Sure.
Thank you.
Side note: Glorantha is my weakness. I wanted to play it since time I encountered
The King of Dragon Pass video game, that used Glorantha (or perhaps parts of its lore) for the setting. Unfortunately, I never had the chance. No GMs running them, no players, costly books, different versions/editions... Oh well.
One complaint I’ve heard leveled against Star Trek and against Star Wars (especially some of the novels) is the repetitive and increasingly implausible galactic threats and planet destroying super weapons. Another is the fact that only the USS Enterprise or Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie seem to be able to stop any of these threats. Everyone else in the universe just seems to sit around on their ass doing nothing too important. I think that my players and I are old enough and jaded enough by the save the world, quest based fiction we’ve read and seen that games focused on that seem implausible or unattractive to us for one reason or another.
Does it concern RPGs only? If so, then it might come from "sacred canon" phobia. Plenty of GMs I know are afraid to introduce things that might contradict the vision presented in the original work of fiction. Last time I've heard that was not that long ago. A buddy of mine complained on his GM who ran some version of "The Game of Thrones" (aSoF&I). The guy lost control over the game when his players attempted to find and murder Jon Snow. He left everything else and focused entirely on making sure the event won't happen.
Save the world tends to be a poor choice the closer a game is to zero to hero since the zero’s aren’t capable of stopping a world ending threat (...)
Out of curiosity: is "Frodo" solution (simpletons of low level coming from dumbfucktown, carrying some anti-threat plot device to place X) popular in the big world?
I see a setting without world ending problem as the norm rather than the exception. So from my point of view there is no need for a solution because there is no problem. In fact I see a really big problem to world ending threats. What happens to all my setting prep when the PCs fail and the world is destroyed?
Is the problem you are experiencing that unless the world is in peril, the players just want their PCs to hang around corner tavern or sit in their living rooms watching holonet dramas? Or is it some other problem?
Bad choice of words.
It's not that I have a problem to solve, I'm simply looking for interesting, and, if possible, original alternatives to this specific theme.
As for the PCs failing - this isn't applicable to all scenarios, but the doom might be either postponed indefinitely, averted in some other way (
all hail Deus Ex Machina), the result might not be that bad as assumed (the Asteroid reaches the Earth, but it breaks down on multiple pieces, the majority of which land in the oceans - a few cities are destroyed, but nothing really major), or there's jump over shark and the setting becomes post-apo. None of these solutions is very good, but they still might play well.
As for my players - we're playing in the many-world setting, and I think that at least two players feel a bit clueless. It's not the problem of the lack of options, but in their abundance. I might be wrong, but it it seems they don't know which path to follow and they could use a shift from a more or less "sandbox" style of adventuring to some solid story arc. I have absolutely nothing against it, but I'd rather use some alternative to the default Big Threat, hence the thread.
(...)Tekumel.
This is weird, you know. I recall way less famous games being mentioned every now and then. I'm not sure why it's like that.
Yeah. We tend to play a lot in each setting. My current Honor+Intrigue campaign has been going on weekly since July 2012. It's not as long lasting as several other campaigns, but it is getting there. Last Friday we played session 203. There has yet to be a world ending threat of any kind. The players don’t seem bored.
The only game where world ending threats are the norm that we do play is Call of Cthulhu and there the PCs never end the threat, at best they delay it.
#203? Admirable!
I had similar experience, yet in my case, sooner or later parting the ways with current setting was discussed and rather than simply putting it on the shelf players almost always choose some world-ending campaign.
I’d replace it with a world without a global threat. A world in which the PCs struggle for success whether that is personal, family, or community against the sort of obstacles: NPCs with conflicting goals and occasionally the environment itself.
(...)
Shifting scale is one approach. Shifting focus from saving the world to maintaining or increasing one’s wealth, power, status, and influence is another. Those goals tend to be much less about saving the world. I tend to do both in the games I run.
Those are very good ideas, but that's pretty much how we're playing so far - PCs are acting as field agents to more powerful figures, protectors, defenders, thieves, diplomats and what not. They also build their own power structures and amass personal wealth and influence. Surprisingly, they didn't start to plot against each other, which is very uncommon in this kind of a game.
The modern developed world is pretty safe. I’ve found petty theft, e.g. pick pockets to be a significant threat in some parts of Europe and any country is likely to have some bad neighborhoods, but physical violence is pretty rare in outside those areas. Outside the cities in the developed world we’ve eliminated animals like wolves, lions, and bears that pose a threat and brigandage is at an all time low. Now if the PCs travel by ship in certain waters piracy is still a valid threat even in the modern world. And in some third world countries anarchy and banditry is still an issue. But I wouldn’t expect a modern day police procedural, spy vs. spy, or monster hunters campaign would have game events driven by random monster tables with actual monsters.
Precisely.
Even in considerably savage parts of the world it's not granted that a tiger will leap at you out of friggin' nowhere, or that you're gonna find a poisonous spider in your boots when you get up. There are exceptions, of course, and it doesn't hurt to check first, but there's hardly any need to become paranoid about that either.
I use a lot of random encounters. Not all are dangerous, but brigandage is still an issue in 1620s Europe whether inside or outside of a city. And gentleman all carry swords and a lot of people are pretty touchy about their honor and dueling is a cultural norm. It is worth keeping in mind that the most dangerous thing to man is other men.
Same here, same here...
Still, using random encounters table/wandering monsters is fully optional, and the GM is free (or rather "urged") to adjust the meeting to his players' capabilities and introduce a twist - what seems to be a party of soon-to-be-XPs goblinoids might as well finish in "help me Obi-Wan, you're my last hope".
Do many people base campaigns on settings that are quite safe?
I'm not sure, I can only speak of myself and people I know. I assume it's quite common, albeit a little complicated - it all depends on whom you ask: from the POV of world's inhabitants it's hardly a heaven, but all you need to do is to stay out of troubles, avoid certain places and don't express certain opinions too loud around certain people.
Now, adventurers - that's entirely different kind of breed. They actively seek troubles, they thrive on them, so according to them the world might be quite hostile, deadly and the danger might hide behind every corner. Still, it comes with the territory and this is exactly what their players want.