Tired of Saving the World

[Azure85]

     in my group i have a few players that have vocalized the desire to get out of the "save the World" genre in our dnd sessions. i have tried "slice of Life" and "Merc' but they don't seem to take root and end up becoming the same Epic fight the BBEG and stop his evil plot even using cults and guilds are starting to grate on their urge to game. any suggestions?

[ZeroSum]

Zombie (or other Horror) Survival.

[PhaedrusXY]

Let them play the villains?

[woodenbandman]

+1, destroying the world is way way better.

[PhaedrusXY]

It is a bit harder to manage as a DM, though. Heroes are alot more predictable. Give them a hook about saving some princess (or the world), and you can usually bet on them taking it. Villains do whatever they damn well please.  You can often prod them in the direction you want with greed, threats to their egos, etc, though, depending on their motivations.

[Talen Lee]

Sounds to me that you have to get a handle on your escalation.

[Fox Lee]

Just work with personal goals. Saving the world is indeed pretty dull, because really, who cares about the world except that it's where you keep all your stuff? Find out what their characters do care about, and threaten that instead. Family? Reputation? Revenge? Greed? Rivalry? Whatever. And read Suicide Squad or Thunderbolts or something

[Talen Lee]

Also, it sounds like you've got a very reactive group, not the kind of people who set up goals THEY want to achieve. Those players, the ones who will set you up to give them a hoop they want to jump through are gems.

[Azure85]

Zombie (or other Horror) Survival.

that sounds interesting sore of like setting it up Resident Evil style where they have to find a way to escape a City or an Isle or something. My games tend to be long running, do you think that if i go with the Survivor/horror should i plan something like they did in RE:apocalypse and make them try to survive the world or put in an endgame goal.   

[Azure85]

i would say that my group is very Reactive players for the most part. i do have two guys out of the 6-8 that show that really work on driving the story,but it can get really tedious leading the group along by the hand. does anyone have any advice to kinda break them of that habit? i have tried allowing the players inaction have negative consequences but it doesn't seem to phase them all that much. some examples are in one session i took away all of their magic gear and hid it on them, this only seemed to make most of them pissy. i gave their stuff back but it took them 2 sessions to get it. i have even gone so far as to have the BBEG send an army in the night and raze the town they were in to the ground, and it did not have the effect i wanted, the rogue ended up looting the store he was casing earlier, the dwarf fighter raided the tavern, and the wizard used greater teleport and got them out when they were done.

[PhaedrusXY]

i would say that my group is very Reactive players for the most part. i do have two guys out of the 6-8 that show that really work on driving the story,but it can get really tedious leading the group along by the hand. does anyone have any advice to kinda break them of that habit? i have tried allowing the players inaction have negative consequences but it doesn't seem to phase them all that much. some examples are in one session i took away all of their magic gear and hid it on them, this only seemed to make most of them pissy. i gave their stuff back but it took them 2 sessions to get it. i have even gone so far as to have the BBEG send an army in the night and raze the town they were in to the ground, and it did not have the effect i wanted, the rogue ended up looting the store he was casing earlier, the dwarf fighter raided the tavern, and the wizard used greater teleport and got them out when they were done.

It sounds like they're well on their way to being villains already. 

[Orion]

I have to agree. It sounds like you have the typical "power fantasy" players on your hands. In essence, this type of player basically wants to run around wild and free, blow stuff up, do what they like, and still be treated like the good guys. They'll sit around doing nothing until you give them something to do, and then they'll whine about rail-roading. They'll insist that their characters are heroes using stunningly tortured logic, and then commit acts of depravity basically just for shits and giggles.

It's a fairly common playing style for teenagers or immature adults. It's about blowing off steam, but also about wanting pre-packed "fun" provided for them so that they can then rebel against it. It's the self-absorbed attitude of the fifteen-year-old. Now, I don't mean to insult your players, who I assume are your friends. I was one of these kinds of players, many years ago, and so were all my friends, and we're all basically decent people. We were just looking to the game as a way to relieve our collective frustrations as being boys in men's bodies and all that pubescent jazz that we all remember so fondly. There's nothing essentially wrong with that, but it sounds like you've all hit a wall where you've realised you're just not having fun at it any more.

