Refusing to Engage With the Premise?

Veeky Forums, I've been running a campaign for about three months now. The idea is that the PCs are humans (from Earth) who've been summoned to another world to act as Heroes. They were summoned because the magical artifacts of the Otherworld are gene-encoded, preventing natives from using them, which means that summoning people from other worlds is a way to get around it.

The thing is, I've been dropping hints that the side that summoned them isn't entirely on the level. They're actually using the PCs to wipe out all opposition to their rule. They want to eradicate most of the non-human races, crush all resistance, and the Demon Lord they're ultimately trying to kill is just the opposition who's been unfairly maligned.

The summoners don't intend to screw the PCs over. If the PCs complete their mission, they'll be amply rewarded and sent home to their own world. The idea is that the people on both sides genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, and it's up to the PCs to figure out the uncomfortable implications of their actions.

I have one PC who's already figured this out. The problem is that he doesn't care. He's done everything he can to prevent the other PCs from figuring this out, and they just go along with whatever their leader tells them to do.

I've spoken to the player, but he's outright told me that he's entirely onboard with the whole 'genocide and establishing a thousand-year kingdom' thing. As in, he's actively pushing for it. This is a desirable end-goal for him, never mind if all the orcs and demon-races have to die and thousands have to be slaughtered in the process.

I don't know, Veeky Forums. It just sort of feels dismaying. I'm not even sure that the other PCs would care if I flat-out told them. How do I get them to, I dunno, feel empathy for the ugly races?

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>They want to eradicate most of the non-human races, crush all resistance, and the Demon Lord they're ultimately trying to kill is just the opposition who's been unfairly maligned.

Why should they possibly care unless the summoners actively turn on them.

The point is, the summoners aren't going to turn on them. The PCs are supposed to eventually go "Hey, wait, this is kind of terrible" independently.

If you're willing to kill people in a different universe because some stranger asked you to, you probably don't mind killing all of them.

>How do I get them to, I dunno, feel empathy for the ugly races?

You can't. Unless you specifically go out of your way to make them aware of what they're doing, which you have to do by showing-not-telling, you will not have the opportunity because you have a player actively workign agaisnt you. unless you literally cheat and force the issue somehow, you'll have to settle for what you've got. The players are having fun? then that's okay. Understand you made an error. When the campaign is over let them know what they did - and watch their faces as they realize they've been duped by their fellow players and the sorcerers.

What Would Conan Do?

>When the campaign is over let them know what they did - and watch their faces as they realize they've been duped by their fellow players and the sorcerers.

Would anyone genuinely give a shit, though? If I was sent to another world, killed some ugly monsters, then sent home with as much gold as I could carry, I wouldn't feel any real guilt.

>watch their faces as they

high-five and bicker over who gets to DM next, hopefully.

well, then have the orcs and demons each summon heroes of their own to wield artifact weapons. or have the population of the summoning race start looking to have the heroes installed as leaders (THEY are the ones doing all the fighting and winning, where as the leaders aren't doing shit) This should make the leaders start getting paranoid about what these humans will do once things are over, and start arranging "accidents" to happen to the heroes

>I've spoken to the player, but he's outright told me that he's entirely onboard with the whole 'genocide and establishing a thousand-year kingdom' thing. As in, he's actively pushing for it.

Having an epic xD /pol/tard in the group who only wants use the game as a vessel to meme about Hitler is not the worst problem your group could have, but it's definitely annoying.

The players will probably go "Cool, boss fights."

You don't. /thread
Seriously. You don't. DnD isn't a novel written by the DM to use the PCs as pawns to play out. Its the exact opposite. It's a novel being written by the players where the DM set the initial conditions.

You have the exact opportunity to show what would happen if the genocide that all the anime light novels have the characters "find out" and stop. Display the consequences:
Mass land expansion means intraspecies war.
Mass unstability as people stake out their own claims.
Trade falters as old goods are not available and common goods sharply rise in price.
Riots happen, kingdom gets overthrown.

