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Mechafunkzilla posted:players who get upset when they're character gets uglied up instead of finding it amusing are annoying, as they tend to be the types who get more pleasure from living vicariously through their Mary Sue avatar than from actual roleplaying. Like most things that involve >1 person, roleplaying involves an agreement, spoken or unspoken, to the effect of "we will discuss to some degree what's going to happen and if one of us objects to it, we'll figure something else out." The GM shouldn't just fiat something horrible happening to the PC, and the player should roll with the punches if something critical does happen in the course of playing.
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Apr 10, 2012 17:53
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Mechafunkzilla posted:From a GM's perspective, players who get upset when they're character gets uglied up instead of finding it amusing are annoying, as they tend to be the types who get more pleasure from living vicariously through their Mary Sue avatar than from actual roleplaying. Oh hey, this reminds me of my own worst roleplaying experience. We had come to the end of an eight-session exalted campaign that was fairly fun to us, none of whom really had prior experience with the system meaning we never really got into what makes people... Not really like the system at all. So in the last session... For some reason, literally every attack that any enemy ever did targeted my character. After a couple hours of going through encounters basically spending everything I had on defense and never really doing anything while the other party members won things for us because they weren't getting interrupted at all, we get to the boss who redirects another party member's attack at me while I'm totally out of energy and unable to defend, instantly killing my character. I expressed being displeased by this, as... Really, it kind of seemed like he specifically had it out for me. But, y'know, the rest of the campaign was fun so I would have been able to forgive that. But the GM complained about me complaining about the circumstances of my character dying, since characters can die in RPGs and you shouldn't be angry at the way the story ends up going, apparently totally missing the actual reason I was annoyed. I still only thought this was weird until he said he thought that a party member's death would be dramatically appropriate for the last session and rolled a die to randomly determine someone to kill off. That's, um. That's something I really took issue with. But, I didn't say anything. I just silently thought it was unbelievably stupid. Kind of soured the whole thing for me.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:00
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Isn't he a new DM? Have an open mind and give the kid a break. This isn't your 15 year RPG character that you're emotionally invested in, it's something you just made for a game.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:01
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Mechafunkzilla posted:That really doesn't sound too bad at all, and it seems to have had the intended effect considering how worked up you are about your character's ear being lopped off. Just try to take that indignation and use it in-character instead of worrying about what should or shouldn't have been done from a metagaming standpoint. From a GM's perspective, players who get upset when they're character gets uglied up instead of finding it amusing are annoying, as they tend to be the types who get more pleasure from living vicariously through their Mary Sue avatar than from actual roleplaying. And yeah, I'll totally admit there's some vanity in my reaction. But that emotional response you mention is tempered by the fact that I no longer care as much what happens to the character. Maybe that makes me a douchy control freak backseat DM. I play so rarely these days it's hard to self-examine. I guess I've just read too many games like Burning Wheel and FATE where it's the player's job to figure out how to tie themselves to the story. It'd be really weird if a DM unilaterally wrote one of your Aspects or Beliefs without consulting you. Verdugo posted:Isn't he a new DM? Have an open mind and give the kid a break. This isn't your 15 year RPG character that you're emotionally invested in, it's something you just made for a game. And yeah, in the end I'm only going to play this character for like 3-4 sessions so it doesn't really matter. My inner storygamer is just morally offended.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:29
