So i am gming the tales of the defenders of blackmoor , and one of my players made a trollkin warlock/long rider, but we have reached a problem, not now but if he keeps the acting the way he normaly acts, it will be a problem.
He will need to get more trolls in the future, but he shows no interest in interacting with the NPCs and the structure of the campaign they wont have a lot of time to frolic in the forrest to find trolls to bond with, and i have 0 plans of rewarding this atitude by puting trolls on his way
So should i:
-break the ever important imersion and tell him that if he dosnt interact with NPCs he will be lacking information of where to find trolls.
-keep my plans untill he hits a wall and than talk to him.
-keep sugesting they explore the village NPCs but mantain the why in the dark
-bend over backwards and change my plans, and the randomly will fight trolls now
I’d suggest introducing an elderly trollkin warlock/shaman of Dhunia into the game who has the Magic Sensitivity Gifted archetype benefit and can thus detect and identify the player warlock. The elderly warlock has lost their last bonded troll, but needs a new one to feed their magic (the spirit bonds still exist, but since the old warlock only has two bonds, this isn’t enough to sustain extensive spellcasting).
The shaman wants to enlist the aid of the younger warlock in seeking out a new troll, and during this endeavour should grumble extensively about the drawbacks of harnesser magic, especially with the way drawing on your own life makes the old shaman’s bones hurt these days (really play up the old person angle here, and play it for laughs as much as possible - the drama will come a bit later). Then, when the new troll has been found and bonded to (with perhaps a sibling available for bonding to the younger warlock, if they wish), the old shaman also asks the young warlock to keep them company during a Dhunian ritual to release the old spirit bonds and let them move on to their next incarnation after praising their life and deeds, which is intended to make the point that a warbeast isn’t equipment, it’s a valued companion (or at least it is so to trollkin).
And if the player refuses to aid the old warlock… just ignore it, let the warlock walk off stage, and that’s that for the player’s access to trolls for the time being. If they do not want to use their warlock magic, so be it, it’s their decision. And if the player later complains about it, remind them of the old warlock’s request.
Last but not least, even if the players won’t be able to frolic in forests, trolls are so amazingly adaptive that there is a chance that the group can find a troll about anywhere. If the warlock player only gets interested in find a troll to bond to later, make them chase some information down, with maybe a false lead or two, until they can find a troll (and on Caen, there is always a troll, if you know where to look, and it may even be a unique one). Don’t allow the player to sidetrack the adventure when it doesn’t suit you, but there’ll probably be downtime sometime, when everybody needs a bit of a break from the big plot. And some trolls do make for a nice “random” encounter, too.
You could also consider alternative Trolls, since they seem to adapt to every climate. I think Trolls could be anywhere, and you could just have a variant of a standard Troll to make it work. Imagine an “Alley Troll” or “Sewer Troll” that lived in a city, or a “Sand Troll” that lived in the desert. I would definitely avoid breaking immersion and instead look for alternative times and places in the story where he may encounter more Trolls.
I did include two places on the vilage where he could gather information about local troll sightings so he could bond with them, but he chose to not notify the hunters to just matk the place where they sighted one,and not try and kill it,and you know tell him about so he could bond with them on downtime
Thats a good idea, i will try to put a “mentor” figure, this idea works great for the character
They are in a vilage in the middle of the thornwood, finding a troll is not the hard part, but geting the time off to find the troll that is, and in the vilage there were two places where he could just request to inform about troll sightings
Consider the Troll finding your Warlock then. Perhaps the party passes nearby and the Troll feels compelled to come to the Warlock. Maybe it tries to eat the party’s food, and the Warlock has to deal with that.
Now, if your Warlock doesn’t accept the Troll like that then I don’t think he understands Warlock as a class very well.
I might get a troll on their way if the situation goes dire(like if Claus the winter troll dies or goes feral) but i think i will try solving it in game first, before talking to him that he really should talk to NPCs, it may really help and be needed to solve some problems
Yeah. There’s only so much hand-holding a GM should do for any player.
Of course, if the player is very inexperienced, it may be a good idea to have an off-game chat with them and make sure they understand how their character’s abilities are meant to develop, and indeed how role-playing works.
Nope he is experienced, just dosnt like the social interactions, unless it has obvious mecanical advantages to it, just happened to create a character that would need warbeast in a campaign where he wouldnt have time to search for one without help from the NPCs
I’d just create a situation in which some town/caravan/outpost/whatever has a problem for the PC group to solve, and the problem involves Trolls doing Troll stuff, or maybe an evil warlock with trolls doing Evil stuff.
