Have you ever played a character who had basically no reason to be involved in the plot?

I'm curious as to why anyone would do this. I mean, I've always done my best to make a character who'd fit in with the game. If everyone's a murderhobo, I'll be a murderhobo too. If the game's about a heroic crusade, then I'll be one of the heroic crusaders.

I mean, it's not hard to overhaul your concept to play better with others.

>Game will allegedly be about carving out a name for yourself in a foreign city
>Make a city slicker type character who should be able to help the party make contacts and rise through the ranks of the city hierarchy.
>Game immediately turns into exploring untamed wilderness in a land where everyone is hostile and nobody wants to talk or make a deal
>City we started in is effectively removed from the equation shortly thereafter
>Stuck with a character who could barely contribute anything until I had him wander off into the forest alone and get eaten by a bear.

What's going on in this thread, bruddhas?

No, because doing so would be a dick move. As a GM, I will straight up refuse any character with no reason to be involved in the game. Roleplaying requires the GM and the players to meet each other halfway, and a big part of that in chargen is making a character appropriate to the premise of the game.

Once had a fellow player insist on playing a deer centaur mailman who was somehow a monk, despite insisting he never got into fights and was very cautious.

His reason for joining the existing party, a bunch of people working for our local lord sent to stop some bandits harassing a town was initially for protection along to road as he was to deliver some shit to that same town.

So naturally, once we arrived in the town we gathered information and set about solving the issue (solve here meaning murder). Whereupon the campaign came to a screeching halt as he asked why not only would he join us on this quest so fraught with danger, but why we'd even speak to one another once we'd reached town safely.

It took like 45 minutes of everyone but him saying 'I don't know, why would you come? Why didn't you make a character that'd care? Fuck it, just come along and stop being difficult.' for him to stop whining and just join in.

Mostly by running from combat.

> tfw other 3/10 are autists and demand a short novel length backstory

I hate this, sometimes you gotta take it into your own hands, tell your party what happened to you, lie if you have to but do everything you can to make them want to help you and it might just force the DM's hand.

My last campaign. The GM tried to railroad too hard and in the process removed the very reason why my character was involved with the rest of the party.
This was actually beneficial, because I could simply walk out of them, after experiencing one of the worst games with definitely the worst GM I've ever met in past 16 years.

one of my players wanted to try DMing for the first time, after 3 of my characters died over 7 sessions I tried to introduce the 4th one.

It was a time during the story when the party wasnt doing anything and didnt need someone to join. I walk up in my power armor and the android player said "my brow sweats with grease at the sight of him"

The only reason my character is with the party is because he is concerned about the android that sweats, and he wont let me take a look at him. God what a joke

It would help if i even got a written back story rather than a text that says "I want to be __insert vidya character__ BUT WITH MAGIC :D"

I fucking hate coward characters.

>Be the Eternal GM
>State your setting, so I may make it
>"We want to play sci fi and deal with space pirates."
>Your wish is granted
>party is on big pirate ship, stolen from a shipyard
>pirate/insurgency lines blurred, they are basically rebels resorting to piracy for funds
>players decide to take on a warship of IRA-types, for reasons that didnt make sense to me even then
>shockingly, it goes bad when Kyle decides to try to "pull aggro", despite being the squishiest of them all
>picks a knife fight with basically an in-universe Krogan, loses spectacularly
>the one thing he's good at is Face/Stealth, so he bails and changes his identity to be a pirate
>rest of the party is captured
>he decides not to rescue them, even when I give him a straight-line back to their ship, the opportunity, a gun, and the keys to their cuffs.
>"Nah, that'd be too dangerous. I'll see what happens"
>1 airlock trip later, they are a party of 1

I might add he has joined, on 3 different occassions:

>Space Pirates
>unironically ISIS because an encounter was scary
>The Galactic Empire purely because he felt the Rebels owed him hazard pay
>A lich because he killed a peasant over a pay dispute and he figured the Lich was hiring

please elaborate, that sounds amusing

Rather make a short novel than be another murderhobo.

Vaan is necessary!
NECESSARY!

Met up with some old friends after a fews years of not seeng them, and joined a campaign in progress as a Treesinger Druid (like normal Druid, but all his wildshapes and empathy bonuses are plant-related instead of animals.)

I wasn’t really invested in the campaign itself because I didn’t really understand the setting (it was set in the Path of Exile world; I only got around to playing it after I joined the campaign) but I did my best to play along as a hermit/‘lone wolfsbane’ (damn I wish I used that earlier) who stumbled curious about people who stumbled across the party. I didn’t develop him from there. In fact, I was pretty shitty at druid in general and ended up slowing the game down, which killed my enthusiasm for him.

Only by the grace of an exploding Brass Golem did my character go out on a good note.