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Yawgmoth posted:Conversely, GMs who feel they have to gently caress over their players' characters with no possible chance of recourse are just as annoying, since they're usually the GMs who get more pleasure from making GBS threads in someone's oatmeal than from actual roleplaying. Losing an ear to a campaign arch-villain who goes by "The Mangler" really doesn't qualify as "loving over a PC". I mean, the guy could turn it into a secondary objective to find a magical healer who can restore his ear, or at least attach a convincing prosthetic. Likewise the player could turn it to his advantage, lobbying for a bonus to Bluff as he tries to impress a prospective employer with tales of That Time He Got His Ear Ripped Off While Slaying A Giant In Single Combat. I mean, being lovely to PC's for no reason and impeding on the way they want to play the game is one thing, but it's not like his character's background was that he was a handsome master of seduction who relied on his looks. "My character  " can really kill the fun of roleplaying sometimes.ImpactVector posted:I still disagree. When you alter a character right out the gate like that you're basically dictating what kind of story you want me to tell with it. On the other hand, if my character loses an ear as a result of losing a fight, that's something I can live with. It's really more your attitude I take issue with more than I am defending the choices the DM made. I personally probably would not have made the same choices he did, but it is a game that you play for fun. The fact that your first thought was "ugh gently caress this railroad-y bullshit, time to have a discussion with the (new) DM" and get self-righteous instead of "oh hm well I don't like what just happened but let's see how I can have fun with it" is off-putting. e: basically what I'm saying is I hope next session begins with your PC's balls getting cut off and the DM forcing you to speak in a high-pitched voice whenever you say something in-character Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 18:36
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Yeah randomly rolling a die is stupid as hell, if you want character death approach a couple people and say "Hey, since we're closing off this game do you want to die and have an incredibly badass death scene?" I mean gently caress, this is Exalted, your character should literally hold off an army while everyone else escapes and then only give up the ghost when a rogue moon crashes into him, and even then he's only mostly dead so the big bad stalks up to him to deliver the coup de grace when the dude explodes himself, killing them both.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:37
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Yawgmoth posted:I would tell them "I do plan but you guys always go off and do crazy stupid awesome poo poo instead of what I plan. Would you rather I just railroad you towards the plot?" The trick for a good GM is "railroading" the players without them realizing it. They'll never know you relocated Super Villain/Awesome Plot Point you wanted to wrap them up in to Different City/Area I Never Wanted them to Visit. I was always pretty good at giving the players the appearance of free will while always working my main hooks into whatever it was they did. there's nothing stopping you from re-locating a significant item, NPC, clue or plot point from where you intended it to be to directly in their line exploration. Granted, some players just like to be dicks and break the game or whatever, but they usually didn't last long in my campaigns, either because they got offed from their own stupidity or they lost interest because I wasn't having it nor letting them ruin things for the players that were enjoying themselves. Usually, the types of players that enjoyed my settings tended to chase those types off.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:43
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Mechafunkzilla posted:It's really more your attitude I take issue with more than I am defending the choices the DM made. I personally probably would not have made the same choices he did, but it is a game that you play for fun. The fact that your first thought was "ugh gently caress this railroad-y bullshit, time to have a discussion with the (new) DM" and get self-righteous instead of "oh hm well I don't like what just happened but let's see how I can have fun with it" is off-putting.
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Apr 10, 2012 18:51
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ImpactVector posted:Oh hey, you had me rethinking my indignation a bit until your edit but I guess this just means we're both assholes? Cool beans. I can live with that. Actually that last bit was me being facetious because I felt like I might have been a little harsh with the rest of my post. 
