Good Story, Bad Game

The party, newcomers to the adventuring life, had answered the summons by the village, and had trekked into the dark caverns to clear out the bloodthirsty goblins residing therein. Triumphant but still battered, the party returned to the village to find the local lord had finally deigned to show up with his retainers. The party didn't care, they had taken the job from the village overseer, and the overseer was who the party was expecting payment from, not this lordling that couldn't be bothered to take care of his villeins properly. 

Yet the lord had other ideas. Embarrassed that he had been proven to be lacking in attending to his sworn duties, he had gathered all of his warriors and rushed to the village to find the adventurers had already performed the necessary extermination. Now here they were about to receive gold that should be going to him in the form of taxes, as this was his land, after all. This was a feudalistic society, not some anarcho-syndicalist commune. The lord ordered his retinue to seize the gold and any other treasure the party had gotten from the goblins. The adventurers protested, but they were very much outnumbered, and not high enough level to matter, so they handed over the villagers' gold and the mere pittance of coins they had gotten from the goblins. Oh, and the +1 dagger the rogue had found on the body of the head goblin. 

"This is fantastic!" thought the lord. "My men didn't have to fight anything, the goblins are gone, and I still got my taxes. Plus this beautiful dagger! Isn't the next town over complaining about orcs?" And so the lord, laughing up his sleeve, mentioned the orc problem of the next village over in passing to the adventurers. He would wait a few days, and then follow them with his war host, see if he could arrive in time to repeat the act.

All of the above is an idea I had recently on something to inflict on my D&D party, I have not actually done that to them yet. Having been a medieval recreator and studied our actual history, I could see some feudalistic lordling doing that to a party of D&D adventurers. Let the adventurers take care of your monster problems, that's less wear and tear on the folks that you have to buy healing potions for, but adventurers aren't covered by your health insurance, now are they? And isn't there some quote about teaching a man to fish so you can beat him up to take his fish everyday?

So why not make your game more "realistic" and do this too them? As the title of this article suggests, the above makes for a great bit of fiction, and while we DMs are "telling a collaborative story with the help our players", that doesn't mean this story makes for a fun or interesting game. By having the lord be more powerful than the party and basically telling them to hand over their hard won booty or die, you have stolen their agency and killed any desire in them to adventure further. That is, unless your ultimate goal was to have the party deal with this lord, this is not a good dose of realism to inflict on your party. Which would make an interesting game - how is the party dealing with little Lord Fontleroy? Outright killing him? Political assassination by going to his Baron/Count/Duke/the Queen? Peasant revolt? What are they doing afterwards, taking the lord's place themselves or giving it to a peasant or one of the lord's old retainers? - but only one time and only if the party themselves are interested in playing along with it.

Just a quick idea I had. Sorry for the long hiatus, been very busy since the beginning of the 'Rona, as my business turns out to be critical, and also my job as well. Looking to finish up several other drafts I have had bubbling on the back burner for a while, and will be posting them soonish.