Seriously, you have the option to show how you want your players to see empathy by displaying the results of rapid colonialism. Stop railroading, let it happen.

If you want them to buy into it, and they want to buy into it, and theyre not buying into it, you have failed to communicate.
You should be more open with your players.
>The summoners don't intend to screw the PCs over.
And this is another potential problem. If you don't want the players siding with the summoner in the long term, then don't let them.
Rajaat from Dark Sun immediately springs to mind. He empowered a bunch of humans to go genocide one race each.
They collectively beat his shit in when they realized they were clearing space for Halflings and not for Humans.

That's the premise the DM set up. Not everyone wants to star in your epik fantasy novel about deconstructing fantasy violence.

The right thing. Or, failing that, the profitable thing.

The PCs are going to be sent home after this, though. I mean, this might happen eventually, but I don't think they'll be there to see it. It's just going to be a victory parade and then being sent home to their own universe with treasure.

I'm sorry your campaign is going to be... fun escapist fantasy?

You can always Spec Ops: The Line them. Just have them do something absolutely fucking horrific, everything go to shit, and it be entirely their fault.

Other than that, let them do it - just show the consequences of their actions. If they are okay with those actions, have people in-universe explain that they're horrific monsters if they're being horrific monsters.

You really don't think prices and greed would inflate with the expanding safe boundary line as they reclaim land from the xenos? Please think a little. There is no way they are doing a a deep dive into enemy territory without logistics support from the rest of the kingdom/empire. They would be surrounded and snuffed out from repeated wave assault. As a consequence of the need for support, they will obviously be reclaiming land along the way.

The thing that gets him royal booty, or failing that, the thing that gets him royal booty.

The problem is that the kingdom is cheering them on. The local townsfolk love their heroic actions. I was hoping the PCs would, you know, take an objective look at things.

Caring more about your enemies than your friends isn't objectivity user, it's just privilege-flaunting.

Every time your players kill a baby, light a hospital with patients and staff inside on fire, etc, make them roll a sanity check to simulate PTSD.

That's not the thing that causes PTSD, it's the random fireball explosions.

If you think a sane, good person would actually be able to just gun down a child or knowingly murder dozens of people, haha no.

His conscience kept him from quitting but he got forced into kingship and wanted to leave it.

They've literally burned down demonfolk temples with people inside, and seen orcs being lead away to work camps. I keep waiting for something to click, but they prefer to squabble over whether that one elf Cleric or her Sorceress mother is hotter.

No that's a different psychological process. The two were related in that once you'd been under heavy shelling you were often too on-edge to do the sort of threat assessment that allows mercy, but you can bomb weddings all day without getting PTSD.

>burned down demonfolk temples with people inside

Take that, 'variable resist'.

Then accomodate your players. They want a simple kill evil beings campaign with waifus to fawn over and romance.

You're the same as the DM who protested that the daughter of the king got handed over by the players to the usurper.

If I was a typical isekai protagonist and a sexy princess begged for my help, sure why not.

Her mother IS hotter. MILF elf is the best elf.

Presumably these demonfolk are "civilians" - they're not all trying to kill the PCs when they bust on the scene. So describe them as such. Huddled in fear, running away screaming, dropping on their knees and begging for mercy in their own language when the players corner them.

You have sociopaths for players. Have a fantasy wank and be done with it. When they kill the BBEG, finish it off with them either dying to the massive army they skipped, internal warring killing the way home with them now being targets because of their power, or with them killing the kingdom and literally everyone revolting because of the poor economic conditions.
In one they die due to negligence, second from traitors, third by their own ego.

You think that would work, but then the party leader dropped a Mass Petrify on them and called them 'demon cultists'.

Don't listen to this guy he's a passive-aggressive cuck.

>on the front line with SS Panzer Div. 2
>"Hans, do you zink ve are zer bad guys?"
>"Never mind zat, Otto. Hanna Reitsch or Leni Riefenstahl?"

