Can't Someone Else Do This?

I'm currently catching up on Blogs on Tape's backlog of excellent, well...blogs on tape. I haven't always been super tuned-in to the blogosphere, so there's plenty of quality stuff I've missed. I'm grateful for Blogs on Tape for giving me the opportunity to catch up on what I've missed (and reexperience old favorites) while I'm driving, cooking, playing Mariokart, etc.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to listen to the reading of Nick LS Whelan's Questgivers are Evil from his Paper and Pencils blog. In this post, Nick writes:

Your PCs are not an army, they’re a handful of dudes with weapons who are willing to kill stuff for money. Who hires people like that?

People who want you to do some bad shit. People who want to deny knowledge of something. People who want to blame “those outsiders.”

In other words, questgivers are evil.

There is pretty much NEVER going to be a long chain of dudes who want to hold your hand while you become an icon of heroic heroism and noble nobility, all while making sure your endeavors remain profitable.

Accepting a quest should mean that you’re about to do some shady ass shit that will probably hurt some good people.

I really like this conclusion. It doesn't make a lot of sense that people (whether they be commoners, nobility, or the merchant class) would turn to crazy, heavily armed outsider mercenary warriors and mysterious sorcerers to solve their local problems. Commoners would expect their rulers to protect them. The nobility presumably have some sworn vassals or other means of asserting their authority, which they would also use to keep the goblins away from the homesteads at night. The merchant class's resources are more limited, but they would likely appeal to the authorities with their problems as well, rather than turn to unknown elements.

I don't necessarily think that questgivers should be Evil. I like to occasionally sprinkle an Evil questgiver into my campaigns. A wizard who offers boatloads of gold to any adventurers willing to butcher a nest of pegasi and steal their eggs for his weird experiments offers a hook for Evil characters, a dilemma for Neutral ones, and an inverse hook for Good ones - "We have to take out that wizard!" The occasional questgiver who willfully gets the player characters into trouble to accomplish their own insidious ends adds some spice to an otherwise textbook campaign - but only if used sparingly.

If all questgivers are Evil (or at least, all the ones offering money are), then players might simply stop doing quests (at least, not for the gold). This might be a good thing, as the players will learn to start doing things out of the Goodness of their hearts, rather than due to the lightness of their purses, and their characters will become true heroes in so doing. Alternatively, they can dance with the devil, getting in trouble from one settlement to the next, suspecting every patron of ulterior motives, getting the gold, burning bridges, and escaping just before the other shoe drops.

That does actually sound kind of fun. D&D should be more like a picaresque - the player characters are Cugel the Clever or Larry David-like protagonists (not heroes), who do things for their own benefit, alienating others and either getting their comeuppance or causing some hapless associate to take the blame instead. But that's not what I'm arguing for here.

What I'm coming to find that I prefer in my own games is instead this: the authorities - or those in power in the setting - are either Evil, incompetent, indifferent, or powerless. People in these tight-knit communities turn to strangers for help because their rulers or would-be protectors either actively prey upon them, approach the communities' problems ineffectively, don't care about them, or lack the means to address them directly.

Perhaps the rulers are Evil, motivated solely by greed or domination. Maybe the government, as it exists, is in a state of decline or negligent decadence. The bureaucracy functions poorly or not at all. The rulers are not interested in doing good work or getting things done. Their hands are tied by distant wars. Their ideology is one of self-reliance and hands-off rulership. The government is physically far away and unable to project power - which works especially well in a typical "frontier" campaign setting.

This also solves the issue that I refer to as "exceptional individual demographics". Surely, the 1st-level player characters are not the only exceptional individuals in the setting, or else where do replacement player characters and henchmen come from? Who trained the fighter, tutored the wizard, or initiated the cleric? Who rules the strongholds, churches, and thieves' guilds? My general rule is that 1% of people in the setting are such individuals with class levels. Most of them are low level, but 5% are very high level. Why don't these people solve the setting's problems?

Because they're Evil, or indifferent (it would probably be wrong to characterize 20th-level NPCs as incompetent or powerless). They may have bigger fish to fry or they may simply not care.

The crux of the issue is that the local power structure - and powerful individuals in the setting - are flawed in some critical way, unable or unwilling to affect change or help regular people. This allows for a variety of scenario set ups. The government and powerful NPCs may be antagonists, or allies with limited accessibility/utility. They may be accustomed to employing mercenaries and regularly post rewards for work that needs doing. The merchant class may be the ones driving progress, or communities may pool resources to attract entrepreneurial adventurer types. 

Of course, on occasion the questgiver is or should be Evil, but it is this general, dominating zeitgeist of anarchy, indifference, or self-interest which allows those Evildoers to flourish, and to recruit stooges (the player characters and/or their rivals and enemies) to do their dirty work and to take the fall.

When the Players Don't Care

Sometimes, the players just don't care to do something. They may have other priorities, the quest may not sound interesting to them, the reward may not be compelling enough, the patron may be too suspicious, or the players may simply be too afraid to fight the dragon. This is totally fine. The game is about players making choices, and while those choices should always have consequences, it's not exactly fun gaming for the fictional player characters and the setting to be punished over and over again because the real-world players simply weren't interested in the hook. 

Some hooks land with some groups, players, and characters, and some don't. It's why I throw out as many hooks as I can reasonably prep scenarios for. Eventually, something will interest them, and I can prep the next volley of hooks while they're busy pursuing the one they're currently invested in.

But what happens to the other scenarios? I just said that the powers-that-be in the setting are unwilling or unable to do anything about these problems, so don't they just get worse?

Maybe. The players have chosen to leave it to fate. I like to use a simple 2d6 roll to determine what happens when a scenario is neglected:

• On a 2 or 3, the worst possible thing has happened. Another group of adventurers or the local ruler has finally gotten around to intervening, with disastrous results. The source of the problem has triumphed and strengthened, and is retaliating in some way. If the local power structure is Evil, perhaps they have resolved the scenario in a way which strengthens them instead. The Evil sorcerer-king has aligned with the orc warband and is now using them to enact their next nefarious scheme.
• On a 4 or 5, a setback has occurred. Someone tried to do something about the problem and failed, and now the problem is worse in some minor way. Adventurers tried to defeat the necromancer, but died, and now the necromancer's dungeon is more dangerous (guarded by the reanimated corpses of said adventurers). The goblins are emboldened by their victory, and now are raiding homesteads closer to the local settlement.
• On a 6, 7, or 8, the status quo is maintained. No meaningful action has been taken towards resolving the scenario.
• On 9 or 10, something good has happened. The local rulers have finally gotten around to sending soldiers to guard the town against the nearby gnoll stronghold, or, another group of adventurers made a foray against the gnolls and managed to clear out a few rooms before retreating. The scenario is now easier, should the players choose to pursue it.
• On an 11 or 12, the problem has been resolved in the best possible way for the setting (though this might not benefit the characters). A rival band of adventurers have solved the problem, and are hailed as heroes. The player characters have to listen to everyone constantly talk about how brave and strong these other heroes are.