As for the hole digger I imagine there's a number of answers.  Not the least of which is that they disturb a grave, awaken a ghost and are aged to death before they can climb out again.  Really I'm a bit surprised the party didn't use the hole as a latrine.  There's also the risk of pockets of noxious gasses.  Anyone who's read Little House On The Prairie would very likely think of that.  Anhegs, purple worms, bullettes, and flesh worms all seem like good encounters.  A more gentle hand might have them reach a hole where a king and an old wizard are visiting with a badger and an owl.  They smile and say, "oh, well you came around by the shorter path, sit down and have a cup of tea now, you might as well, you've reached the bottom of that particular hole whether you realize it or not."  If they're still down there after dark they could be eaten by a grue.  It could start to rain and the mud could start sliding in.  They could hit a strange metal pipe that goes on in both directions and explodes in a horrible fireball if they don't get out of the hole.  They could hit bedrock and discover they can go no farther.  They could drop right into a boss fight (ugh hate that term with a passion) all alone and show the party how deadly the enemy really is.   They could fall out the bottom of the hole in China or hell.

Really, what DM doesn't have something they could do to a PC who's dumb enough to start digging holes?  If you've killed them once and they do it again let them find a land mine and lose both arms and one leg, then let them lie in the hole wondering what will become of them until someone comes along, looks in the hole and just shakes their head and starts filling it in.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;927958You can also use peasants in place of livestock.

Just sayin'.

Well, if you're careful and successful enough they might manage to get their birth rate above their death rate but since you're using them as a buffer and to swell your numbers when the inevitable monsters come.  Think of it as building a modest domain at lower levels with the intent of eventually becoming a lord.  But the objective is to look vulnerable and then sucker the monsters in.  A dragon caught in a pillory is worth as many XP as a loose one after all.

I prefer games with a clear cut premise. The GM as part of the pitch says "You are member of the Rebel Alliance/Justice League/local Ghostbusters franchise". That tells me what my character does. The "why" or "how" is up to me, but at least I know what kind of character to build and that if the rest of the players follow the same guideline, we'll have a party that is coherent and has a strong to work together.

If the GM says "create whatever you like" then I can easily end up with a "farmer who doesn't want to adventure" sort of character. Not literally a "farmer" but for instance maybe a journalist who goes a long with the party just far enough to get the story has no interest in resolving the issue being investigated.

Quote from: Skarg;927886What do you think the actual question is? Is it a different question which could be a different thread, like, "Why do your players' PCs stay in the same place and cooperate and spend their lives on adventures?" or "What do you do when some/all of a PC group want to do other things besides adventure together?"

BTW just to answer this question: the discussion seems to have started in How to tell the DM that his campaign is boring and then Bonus Currencies and Avoiding the Narrative Stance. I think the idea's been recapped here by now but the original theme was players whose character concept means they don't actively seek adventure. (Somehow this got mixed up in Campbellian Monomyth, which is interesting but not, in my opinion, a universal template either for traditional fiction or for roleplaying games.)

To my mind escaping the chains of story structure and expectation are the main advantages of rpgs over fiction.  Why anyone would want to tie themselves to those rail road tracks rather than exploring the alternatives is lost on me.

I'm still not 100% clear about the original premise.  There is a difference between "I want to play a character who is reluctantly forced into an adventure like Bilbo" and "I'm going to sit here in the bar and say no to the guy who tried to hire me.  I'm going to get drunk".  I've heard of both.  Which are we speaking of?

Quote from: Omega;927746The subject came up of players having their character effectively refuse the call to adventure and instead want to stay a lowly farmer or peasant.

This is called a 'troll'.  You say, "You do this and live a relatively happy life."  Then you take his character sheet, and continue with players that are there to play a game instead of being smartasses.

The problem with this discussion is not getting caught debating the extremes.

Extreme 1 - This campaign is about going on adventures, you will always go on adventures, never doing anything on the side that isn't adventuring, no matter how much it makes sense or fits the setting or the characters themselves.  Ie. a GM and/or players being complete fucknuggets.  This is complete and total shit, no one wants this.  No sense in talking about it like it's a real thing.  The sane people leave and everyone moves on.

Extreme 2 - I want to do what I want to do, and whatever you want to do is not what I want to do, yet I demand you spend time focusing on me.  Ie. A fucknugget player who never should have been sitting at your table to begin with. This is complete and total shit, no one wants this.  No sense in talking about this like it's a real thing.  You flush the turd and move on.

Everyone else - Players engage with the premise and nature of the campaign and setting, GM allows players the freedom to engage with more than one premise allowed by that campaign and setting.

You can mitigate problems through 1. Expectations, 2. Flexibility of both GM and player.  Funny how those fix a lot of things.

Now if you have one player who wants to go one way, and the rest of the party another, that's tough if everyone is actually roleplaying, engaged in the game, and not being a fucknugget.  Possibly retire the character, bringing them back in if circumstance allow it, or maybe deal with the other character from time to time (but obviously the GM can't be expected to have the time to do this), but the player who is pushing for the split has to accept that "and the PC lived happily ever after" might be the result of his leaving everyone else.

Now if some of the PCs have their own agendas, and not all of them match up, then separate parties might be an answer.  Of course all the players and the GM have to go along with this, because everyone sacrifices in this case.  The GM has a more complicated campaign to run and different PC groups will have different amounts of time allotted to them.  Also, some players don't like bouncing back and forth between groups, they want to play one character.  If you don't split the party and some of the players prove to be more flexible, and go with the other party, remember this, and make sure that if it happens again, that the fact that they went along last time gets factored in.