>Colonialism meme

Not the GM, but would that even happen? If the good-badguys win, they win. That seems kind of passive-aggressive to me, honestly.

>Demon Lord
>unfairly maligned
>Demon Lord
>unfairly maligned
Yeah nah, I call bullshit.

Spec Ops can still work. Hell, one of the most crushing moments of that game is when the main antagonist of the game tells you "you're here because you wanted to be something you're not - a hero".
Having them burn down a group of 30 civs, including clear and obvious noncombatants, and describe in excruciatingly grizzly detail what they've done, might snap them out of their genocide frenzy. Have them, through a series of slightly contrived events, end up fighting the guys they're allied to, and justify to themselves that they must have gone rouge,
Just rip ideas from that game in general, it works by taking the idea of the "ra ra, we're the good guys on blind faith!" thing and snapping the player out of it.

> You're the same as the DM who protested that the daughter of the king got handed over by the players to the usurper.

Which thread was that?

He grew up without a father.

Bear with me here: what do your players get from straying off the beaten track? What possible advantage would they have from turning on, presumably, the most powerful human kingdom to fight for orcs and demons?

boards.fireden.net/tg/thread/51205668/#51205668
This one.

I dunno, a chance to act like actual fucking heroes?

Mirror match is the coolest form of boss fight.

I can't tell if it's more than one person trolling the OP. Obviously his players have figured out they're typical vidya protagonists and are enjoying it.

The Aedile is so concerned about his story that he wants to railroad the PCs into feeling bad for something they honestly have no reason to feel bad about. One side summoned them first, they're more relatable and if the two can't coexist, then let allies be allies.

Why? If they're enjoying it you've won.

>PTSD
It's incredibly unlikely for people close to violence to get PTSD, it requires long stints of sleeplessness, fear, and is greatly aggravated by distance. The human brain is very good at disassociating the bad parts of ending someone up close, not so good at far away. That's why it's much more common since WWI, and why people like drone pilots get it so much more than frontline soldiers.

DMs can't subvert the plot without player buy-in.

Players can often subvert the plot with only minimal DM buy-in though! My personal favorite is when I, by virtue of being the most proactive personality in the group, kept convincing everyone we were the plucky rebel group as we literally built a (fantasy) death star and got into political marriages with demon cultists.

You're gonna have to define your non-standard usage of the term Hero user

>violence for money and pussy
Sounds like traditional Grecian heroism to me.

>Aedile
Is that you, FATAL bloke?

Boo hoo he's a fucking DEMON LORD.

I used Aedile ironically because he seems like he's trying to force himself on the players for some bullshit reason.

i second the spec ops the line plan, make it clear that in order to win this war they are gonna have to either do or enable really fucked up things, the trick is tho to make sure that they know this isnt an oc punishment or judgment. just the natural consequence of their actions. maybe give them a reason to interact with enemy civs, like some turning traitor to save their families from the genocide only to be inevitably betrayed. theres plenty of examples from history, and in the end if the players still don't realise whats happening but still have fun then just let things come to conclusion and learn for next time (or decide the benefactors do betray them for whatever reason, maybe prevent any future enemies summoning them against them?)

Or maybe they just get rich and go home, to have lots of sex with their elf waifus.

>Elf waifus

You know, Hero as in 'a guy who does good things and acts in a moral way'.

The question is what morality do you follow, though. Because even if you argue for an objective moral good, you'll spark a huge discussion at the end because people will disagree on what it is even if they agree that one exists.

How about "Not being a party to genocide and enslavement?"

>Genocide
Well, if the target of genocide happens to be evil incarnate...No one would disagree (short of demon cultists) with wiping the Abyss clean of demons, right?
>Slavery
Shield Hero; oh, and about every single slave situation in history where the slaves got off rather well, like the Greek slaves in the Roman Republic that acted as teachers and had a much more comfortable lifestyle than the poorer Romans.

Alright, "Being a party to cattle slavery".

Your player in question is not refusing to engage with the premise, he's embracing it. The player found out the truth, and actively rejected it. As you said, he's actively trying to stop other players from learning the same thing he did.

