t feel like they’re playing “wrong” since there is no “wrong way” to play, I just feel like they need to “grow” as tabletop players…

If they want to play as fascist goons that’s fine, but they can at least play into it… Be unnecessarily evil, rape, pillage… Hire gangs of ruffians as men at arms… But they don’t do that… They are basically playing D&D like silent videogame protagonists…

Which there is nothing wrong with, kinda breaks the spirit of the game doesn’t it?

Again, if that’s how they want to play that’s fine, it’s not my job to police their fun, I am just saying it’s kinda odd. 🤷

[False God]

My players typically hate royalty and treat minor attitude issues or oversteps by nobles as reasonable grounds to kill them.

[paladinofshojo]

The fact that they are hunting for "the story" to "proceed" - evidently by any means necessary - illustrates my point perfectly.

I really don’t get what that’s supposed to mean…. They made that choice… The only one who was forcing them to kill that little girl was themselves, all I did was ask, “are you sure?”

They clearly didn’t want to do it, and they could have just up and left the village then and there to do other stuff instead of playing Game of Thrones for King Rupert…




No offense but this is a very narrow view. Game design is game design, you shouldn't discard good lessons simply because they are from a different medium, rather you should look at the similarities.

The problem with that is that concepts that are considered ground breaking for video games aren’t applicable or counterproductive for tabletop.

For instance, how do you add the combat system of Dark Souls or Shadow of Mordor into Tabletop…

Also, how limiting would it be if you’re only allowed a good, neutral, or evil option when speaking to NPCs like in Mass Effect or the Witcher? Instead of actually using human imagination to hold an actual conversation?


Yes video games have a narrower possibility space than tabletop (though you can absolutely start a business and make a family in a game like Skyrim.) But having a world of theoretically infinite possibility that ends up being an unfocused mess with bored and directionless players isn't superior. Did you even ask your players if "starting a business" and "making families" are things that interest them? That's what people are trying to get across to you, you find these features to be amazing selling points of your world but your players appear to be looking for a plot, not to play pretend house somewhere without working towards anything in particular.

It’s not the DM’s job to provide you a purpose to play… The DM is only there to keep the world together and consistent and actually “alive”… it’s the player’s job to decide whether or not they should follow the “main plot” or even if there is a “main plot” to begin with.

Do people wake up and expect God to tell them what to do and what their purpose is in their actual lives? No! Then why should Player Characters in a world as immersive as our own expect their version of God to grant them that luxury?


And the idea that "telling a story" and "player immersion" are at odds from each other makes no sense. You can't seriously believe a game like Breath of the Wild isn't immersive.

It isn’t though…there still is one linear story that you have to follow…What happens if you want to leave Hyrule for some distant lands across the ocean? Or Triforce forbid…what happens if you want to be evil and help the Calamity destroy Hyrule?

[Xervous]

I am kinda nervous about that because I’d rather have them naturally progress as players instead of me having to “correct” their behavior.



I think you’re mistaking me, I don’t feel like they’re playing “wrong” since there is no “wrong way” to play, I just feel like they need to “grow” as tabletop players…


What is ‘progressing as a player’? Why do they need to ‘grow’? Need is a very strong word to use in this case.

[Psyren]

I really don’t get what that’s supposed to mean…. They made that choice… The only one who was forcing them to kill that little girl was themselves, all I did was ask, “are you sure?”

They clearly didnÂ’t want to do it, and they could have just up and left then and there to do other stuff instead of playing Game of Thrones for King RupertÂ…

I'm not sure what's happening with your post but there's a lot of weird characters getting inserted.

And yes, they made that choice, but if their characters are making IC choices because their players are feeling OOC bored and directionless that's an actual problem. Do you disagree?




The problem with that is that concepts that are considered ground breaking for video games arenÂ’t applicable or counterproductive for tabletop.

For instance, how do you add the combat system of Dark Souls or Shadow of Mordor into TabletopÂ…

Also, how limiting would it be if youÂ’re only allowed a good, neutral, or evil option when speaking to NPCs like in Mass Effect or the Witcher? Instead of actually using human imagination to hold an actual conversation?

Let's put aside that you absolutely CAN add Dark Souls and Shadow of Mordor mechanics to a tabletop game, quite easily in fact. (SoM's Nemesis System is much, much easier to do in tabletop in fact.)

I'm not talking about game mechanics though, I'm talking about plot and narrative. Every RPG can have those, regardless of medium. And a game without plot is possible, but your players clearly don't want that from what you're telling us, nor have you told us if you've actually and explicitly asked them that question.



It’s not the DM’s job to provide you a purpose to play… The DM is only there to keep the world together and consistent and actually “alive”… it’s the player’s job to decide whether or not they should follow the “main plot” or even if there is a “main plot” to begin with.

You are half right. It's the player's job to decide if they follow the main plot.

But deciding whether there is one? That's your job, not theirs.


Do people wake up and expect God to tell them what to do and what their purpose is in their actual lives? No! Then why should Player Characters in a world as immersive as our own expect their version of God that luxury?

A plot doesn't mean a god (lowercase or uppercase) telling you what to do. Plot means three things: Goal (what they want or need to accomplish), Stakes (what happens if they don't do that) and Urgency (what timeframe is there on it, if any). That can come from a god, a villain, an opportunity, a natural phenomenon, or any number of other things. The point is that your players are looking for one, and you're adamant against providing one. That's not a bad thing unless you don't actually make that crystal clear to your players.



It isnÂ’t thoughÂ… there still is one linear story that you have to followÂ…. What happens if you want to leave Hyrule for some distant lands across the ocean? Or Triforce forbidÂ… what happens if you want to be evil and help the Calamity destroy Hyrule?

So any constraints or direction at all means a game isn't immersive to you? :smallconfused:

[paladinofshojo]

I'm not sure what's happening with your post but there's a lot of weird characters getting inserted.

And yes, they made that choice, but if their characters are making IC choices because their players are feeling OOC bored and directionless that's an actual problem. Do you disagree?

I am assuming the characters happen when I use an apostrophe or a period… strange.

But moving on, they don’t feel bored or directionless though…

They were sad because I had them kill Juggles the Jester, and they were mad at me for putting them in a situation that forced them to kill a 6 year old girl. They are invested to the story world.

It’s just that the concept that they have agency over their narratives isn’t in their minds…like at all…with a normal party they’d have flipped the bird to the King or even killed him and bounced to go adventuring somewhere else…

My party, on the other hand, seems to be making it more difficult for themselves by masochistically serving a teenage royal brat. They don’t need to follow him around but for some reason they feel obligated to.





I'm not talking about game mechanics though, I'm talking about plot and narrative. Every RPG can have those, regardless of medium. And a game without plot is possible, but your players clearly don't want that from what you're telling us, nor have you told us if you've actually and explicitly asked them that question.