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Apr 10, 2012 18:55
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Actually that last bit was me being facetious because I felt like I might have been a little harsh with the rest of my post. In the end I think I'll just let it go. I'll likely spin it back towards the character's stated backstory of being a bit of a goody two shoes by playing him as more concerned about the town and completely disregarding the ear thing.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:01
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ImpactVector posted:Haha, ouch. You got me. It's me, I'm the one who gets too worked up over elfgames. Exactly! The goblin was obviously trying to intimidate your character and goad him into seeking vengeance; the fact that he'll take it in stride and defend the town for the right reasons builds the dynamic of the campaign in its own way.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:17
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Losing an ear to a campaign arch-villain who goes by "The Mangler" really doesn't qualify as "loving over a PC". I mean, the guy could turn it into a secondary objective to find a magical healer who can restore his ear, or at least attach a convincing prosthetic. Likewise the player could turn it to his advantage, lobbying for a bonus to Bluff as he tries to impress a prospective employer with tales of That Time He Got His Ear Ripped Off While Slaying A Giant In Single Combat. I mean, being lovely to PC's for no reason and impeding on the way they want to play the game is one thing, but it's not like his character's background was that he was a handsome master of seduction who relied on his looks. "My character tl;dr: it's not about "my character " as much as it's a matter of mutual respect.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:22
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Particularly when the way the character got hosed with might later be used to support a penalty to Listen checks. Slapping a permanent penalty on anything by fiat is pretty much the definition of loving over a PC.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:28
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Yawgmoth posted:It's still a dickbag thing to do, to say "hey your character? I'm gonna do poo poo to him without your consult or consent." There's a huge difference between "This happens to your character without even the illusion of having a chance to avoid it because I say so" and "Hey, what do you think about having this happen to your character?" or even "I wanna run a pre-game session with your character regarding a point in your history" and then having that poo poo happen. With the last, the DM can still force the issue but can still maintain that possibility of a different outcome through the rolling of dice and allowing that small chance of a nat 20 or lucky crit or just clever tactics of the PC. I would definitely play with the latter two DMs; I would likely not play with the first. Just because a DM does not run a campaign in the way you think is ideal does not mean it is automatically a big deal, unless you decide to make it a big deal. A Thing Happened to the character, sure it was a little unfair and shows a bit of DM inexperience, but it's not like the DM stole his agency and said "you are furious and follow him to his hideout and on the way you kill someone and are now wanted for murder". Your first scenario is also a total misrepresentation of what the situation is, which is an enthusiastic but also fairly new DM tried to craft a campaign introduction that would engage the players emotionally, and overstepped his bounds a bit, not "hey guess what players whatever I want to happen to your characters will happen, gently caress you also". At most, it would warrant a bit of constructive criticism after the fact along the lines of "hey it would have been fun to play through that introduction you sent and maybe tried to turn the tables on the goblins", it's certainly not worth torpedoing the campaign over. some loving LIAR posted:Particularly when the way the character got hosed with might later be used to support a penalty to Listen checks. Slapping a permanent penalty on anything by fiat is pretty much the definition of loving over a PC. So if this is really concerning you, you say to the GM, "hey so since losing my ear was out of my control and I still have two functioning eardrums, can we have this be just a cosmetic thing and not affect listening checks?" and you work it out. Again, it's not a big deal, and this is a better way to go than grumbling about how the DM "hosed your character over" and coming to the table with a bad attitude. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 19:41
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Years ago, I had a truly great Battlestar Galactica game. For those of you who don't know it, shame on you. The 5-player game has 2 random Cylons that win if the humans lose, this loyalty is decided by cards. Every turn someone draws cards, the cards are used to solve the crisis that comes up every turn, through skill checks. The humans have a great tool to double their actions per turn with Executive Orders. The game started off with me as a Cylon. My best friend (Carl), who picked the only character that starts with 2 loyalty cards, is a relatively easy target for casting suspicion. So after 2-3 turns and spiking a skill check with one of his card colours, I can make a decent case. I start airing my suspicions, Carl counters that I could have sabotaged the crisis just as well. That turn a crisis comes up that lets the current player (me) check a random loyalty card of someone. I decide to check Carls and then have "solid proof" he's a Cylon, at least 1 other person already believes me. So he passes a random card to me, I check and see a Cylon face staring back at me. drat, I've just made my only cylon buddy a suspect. However, he knows which card I saw when I returned it, so we know about