Hello Veeky Forums, perhaps you can assist me with this conundrum.
I have a player with ambitions to take over the known world. He has the appropriate tools to do so, and has already cemented his grasp over a moderate sized region.
There are several problems that come along with this.
- His character no longer has a reason to sally forth and adventure. His subordinates can handle most challenges I throw the party's way.
- He's splitting the party. His reign could be described as neutral evil with extremely good public relations. The player's expertise at getting others to see things his way is the only thing that's prevented the party from totally fracturing, and that thread is starting to wear thin.
Should I just break up the group into two parts (those for and against the character)? Should I tell him to roll a new character? Should I deus-ex his empire into the ground?
The system is 3.5, and I'm happy to answer any questions that can help clear this issue up.
Pic somewhat related to the character in question.
Gavin Price
Necromancer with an army of undead march from the underdark. have fun bud.
Bentley Butler
maybe it's time for a Tarrasque?
Tyler Ward
So a deus-ex is really the only option at this point? I feel a little bad knocking over his sandcastle, he put a lot of work and thought into it.
Jonathan Cox
I don't know. Is it making the game uninteresting? You should just let it play out if it's not stifling fun. Fuck you could have your player become an organic big bad evil guy. That's pretty cool.
Jackson Harris
have him over thrown by his own empire. is always fun.
Isaac Bailey
maybe not dues ex, but give the pc a challenge
Luis Wright
Can the rest of the players have a place of power in his kingdom? Maybe just up the ante and scale.
I would probably just tell him that is such a full time thing, that he would need to retire the character, but he could still RP the king character. Maybe before each session, throw conundrums and problems at him to solve. use his choices to direct the kingdom and world
Carson Hall
It's extremely fun, but it's making the game mechanically difficult to execute. At this point, I essentially have to have to tables set up, and given fractures that are starting to form on the good aligned table, it might become three...
He has nearly everyone drugged up on magically enhanced opium, some without their knowledge. I've tried having people get rowdy, but he just upped the concentration for a while. It's in the food and water that his little kingdom manufactures as a result of that experiment in dethroning.
Any ideas on a challenge that can't be handled by subordinates? That's principally the issue.
The players with even reasonably questionable morality have fallen in line behind him. If I don't have any better ideas, I like your latter suggestion a lot.
Jaxon Reyes
No no, dude, no. Listen. You ARE the Deus: your narrative, the machina.
He's a NE diplomancer who is sending forth minions? Got a country under his thumb?
Great. move the campaign away from him, include his minions with the party. Basically, unless he's actively scrying what his minions are doing 100% of the time, his PC just became a retired patron. The rest of the party and his minion are now the party of focus.
if he *is* scrying on his minion 24/7, he's not paying attention to his rule, and shit starts to turn against him. Pick a natural disaster: Famine, Plague, an especially bad unseasonal storm... it's really fucking hard to talk down a hurricane. Now add another, somewhat different problem... Crime, a messianic cult, a fire in the warehouse district of the city uncovering one of the unforgivable things he's done... Shit, as they say, Happens. and it turns the people against him... so now he's seeing disruption, not just in your game, but in his kingdom. The borderlands are pushing back with invading barbarian masses and raiders, refugees from adjacent and distant lands are creating a population glut... Everything /pol/ has ever said would happen *does*. and the people aren't putting up with his diplomacy anymore. They don't listen to his proclamations, and he can't be there in person to sway every angry mob.
And so ends the reign of Player Character the First.