The reason why I have become dungeon master for this group was that we had all originally been players under a very strict, old school railroading DM who insisted on micromanaging everything… he had long speeches said by his NPCs while we the actual players stood around in the background waiting for his wizard chosen one NPC to fulfill the prophecy and banish the demon lord back into the abyss.

After that we all agreed no more railroading DMs, hence why I am so adamant about my stance.




You are half right. It's the player's job to decide if they follow the main plot.

But deciding whether there is one? That's your job, not theirs.

Why though? As a DM I gave them their first session, after which I granted them a world in which to impact however they see fit…

A world fleshed out with quests and intrigue of which they haven’t even scratched the surface of btw.




A plot doesn't mean a god (lowercase or uppercase) telling you what to do. Plot means three things: Goal (what they want or need to accomplish), Stakes (what happens if they don't do that) and Urgency (what timeframe is there on it, if any). That can come from a god, a villain, an opportunity, a natural phenomenon, or any number of other things. The point is that your players are looking for one, and you're adamant against providing one. That's not a bad thing unless you don't actually make that crystal clear to your players.

It’s not a DM’s job to give players goals though…. The players have choice… And if you take away that element from them then what’s stopping your game from being another story simulator like a video game except with pen and paper?




So any constraints or direction at all means a game isn't immersive to you? :smallconfused:

Yes? That’s why I disagree with your comparison between video games and tabletop, if you want to kill scores of nameless mobs and follow an already established and linear story then there’s video games…if you want to actually be in a world filled with living breathing people than you can play tabletop.

The overall quality of the video game is irrelevant, if it limits your choices in any way then it isn’t immersive.

[Psyren]

The overall quality of the video game is irrelevant, if it limits your choices in any way then it isn’t immersive.

Your definition of immersion is too narrow for us to have much meaningful discussion then.

Have you asked them, directly, whether they want a main plot or not? Yes or no, and if so, what did they say?

[paladinofshojo]

Your definition of immersion is too narrow for us to have much meaningful discussion then.

Have you asked them, directly, whether they want a main plot or not? Yes or no, and if so, what did they say?

Not yet, our next session is tomorrow night…

And I got to admit I am kinda dreading it because I don’t want to influence how they play…

[Xervous]

Not yet, our next session is tomorrow night…

And I got to admit I am kinda dreading it because I don’t want to influence how they play…

If you don’t want to influence how they play, but you also want them to play a specific way, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. The dog won’t learn to roll over if you never teach it. Either find comfort in the fact that they’re enjoying uninfluenced play, or work towards building a shared understanding of what’s fun for everyone at the table.

[TheStranger]

Not yet, our next session is tomorrow night…

And I got to admit I am kinda dreading it because I don’t want to influence how they play…

You seem to have a very particular idea of what TTRPGs should be and how the players and DM should approach the game and interact with each other and the world. You also seem to have the idea that your attitudes are correct and your players should “grow into them.” The first part is fine, but the second part is a big issue.

I’ve been playing TTRPGs for about 30 years, and I don’t have much interest in the type of “sandbox” campaign you seem to want to run. I play in a group with several experienced players and a DM I consider to be excellent, and we play published adventures almost exclusively. That’s the style of game we all enjoy, and I don’t think it makes us lesser roleplayers to prefer that structure in our game.

My point is, there’s no one right way to play TTRPGs. The important thing is that everybody at the table is on the same page. It’s fine that you want to run an extremely open sandbox game. It’s also fine if your players want to play in a game with more direction. Sitting down and talking about these things isn’t influencing how they play, it’s what you do to make sure everybody’s on the same page and having fun. It’s certainly better than wanting them to play a certain way but never telling them. But if their answer is that they really prefer that there be a story, you’re not doing anybody any favors by refusing to give them one. The best DM is the one who makes the game fun for everybody (himself included), not the one that adheres to some principle of player freedom.

That said, the fact that they’re so unwilling to go off-script that they’re apparently killing kids not because they want to be evil but because they feel like your plot requires them to is pretty extreme. There’s nothing wrong with using that as an example of a place they could have acted differently. Not in the sense of your plot was actually that they wouldn’t kill the kid, but as an example of a place where they could have killed the kid or not, and whatever they did would have become the story from then on.

[Psyren]

Published adventures have a main plot.
Published adventures are also not "video games" which you seem to see as a pejorative. They are tabletop.

You have two choices - bite the bullet and figure out what your players want, or don't. Doing the latter maintains the status quo (which you seem dissatisfied with.)

Doing the former will lead to two more choices:

1a) If you ask them and they want the same thing you do, then you have to figure out why they don't seem to be behaving the way you expect.
1b) If you ask them and they don't want the same thing you do, you have to decide whether you're going to change up the campaign to meet them halfway, run a campaign one side (you or them) is not happy with, or quit.

[Satinavian]

The players looked at me kinda annoyed and angry. Then the rogue shook his head begrudgingly and rolled to slit her throat.

I asked him, “are you sure?” and he said, “well yeah… the story has to proceed right?”
Ok.

That here is the point where you should have stopped the game and have a proper talk about it OG with your players. For three reasons

- There were obviously misunderstandings that need to be cleared up.
- Your increasingly heavyhanded approach to get them to oppose the king via having them do cruelties obviously didn't work and needed changing.
- They stopped having fun.


As your next session is imminent, start it with such a talk.

[TheStranger]

Ok.

That here is the point where you should have stopped the game and have a proper talk about it OG with your players. For three reasons

- There were obviously misunderstandings that need to be cleared up.
- Your increasingly heavyhanded approach to get them to oppose the king via having them do cruelties obviously didn't work and needed changing.
- They stopped having fun.


As your next session is imminent, start it with such a talk.

Very well said.

[icefractal]

That here is the point where you should have stopped the game and have a proper talk about it OG with your players.
This! Stop hinting at how your game / TTRPGs in general work and tell them. You've been saying things like "open world" and "living, breathing world" and expecting them to know that as a result they can approach problems any way they want to.

Well if they came via the world of video games, that's not how those terms are used!
Open World = you can travel around freely and visit areas in any order
Living, Breathing World = NPCs do something other than stand motionless when not interacting with the player
Neither of them implies you have total freedom in how you approach problems.

When they say something like "we have no choice" and you don't correct that, you are contributing to the miscommunication. The game itself can be a mysterious process of discovery, but understanding how it's played shouldn't be!


As an example, consider if you were playing in a game I was running, and this jester situation came up. I had previously mentioned that I see the game as a collaboration between the players and GM. You refuse to execute the jester, the king orders his other guards to kill you, and after a tough fight several PCs have died. Understandably, you're frustrated at this seemingly no-win situation.

Then I ask "Why didn't you just say that the jester was secretly an assassin, and have him throw some smoke bombs to cover your retreat?" After all, I said this game was a collaboration, obviously (in my mind) that means that the players can insert any narrative that doesn't directly contradict what's been established.