What I'd recommend, then, is to switch to a radically different model for the game, totally different goals to achieve. It just occurred to me this morning that D&D rules would lend themselves to search-and-rescue without villains. Have an earthquake happen and then prominently display many and various townsfolk/city-dwellers almost about to be killed by falling debris, wrecked buildings, what have you. If they take the bait (and it's a bit of an "if"), then they'll be engaged in saving people rather than just running around killing them. Leave material rewards around town in the form of rich people willing to give them stuff to help them on their continuing quest to save everyone. Rig the rewards so that they're particularly useful to that end. A wand of Web could go a long way in that regard (safety net) or Levitate (to get people off of high places) or the like. This is just an idea that was banging around in my head, but think it about it. I might be useful. At the very least, the idea of a game without obvious villains but with obvious goals might be the way to go.

[veekie]

i would say that my group is very Reactive players for the most part. i do have two guys out of the 6-8 that show that really work on driving the story,but it can get really tedious leading the group along by the hand. does anyone have any advice to kinda break them of that habit? i have tried allowing the players inaction have negative consequences but it doesn't seem to phase them all that much. some examples are in one session i took away all of their magic gear and hid it on them, this only seemed to make most of them pissy. i gave their stuff back but it took them 2 sessions to get it. i have even gone so far as to have the BBEG send an army in the night and raze the town they were in to the ground, and it did not have the effect i wanted, the rogue ended up looting the store he was casing earlier, the dwarf fighter raided the tavern, and the wizard used greater teleport and got them out when they were done.

I think in this case, you'd need more carrot(loot and xp), since they aren't inclined to care about the stick. Considering the professed power level(teleporting on a whim says upper end to me), you could bring in an npc adventuring party, taking their loot out from in front of them, taunting them with some cheeky note. Which could give them the impetus to go out there and get them. Hopefully.

Bounty hunters on their tail might be another handy hook, one that's hard to ignore.

[X-Codes]

An island of zombies does sound like a good, fun game.  Either the party survives until help arrives or they find a way to escape or they have to explore the item and destroy the evil artifact creating the zombies.

Another one you can do (inspired by Baldur's Gate) is to put the party in a big city with a Theives' Guild.  Doesn't matter whether they're running it or trying to destroy it, just so long as it's there.

In either case you'll want Cityscape.  Zombies get weak at higher levels, so you'll want to use the Mob template (or whatever it's called; like swarms but with big things).  Likewise, Cityscape has a lot of info on city-based adventures, even if a lot of the crunch in the book is crap.

[woodenbandman]

I do love a good zombie story but there's a few things that can ruin it. Darkvision, for one, because then you have to resort to magical darkness which feels like a railroad; blindsight, which beats even magical darkness and you have to pull shit out that defeats that, which feels like an Amtrack;

these things make it hard because, in my experience anyway, the scaryness comes from not knowing what's beyond the sphere of light, in the dark, creepy corners of the city streets. If you plan on a survival horror game, you need to play up the things you'd normally ignore, like smell and touch, and especially sound. Fortunately, it's dark, and you can thusly ignore a great deal of sight until your players specifically interact with whatever it is that they're looking at. You should probably ban races with darkvision, and maybe even low-light vision, which seems like a bit of fiat, but it will enhance the experience (provided your players agree to it), or make those races worth a level adjustment, because it becomes infinitely more relevant. Pick up Libris Mortis, Heroes of Horror, and Dungeonscape, as those three are your new best friend. Dungeonscape is to add a bit of normalcy to the horror. You can throw in a zombie society, that is actually afraid because their citizens had this sudden desire to go kill a bunch of people and harvest their brains, which is really good for horror after a long bout of zombie stomping.

[veekie]

I do love a good zombie story but there's a few things that can ruin it. Darkvision, for one, because then you have to resort to magical darkness which feels like a railroad; blindsight, which beats even magical darkness and you have to pull shit out that defeats that, which feels like an Amtrack;

Well, there are ways around extraordinary senses, claustrophobic tunnels are one, as are most maze scenarios where line of sight goes no further than you can spit and enemies like to ignore the walls. Does limit what you can use though. Also, swarm shifting undead are awesome for this.