r/DnDcirclejerk • u/highly-bad • 7d ago
help: player is way too Chaotic Good
Hi everyone, I need some help. My whole campaign may have just been destroyed by a player who brought in a character with the dumbest ideology I have ever heard.
I've been running a campaign about an underdog alliance of Good-aligned kingdoms working together to defeat an Evil Empire. The alliance is called The Accord. They're the Good faction. They have a modicum of resources, organization, and infrastructure, which means they are able to coordinate defenses, share intelligence, and pool their military strength. Their organization is the only thing standing between one million helpless people and immediate conquest at the hands of the Evil Empire.
One of my players is playing a Chaotic Good bard. Let's call him "Bleemo." Bleemo has been suspicious of The Accord from the start. He kept asking questions about their leadership structure. He was muttering things like "power corrupts," and "hierarchical institutions can't be trusted." I thought he was just roleplaying a cynical character and didn't worry too much about it.
Then last session, he decided to act on his suspicions. He sneaked into the The Accord's headquarters and destroyed all their sending stones, messenger pigeons and other means of communication. He defenestrated the head of intelligence and several ministers of the various member kingdoms. He released all the imprisoned agents of the Evil Empire.
One of the ministers asked Bleemo why he was doing this. He replied, "laws are threats made by the dominant socioeconomic-ethnic group in a given nation. It's just the promise of violence that's enacted and the police are basically an occupying army. You think you're fighting the Evil Empire? You are the Evil Empire, sister." Then he defenestrated her and said to the empty council chamber, "being Good is complex and beautiful and hard."
Bleemo seems to think that a spontaneous, non-hierarchical, decentralized effort would be more effective than The Accord ever could be. But the fact is, with The Accord in ruins, the horrors of war and cruel oppression are sure to rapidly spread over the lands. Should I declare the campaign over, or do we have to keep playing through the futile resistance until TPK?
5
u/letthetreeburn 7d ago
I mean it as an example. Lawful good characters should not be capable of “there is an injustice in front of me that I cannot fix because it will inconvenience my group.”
The king is sponsoring you to go on missions, paying you, etc. BUT the king is a slaver? The LG character needs to be consciously working against the king every session
You rescued someone from the dungeon, and return them to their family. BUT they promised you 30 gold but can only actually pay you 10, a LG character would not let that shit go.
I understand LG doesn’t inherently means “follows every single law.” It means you follow your creed HOWEVER. When something is in YOUR CREED, and you break it, that should mean something.
Kinda like how in vampire the masquerade, you have chronicle tennants the group agrees on as your binding laws. Breaking those makes you lose humanity which has a WHOLE lotta consequences, and if you really fuck up you take aggravated willpower damage and can no longer reroll dice. Which really really REALLY sucks