I only see two options for you. One, you can ensure that the other players all find out by making it obvious and watch the fireworks. Two, you can keep playing it as you've been doing and wait for the reveal later on. At some point, the other players will find the truth and will have to make a decision about where they stand. If the players all join your "problem" player, too bad, that's your campaign now. Let them slaughter and face the consequences of their actions. If the players all decide that the "problem" player was wrong, I would suggest removing the character from the game and making his character a villain. Let him have a new character, perhaps one pulled in by a benefactor that wants to save the non-humans or something like that, and start up the next segment of the campaign. Either way, I hope it works out for you.

Do you feel bad when you commit genocide in a video game? When you shoot a happy bird into a pig base, do you feel bad for destroying the hard work those pigs put into creating those little houses?

the players in OPs isekai game are not from the world they've been summoned to, and they know that they will be able to leave whenever they help the people who summoned them out. I imagine that whatever they're doign is pretty easy as well, since OP likely intended for them to turn against the 'evil human' empire, who would have to be stronger to make for a better game. So why should they give a fuck if some hypothetical orcs and demons are killed? Especially with the current stigma we have about orcs and demons being evil shit that kill and rape without regard. I also imagine that OP has an 'oh so clever' moment where the PCs have to decide whether they're going to help otu the poor orcs beat the evil humans or escape the isekai world, since if you kill the people who summoned you, you can't leave the world and are stuck there.

All of this reeks of railroading, and not in the good way. You can't make players feel something, and trying to force them to feel something will only result in them not caring about your campaign, which I bet they don't care about anyway, seeing as its contrived as fuck anyway.

>waah why no empathy
faceless non-characters don't get empathy. players have to actually do something meaningful with a NPC before they're likely to care about them.

failing that just give them an incentive to develop disagreements with the ones on their side so they reach out to someone else. typically this is done by having some talentless asshole with a small amount of power determinedly withhold everything convenient in their lives in order to gain a small amount of profit.

>Implying there's anything bad about this.
user, you're missing a golden opportunity to finish this campaign, ending with the world in a state of chaos due to an oppressive regime, which the PCs of your next campaign can work to overthrow.

100% this. I would be planning the next campaign already.

Have the summoners become aware of the situation and give the 'aware' player boons to direct the situations in their favor through increasingly evil acts.
Turn the other players against him through greed or tempt them with overthrowing the summoner's plans and rulling teh land themselves.

Don't be too rigid with YOUR ending and tailor the game to them. You've got plenty of potential to work with.

If a game connects with you properly and asks those questions, then yes, it should.
Other anons bought up Spec Ops: The Line, there's a game that makes you feel like crap for killing people. Mass Effect has an entire arc over 3 games centred around the Krogan genophage, a disease which is effectively a slow genocide of the Krogan and the player's decision to reverse it or not; that same franchise also has the potential genocide of the rachni, but it's done less well than the genophage dilemma.

But it seems that OP is just complaining that his player's characters don't pity the poor innocent mosters. If there's some objective morality enforcement system in the setting (karma, deities) according to which what the PCs are doing is evil, then have them suffer the consequences, but if not then why not let things play out naturally?

Your players sound amazingly based, can I borrow them for my campaign?

Now there I agree with you - if things play out and your guys are monsters, show them the consequences of acting like monsters. Or be like Mass Effect and give them a name and a face to represent the troubles they've got going on. If you genuinely believe your players are acting like a bag of dicks, show them they're being a bag of dicks by giving them enough rope to hang themselves with.

I just felt like you were pissin' on my vidja and saying there's nothing that can give you emotional connection or emotion over hypothetical people. I ain't about that life man, you can feel bad for fictional things and your own fictional actions, nature of an interactive medium.

>"WAAAH muh poor innocent demon lord."
>"He a gud boi, dindu nuffin."
If someone is going through this much trouble to genocide someone its usually for a good reason. Besides, why wouldn't you help people who give you lots of gold and sex to kill off some ugly inhumans?