each other. I start cursing his other must have been the Cylon card, and 2 turns later I intentionally bungle my attempt at subtle sabotage, being outed by the only other player who initially believed me. Carl then manages to get me throw in the brig and is cleared of all suspicion when I reveal myself. The game drags on for the humans, there's no real sabotage going on so they don't know who the other Cylon could be. Carl's being the most helpful "human" player, but I'm getting a bit lucky and can throw a lot of trouble their way. After an hour of this, I'm starting to wonder if he even realizes he's a cylon himself, cause he's undoing so much of my damage. Then suddenly, we're 1 turn away from human victory. The last turn sees me throwing a Super Crisis their way. It resets their jump track, so they are at least 3 more turns away from winning. It also summons a lot of enemy ships and they already had a lot of civilian ships out there being vulnerable. If they lose 2 more ships, the humans lose. Carl is the only player sitting in the location that'll let him save all the civilian ships. Another player could move there and save 2, but an Executive Order would double the actions my buddy can use, so he can save all 4. The humans do the math. There's a ship out there that has nothing valuable on it, they can afford to lose it. With all the other stuff they've lose over the game, there's about a 20% chance one of the ships in danger is that ship. It's a 1/5 chance for them to win the game if they decide they don't trust Carl. After 3-4 minutes of debating, with me goading on by them saying he's been a Cylon all along, they decide that in the end, if Carl was a Cylon he played terribly. They think that if he revealed himself earlier, the humans would've had no hope of winning. He's played this game as much as the rest of us (10 times or so at the time), so he knows this. But to Carl, BSG isn't a game about mechanics, it's about theatrics. In the end they give him the order with these words: "Save us, Carl, you're our only hope." He reaches over, picks up the civilian fleet and sends the entire thing into the waiting sights of the Cylon Raiders. Up until then, nobody had him as their prime suspect. The looks on their faces was priceless.
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Apr 10, 2012 19:42
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Yeah, thanks all for both validating that it was a hamfisted way to get buy-in and slapping some sense into me that I was getting mad about elfgames. I'm still not ecstatic about it, and I might just give him a "hey, maybe next time it'd be cool to cooperatively work together with a player to figure out why they're interested in the current situation rather than trying to dictate it", but I'm not going to flip any tables or anything (not that that was ever the plan).Mechafunkzilla posted:but it's not like the DM stole his agency If I had gotten to play out that intro and maybe punch out a few goblins, try desperately to raise an alarm, and spit in the face of the leader as he cuts off the ear I'd totally be down for that. But as things stand now the DM has done more to characterize my dude than I have.
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Apr 10, 2012 20:03
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ImpactVector posted:Yeah, thanks all for both validating that it was a hamfisted way to get buy-in and slapping some sense into me that I was getting mad about elfgames. I'm still not ecstatic about it, and I might just give him a "hey, maybe next time it'd be cool to cooperatively work together with a player to figure out why they're interested in the current situation rather than trying to dictate it", but I'm not going to flip any tables or anything (not that that was ever the plan). I don't think you actually understand what "agency" means. He didn't define anything about your character's personality and he didn't force your character to perform any actions. Your character was abducted and tortured. It was unfair and beyond your control, but it doesn't force you to play a certain way whatsoever. The scenario you laid out would have been fun to play through, sure, and he would maybe be a better DM if he went out of the way to run through it. But it also wouldn't have been any fun for the other players to stand there watching you fight some goblins so that the campaign could get started. e: VVVVV this too VVVVV Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 20:12
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ImpactVector posted:Yeah, thanks all for both validating that it was a hamfisted way to get buy-in and slapping some sense into me that I was getting mad about elfgames. I'm still not ecstatic about it, and I might just give him a "hey, maybe next time it'd be cool to cooperatively work together with a player to figure out why they're interested in the current situation rather than trying to dictate it", but I'm not going to flip any tables or anything (not that that was ever the plan). You don't get full agency over your character until the game starts. Just like you wouldn't mind the GM giving you an ancestral blade if it fit your backstory, you shouldn't make a big deal about the ear. Get it healed, pick up a habit of stealing ears to replace yours, do whatever. But it's not the end of the world.
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Apr 10, 2012 20:13
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Just because a DM does not run a campaign in the way you think is ideal does not mean it is automatically a big deal, unless you decide to make it a big deal. A Thing Happened to the character, sure it was a little unfair and shows a bit of DM inexperience, but it's not like the DM stole his agency and said "you are furious and follow him to his hideout and on the way you kill someone and are now wanted for murder". Just because it's "not the end of the world" doesn't mean he shouldn't say something. You don't get someone to improve by not telling them what to stop/change.
