In the Earthdawn Cathay Quest the party had a blacksmith shop in Tiet Dei's capital, an inn near the frontier, and a mine in Taolin. A lot of their adventures were trade based, essentially moving along the road between their three businesses, collecting money, collecting ore, and creating weapons and armor. The group had a Merchant and a Weaponsmith as part of the group.  The best adventure was when a rival merchant tried to capture the group's Weaponsmith and put him into forced labor. His thugs failed and they busted up his slavery ring of miners and smiths. Then they tried to capture Bing Qing for the king for execution for his crimes including allying with a traitorous noble trying to overthrow his kingdom. They found him at their inn trying to burn it to the ground next and captured him with his remaining men trying to free him as they returned to the king. He was executed and eventually returned to try and kill the group again as a floating zombie corpse with a ridiculously outstretched neck and head that he had to hold in his hands to see proper.  This is only as fun as you make it though, and as game master I admit that I tired of the concept after a while and wanted to move to other subplots like the war of the 5 armies and The Shadowed fighting for control of Cathay.

One thing I like about Savage Worlds is the Rich edge for income purposes. So set up all the trade and shops you want, then have subordinates do the work and you need to go to the locations of your businesses to collect your income every month. Works well and they can keep trying to adventure and expand their businesses rather than maintain a long trade route themselves like they tried in Cathay Quest. Salomo Rune did this in our first 50 Fathoms run setting up new deals as we went to new ports and it was an excellent way to run things.

My character is a farmer, or wants to be.

Specifically he wants a cattle ranch. To get it he took a job as a hand on a large ranch, which involved joining a posse to catch an outlaw who was hiding out on the range - and then being ambushed by the outlaw's gang later on - fighting Apaches, chasing down rustlers, and hunting a mountain lion. He raised capital by gambling in a local saloon on his day off each week, which got him into fistfights and gunfights and put on trial and run out of town by vigilantes. Most recently he's been hunting wolves to protect herds during a hard winter - and battling bandits and hired killers as well - and as a result of card game won the deed to a general store and then bought a saloon in town.

Now he's preparing to buy cattle for a 450-mile drive to Kansas, which also involves rounding up mavericks without being accused of rustling, catching mustangs and breaking them for the remuda, and supervising a staff of six cowhands and a cook. There will be rustlers and bandits and Indians and prairies fires and thunderstorms and tornadoes and stampedes and a constant search for water and Gawd knows what else along the way.

Once he gets back from the drive, he's got a nice piece of land in mind for his ranch, provided he can handle renegade Apaches, outlaws, regulators and rival ranchers who don't want anyone on 'their' range.

And he's getting involved with local politics in Promise City, what with the municipal election coming up in the fall, quietly siding with the small ranchers who the wealthy cattlemen call 'rustlers' and drive off 'their' range with hired guns.

Yup, that's me, refusing the call of adventure to roleplay a farmer.

Quote from: Omega;927838There are no weak characters in D&D. There may be weak (minded) players though.

:rolleyes: Save it for the next 3d6 in order thread; there should be another within a month.

Black Vulmea, how did the other PCs fit into this?

Skarg: I do think that players who abuse their "PCness" should be dealt with as you suggest. Of course this means the group as a whole has veto power on your character concept. Even in the wandering adventurer paradigm, the core of the party isn't likely to admit someone to the group who's going to steal from them or murder them in their sleep. It shouldn't just be "why am I adventuring" but also "why would these people let me hang out with them?"

I blame Thieves, Assassins, and Paladins for this, and to a lesser extent Rangers and Clerics.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;927855"Farming? You don't know how. You could buy some land and have some peasants work it for you, but all land is owned by some lord, so you'd have to swear fealty to him. And would he find the best use for an Xth level fighter to be supervising peasants? Or might he send you on... adventures? Anyway, for the meantime you'll need to get loot and level up and try to get to know some lord who you can swear fealty to. In other words, adventure."

This is why the Monk class involves learning Distance Death and Quivering Palm and not Right Livelihood or the realization of Non-self.

JG

Quote from: Arminius;927906Skarg: I do think that players who abuse their "PCness" should be dealt with as you suggest. Of course this means the group as a whole has veto power on your character concept. Even in the wandering adventurer paradigm, the core of the party isn't likely to admit someone to the group who's going to steal from them or murder them in their sleep. It shouldn't just be "why am I adventuring" but also "why would these people let me hang out with them?"

I blame Thieves, Assassins, and Paladins for this, and to a lesser extent Rangers and Clerics.

Yep. Though I am more often interested in the disagreements than wishing the players were all on exactly the same page. When good roleplaying is involved, the disagreements between players have been some of the more interesting and memorable and fun and tense and unpredictable elements of play. I'd usually rather a party splits (or characters die or patrons be alienated or whatever) for real reasons that make sense, than have players censoring their roleplaying for meta reasons. Having an unwritten rule that PCs all have to get along and cooperate and stay together and "follow the plot" or whatever seem like bad problems, while split parties and deaths for interesting/logical reasons seem more like inconvenient but interesting features.

When I sometimes see people post questions about "how do I handle a new group who has chosen Evil and Good characters who should logically want to kill each other?", my usual first thought is, "well, I'd have them meet and see who defeats the other - the survivors keep their PCs and the others need to roll up new PCs who will get along with the survivors", and that sounds much more interesting to me, actually, than just all agreeing to be the same alignment and magically meeting and forming a party.

Sometimes I think you'll get a player wanting to be a farmer more often when the RPG is touted as allowing you to be anything. And some want to test that. The problem comes when its just one player out of the blue or when they agreed to A but then baulk and want to play peasant. No problem if the GM has stated its an option and the rest of the group is on board. Simmilar to when you get one player who wants to do courtly intrigue and everyone else wants to go dungeon delving.