>there's a game that makes you feel like crap for killing people.
No it doesn't, it just annoys you by beating you with its message.

OP here: See, I don't want to make things too ham-handed. If the kingdom succeeds, they will probably establish a successful Empire. The Prince, who accompanies the PCs as their handler and interpreter, is extremely competent. He plans to find the Sword of Man, the one artifact that can be wielded by natives, then declare himself Emperor when he succeeds the throne. (He loves his father, who is on-board with this plan.)

I'm just sort of hoping that the PCs have the basic decency to see how his plan os wrong and is built on the bodies of literally thousands of the other races. You know, to see past the propaganda that everyone has bought into. To fight for people who might not deserve it, because it's the right thing to do.

... OP, you realise that building on the bodies of a fuck-tillion people is how Empires work, right? They wade in ankle deep in the blood of anybody who opposes them, then the Pax Romana takes a hold of things?
Would you stand by the Gauls against the might of Rome? Sure, they seem bloody and brutal at the time, but looking back we can overlook that for what the Empire did. If your Empire is going to establish a successful and prosperous Empire that will give long lasting peace and thus likely make great strides in various fields including but not limited to science, medicine and culture; they ARE the good guys, they're just the especially brutal "history will remember them better" kind of good guys.

The problem is that the prince sounds like an awesome guy and a filial son. You already said he's dealing fairly with the PCs and doesn't plan on screwing them, so why would anyone sane fight for the enemy?

lots of people would be quite happy with things in real life if they were this simple

Wait, so the king's own son is risking life and limb to fight alongside the Heroes? What's so wrong about that?

Is the world REALLY better off for having orcs and demons in it?

He's actively employing them to wipe out his enemies, and keeping them from taking a more nuanced approach?

So a PC's morality doesn't match your own so you want to railroad the party to doing things you want to? Congratulations, you're a piece of shit GM.

>make an anime game
>get surprised when your players turn out to be weebo psychopathic murderhobos
You made a bed out of shit, don't be surprised that your back is filthy now. Either discuss your issue with the group and change the setting tone accordingly, or throw up your hands and go for the full Neill Blomkamp experience.

I mean, what have those races done to deserve it? And you didn't answer the main question I posed: Why do they care about killing things when they aren't a part of that world? I could give a shit if my post is deleted and hundreds of letters and poorly used punctuation are killed since once I close this thread none of it will matter to me.

Also, answer another question: If they betray the kingdom of man, will they be able to easily return to their normal world with bags of money? Or are they either stuck in isekai-land forever if they do the 'right' thing

This Prince sounds like a great guy, killing some outsiders to bring about such a glorious empire is easily worth it.

He sounds like a great guy.

Do you enjoy shitting over other people's fun?

So did 9 out of 10 niggers.

What kind of hideously evil prince would ever consider siding with foreigners above his own family and people? Of course he wants his enemies dead.

Achilles, the archetype of all heroes, prays for the deaths of hundreds of his countrymen because he was pissed that Agamemnon took his slave fucktoy away. Zeus listens.

A hero does not have to fit into modern morality. The players are still heroes even if they commit genocide. Just look at what happened to Troy.

Their orcs user. Orcs are monsters, not people.

That prince sounds like a bloke I'd like to have a beer with. Sign me up for his company of heroes.

Genocide and enslavement are heroic.

To be fair everyone else in-universe thinks Achilles is being a dick too, all his hero friends turn up and go "Hey Achilles, do you maybe want to stop throwing a strop and go fight?". Agamemnon is also an ass, but Achilles isn't seen as an angel either.

>isekai

>helping nonhumans
>heroes
What?

Are you by chance a psychopath?

The demons pay better.

I'd just try and introduce more opportunities to see things from the other perspective. Maybe try putting the PCs in charge of guarding prisoners, or a mission to sneak into a town where you can describe the mundane lives of these people.

Doesn't stop him from being a hero though, which was the point.

Veeky Forums, why are players so often amoral scum?