Except actually I don't ask that, I just silently wonder why you inexplicably didn't think of doing that. How many sessions, you think, before you'd spontaneously discover that option? Being mysterious OOC is for chumps!

[KineticDiplomat]

As a late arrives, let me see if I can sum this up:

1) The GM creates scenarios where the governing authority asks them for things ranging from "against our modern sensibilities, but really there's a case here for both sides" to "over the top puppy kicking".

2) The party does the thing that the governing authority asks. They seem to enjoy it.

3) The GM is aghast that they picked the side he was casting as the villain, who happens to the be the governing authority.

4) In an effort to make his players pick the "right" side the GM doubles down by starting back at 1 with an EVEN BIGGER EXAMPLE.

5) Repeat ad nauseum

Is that right?

[Easy e]

It’s not the DM’s job to provide you a purpose to play… The DM is only there to keep the world together and consistent and actually “alive”… it’s the player’s job to decide whether or not they should follow the “main plot” or even if there is a “main plot” to begin with.



No, the DMs job is make sure everyone is having fun. If that means provide purpose and direction to a group who wants/needs it; then give it to them.

That may not be this group though.


IDo people wake up and expect God to tell them what to do and what their purpose is in their actual lives? No! Then why should Player Characters in a world as immersive as our own expect their version of God to grant them that luxury?



Yes, many people wake up and ask God for signs and portents on which direction they should take, and they consult the bible for clues on how to live. And yes, they do pray for guidance in their actual lives.

However, since in this "fantasy" world you can interact pretty directly with the Supernatural, especially if you are a cleric, warlock, paladin, etc.

[Cluedrew]

That is just how the campaign got started. That is not what I was asking: What have you told them about your expectations for what this campaign is about and how they should approach it. Speaking very generally, not in terms of any particular decision.There are no expectations.... It's a straight sandbox and I had told them that this is a living breathing world that reacts according to their choices and actions....I have no idea how that statement could be true. The first one, you might have a sandbox and a breathing world. But obviously you had an expectation about how they would take advantage of that and are kind of upset that they didn't. And that's not wrong, not on its own.

The problem is you seem to be under the impression that anything more than "Are you sure?" is railroading even when (apparently) no one involved is enjoying it. You could give them other options, or even just mention that doing what the king says is the only choice. Like explicitly, I like the phrase "Whatever you do is the plot." but there many other ways to explain it.

I think the king and the royalty business that started this is secondary to: They don't really get what they can do in a table top sandbox. They are probably waiting for the event where someone comes up to them and offers a deal to overthrow the king and be their new "good" quest giver.* Even if you have told them that they can make choices it obviously has not sunk in yet, and making the quests on the main path unpleasant is probably not going to teach them that. But just explaining them might do it.

So I am adding my voice for the "Talk to the group." option. Between you and the rest of your group, without going through the game itself. You can provide guidance without railroading (just don't force them to take it) and I don't see how telling them they have a choices they can make is taking freedom away from them.

* Also if they don't want a sandbox adventure, that might be the best solution. The next quest giver can be kinder and also give them more choices to ease them into the sandbox thing. It is a big switch so doing it all at once.

[TeChameleon]

Oogah.

Trying to think of how to put this; I tend towards bluntness, so I apologize in advance if I give offense. None is intended, I'm just trying to communicate as clearly as I'm able.

Paladinofshojo, you are railroading your players.

Not in the usual plot sense, admittedly, but by adamantly refusing to provide even the barest semblance of an overarching plot, you are excercising an undue amount of control over their play. Meta-railroading, if you will. If your players don't know what to do, making the one path they think they have figured out as unpleasant as possible but refusing any other feedback is... honestly, if not for the open confusion you seem to be expressing, I'd almost think this was a gigantic, mean-spirited trolling attempt on your players.

A DM-guided plot is not badwrongfun- you seem to have swung too far the other way after a bad experience with your previous DM. As a DM, you must be willing to adapt to your players' needs, or everybody is going to end up frustrated, and the game will be a complete waste of time (a game that isn't fun is astonishingly pointless).

[ngilop]

As a late arrives, let me see if I can sum this up:

1) The GM creates scenarios where the governing authority asks them for things ranging from "against our modern sensibilities, but really there's a case here for both sides" to "over the top puppy kicking".

2) The party does the thing that the governing authority asks. They seem to enjoy it.

3) The GM is aghast that they picked the side he was casting as the villain, who happens to the be the governing authority.

4) In an effort to make his players pick the "right" side the GM doubles down by starting back at 1 with an EVEN BIGGER EXAMPLE.

5) Repeat ad nauseum

Is that right?

You forgot the part where none of it is even remotely close in any way, shape, or form to railroading. Or that doing thing close to decently/efficiently/benevolently is boring.

[King of Nowhere]

They don’t cheat on their dice rolls, they don’t do anything to female NPCs that would be considered “offensive”, all they do is play the game mechanically. The way they talk to each other OOC as players seem to be as if they are discussing a show. As if they don’t have any agency in the narrative.

When the King orders the execution of the hilarious halfling jester for referencing how a visiting princess kicked him in the balls I assumed the players would be attached to the clown and save him, or at the very least leave the King’s service, but they simply said “RIP Juggles” as their characters began beating the clown as he was begging for his life and trying to plead to them with all the “laughs they shared over the years”….

They are not sociopathic players, when they are sent to raid towns and villages I make it an effort to make it as unpleasant I can for them… the last one as they arrived into the town I had a little peasant girl chasing a ball towards them.

When she saw the men she just looked up and smiled at them and said, “hello! We don’t get strangers in town too often!” They will see that a few of her teeth have fallen out, suggesting that she is around 6.

The players looked at me kinda annoyed and angry. Then the rogue shook his head begrudgingly and rolled to slit her throat.

I asked him, “are you sure?” and he said, “well yeah… the story has to proceed right?”



These are all video games though… They are focused entirely on telling a story, not player immersion….

You can’t start a business or make a family in GTA can you? In Breath of the Wild, Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed you are literally railroaded into doing a quest line which the entire game is based on, Skyrim is arguably better at it than all your examples, but even it is a “dumbed down railroad” version of TES’s best RPG game, Morrowind, in which your actions have weight as whichever faction you join forces you to be excluded from others and their quests…. Which will impact your entire game… also information wasn’t as readily available as it is in Skyrim…. You actually had to collect and read books to figure out what’s going on. And EVEN with all of that, there are still limitations to immersion because you are not surrounded by actual people but coded sprites with scripted responses.

Point is, videogames aren’t the benchmark to what tabletop RPGs should be held to because the two are run by different metrics.
perhaps they are used to videogames, and they don't know they can change the plot?
perhaps they are still used to doing things under the old dm, and they are expecting directions?
how are they supposed to know if you don't tell them?
this is a clear culture clash, you must talk with them of expectations immediately. DON'T drop hints; dropping hints is a good way to set up mystery and enigma, but it's a terrible way to communicate.
And you are as guilty as they are; perhaps more, because by your recounting the players have stated several times that they believe they have to carry on the tasks you put in front of them, no matter how bad (i also blame the current grimdark fashion for making people think that's how a fantasy world should be), and despite this you never corrected their flawed assumption.