Now if all the PCs want to move one way, and the GM another, then it depends on how much the GM can give.  For example, one of my groups is currently in a war-torn nation with a newly-crowned King that most of the country does not support.  The Civil War will continue, there is lots of land to retake and occupy, and smart characters who are interested in that kind of thing, may very well find themselves with a land grant of some kind, because frequently when a nation is in total chaos, title and land are easier to hand out than coin. I could...

• block this in-game by simply making sure that never happens, regardless of circumstance ie. being a railroading fucknugget of a GM.
• take it to the table, and just tell the players I'm either not interested in this turn of the campaign or I simply don't have time to do it.
• be flexible and have prepared myself for this possibility.

Well any GM who puts PCs in the middle of a land where title and land might be up for grabs, and doesn't factor that in, is kind of an idiot, so my response is #3.  I've prepared myself that the players might become less the wandering type of adventurer and more the defend your property against bandits, soldiers, predators, roving ghouls, and whoever else kind of adventurer, or that they may simply prefer to hire on with a Noble they like and thus change their adventuring to more mercenary work.  It fits the genre perfectly, there's hardly a S&S character who wasn't a merc at some point or another, supporting some noble in their quest for power.

As long as people recognize each other's limitations and interests and aren't completely self-absorbed selfish pricks, things should work out fine.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;927980I'm still not 100% clear about the original premise.  There is a difference between "I want to play a character who is reluctantly forced into an adventure like Bilbo" and "I'm going to sit here in the bar and say no to the guy who tried to hire me.  I'm going to get drunk".  I've heard of both.  Which are we speaking of?

I guess it could be either. Part of the problem may be differentiating the two, but it could also be partly on the GM, differences of gaming philosophy, and failures of communication. For example, assume Bilbo is a freshly generated PC. If the player wants to be forced into an adventure, no problem. Even more if there's an understanding, maybe from past history between the people at the table, that there's going to be some playful struggle before he assents. Pretty much the same if the player's "up for anything" and just flat-out trusts the GM to take the lead on setting things in motion. On the other hand if the player has a strongly divergent idea of the type of "adventure" that would arise in the life of a Hobbiton gentleman, he might not like the arrival of Gandalf & the dwarves. He might see it as implausible, intrusive, destructive to his character concept, etc.

Okay, here it's hard to have much sympathy for Bilbo-player--I mean what would his adventures be at home? But if the PC was a minor noble whose player was looking forward to engaging in local politics & intrigue, and now he's being offered a hexcrawl/dungeon looting expedition, there's more to it. I really don't think it would help things for the GM to then up the pressure by having Smaug fly over and burn his castle.

Our Pathfinder group did something like this last year. I think the GM had fucked with us a little too much (bit of a railroad with shifting goals/enemies to keep the carrot/stick just out of grasp)... so at some point we found ourselves in a nice town, gave up on the main quest (at least for the time being) and bought some land and started a farm. We hired help and started a profitable business. There was still 'adventure' but it was mostly local, trading favors with the local archmage and the wizards' college.
It wasn't outright rebellion... just choosing to no longer engage with a somewhat forced plotline that was turning into a shaggy dog story.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;927980I'm still not 100% clear about the original premise.  There is a difference between "I want to play a character who is reluctantly forced into an adventure like Bilbo" and "I'm going to sit here in the bar and say no to the guy who tried to hire me.  I'm going to get drunk".  I've heard of both.  Which are we speaking of?

The thread was aimed mostly at the second. Though some seem to get it mixed up with the first.
With the added pondering of those who might start out adventurers but for whatever reason decided they would rather be merchants or farmers and stopped adventuring. Or at least stopped the dungeon delve and combat oriented adventuring more or less.

Quote from: Omega;927998The thread was aimed mostly at the second. Though some seem to get it mixed up with the first.
With the added pondering of those who might start out adventurers but for whatever reason decided they would rather be merchants or farmers and stopped adventuring. Or at least stopped the dungeon delve and combat oriented adventuring more or less.

That's kind of what I thought, because "reluctant adventurer" is an old standby.

I don't understand the "I refuse to engage" types, though, and I know we've both seen them discussed many times.  Now, I ** ALWAYS ** have the "expectations" discussion before the campaign starts, so this has just never happened to me.  But if it did, and the person was genuinely refusing to play, I'd stop the game and say "Why are you here at the table?  What do you want?  What do you expect?"

Seems obvious to me, but I've never seen any discussion of people asking such "players" what their goals really are.

I did have one player in my OD&D game decide that since gold gave XP he was going to invest all his money in various merchant ventures.

He seemed less than thrilled when I told him that his financial successes made him a second level merchant rather than a ninth level magic user.

I had a player with a gnome illusionist who took an offer from a grateful noble to be a  court magician and effectively retired that character from the game.  The player had decided the character was too delicate for how he liked to play and I think was pretty happy to have an excuse to give the character a good home.

Quote from: ligedog;928004I had a player with a gnome illusionist who took an offer from a grateful noble to be a  court magician and effectively retired that character from the game.  The player had decided the character was too delicate for how he liked to play and I think was pretty happy to have an excuse to give the character a good home.

I've had characters do this.  My first Dark Heresy character 'retired', only to become an Inquisitor later (as in, the NPC doling out missions when I GM'd).  You can always re-use these characters if need be.