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Apr 10, 2012 20:48
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Yawgmoth posted:I don't think you actually read what is DM sent him. It was pretty much all "you do this, you think that." You're so close to getting my point, too, and then you swerve hard to dodge it: it was a little unfair and shows a bit of DM inexperience, and as such he should say "hey this sort of thing isn't cool because <reasons stated> and how about <alternates given> instead of railroady bullshit?"  Okay, the DM narrated some idle thoughts that the PC had. Again, maybe worth bringing up as an aside later but not a big deal. That is a far cry from "telling you what your character thinks" and forcing his character to perform actions. The spirit of it was "you are on patrol and are ambushed by overwhelming numbers of enemies", which is fine. Sometimes this is even preferable, it can be frustrating if players are forced to play through an un-winnable fight. Also, sometimes it isn't a good idea to correct every mistake a newbie DM makes because it will kill their confidence and make it less fun to DM for you. And, depending on the severity of the mistake, make you look like a quibbling manbaby who can't let things slide. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Apr 10, 2012 |
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Apr 10, 2012 20:57
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Note: At this point I'm pretty much arguing rhetorically about best practices. I'm past caring about the current situation in terms of doing anything to change it. Also, just to clarify one last time, the DM probably has more DMing experience than I do. I just have more 4e/non-D&D/non-traditional game experience.Mechafunkzilla posted:I don't think you actually understand what "agency" means. He didn't define anything about your character's personality and he didn't force your character to perform any actions. Your character was abducted and tortured. It was unfair and beyond your control, but it doesn't force you to play a certain way whatsoever. quote:I was thinking Alek is a former guard captain for a corrupt lord who was sentenced to die when he refused to execute a poor poacher who was hunting to feed his family. He fought his way out but he's been on the road since, taking jobs to make ends meet (and, though he'd never admit it, to help those in need). If we're doing old-school alignments, he'd lean towards chaotic good. So right off the bat the DM has had more say about who my character is than I have. And it's in the form of a short story from the DM, which by implication is fact until he says otherwise. Maybe we have some different playstyles, but I personally find it to be a little offputting/daunting to try to get into that character's head now. It's not the end of the world, but in my mind there's really no reason to have that kind of conflict even come up. Liesmith posted:You don't get full agency over your character until the game starts. I mean, yeah, you have to play within the rules of character creation and some of the details are probably defined by the setting. So it's not 100% control. Then again I don't really believe in backstory beyond a few sentences to give the DM a few ideas of things to bring up in play and to give a player a starting point. And normally I don't even consider that to be set in stone.
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Apr 10, 2012 21:17
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MechaFunkZilla[/quote posted:quibbling manbaby You've got a tremendously bad attitude. If my DM sent me an email with something like "Is it cool if one of your ears was cut off by Magurg, Goblin Warlord/Skullfucker?" It'd be one thing. That's not what happened. Instead, Vector got a typo-RIDDLED email that narrated: *Where his character was (reasonable) *Who his character was (a bad worker who would gently caress off without excitement; a loser, a victim) *What happens to his character concept (instead of being an ex-guard, he's a freelance guard who got mutilated by goblins). It didn't help that the email lacks even two good sentences struck together. If I got that from a prospective DM, we'd be having a talk. Part of having fun is having rules and boundaries. One of them is "work with the players so they play the character they want to play, in a way that fits into the wider universe." This was not that, no matter how many emoticons you post.
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Apr 10, 2012 21:21
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If a dude sent me a thing about how I got captured and lost an ear and it was that badly written and all that poo poo with no input I'd either be out the game (if I didn't know the dude that well) or call him on it. It's really not defensible.ImpactVector posted:Also, just to clarify one last time, the DM probably has more DMing experience than I do. Too bad he's poo poo at it
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Apr 10, 2012 21:22
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Mikan posted:Too bad he's poo poo at it
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Apr 10, 2012 21:27
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I can't believe "let it slide and see what happens" about something that happened before the DM has even presided over a single session is such an unpopular opinion.
