I am a new player and about four session in to my first campaign. I have joined a group with people who have played before and we all created our characters before meeting so it is a random assortment of characters and classes with no real 'traditional' build for a party (who needs healers right!).
Anyway the thing that really surprised me is it seems I am the only good character in my party. Now apart from the weirdness of trying to save the world from some big bad with a party of dubious characters, the thing I am having trouble with is I am the only good character and I am having trouble justifying why my character would continue traveling with this party (obviously there was an initial scene that gave us a common goal but beyond that they don't really need to travel together to work towards the goal apart from safety in numbers kind of thing). I like my character but I am thinking she may have to part ways and walk of into the sunset because I can't see it working from a roleplaying perspective.
Is this something anyone else has encountered? Is it ok to ditch a character if it doesn't fit with the group?
Try not to think of it as a fully-fledged hero traveling with villains. Their alignment can be their natural attitude and way of life, rather than their driving force or purpose.
Maybe you're a kind spirit traveling with bandits, offsetting their misdeeds or spoiling their malicious plans with good. Have you ever had a friend who was a 'bad egg,' yet you both got along despite the differences in attitude? It can be hard to separate the alignment from being 'who the characters are' rather than their 'general perspective/nature'. This gets compounded when players exaggerate their actions to suit the alignment to the extremes, in which I can understand your frustration.
There can be some good roleplay with a mix of alignments, as you all pull at the rope to direct the party's actions. Perhaps have a chat with the other players and ensure that they're subtle traits and not becoming the focus of anyone's actions to help ease gameplay for you all.
Your post doesn't make clear if there are actually players with an evil alignment. Even then as long as the actions they take are not overt or obvious a good character should be able to justify staying with a group they have become attached to, up to a point.
If the GM can tolerate some role-play when the party makes goals and plans you could use that opportunity to make your character's view know and then take it from there. A lot of good gaming sessions can be traced to sitting around a campfire figuring out the best way to tackle whatever problem has presented itself. The essence of good drama (and by extension storytelling) is conflict.
To go into more detail, our party killed some evil cultists that were attacking us (fair enough) then the town guard arrest us, this ends with a fight and our party killing off the guards in the immediate area, I roll with this as a 'backs against the wall situation' and role-play getting upset afterwards as a loss of innocent life/just doing their job kind of thing. Later we are traveling and after exploring some ruins and a few creature fights we encounter a dwarf chilling with a big chest. Dwarf is not aggressive, I'm not going to attack a NPC that isn't trying to harm me so I leave him alone and move on. Of course the rest of my party are on a looting high and don't hesitate, cut him in two.
I guess the thing that struck me is that I feel like this is going to be a pattern, My character respects life and will not kill for some loot or the easy way out. The rest of my party doesn't care. So In those roleplaying moments I feel like I could be spending all my time acting upset about some merciless killing my party has done and thats not what I want to spent the rest of the campaign doing (as a player). Like you said conflict is makes good drama but I get the feeling this conflict could get tedious?
Remember you can knock out npcs with melee attacks without killing them. There are a few non-lethal spells too, namely sleep. Your character can try to convince the others to do less murdering. Bad people can do Good things for bad reasons. You can have your alignment change over time as you are corrupted by the party.
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I am a new player and about four session in to my first campaign. I have joined a group with people who have played before and we all created our characters before meeting so it is a random assortment of characters and classes with no real 'traditional' build for a party (who needs healers right!).
Anyway the thing that really surprised me is it seems I am the only good character in my party. Now apart from the weirdness of trying to save the world from some big bad with a party of dubious characters, the thing I am having trouble with is I am the only good character and I am having trouble justifying why my character would continue traveling with this party (obviously there was an initial scene that gave us a common goal but beyond that they don't really need to travel together to work towards the goal apart from safety in numbers kind of thing). I like my character but I am thinking she may have to part ways and walk of into the sunset because I can't see it working from a roleplaying perspective.
Is this something anyone else has encountered? Is it ok to ditch a character if it doesn't fit with the group?
Try not to think of it as a fully-fledged hero traveling with villains. Their alignment can be their natural attitude and way of life, rather than their driving force or purpose.
Maybe you're a kind spirit traveling with bandits, offsetting their misdeeds or spoiling their malicious plans with good. Have you ever had a friend who was a 'bad egg,' yet you both got along despite the differences in attitude? It can be hard to separate the alignment from being 'who the characters are' rather than their 'general perspective/nature'. This gets compounded when players exaggerate their actions to suit the alignment to the extremes, in which I can understand your frustration.
There can be some good roleplay with a mix of alignments, as you all pull at the rope to direct the party's actions. Perhaps have a chat with the other players and ensure that they're subtle traits and not becoming the focus of anyone's actions to help ease gameplay for you all.
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Your post doesn't make clear if there are actually players with an evil alignment. Even then as long as the actions they take are not overt or obvious a good character should be able to justify staying with a group they have become attached to, up to a point.
If the GM can tolerate some role-play when the party makes goals and plans you could use that opportunity to make your character's view know and then take it from there. A lot of good gaming sessions can be traced to sitting around a campfire figuring out the best way to tackle whatever problem has presented itself. The essence of good drama (and by extension storytelling) is conflict.
To go into more detail, our party killed some evil cultists that were attacking us (fair enough) then the town guard arrest us, this ends with a fight and our party killing off the guards in the immediate area, I roll with this as a 'backs against the wall situation' and role-play getting upset afterwards as a loss of innocent life/just doing their job kind of thing. Later we are traveling and after exploring some ruins and a few creature fights we encounter a dwarf chilling with a big chest. Dwarf is not aggressive, I'm not going to attack a NPC that isn't trying to harm me so I leave him alone and move on. Of course the rest of my party are on a looting high and don't hesitate, cut him in two.
I guess the thing that struck me is that I feel like this is going to be a pattern, My character respects life and will not kill for some loot or the easy way out. The rest of my party doesn't care. So In those roleplaying moments I feel like I could be spending all my time acting upset about some merciless killing my party has done and thats not what I want to spent the rest of the campaign doing (as a player). Like you said conflict is makes good drama but I get the feeling this conflict could get tedious?
Remember you can knock out npcs with melee attacks without killing them. There are a few non-lethal spells too, namely sleep. Your character can try to convince the others to do less murdering. Bad people can do Good things for bad reasons. You can have your alignment change over time as you are corrupted by the party.