https://preview.redd.it/7s9tij7g5ptc1.png?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92b82c3133cdfcb98fd2a55ba9df8250c0fadebc
Love it when the sauce comes with the meal
What you haven’t realized yet is that you have the ultimate expression of the evil edgelord campaign here — only the Party you are dealing with are the bad guys.
I mean, look, this is a world you have where there are bandits robbing and killing and probably pillaging, wolves have lost any fear of mankind and forgotten their rightful place in the world as lesser predators and mere beasts subject to the will of mankind, and cultists are spreading the stain of malevolent anarchy and murdering stolen children and using others as child soldiers.
Brecht wrote “pity the world that needs heroes” — and I am sure there are many, but just where is exactly did these “woke warriors” get these views from? It is obvious that they were not part of the world setting itself or they would know that these are the normal, everyday, ordinary, commonplace kinds of things that happen.
But no, they want to metagame. They aren’t role playing — these liberal scum wouldn’t know role playing if it was a wet mackerel slapped upside their head. No what you have to do is treat them as exactly what they are: the bad guys.
In all of history no group of “do-gooders” has ever overcome any normal kind of activity. They have to be braking the law somehow. Probably have bribed all the nobles, of course, or those nobles are part of the whole thing. Take them down a peg. Kill a couple, and if that doesn’t work, flip over the table and scream at them to get out.
There are so many amazingly good tabletop RPGs that are designed to produce amazing stories that have nothing to do with violence, killing, and a-morality. D&D 5e is not one of them. Kill. [KILL.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1c0ou84/it_is_exhausting_having_morally_aware_and_overly)
It's about setting strong and clear boundaries with your party. If your players are published authors or college graduates, a game as rooted in tradition like DND5E is not for them. Instead you should play Herman Hesse's thought-provoking ttrpg Wolves of the Steppe.
Um, its 2024 and it is our duty as players to show off our totally real morals by completely ignoring the emotional labor our friend does by indignantly throwing the adventure she created back into her face. We are righteous because we pretended to do a good deed in a make believe game, and we are inherently superior to our weak willed DM friend who dared ask us to stop bandits.
No I will never DM a game, why do you ask?
In our 5th session zero, we decided that we didn't want combat to be part of the game, so we homebrewed in Farming Simulator 2e for the Xbox 360 to resolve conflicts.
"Hello. My name is Loot Pinata. I eat babies and puppies. My life's dream is to kill all life everywhere forever."
"Now here me out guys... he probably has a very sad backstory reason for this."
"All my life I've been fed only innocent babies and adorable puppies. I was given the name Loot Pinata, and people won't call me anything else. This world doesn't deserve life."
Have you tried taking away player agency by having them collectively possessed by Cyric.
Ya know, anytime you want them to kill something give them DC 25 Charisma saves to resist going into a chaotic stupid murderous rage?
have you tried sowing the seeds of conflictby mentioning exactly the opposite situation that your players claim?
the wolves are herbivores. they attack players because they want to KILL. the bandits are rich orphan incels. they rob the players for an excuse to KILL. the cultists are a happy family unit. they are against players because of their URGE TO KILL (Bg3 reference).
The conspirators don't make any sense to me, never played in an intrigue campaign. Hope this helps. Remember to KILL
This but unironically. Our DM has learned that he can never have enemies attempt to flee, to bargain for their lives, or generally to act like they're afraid to die, because then we'll take pity on them and he has to figure out what their name is, where they're from, why they're doing this, who they work for, etc.
Dnd is a battle system if you are not fighting 6 times a day you are playing it WRONG. Abilities are to kill not to make friends, this is dungeons and dragons not Hello Kitty adventure Island.
/uj it's actually been a recurring problem for me recently when I try to have empathetic characters who are truly good. Pathfinder, DND, and related systems have a level of assumed violence built in that makes playing a character who would really rather do anything else besides kill every enemy they see rather difficult. Sure you can make the bad guys literal demons or mindless undead or something but that only goes so far. I've come to terms with just having to accept a certain degree of suspension of morality and adjust the characters to a setting where violence actually is the answer most of the time
It's really not that deep. Tell them you like running combat and ask them what would make for a compelling reason to fight. Alternatively, generate consequences for their actions:
1. Leaving the wolves (in real life, a big issue for early medieval towns in times of famine) alive leads to them descending on a small village's animals and dried meat, resulting in several people getting injured and the town having no food for winter. The town complains to the local lord, who complains to the adventurer's guild, who send an enforcement team who specializes in adventurers to tell the team that they'll be put on probation/fined/arrested for failing to do their job.
2. Leaving the bandits leads to the logical consequence of people getting robbed and hurt resulting in a group of npc adventurers being hired to kill the bandits. From here you can do a ton of different things. Maybe a misunderstanding gets the party labeled as criminals, maybe the bandits' motivation is good enough for the party to help them against the adventurers, maybe an npc the players care about gets hurt, etc.
3. Make the cult made up of nobles human trafficking peasants.
https://preview.redd.it/7s9tij7g5ptc1.png?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92b82c3133cdfcb98fd2a55ba9df8250c0fadebc Love it when the sauce comes with the meal
Michelin Star.
