Loyalty & Duty to your crew?

[mikec964]

This has been really an interesting read. The points on all sides are helping me round out my thinking for my campaign.

My campaign is shaping up to be eight adventures (probably 1 play session each) that complete a larger story arc. After that, I don't know if we'll keep playing Vikings or if we'll switch to another genre. But in keeping with the larger story, I think it's fair to force some conditions on the players. Everyone is a Viking, everyone is a member of this crew, nobody is secretly planning a mutiny or to overthrow the king or to pursue a career in the assassin's guild.

That's some railroading, but in my case I think it's a good trade-off for having a more epic build to the story. And as the GM who has to plan and write all this, I think narrowing the scope to make my life easier is a reasonable request.

I think Hans is closest to the feel I want for this adventure:

Originally Posted by Hans Rancke-Madsen

The Viking Code
Sense of Duty to crew is entirely appropriate, but it's not going to be worth many points, if any. Most of the disadvantage would be subsumed in the general Viking Code of Conduct (See p. 26 and p. 8), which is all but mandatory and doesn't count towards the 40-point Disadvantage allowance.

Pagan's suggestion is good for adventurers, but not appropriate for my Viking campaign. This is a crew of elite warriors, hand selected. Adventurers might feel the way he suggests, but a reluctant Viking wouldn't be selected for this.

Originally Posted by Pagan

If you tell the pcs, hey, you've gone viking with this crew for the last 3 summers and you love these guys and they love you. You are a tight-knit, family like group. Then let the pcs CHOOSE to take sense of duty or duty to their fellow pcs or npcs. If a player or players says, "Yeah, I'm forced to go viking because it's what my father expects but I don't feel any real loyalty to these guys. I just don't want to disappoint my father."

In part because my players are young (my children, ages 10 & 12, and their friends), and in part because they are inexperienced role-players, I'm taking more control of the campaign. I'll run the captain, a more powerful NPC, for the first few adventures while everyone gets the hang of things. It lets me rail them into the adventure ("The captain says to take 4 crew and go rescue that girl, so let's go"). It also makes for more drama when the previously all-powerful captain is easily defeated by the villain and the players have to step up.

This is obviously going to be very different with experienced and older players, or a GM who has a more broadly developed world and doesn't need to try to run a particular arc.

It *does* get around the old "you meet in a tavern, and your wizard thinks it'd be great fun to adventure with an elf-hating untrustworthy assassin".

Slightly off-topic, in a previous attempt at playing GURPS with them, they were faced with a camp of 100 bandits. They put together an attack plan and went in... and lost in about 8 seconds. Later, they said the reason they thought 4 could beat 100 is because it's possible in video games (Champions of Norath). So having an NPC who can order a retreat once in a while will be helpful as they adjust to the non-cinematic style of play.