They found it, the Warlock PC binds the Troll(s), if there is an evil warlock involved maybe it gets killed or just flees to return at a dramatically appropriate moment later in the campaign, etc…
I’d do some hinting and waiting to the other player to get the idea and do so during weeks…20 years ago. Now it looks like I’m waiting for telepathy links to open, instead of just talking: “hey, this kind of character needs beasts to work, ideally Trolls, do you feel like going open-world and sandbox here and you take your time and start a search for trolls when you feel it, or do we just plan an encounter in the next few sessions?”
Im trying to avoid doing this so to not reward antissocial behaviour, i know this player wont interact with NPCs for fun, just if he has some mechanical advantage of doing so or it advances the plot
And im also trying to not give filler encounters ex machina, well at least not per pure chance
I will keep this in mind since some of my players are kind of dense so i may just try ot in game and if it dosnt work i may just have a talk outside of game, and lay out the situation or he starts interacting with NPCs(lumberjacks and hunters) that could help locate a troll, or he will not get them since he has no time to search for them by himself, and if he thinks it will be too much of a bother to interact with those NPCs constantly offer him a chance to retcon his archetype and warlock carrer and adjust the backstory
I think it’s necessary to separate the player’s antisocial behavior from the character’s antisocial behavior. A well-played antisocial character can still be very rewarding and interesting, but if a player chooses not to interact with the world except to gain a numerical advantage, then that should absolutely not be encouraged.
So if he doesn’t want to role-play to get a warbeast, that means no warbeast for him.
Yeah even when i acomodate and allow him to just say what hes doing or speaking intead of describing or acting it, but even though he does refuse to interact unless it has obvious advantages.
For the hell of it, he plays a trollkin who rarely drinks, a troll warlock that suposedly cares for his mounts and trolls, but he dosnt interact with the troll, or the bison(the second one is just just weird that he dosnt, but not needed)
There are things he does in character, like refusing to get close to a pair of orgoth itens(a blade and an armor) and when they discovered it, he sugested to just tell a church and let them deal with it,but that may have been hos overcautious nature.
Granted it is not as bad as in my girlfrends campaign where he is playing the most well suited social character, but it dosnt interact unless interacted with(given he isnt complaining, his only complain was that he didnt get a special “gift”(read as haunting, revelations that shatter the characters world view, pact with a defiler))
I’ve had players before who didn’t interact with the world, or not in a way that could make the world wish to interact with them. In the end those characters were ignored except for occasional comments along the lines of “rein in this individual if they are with you, otherwise we will rein them in.”
It’s not always been the player’s fault, of course. At times the players were just awkward (I was running scenarios in a church group for teenagers twenty years ago, so there was a lot of teenage awkwardness there, I think). But other times the players were just straight up ignoring the world, and once when I was running an 1890s Cthulhu game I just ended with saying “So you get on the train again. A few weeks later, you happen to read in the newspaper that a village near the line you were using at the time was completely destroyed by unknown forces, with the authorities having no clue whatsoever as to what happened. No bodies were found, including no livestock at all, whether dead or alive, and all buildings had smashed doors and furniture. The end.”
In short: When players don’t want to play, you can’t force them. If the player is willing to work with the group when combat ensues but otherwise sits sessions out (not a good idea for warlocks AND cavalry IMHO; it should be reinforced that warbeasts and mounts can get surly from being mistreated or ignored), then maybe that is enough, if the rest of the group can do the rest of the lifting (i.e. role-play) - I’ve had players who only really knew how to do combat, and that worked well enough as they were decent team players during fights. Some were actually even godsends in combat, being decent powerhouses when the rest of the group was more specced into investigation and role-play, and happily took up the roles of meat shields and battering rams. But this only worked as long as there were people who took on the role-playing tasks as well.
His character in my campaign is a powerhouse in combat, and he does help a lot in combat on my girlfriends campaign hes not that of a powerhouse, but he seems to enjoy himself,and dosnt complain when there is no combat, that is not rare, but hes a johny through and through so most of his fun is creating and finding combos in combat
Presactly.
I once wrote a murder mystery adventure with a doppleganger assassin who used his shapeshifting abilities to impersonate another, innocent man. My players just went and killed the guy who had been framed, decided that the case was closed, and went fishing. It didn’t matter to them that the murders continued, so I decided it was not worth my time to continue running the campaign.
I’ve also had a player who more or less sat in a corner reading a book while the rest of the group role-played (in a campaign with lots of intrigue and plotting), but participated (with great enthusiasm and skill) to combat encounters. He didn’t really bother anyone, even though some of the other players questioned whether he was in the right group.