I am kinda nervous about that because I’d rather have them naturally progress as players instead of me having to “correct” their behavior.
yeah, about that: "natural progression" is a lie. we interact with our environment and with other people, we get feedback for our actions, we correct ourselves.
That's why we have a whole teaching system. we don't let our children loose and expect them to "naturally progress" to become engineers. At best, "natural progression" happens when one already has a good grip of what they're doing, what they want. which is clearly not the case in your group.
Back in the days when people still thought there were "natural" things, somebody tried to study how children would grow up without adults to teach them. so he had people feed them and clean them up, but with strict orders to not talk to them or show them affection. They thought, without guidance (we may call it railroading), they would start speaking the "natural language", and they would behave according to "natural laws". Of course, those children never learned to speak, and they all died early.

Once you teach someone a few different ways of doing things, a few different options, they can choose the one they like most, and perhaps there's some actual free will involved in that process. At least, there's enough of a capacity to take informed decisions, which is enough of a free will as far as I'm concerned. But if people don't know they can make choices, or they have no idea what they can choose, they aren't making a free choice there, and you aren't giving them freedom in refusing to inform them.

EDIT: also, in your crusade to eliminate every hint of railroading, you are trying to railroad them. you want them to abandon the king, and so you force them by having the king give increasingly bad orders. you don't want to punish them for taking choices, but you force them to kill npcs they like if they do.

[KineticDiplomat]

I will say you've neatly come upon one of the D&Disms that most people ignore for playability.

Namely, it's a game that is at least nominally oriented to being good-ish protagonist/heroes. Very Tolkien esque in its kind of meta direction assumptjons.

Alas, any attempts to act within a medieval morality/governance structure is going to look pretty Evil by modern (and hence D&D) standards if The King is anything more than a cartoon villain or an impotent quest giver. With the exception of maybe the blood bathing empress, not much you've asked of them would be considered that morally arduous in the context

[Jay R]

Several thoughts, presented with no connecting thread.

A. No, it's not just your gaming group. This behavior has been going on for thousands of years, and will not stop any time soon.


B. Kings have great gifts to give -- including money, land, magic items, and quests.
Kings can make the lives of non-kings miserable.
Even if you're too powerful for the king to help or hurt, other people you care about aren't.


C. I would expect any gamer who is trying to play a character from a time of royal power to give the royalty courtesy and respect -- even if (or especially if) they plan to overthrow them.


D. You cited the example of the American Revolution. Without getting into any partisan details, please remember that that incident was revolutionary -- a sweeping historical change. And even there, many people in the colonies remained loyal to the British Crown.

[The Glyphstone]

Open-world video games also tend to still make their 'plot-critical' NPCS invincible/unkillable, so if your players are thinking this is pen-and-paper Skyrim, that's another reason for why they just follow what they think is the story to follow.

Seriously, listen to everyone else, and sit down for a serious honest OOC discussion with your players about the problems. This isn't a case of you not running the game they want to play, you are playing a completely different game than they are.

[Segev]

No my main problem is that they’re not engaging the world and are just doing whatever the king tells them to… with little to no character growth or building.

This is a roleplaying game and their characters should have their own backstories, goals, experiences, and aspirations.

They aren’t making rivals, personal enemies, friends, lovers, merchant-customer relations with anyone in this world. They're serving the CE teen-king, doing his evil bidding, and they're NOT making enemies? The teen-king doesn't think they're the coolest, most badass things ever to lord over an edge? He doesn't have syccophants who see the PCs as his trusted agents and want to use the PCs' connections and importance to the king to get on the king's good side?

Why not?


This story stopped being about their Player Characters and the World and more about “the chronicles of King Rupert the Mad”. Who actually enjoys playing their entire campaign revolving around a CE teenage NPC instead of their own PCs?

Why isn't "we do whatever Rupert tells us" enough for you to have the world react to the PCs as actors? The players are making choices. The choices are in line with Rupert's desires, sure, but so what? Why do the players have to make different choices than they are for it to count as "role-playing," to you?

[paladinofshojo]

They're serving the CE teen-king, doing his evil bidding, and they're NOT making enemies? The teen-king doesn't think they're the coolest, most badass things ever to lord over an edge? He doesn't have syccophants who see the PCs as his trusted agents and want to use the PCs' connections and importance to the king to get on the king's good side?

Why not?

That would imply that they’re actually roleplaying and engaging with the court or anyone really….

In my last session, I had 25 characters set up in the Royal court, Lady’s in waiting, Lords, Knights, Ministers, Squires, etc. Each with an intricate backstory and the court was split between those who support the current regime and Lathander worshippers who are enraged that their Archbishop was slain…. Though everyone kept their personal feelings hidden as they would publicly support Rupert

And you know how many of them the party engaged with? Just the bear that was chained to the wall for entertainment….


Why isn't "we do whatever Rupert tells us" enough for you to have the world react to the PCs as actors? The players are making choices. The choices are in line with Rupert's desires, sure, but so what? Why do the players have to make different choices than they are for it to count as "role-playing," to you?

The players don’t even like Rupert personally…He made them kill entire villages of peasants to send a message to lords who overstep themselves or because he heard that they were harboring rebels.

Every time he does that, I have them beg the party, some of them are parents begging for their children’s lives, other’s are of pleading and saying that they have done nothing wrong, some of them begging for Lathander or the King to save them…. The players do not enjoy carrying out these tasks, especially when they had to roll initiative to slit a 6 year old’s neck

And before you accuse me of “railroading” them. By “deliberately making Rupert so evil”…

I’ll just say that Rupert was always intended to be an evil bastard, and they were warned countless times to not support him initially

The only reason why the Party supported him was because he had the more legitimate claim and that when he was Prince, Rupert had feasted and hunted with the party when they began to make a name for themselves at court… being charming and acting friendly… People had warned the party not to trust him, in the Royal Court, in the Military, even some stories in the taverns… but they didn’t listen…. The Paladin didn’t even bother to cast “detect evil” on him…

Rupert was written to be always be a manipulative sociopathic **** but apparently my party felt that he was entitled to rule because he is the legitimate son of the last king.

If anything, their current situation was their own fault not mine….

The only reason things escalated to the point where they are now is because they enabled the sociopathic teen king every step of the way…

[Lord Raziere]

Okay, another horror story about them.

You have been told numerous times: you need to communicate with them OOC that your not comfortable with this. Complaining to us won't fix anything.

Otherwise, Your stories only grow more unbelievable with each telling. You contradict yourself: earlier you said that they had enough manners to not make enemies with nobility, now they only interact with a chained up bear? Which is it?