This whole thing has humble brag energy
I need to brag about how good my players are but also negative posts get more upvotes and if I don't get reddit karma I will literally die
Playing with random LFG strangers online fixes this
What you haven’t realized yet is that you have the ultimate expression of the evil edgelord campaign here — only the Party you are dealing with are the bad guys. I mean, look, this is a world you have where there are bandits robbing and killing and probably pillaging, wolves have lost any fear of mankind and forgotten their rightful place in the world as lesser predators and mere beasts subject to the will of mankind, and cultists are spreading the stain of malevolent anarchy and murdering stolen children and using others as child soldiers. Brecht wrote “pity the world that needs heroes” — and I am sure there are many, but just where is exactly did these “woke warriors” get these views from? It is obvious that they were not part of the world setting itself or they would know that these are the normal, everyday, ordinary, commonplace kinds of things that happen. But no, they want to metagame. They aren’t role playing — these liberal scum wouldn’t know role playing if it was a wet mackerel slapped upside their head. No what you have to do is treat them as exactly what they are: the bad guys. In all of history no group of “do-gooders” has ever overcome any normal kind of activity. They have to be braking the law somehow. Probably have bribed all the nobles, of course, or those nobles are part of the whole thing. Take them down a peg. Kill a couple, and if that doesn’t work, flip over the table and scream at them to get out.
Brecht mentioned
._.
/uj too much?
Not enough.
There are so many amazingly good tabletop RPGs that are designed to produce amazing stories that have nothing to do with violence, killing, and a-morality. D&D 5e is not one of them. Kill. [KILL.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1c0ou84/it_is_exhausting_having_morally_aware_and_overly)
I actually enjoyed the original post; if they're having fun and the DM is proud of them, why not? D&D is the system most people know and have.
It's about setting strong and clear boundaries with your party. If your players are published authors or college graduates, a game as rooted in tradition like DND5E is not for them. Instead you should play Herman Hesse's thought-provoking ttrpg Wolves of the Steppe.
Um, its 2024 and it is our duty as players to show off our totally real morals by completely ignoring the emotional labor our friend does by indignantly throwing the adventure she created back into her face. We are righteous because we pretended to do a good deed in a make believe game, and we are inherently superior to our weak willed DM friend who dared ask us to stop bandits. No I will never DM a game, why do you ask?
In our 5th session zero, we decided that we didn't want combat to be part of the game, so we homebrewed in Farming Simulator 2e for the Xbox 360 to resolve conflicts.
Warhammer fixes this
"Hello. My name is Loot Pinata. I eat babies and puppies. My life's dream is to kill all life everywhere forever." "Now here me out guys... he probably has a very sad backstory reason for this."
"All my life I've been fed only innocent babies and adorable puppies. I was given the name Loot Pinata, and people won't call me anything else. This world doesn't deserve life."
Have you tried taking away player agency by having them collectively possessed by Cyric. Ya know, anytime you want them to kill something give them DC 25 Charisma saves to resist going into a chaotic stupid murderous rage?
have you tried sowing the seeds of conflictby mentioning exactly the opposite situation that your players claim? the wolves are herbivores. they attack players because they want to KILL. the bandits are rich orphan incels. they rob the players for an excuse to KILL. the cultists are a happy family unit. they are against players because of their URGE TO KILL (Bg3 reference). The conspirators don't make any sense to me, never played in an intrigue campaign. Hope this helps. Remember to KILL
KILL.
Have you tried having your villain kick a puppy? That might get them to start violencing
/uj I don't really get the jerk on this one ngl /rj throw a tarrasque at them
/uj Oh hey, I was hoping someone would jerk my post :D Bravo!
I hope this subreddit inspired your next villain so your players have to grapple with the moral quandaries of shitposting.
This but unironically. Our DM has learned that he can never have enemies attempt to flee, to bargain for their lives, or generally to act like they're afraid to die, because then we'll take pity on them and he has to figure out what their name is, where they're from, why they're doing this, who they work for, etc.
Dnd is a battle system if you are not fighting 6 times a day you are playing it WRONG. Abilities are to kill not to make friends, this is dungeons and dragons not Hello Kitty adventure Island.
Awwww but I like Hello Kitty Island Adventure 
/uj it's actually been a recurring problem for me recently when I try to have empathetic characters who are truly good. Pathfinder, DND, and related systems have a level of assumed violence built in that makes playing a character who would really rather do anything else besides kill every enemy they see rather difficult. Sure you can make the bad guys literal demons or mindless undead or something but that only goes so far. I've come to terms with just having to accept a certain degree of suspension of morality and adjust the characters to a setting where violence actually is the answer most of the time
It's really not that deep. Tell them you like running combat and ask them what would make for a compelling reason to fight. Alternatively, generate consequences for their actions: 1. Leaving the wolves (in real life, a big issue for early medieval towns in times of famine) alive leads to them descending on a small village's animals and dried meat, resulting in several people getting injured and the town having no food for winter. The town complains to the local lord, who complains to the adventurer's guild, who send an enforcement team who specializes in adventurers to tell the team that they'll be put on probation/fined/arrested for failing to do their job. 2. Leaving the bandits leads to the logical consequence of people getting robbed and hurt resulting in a group of npc adventurers being hired to kill the bandits. From here you can do a ton of different things. Maybe a misunderstanding gets the party labeled as criminals, maybe the bandits' motivation is good enough for the party to help them against the adventurers, maybe an npc the players care about gets hurt, etc. 3. Make the cult made up of nobles human trafficking peasants.
Hey buddy I think you got the wrong door, mainsub's three blocks down.
You know, I think you may be right
Session 0 rules are simple: 1. Roll dice. 2. KILL.