Does anyone else feel that their players kinda fetishize Royalty?

[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.