The campaign was originally about exploring and colonizing a new continent modeled loosely after south america. We had our Aztec elves and Mayan Kobolds, more drugs than we could handle and several strong foothold colonies. The GM then plays Darksouls and suddenly we stumble onto an endless gothic castle in the middle of the fucking jungle populated by chatty "undead" and fucked up knights and throws a plotline revolving around rekindling a sacred fire at us out of the blue. The whole tone changed to grimdark.
Once I realized what was going on and got the other players in on it, we tried our best to disrupt everything. Several attempts were made at rekindling that sacred fire by burning down the castle including dropping alchemist fire from a small airship the GM forgot we had, tried flooding it by redirecting a river once. We tried just leaving the area for another a few times but always ended up back at the stupid castle. At one point we got as much processed drugs as we could and tried doping everyone we came across inside. The GM eventually just walked out on us and that was that.

The character I'm playing now was basically this for the first five or so sessions. I was having a minor crisis because I couldn't figure out what his motivation was, and was thinking about rerolling in order to create a character more fitting for the story.

Motivation finally came in the form of a talking necromantic bow, and I've had fun with him since, but man was he dull at first.

I'm the Forever DM, so no.
However, there is a 90% chance that any player you encounter will do this, because 90% of players are hot garbage.

>My DM did something I didn't acre for, so we made it as unfun for him as possible!

No, YOU are That Guy. Fucking talk about your grievances like a god damned adult. cunt.

>Guardian of Yuna during her journey
>Nothing to do with the plot
So Kimahri, Lulu and Yuna, also have nothing to do with the plot?

I have one recurring rule for character building. Make sure your character has a reason to join the party.

One guy outright ignored those instructions, even to the point where I took every other reason to not join form him during the prologue, while managing to connect it to the plot by the spur of the damn moment. He chose to sit around feeling sorry for himself then attempt to contact the party, so I told him, okay, they leave you. Make a new fucking character. He wised up, for like 2 sessions, until we kicked him for being a douche canoe.

that nigga's fucking racist

They're all assholes but that DM sounds like an idiot

That teenage girl has awfully small breasts.

just kill his character the next time he pulls this shit, people don't like turncoats user

Man FFXII was lit but Vaan really was irrelevant.

The question is have I ever played a character who had a reason. The answer is no

Absolutely. But they're the aggressors, because they are pieces of shit. The DM is just a bad DM, but that would be easier and more effective to fix with discussions.

Him being a bad DM doesn't excuse them for being bad people.

>DM: So yeah, the campaign is now about being monster-hunters on an unexplored continent because Monster Hunter World just came out this week and I have a hard-on for it!
I have fought off the urge to do this many times.

Better dead than Al-Bhed, ya?

If Vaan didn't exist no one would have stopped Ashe from doing exactly as the Occuria wanted, committing genocide and becoming a new Dynast King pawn in their hands.

What about Venat?

>have a friend who's new to RPGs
>give him a group of NPC friends who can help him get involved in the story
>he does nothing with it
>heavily imply that the princess has a crush on him
>he does nothing with it
>he ignores pretty much everything happening around him
>in a last bout of desperation, have it so that the campaign's main villain was, by pure coincidence, his big brother the whole time
>he doesn't seem to care

Wasn't Vaan literally added to the story midway through production because some executive didn't want Ashe to be the main character because she wasn't a metrosexual Jonas brother?

...Have you ever played a character, user?

>LOL I HAVE A FAMILY! THREATEN TO KILL THEM SO I CAN PRETEND TOCARE!

is not "a reason to be involved in the plot". It's the exact opposite. Everyone has a fucking family. It's only marginally less lazy than "lol I'm an orphan!"

Unless your family member is involved in the fucking plot, there is no fucking way to actually use the PC's family aside from "lol I killed your fantasy little sister now you must roleplay being sad/angry for a little while!"

And that is still not actually related to the plot for its own sake. It's just a completely bizarre deus ex machina intervention to force some kind of emotional display.

If you want your PC to be involved in the plot.. you need to actually think about it instead of just writing the character you want to play and then shit out some lazy bullshit excuse later so you can blame the GM when your Mary Sue gets caught out.

I ignore PCs' families because I don't give a cunting fuck that you have a mother. It has literally nothing to do with the story at all and it's useless to me. You don't get to blame me for not killing your stupid mother later one when you realize you have failed a roleplayer.

God damnit. I want to be in a Deathwatch game so I can Space Marnine Wakka. That said, what chapter would he fit best in?

Oh... you mean... you want to betray the PCs who are your allies confronting me here in my lair?

>Yeah! So... like... does our benefits package include dental? And what about vacation days?

Hmmm. Would you describe yourself as a kind of "cynical opportunist", user?

>Yup. I like being alive and I'll do what I need to, betray who I need to and say what I need to! Because I'm smart. Not dead!

I see. And... would you say that I have much reason to hire you? Knowing that you would betray me the moment it benefits you?

>Erm. Well. Yeah! I mean, I'm real good at running away, didn't I mention?

Hmmm. Yes. Well. Let me ask your allies a question here - would you lot mind just taking a step back one moment? I don't want to accidentally catch you in the blast radius.

Thats actually kinda how the Lich convo went.