Dragon Storm actually developed a character flaw card based on this actually happening at a session Susan was GMing. I was there and yeah it did happen. A player wanted to play a non-shifter. Which aside from the orcs and vorn, there weren't any such as PCs. So there was developed the "Denial" card which essentially means the PC cant change at all aside from possibly a necro using a force shift spell.

And bemusingly enough the PCs usually start as peasants who DONT want to be adventurers. They were perfectly fine being farmers and such. Then they find out the truth the hard way and well its adventure... or die. *cue The Fugitive music* :cool:

Other games really put the screws on the GM to come up with adventures for parties consisting of, A rock musician, a programmer, a mercenary and a mechanic... While others have that as the central theme. The socialite, the professor, the aviator and the cop are all inexorably entangled in an ever deepening mystery.

Quote from: Omega;927937Other games really put the screws on the GM to come up with adventures for parties consisting of, A rock musician, a programmer, a mercenary and a mechanic... While others have that as the central theme. The socialite, the professor, the aviator and the cop are all inexorably entangled in an ever deepening mystery.

Juuust sit right back and you'll hear a tale...

I've used the "your plane crashes/ship wrecks/train derails in some godforsaken place/through a dimensional rift/Oz/Narnia" more than once.

It doesn't work so well for S&S, life-is-brutal-and-dangerous kind of settings, but as long as there's pressure to stick together to increase the odds of survival it'll get off the ground.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;927888Yup, that's me, refusing the call of adventure to roleplay a farmer.

That is exactly why these things can work out well.

I grew up on a farm.  I roleplay to have fun.  No fucking WAY would I play a medieval peasant farmer.

Quote from: Skarg;927886There's a guy who's posted on the TFT email list several times about the impossible GM challenge he feels will destroy any GM, which is what if he just keeps saying his PC starts digging a hole and keeps digging and asking what he finds. I mention this because to me this seems both not a problem, and also a more obvious version of the problem some people struggle with in trying to force their group behavior expectations on roleplayers and/or players who aren't as interested in staying together and doing what the GM expected/wants/prepped.

My first question would be, out of character, "what are you doing?"

Take your statement "players who aren't as interested in staying together."  Okay, if you cut the group in two, each group gets half as much play time as before.  If each PC goes their own way, each person gets much less play time than before and you've drastically increased the referee load.

This is all shit that should be talked about beforehand.  The referee is not an infinite number of televisions that dispense entertainment; the ref has limited time, and quite possibly the other players have limited time as well.

Also, why the fuck would somebody want to "destroy any GM?"  What the actual fuck?

And as for "I'm going to dig a hole and keep digging forever and asking what I find," I would say " you find that the referee thinks you're a fucknugget.  Now either play with the rest of us or get the hell out of here."

I mean, seriously, what the hell?

Quote from: Arminius;927901Black Vulmea, how did the other PCs fit into this?

We're playing the campaign by the early Boot Hill rules in which the player characters are not a 'party of adventurers,' but rather may have conflicting roles - lawman, rancher, outlaw, hired gun, &c. We make use of campaign turns with written orders for our characters, and the other players play the non-player characters as we resolve our turns. If our orders look like they may lead to conflict between the player characters, the third player or an outside gamer resolves the turn.

Right now I'm the only player with his original character still in the game - one player is on his second character, the other is on his fourth. The original three characters started together in BH1 Mad Mesa - one character was killed and replaced by a new character before we moved on to BH2 Lost Conquistador Mine. My character was run out of Dead Mule by vigilantes and went on to Promise City while the other two continued to search for the lost mine. Both of those characters died when they were ambushed searching for the mine and new characters brought in on the way to Promise City - one of those characters died at the hands of bandits as well, before reaching Promise City, and was replaced, leaving us with our current group.

The current assortment of characters consists of my cowboy/gambler, an ex-Union Army Pinkerton detective/bounty hunter, and a gunfighter masquerading as a snake-oil salesman. Right now my character is in Burned Bush Wells following the the events of BH3, the detective/bounty hunter left Burned Bush Wells and returned to Promise City when he decided hunting wolves was too much work for the money, and the snake-oil salesman/gunman remained in Promise City, ingratiating himself with the Law & Order faction. It's highly likely that our characters will come into conflict before too long - the Pinkerton is offering his services to the ranchers' association as a 'range detective' to run off 'rustlers,' and my character is sure to be on the opposite faction from both of the other characters when we get into BH3 Ballots & Bullets.

We're also moving into troupe play. My character's brother and a family friend are on their way from Nebraska to join him for the cattle drive, the Pinkerton has a partner, and the snake-oil salesman's 'sister' - that's what he calls her, anyway - joined him from California with her coolie servant in tow. Election season in Promise City promises to be bloody.

Though, even using AD&D you could buy a decent herd of sheep or cattle and head into the wilderness with hired farm hands.  What you do is build a fortified farmstead with its own well and XP farm all the stuff that comes after you and your livestock.  So you start raising hedgerows to funnel visitors into kill zones and try to make alliances with local nature powers like satyrs, centaurs, and nymphs.  You could even do it with a character who got seduced by a dryad.  Just set up and let the adventures come to you.  The problem is that most raiders don't carry all their worldly wealth with them so the profit margin will be thin but with the right application of bless flocks and sacrifices to the gods of fertility you might be able to make more money in the meat trade.  And if they don't know that those cans of 'tuna' contain goblin well, you probably didn't play enough nethack.

Quote from: David Johansen;927956What you do is build a fortified farmstead with its own well and XP farm all the stuff that comes after you and your livestock.

You can also use peasants in place of livestock.

Just sayin'.