[KineticDiplomat]

Upon further review, this is looking like a GM deciding the party is "doing it wrong" and has now decided that after his efforts to teach right, it's fire and brimstone time.

Stop. Just stop playing the game.

You're creating intricate courts for players who only interact with the bear, and clearly go a questing and a murderhoboing. They may actually like playing for Rupert, they may just be aligning with him because it's the fastest way to get put the door and doing D&D things, and they may actually be subtly or not so subtly sending you a "screw you" because the same level of animosity you're building up towards their actions is coming right back at your for their own very human reasons. Whatever the reverse of Occam's razor is says that their actual personal views on the legitimacy of a king through the lens of cognatic primogeniture is not what's causing this.

And since it's not, then false assignation of royal fetishizing is not the way forward. More likely you hate them for being murder hobos and they hate you for trying to force-tell a preachy story.

So, either get a murdehovoing or pick up your ball and go home, cause the idea that you're about to hit them with a wise and salient lesson on the nature of human power dynamics qccording to your preferred morality and they'll suddenly play the way you want...well it's a fantasy genre, but that one would be stretching it

[paladinofshojo]

And since it's not, then false assignation of royal fetishizing is not the way forward. More likely you hate them for being murder hobos and they hate you for trying to force-tell a preachy story.

You don’t get it do you? I want them to be murderhobos, or lawful good guys, or just chaotic neutrals, or hell even LE goons… as long as they are having fun …

What happened here is that they made bad decisions and are now stuck in a position where they are serving a deranged CE Joffrey Baratheon clone and are now just going through the motions and literally the only reason they are doing it is because “he’s the rightful king”…

I have to be impartial here, I can’t openly tell them to “rebel… or leave… or whatever” I just nod and let the world respond to their decisions

This is what we all agreed on after the last DM, no more railroading and forced to follow a single linear plot… they WANTED choice and the ability to impact the story so gave it to them, so why aren’t they happy?! And how is it my fault?!



Otherwise, Your stories only grow more unbelievable with each telling. You contradict yourself: earlier you said that they had enough manners to not make enemies with nobility, now they only interact with a chained up bear? Which is it?

How exactly do these two contradict one another?

[The Glyphstone]

Maybe you would know the answers to those questions if you actually, at any point, bothered to talk to them about it? Random strangers on the internet cannot diagnose the dysfunctions in your gaming group, especially when we're only getting an extremely one-sided account of the situation.

You say you want them to have fun. You also say they're obviously not having fun. You refuse to reconcile these incompatible positions via communication to find out why they're not having fun when, in your eyes, you gave them exactly what they wanted.

[Lord Raziere]

You don’t get it do you? I want them to be murderhobos, or lawful good guys, or just chaotic neutrals, or hell even LE goons… as long as they are having fun …

What happened here is that they made bad decisions and are now stuck in a position where they are serving a deranged CE Joffrey Baratheon clone and are now just going through the motions and literally the only reason they are doing it is because “he’s the rightful king”…

I have to be impartial here, I can’t openly tell them to “rebel… or leave… or whatever” I just nod and let the world respond to their decisions

This is what we all agreed on after the last DM, no more railroading and forced to follow a single linear plot… they WANTED choice and I gave it to them, so why aren’t they happy?! And how is it my fault?!



How exactly do these two contradict one another?

1. Okay. cut the knot then: leave. stop DMing them. no gaming is better than bad gaming. if they complained so much about choice then decide to get stuck in this without doing anything to get out of it and not communicate what they really want openly, that is their fault. Stop putting up with their contradictory behavior, they're not worth your time.

2. Any person of a lower class paying attention to a chained up bear instead of a noble is sufficient reason for a noble to think of it as a snub and think of them enemies just from that alone. if the kingdom your truly making is truly made to be like in GoT and horrible, they shouldn't have the luxury of ignoring the nobility for fear of getting punished. and the fact they have a direct line to the king? thats power, thats reason enough to for people to want to influence and talk to them regardless of what they choose. nobility is all about wanting respect for mere dint of birth and not merit, if they aren't paying attention to the nobility they've already screwed up, and if you don't have nobility recognizing how close they and acting accordingly your not portraying them accurately.

[KineticDiplomat]

Nope, I get it.

Neither side is having fun. There's some rationalization going on on both sides why they're sabotaging the fun, but it's pretty much a growing animosity. The GM is using "faithfully playing the world" as a cloak for putting the boot in where he can for the players "wrong" choices and then absolving himself of even the barest table leadership requirements under the guise "it's the sandbox they wanted" all while growing to dislike the players

The players are sticking to "rightful king" for some reason, their personal view on primogeniture probably not actually being the reason. Single source reporting here, but they are also very clearly just putting up with the GM as they grow to dislike his game.

So...go home. Stop playing. Find another group. This connection isn't working at a fundamental level and it's not going to work. Gaming groups are relationships, and the chemistry ain't there for this one. Pull the trigger and move on.

[paladinofshojo]

Maybe you would know the answers to those questions if you actually, at any point, bothered to talk to them about it? Random strangers on the internet cannot diagnose the dysfunctions in your gaming group, especially when we're only getting an extremely one-sided account of the situation.

Okay how is this one-sided? When have I blamed anyone or anything for my game not being fun?

Tell me, if you were a player in the campaign I described… what would you do? Why would you be unhappy?


Nope, I get it.

Neither side is having fun. There's some rationalization going on on both sides why they're sabotaging the fun, but it's pretty much a growing animosity. The GM is using "faithfully playing the world" as a cloak for putting the boot in where he can for the players "wrong" choices and then absolving himself of even the barest table leadership requirements under the guise "it's the sandbox they wanted" all while growing to dislike the players

What “punishments” am I giving for their choices exactly? How have I ever influenced the world with my personal biases? There’s a reason why I am talking about this with YOU rather than THEM…

Because I don’t want to influence their game in any way shape or form… I want to just be an observer…

[Lord Raziere]

Okay how is this one-sided? When have I blamed anyone or anything for my game not being fun?

Tell me, if you were a player in the campaign I described… what would you do? Why would you be unhappy?

We can't tell you. We are not your players. We haven't experienced what they have.

its one sided because unless you get your players to post their side of the story here, all we have is your word that they even exist.

So either go talk to them or leave the group and let them sort it out themselves. Otherwise your just going to remain in this deadlock until it blows up. Not worth it, do something or jump ship.

[paladinofshojo]

2. Any person of a lower class paying attention to a chained up bear instead of a noble is sufficient reason for a noble to think of it as a snub and think of them enemies just from that alone. if the kingdom your truly making is truly made to be like in GoT and horrible, they shouldn't have the luxury of ignoring the nobility for fear of getting punished. and the fact they have a direct line to the king? thats power, thats reason enough to for people to want to influence and talk to them regardless of what they choose. nobility is all about wanting respect for mere dint of birth and not merit, if they aren't paying attention to the nobility they've already screwed up, and if you don't have nobility recognizing how close they and acting accordingly your not portraying them accurately.