>be chaotic neutral Rogue
>try to charm his way into the Lich castle
>shockingly, Troll Zombies and dragon skeletons are not chatty (they were aware of these from past visits)
>sneaks in, makes his way to library
>announces his presence
>Lich comes in
>Rogue walks out and says "Hey I---"
>gets crunched by Implosion on the spot
>"hey no fair!"
>"remember when he talked to you once and you threw a dagger at him and the party ambushed him before he got 2 seconds in? He remembers"

He didnt do it again... in that campaign anymore.

I had a character's parents involved in the plot because they were war vets. The two of them ran a small mechanics shop the players occasionally visited when they were in the area and needed repairs and the like, and they both showed up near the end of the campaign all dressed up in their military uniforms to go into battle alongside their kid because they fought for their country once and they'd do so again.

A PC's family is the same as any other connections a PC might have with people in the world, and they can be utilised the same as any other connections the PC has with people in the world.

>Get invited to game.
>Setting is one that's hostile to mages. Remember this.
>Opener is a dragon burning down the town all the PC's live in.
>Hook up with the other survivors, the rest of the party, and decide we need to head to the nearest town to warn somebody.
>Do so. Some small hijinks ensue. All's going well so far.
>Get to the city. Get to the inn and prep to inform the nearest authority figure about the dragon attack.
>Wake up next morning, party member is gone.
>Got captured for being a mage.
>Bring up that he was a mage and got what was coming to him, but get talked into saving the guy because I knew him, all the usual stuff.
>Plan to prison break the guy
>Everyone else reveals they're also mages.
>I am literally the only non-mage in the world that's pretty anti-mage, meaning I'm now surrounded by wanted criminals and attempting to consider breaking out another mage from prison.
>"Well what do we do after we break him out?"
>'We'll catch a ship to the mage-friendly country over the sea and make a living as mages.'
>I nope out, steal one of the party's horses and ride my ass to the nearest city to tell THEM about the dragon attack.

Rolled up another character after that and went along fine, but Christ. "Hey, leave everything you know behind to come hang out with a bunch of mages despite the fact it was established long before play your character didn't like mages just like most people in the setting!"
No, I'm not going to do that, that would not be in-character at all.

>Penelo
People seem to forget about her, but she always bothered me more than Vaan. I didn't like Vaan being the main character (and some of that is probably because I hate his design), but that was my gripe with him, not that he exists at all. Penelo is neither particularly integral to the plot nor an entertaining or intriguing character, so there's basically no point to her at all. She's taking up room in the roster that could have gone to literally any more interesting character concept. Hell, just replace her with a Bangaa and she's already more compelling, both because Bangaa are cool and because simply having a party member who's a scary lizard can be used as a basis for compelling situations.

represents the average poor man who has been affected by all the douchey politicking of the upper classes; gives the average person a window into the story, a way to bring them in from a point at which they are familiar

coulda been way less gay though

Thank you. Thank you for murdering that imbecile, I'm so goddamn tired of players that don't realize that recurring villains have a longer memory than the average goldfish.

You're a bad DM if you let this guy kill the entire party.

>Gondor's lies

>come up with an intricate fantasy world in which to play a TTRPG
>it takes literal years
>you integrate the characters your players have made into the dense narrative
>finally done, invite them over to come and play it
>everyone sits down
>all ready to go
>your kid brother comes up to the table, asks what you're doing
>tell him to go away
>he demands to play
>he demands to be the main character
>hand him a character sheet
>he begins writing, barely legibly:
>Name: vAAn

>player has a character tha gets into fights and eventually decides to leave the party over differences
>comes back with a new character with the same motivations

we asked him to justify why his character was wantign to join us, especially when an enemy of ours seemed like a much better choice for him, and he kind of floundered a bit. Why

>CMOT Dibbler
>LN
Pick one

It feels pretty good to do, honestly.
>Monster Hunter World about to drop.
>Player, after the campaign has been on hiatus for months: I can't make it to the return session due to falling on hard times.
>DM (Me): Well guess what guys, it just so happens that I happened to find old campaign notes for a campaign inspired by Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. Who wants to play that instead of staying on hiatus until user gets back on his feet?

Fucking Woolie

Wasn't Penelo's role to befriend Larsa and help encourage him to be a good emperor?

>Im-fucking-plying Zidane isn't tapping that Princess's fat ass everyday

A couple times.
I don't mean to dodge responsibility, but honestly all but one time, it has totally been the GM's fault. I'll either not be "spoiled" about the plot, and thus make a hardboiled gumshoe, only to find out that we are clearing out marauding vampires on the high seas with a merfolk war on the horizon, or else I'll give my character's proto-backstory to the DM, then my involvement in the plot will be entirely hinged upon being betrayed by his partner that themselves has no real association to the main plot, or else the plot suffers one too many "insane twists" to the point that nobody is here for any reason beyond we are playing this game together.

The one time it was wholly, completely, and beyond any doubt my fault was the time I needed to get a bunch of things off the backburner and into the trash in one, magnificent cathartic burst of godawful writing and execution. I wish I could say it went as well as some of those legendary tales you hear.