GM makes a game with multiple factions, all of whom want the PCs to join them

>GM makes a game with multiple factions, all of whom want the PCs to join them.
>Tries to make the decision about who to side with evenhanded. There are no clear good guys or bad guys.
>Every single faction appears more unreasonable the more time you spend with them, forming a balance on who you hate the least instead of who you like the most.

Why does this happen so often?

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Welcome to reality. If any of them were truly reasonable they wouldn't be so opposed to each other. And they will probably only unite to curb stomp any truly reasonable faction.

>Why does this happen so often?

GMs often get caught up in the intoxicating aura of their own worldbuilding, and forget that players want to interact with the world, not watch the GM interacting with himself.

When you only have a rough idea of your world, it's a lot easier to accommodate the players and make a game that seems meaningful to them.

I fail to see the problem, honestly.

In fact, like IRL, lot of groups start with, in their own view, good intents.
The more time pass, the more defeats or harm suffered, the more power hungry politicians plot, the more idealism comes in schock with real facts, the more the movement changes.
For example, one starts by fighting for equality, and end as an horrible group hating anybody more successful , seeing them as oppressors, destroying any chances of improvement.
Just an example of possible reason.
Or a revolt against a tyrant, ending in the slaughtering of the entire aristocracy, even the benevolent ones.
Both normal people and idealists will start to hate " what X has become".
In the end the movement changed and the people in it too.

How does any of that have to do with the failure to make any of the supposedly neutral factions sympathetic?

Are you the same autist who keeps making threads about not getting the Golden Rule on Veeky Forums?

>Are you the same autist who keeps making threads about not getting the Golden Rule on Veeky Forums?
Who?

Sorry, I'm probably going to do this.
Because when people enter conflict, they tend to do things that make them look like douchebags from an outsider's perspective but are at least mostly justified from their point of view.
See: American nuclear bombing of Japan.

Therefore the correct action is to form a good faction and wipe out all the rest.

It's what we did in one of our games.

>form a good faction and wipe out all the rest.
That's what the other factions said.

This is kinda more vidya-related, but I think alot of the principles apply to roleplaying games too.
youtube.com/watch?v=Lg_Lp5bO1U8

Yes, but the players are surely good because they are roleplaying as good aligned guys and not neutrals. If they are neutrals then it would be hypocritical.

>its a choice 'who you hate the least'

so like in real life, its very realistic
good job GM
i don't see a problem

desuarchive.org/his/thread/3504081/#3504081

desuarchive.org/his/thread/3567099/#3567099

This guy.

Pretty good example, but it looks reasonable even from the point of view of outsiders when you look at the lead up.

>nearly 100% fatalities of both military and civilian populace of okinawa, not because the Americans deliberately genocided it, but because those who didn't fight threw themselves off of cliffs rather than be captured
>Projections of over 1 million casualties just to establish a beachhead on the primary islands of japan
>Intelligence and the historical record show that the Japanese military government was planning on basically arming everyone who could so much as carry a sharpened bamboo shaft.

With numbers like that, you find something that will absolutely break their spirit. The Japanese were already completely aware that they could do next to nothing against american bombing runs, but by blowing two cities to ash (the first to demonstrate capability, the second to show that it wasn't a one shot thing and imply that the Americans could keep it up indefinitely), the Americans showed the Japanese that there would not be a glorious final stand, they would not take as many or more with themselves as they were conquered. They would just be wiped off the map with a few planes.

Realistically, if you have a group of highly sought after adventurers who hate all the various contenders for whatever the prize is, just some more than others; they won't get involved. In practice, that means you have no game.

no u

seriously this is dead end for you? that only means you are making it all about aesthetics or superficiality of a faction, it doesn't matter how much you players hate certain group as long as this group has something players want

this needs to be about buisness, menly adventuring business not about which faction has prettier colours or which faction has better morals on the surface (and seeing players hate them anyway means they are pretty shitty morals at that).

make them join lesser evil so do speak

Also I personally have a stake in this because both of my parents were concieved after WWII, and my father's father was part of the pacific recon forces, meaning he was literally dropped by himself on enemy islands with enough supplies and cartography gear to last himself until the pickup time, and if he wasn't there when the PT boat pulled up he would be considered MIA and written off.

He'd literally be in the first wave of folks on the beaches of Kyushu or whereever the initial beachhead was planned. My mother's father was a medium to short range battery commander on a half-track, he was often in sight of the enemy guns because that's how that sort of artillery worked. The chances of both of them getting through it alive is pretty much nill. One of my Mother's best friend's father was a piloting teacher in Japan who couldn't take it any more, cause he was training kamikaze pilots and he was about to volunteer for becoming a kamikaze pilot himself right before the bombs dropped.

So it'd be incredibly hypocritical for me to not say 'yeah, dropping the bombs would be a good thing'

Oddly, nobody bothered to talk a little bit about game theory. Was a cute little model of that whole thing on the BBC a month or two ago that was pretty interesting.

Yeah, it's a simplistic model, but it makes a reasonable degree of sense.

ncase.me/trust/

Often a good guy will start a decent faction that over time will get corroded. A neutral guy with interest in making a viable model will make a faction harder to corrode because its guidelines won't be supported mainly by morality but by utility.

You need both in order to get things working, and argueably, someone who is an affable lawful evil character bent on making the whole structure incorruptible, like how police may ask psychos for help in getting other psychos caught.

Although going full ogre battle is fucking hard m8

>you need both
Not at all. Someone good isn't incapable of understanding how neutral or evil works. Being good doesn't make you blind to others nature.

It doesn't open to you instantly their worries, their thought processes or their worldview either, you know, because you're trying to offer a real alternative to polarized solutions out there.

Only considering the good guys severely limits your point of view, even if they are socially able, good with empathy and capable at rulling.

>Only considering the good guys severely limits your point of view
Yeah, no. I have to digress. You are literally implying that someone good cannot know how someone evil thinks. That's untrue.