But who would want to associate with the King’s “pet rats”? They aren’t “real” nobles… they’re barely knights, with the party lead being “ennobled” with a small tower in the country as his land, all they are are just upjumped commoners and foreigners who are ridiculously strong and competent…

Most of the nobles, even the ones that give them quests deliberately insult them, wondering if they are illiterate, complimenting them for “not smelling like horse dung”… and they don’t retaliate at all…


We can't tell you. We are not your players. We haven't experienced what they have.

So it’s automatically the DM’s fault because….?

I can take criticism, but the problem here is that you’re immediately acting like I’m the problem because I’m the DM… and you automatically expect me to actually change the course of the game to suit my needs because of your own experiences with “bad DMs”… even though I’ve stated time and time again I don’t do that…

[Lord Raziere]

But who would want to associate with the King’s “pet rats”? They aren’t “real” nobles… they’re barely knights, with the party lead being “ennobled” with a small tower in the country as his land, all they are are just upjumped commoners and foreigners who are ridiculously strong and competent…

Most of the nobles, even the ones that give them quests deliberately insult them, wondering if they are illiterate, complimenting them for “not smelling like horse dung”… and they don’t retaliate at all…



So it’s automatically the DM’s fault because….?

I can take criticism, but the problem here is that you’re immediately acting like I’m the problem because I’m the DM… and you automatically expect me to actually change the course of the game to suit my needs because of your own experiences with “bad DMs”… even though I’ve stated time and time again I don’t do that…

1. That......doesn't sound like any PC I've ever heard of. That doesn't sound right at all, at least intuitionally speaking.

2. Because whatever YOUR PLAYERS say is the problem. We don't know the problem, because all this is SUBJECTIVE. We can't read your players minds and tell you what those specific 4-5 people have problems with you. We can only offer this general advice:
-Either communicate with them to figure out what their problem is OOC, no IC barrier to communication, speaking plainly and directly
-or leave, putting the game behind you and let them figure out how to have fun without you, because you've decided to be completely passive despite seeing a problem and the player have decided to be completely passive so your both wallowing in misery according to you and if your truly unwilling to confront them about any of this, save yourself the work and pain for lack of fun return on your investment and get out.

furthermore as the GM, you change the course of the game by reacting to them at all. the game wouldn't exist without you, your not a non-interfering observer, your a player like them just with a different role, and if your not having fun you deserve better. your not a martyr for the other five guys fun, so don't become one. communicate with them OOCly to get this sorted or get out.

[paladinofshojo]

1. That......doesn't sound like any PC I've ever heard of. That doesn't sound right at all, at least intuitionally speaking.

I know right… I would have expected them to kill one or two nobles by now but nope… they just let them do as they please with complete impunity…




furthermore as the GM, you change the course of the game by reacting to them at all. the game wouldn't exist without you, your not a non-interfering observer, your a player like them just with a different role, and if your not having fun you deserve better. your not a martyr for the other five guys fun, so don't become one. communicate with them OOCly to get this sorted or get out.

I disagree, it’s not my job to railroad especially when the party isn’t complaining openly about it… I just want them to have fun and actually enjoy playing…because they’re not just my “players” they’re also my friends.

The only reason I am the DM was because apparently no one else wanted to and they all felt that I would do the best job because I would take it more seriously… which I have.

[Lord Raziere]

I know right… I would have expected them to kill one or two nobles by now but nope… they just let them do as they please with complete impunity…



I disagree, it’s not my job to railroad especially when the party isn’t complaining openly about it… I just want them to have fun and actually enjoy playing…because they’re not just my “players” they’re also my friends.

The only reason I am the DM was because apparently no one else wanted to and they all felt that I would do the best job because I would take it more seriously… which I have.

1. Hm, Yes. strange. Very mysterious. I wish I was there to ask the players themselves why they act that way. y'know. like you can. Supposedly.

2. asking them whats wrong and discussing how you can adjust yourself with them OOC is not railroading. your using a definition that no one in the community would hold you to. as for this friend thing, that doesn't matter. communicate with them or end the game, if your truly friends with them they will understand your reasons either way and be fine with it. prolonging the silent suffering helps no one, get it over with either way.

[The Glyphstone]

Whether or not you have been the cause of the problem till now, if you refuse to engage and communicate with your players to fix the problem, then you become the problem. Its that simple.

Being an impartial, cold black box observer is no better than being the AI programmed to operate a video game.

[TheStranger]

I disagree, it’s not my job to railroad especially when the party isn’t complaining openly about it… I just want them to have fun and actually enjoy playing…because they’re not just my “players” they’re also my friends.

The only reason I am the DM was because apparently no one else wanted to and they all felt that I would do the best job because I would take it more seriously… which I have.
You seem to be interpreting “talk to them OOC” as implying something much more confrontational than it needs to be. You just need to have a friendly conversation about whether everybody is having fun and what might make things more fun. It’s not all negative, you can talk about things that are working well too.

I get that you’re worried about railroading, but it would be very strange to be playing a game with friends every week and then never have a conversation with your friends about the shared experience of playing that game. Asking why they did things or telling them you were surprised because you expected something different is not just fine, it’s necessary.

What you’re describing is like seeing a movie with friends and refusing to talk about it afterwards because you don’t want to taint their opinions of it. Meanwhile, you don’t think they even liked that movie, but you’re going to take them to see the sequel next week.

Bottom line is that an OOC conversation is necessary sometimes to keep a game running smoothly (and seems to be long overdue in this case). And discussing any shared experience with friends is a great way to relive it and enhance everybody’s enjoyment, while also giving everybody ideas for how have more fun next time by doing more of what people liked and less of what they didn’t. You’re making some strange and arbitrary rules for yourself here.

[Xervous]

You’re the GM, pull a bomb out of thin air to spice things up. Who’s to say that serving girl the king ordered to his rooms for the night wouldn’t bring a knife and gut the little turd? You’re the GM making the world, a serving girl killing a rapist in self defense is hardly contrived. If the world is living and breathing why hasn’t someone killed the king yet? There’s no need for him to be dead or alive specifically, but by removing him from the picture you can start to better your game. The players are stuck in a loop, progress the situation and they’ll start taking different actions. The plot arcs of NPCs in sandboxes offer many potential branching points for the characters to adjust the trajectory. If they choose not to act on a certain point in time the arc doesn’t stop moving, it keeps going where it was headed. Sometimes NPC arcs collide with each other, that’s where you get surprises like “oh no the butler murdered the duke”. Maybe the PCs stopping the Duke from leaving the party early would cause another NPC to be the victim, maybe it would cause the murder to be attempted on a different day. If the only events that happen are those performed by the PCs it really is a Skyrim sandbox: dead sand that only moves when you poke it.

So yeah, kill the king, remove the one NPC they were using to guide their actions, then provide better options that will promise more enjoyable play.

[Segev]

That would imply that they’re actually roleplaying and engaging with the court or anyone really….

In my last session, I had 25 characters set up in the Royal court, Lady’s in waiting, Lords, Knights, Ministers, Squires, etc. Each with an intricate backstory and the court was split between those who support the current regime and Lathander worshippers who are enraged that their Archbishop was slain…. Though everyone kept their personal feelings hidden as they would publicly support Rupert

And you know how many of them the party engaged with? Just the bear that was chained to the wall for entertainment…. Did these NPCs at any point approach the party? If so, how did the party react to them? This isn't a criticism, but an observation: players are often not social butterflies IRL, and don't have a vibrant CGI image to move around and "press A" at NPCs in a tabletop game. Some players will still take initiative and walk up to random NPCs, or NPCs they think look or sound interesting, but my guess - and this is just a guess - about why they interacted with the bear is because the bear is the only thing you described in a way that stood out to them.

Now, maybe you did have some nobility et al approach them, and they blew them off. I don't know. But my advice is to have NPCs approach the PCs, not to wait for PCs to approach them (especially if the PCs are "under orders" when they approach NPCs, and the PCs follow those orders slavishly).


The players don’t even like Rupert personally…He made them kill entire villages of peasants to send a message to lords who overstep themselves or because he heard that they were harboring rebels.

Every time he does that, I have them beg the party, some of them are parents begging for their children’s lives, other’s are of pleading and saying that they have done nothing wrong, some of them begging for Lathander or the King to save them…. The players do not enjoy carrying out these tasks, especially when they had to roll initiative to slit a 6 year old’s neck Do the players tell you they don't like it? Have you, when they expressed that, pointed out that it's up to them whether they actually do it or not? What has the players' response been in such cases?

What have your players told you, OOC, about the game? What do they think of it?

What have they told you that you know they don't enjoy rolling initiative to slit a child's throat? What have you told them when they've expressed this, and what was their response?

How have they reacted with NPCs you've got set up at things like the party you mentioned before approach them? What have the NPCs tried to engage with them on? What have the players told you about such encounters, if anything? Ask them why they interacted with the bear, OOC; perhaps there's a hint there as to what it is that draws their attention.

[Faily]

You’re the GM, pull a bomb out of thin air to spice things up. Who’s to say that serving girl the king ordered to his rooms for the night wouldn’t bring a knife and gut the little turd? You’re the GM making the world, a serving girl killing a rapist in self defense is hardly contrived. If the world is living and breathing why hasn’t someone killed the king yet? There’s no need for him to be dead or alive specifically, but by removing him from the picture you can start to better your game. The players are stuck in a loop, progress the situation and they’ll start taking different actions. The plot arcs of NPCs in sandboxes offer many potential branching points for the characters to adjust the trajectory. If they choose not to act on a certain point in time the arc doesn’t stop moving, it keeps going where it was headed. Sometimes NPC arcs collide with each other, that’s where you get surprises like “oh no the butler murdered the duke”. Maybe the PCs stopping the Duke from leaving the party early would cause another NPC to be the victim, maybe it would cause the murder to be attempted on a different day. If the only events that happen are those performed by the PCs it really is a Skyrim sandbox: dead sand that only moves when you poke it.

So yeah, kill the king, remove the one NPC they were using to guide their actions, then provide better options that will promise more enjoyable play.

Piggybacking off of this:

NPCs don't enter Standby mode when PCs aren't interacting with them or doing things. The world keeps spinning and moving even if the PCs don't really do much.

So yeah, kill some kings, sack the capital, have an invasion by a rival kingdom. Shake things up.

[King of Nowhere]

If anything, their current situation was their own fault not mine….



that's the completely wrong way to look at it.
Not because it's your fault or their fault, but because the blame game never helps anyone.

So it doesn't matter who's at fault. You can try to do something to fix this mess. And there's a dozen people here who talk with your players honestly ooc.
Or, you can keep blaming them and keep playing a game that grows increasingly distressing for everyone involved.

Oh, and by the way, i belive both you and your players are to blame, because you're not communicating with each other. In every social or team game, not communicating with the other players is a capital crime.
But we are so hard on harrassing you to take action, and not your players, because you are the only one we can speak to. If your players wrote on this board, we'd be telling them the same, stop the vicious cycle and talk to the dm ooc.

And if you are unwilling to do any of the things that may help overcome your problems... well, in that case it may not have been your fault in the beginning, but it will definitely become your fault for failing to try and fix things. Furthermore, as DM you have the greater power at the table, and with it comes a greater responsibility. Any newly elected politician is not responsible for the problems of his country, but we do hold him to blame at the next election if he didn't take sufficient measures to counteract them.


The only reason I am the DM was because apparently no one else wanted to and they all felt that I would do the best job because I would take it more seriously… which I have.

if your idea of "seriously" means "never talking with your players about obvious problems at the table that make everyone uncomfortable because you are afraid any input you give would be railroading", then you definitely need someone to take Dming less seriously.



What you’re describing is like seeing a movie with friends and refusing to talk about it afterwards because you don’t want to taint their opinions of it. Meanwhile, you don’t think they even liked that movie, but you’re going to take them to see the sequel next week.
very well put

[paladinofshojo]

Piggybacking off of this:

NPCs don't enter Standby mode when PCs aren't interacting with them or doing things. The world keeps spinning and moving even if the PCs don't really do much.

So yeah, kill some kings, sack the capital, have an invasion by a rival kingdom. Shake things up.

You know what, you’re right…. Just because my players don’t want to do anything about Rupert doesn’t mean the rest of the world should deal with him…

I already have half a dozen different powerful people he’s wronged…. I’ll start having the kingdom start tearing itself to the seems with several different rebellions, assassination attempts, an invasion by an Orcish Horde or Hobgoblin Kingdom who sense weakness, and perhaps even the undead plague and maybe demonic influences.

And it wouldn’t be considered “railroading” because all of this was technically inside the world but they were too uninterested to actually nip these problems in the bud.

[Witty Username]

Players have a natural sense of what is expected, and a inate desire to do otherwise.

Two friends and me were pitched on a game , world conquered by a Demon lord and we were rebel fighters against it. We made three Lawful Evil characters (no communication during character creation). Mine being a character who was serving an overlord whose world domination plan was badly banjacked by the turn of events.

[Dreamer]

And it wouldn’t be considered “railroading” because all of this was technically inside the world but they were too uninterested to actually nip these problems in the bud.

Picture a sports referee who constantly makes calls that only benefit one team. Pretty awful right? Now imagine the players get rid of him, and get a new referee. But this referee is so terrified of seeming biased like the old one, they never make any calls at all. No matter what rules are broken, they do nothing. And the players, used to the old referee, continue - one team breaks the rules with impunity, and one team sticks to all the rules to avoid punishment. Sure, the referee technically managed to avoid making the same mistake as the previous one, but they're so focused on not doing that they're making a just as big mistake themselves, and nothing has actually changed for the players.

In case it's not clear, you are the new referee in this metaphor. You are so focused on not railroading (which well done, you've avoided) that you're completely failing to see that your players don't know you're not railroading. Talking to them, and telling them this, is not railroading.

The problem is your players are so used to railroading, that they think the rails are there. It doesn't matter what you change in the game, they're just going to look for where they think the rails are, and follow them. They've done this repeatedly, like when they killed a six year old girl, unhappy that they did so, because they thought that was what the rails were. The solution is very simple, and I'm not the first to tell you this: Tell. Them. There. Are. No. Rails. They are not going to just realise it, no matter how much you change in game.

An example of how to do this. Set up a clear, simple choice, with two or three obvious options. Then, briefly stop the game, and not as an npc, but as you, tell them that whatever they choose, that will be the game. That all the options are fine. Make it explicit. Then go back into the game. It only has to take a few seconds, and it's very clearly not railroading because it is giving them options. And hopefully, once they've realised they had a choice there, there'll be more on the lookout in future, and you might actually get a game that you all enjoy.

I hope this helps. Sincerely, a long time lurker who just wants you and your players to have fun.

[Bohandas]

I mean, I think a lot of people inappropriately fetishize royalty in real life, even in countries where such things aren't present or relevant. But I'm forbidden from going into more detail in this venue.

[Bovine Colonel]

And it wouldn’t be considered “railroading” because all of this was technically inside the world but they were too uninterested to actually nip these problems in the bud.

I'm not the first to say this, but you definitely have more pressing problems than whether removing an NPC could be construed as railroading.

[Saelethil]

As pretty much everyone else here is saying, you need to talk to your players OoC about what they want and expect from the game as well as what you want from the game. This is not railroading. This is communication which is necessary for positive change.
Until you take this step, NOTHING else that has been recommended here is going to solve your problem. It might relieve some of the symptoms for a few sessions but the real problem will still be there. You and your players seem to think that you are playing completely different games.

[Psyren]

Not yet, our next session is tomorrow night…

And I got to admit I am kinda dreading it because I don’t want to influence how they play…

^ I'm still not seeing what the outcome of this was. Did you talk to them OOC or not? What did they say?



So it’s automatically the DM’s fault because….?

I can take criticism, but the problem here is that you’re immediately acting like I’m the problem because I’m the DM… and you automatically expect me to actually change the course of the game to suit my needs because of your own experiences with “bad DMs”… even though I’ve stated time and time again I don’t do that…

We're inclined to think it's the DM's fault when we see things like this:



The players looked at me kinda annoyed and angry.

Even if it's not all the DM's fault, "annoyed and angry players" are a problem for the DM to solve, or at least be part of the solution.

[Talakeal]

I find myself in the same boat as the OP quite often. Although in my case its even worse, the players assume I am railroading them, side with villains, commit atrocities, and then blame me for railroading them into it.


Picture a sports referee who constantly makes calls that only benefit one team. Pretty awful right? Now imagine the players get rid of him, and get a new referee. But this referee is so terrified of seeming biased like the old one, they never make any calls at all. No matter what rules are broken, they do nothing. And the players, used to the old referee, continue - one team breaks the rules with impunity, and one team sticks to all the rules to avoid punishment. Sure, the referee technically managed to avoid making the same mistake as the previous one, but they're so focused on not doing that they're making a just as big mistake themselves, and nothing has actually changed for the players.

In case it's not clear, you are the new referee in this metaphor. You are so focused on not railroading (which well done, you've avoided) that you're completely failing to see that your players don't know you're not railroading. Talking to them, and telling them this, is not railroading.

The problem is your players are so used to railroading, that they think the rails are there. It doesn't matter what you change in the game, they're just going to look for where they think the rails are, and follow them. They've done this repeatedly, like when they killed a six year old girl, unhappy that they did so, because they thought that was what the rails were. The solution is very simple, and I'm not the first to tell you this: Tell. Them. There. Are. No. Rails. They are not going to just realise it, no matter how much you change in game.

An example of how to do this. Set up a clear, simple choice, with two or three obvious options. Then, briefly stop the game, and not as an npc, but as you, tell them that whatever they choose, that will be the game. That all the options are fine. Make it explicit. Then go back into the game. It only has to take a few seconds, and it's very clearly not railroading because it is giving them options. And hopefully, once they've realised they had a choice there, there'll be more on the lookout in future, and you might actually get a game that you all enjoy.

I hope this helps. Sincerely, a long time lurker who just wants you and your players to have fun.

This is great advice.

[Bohandas]

Who decides what is evil? Heck, one of the more popular gaming settings out there managed to justify the sacrifice of thousands of people daily just for more efficient interstellar travel.

It's a little out of line to say that the WH40K empire's policies are justified. I think it would be stretching it even to argue that they're the lesser evil.

[Reversefigure4]

The players are obviously operating on a different wavelength to the GM, and the GM doesn't seem to follow that offering them choices is the exact opposite of railroading them. I'm not sure in what world saying "Guys, are you happy slitting peasant throats? Nobody wants to overthrow Joffrey, or join the circus, or do anything else? Remember that you have all the options here - slit the girl's throat, cast a spell, leave entirely, become pirates, get sick of the peasant murdering and go raid monster dungeons for cash, etc?" Why is it better to just sit there and wait for them to realise they have choices?

"Fetishising Royalty" could be as simple as "We're used to a game structure where quest givers give us a quest, and then we do it." It's the most basic underlying structure of RPG and video game experience, so it's not hard to believe players default to this.

Look at it from Hypothetical Player Point of View. I want to play the GM's game. I want that more than not playing the game (that's a punishment, for me). I ask the GM what he wants to do in the game. A NPC provides a plot hook "King Joffrey tells you to go massacre the peasants." OK, so that's what the game is about? Working for an evil king? Sure, it's not entirely to my taste, but it's better than not playing at all, right?

So my character goes to kill the peasants. The GM doubles down on this, describing how young and innocent the peasant girl is, how bloody and awful it is when I slit her throat. But he doesn't tell me now to, or that the character has any other options. I don't like this, but I do it anyway, because I want to keeping playing. Maybe it's just this bit of the plot that's a bit dark, and eventually we'll get to something I like better.

I, Hypothetical Player, don't particularly like sandbox games. I don't want to generate my own plot. I just wish the GM's plot was a bit less bloody, but every time we go back to King Joffrey, what he wants is worse than the last time, and there's no other options presenting...

Eventually, Hypothetical Player gets sufficiently annoyed with this and leaves the game, or changes their character to be more of a Lawful Murderer, or accepts that the game will be Peasant Massacre: The RPG and leans into it, learning to enjoy that style.

[Alcore]

{Scrubbed}