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Apr 10, 2012 21:28
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I really wouldn't appreciate that intro as a newish player to RPGs in general. My character is my character, I should get to at least throw out a cheesy one-liner at the goblin who chopped off my drat ear, not sit there horrified because the GM said so. Pre-game or not, I don't think a GM should ever treat a PC as an NPC. External stuff is fine (You were guarding a wall, goblins attacked it, you lost) The problem is when the player was given no input at all in how his character reacted to that situation. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it or change the result, but I would probably say something like, "Hey can I edit this a bit and put in my character's reactions? I don't think my character would be so passive during this."
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Apr 10, 2012 21:34
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In retrospect I guess I'm just coming from a different perspective from some of you I'm disagreeing with since I only play with friends, and we'd have a blast even if the narrative was terrible and PC's die 15 minutes into the first session of a campaign. If you're playing with people who you wouldn't have fun hanging out with anyway and the focus is 100% on the game I can see getting upset about DM missteps being more justified.
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Apr 10, 2012 21:43
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Seeing all the argument about railroading and bad player/gm conduct, it reminds me of a friend of mine we had guest-dm some shorts. He was good for short adventures where we had a good chance of death in 4e. One time after we were captured by sea-slavers my Dragonborn Shamash got into an argument with one of the slavers. We were all chained up. Shamash: What are you going to do with us? Slaver: We're going to make you fight in the Arena! Shamash: *uses dragon breath* He had apparently not expected that, when from my perspective that could have ended no other way. Shamash was muzzled until the arena portion. I think we ended up destroying the entire island after we fought an immolith in the heart of the Volcano. Good times.
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Apr 10, 2012 21:45
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Mechafunkzilla posted:In retrospect I guess I'm just coming from a different perspective from some of you I'm disagreeing with since I only play with friends, and we'd have a blast even if the narrative was terrible and PC's die 15 minutes into the first session of a campaign. If you're playing with people who you wouldn't have fun hanging out with anyway and the focus is 100% on the game I can see getting upset about DM missteps being more justified. I only play with friends too. We just do this weird thing where it's even more fun to not do lovely stuff and have fun hanging out.
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Apr 10, 2012 22:03
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Mikan posted:I only play with friends too. We just do this weird thing where it's even more fun to not do lovely stuff and have fun hanging out. lovely stuff is often just as if not more fun than not-lovely stuff when RPGing with friends, in my experience v  v
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Apr 10, 2012 22:09
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mistaya posted:I wouldn't make a big deal out of it or change the result, but I would probably say something like, "Hey can I edit this a bit and put in my character's reactions? I don't think my character would be so passive during this." Like seriously, motherfucking second wind -> action point -> bull charge headbutt.
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Apr 10, 2012 22:27
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Getting headbutted would give the goblin a good reason to chop off your ear too!
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Apr 10, 2012 23:58
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Collaborative storytelling in action. Writer A proposes, Writer B edits, in the end a story emerges that's mutually enjoyable. 
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Apr 11, 2012 00:03
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mistaya posted:Getting headbutted would give the goblin a good reason to chop off your ear too! 
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Apr 11, 2012 00:13
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Repostin' this classic story.  Jessi, the apocalyptic treewhore and fledgling succubus Many years ago I moved across country and moved in with an old friend of mine who needed a roommate here in Virginia. I liked it so I stuck around. My roommate, who I'll call Joe because I don't want him to get angry for using his real name, had an INTERNET GIRLFRIEND whom I'll call Jessi because that's her fuckin' name, the psycho. Anyway, after I lived with Joe about a year, Jessi came down and visited us. Whoa boy she was completely unlike anything I'd ever pictured for Joe. But hey! She liked D&D and sat in a few session with my RL group. She played a normal, interesting character. Her first, and only, normal character. A while later, he went and visited her. And a while after that she moved from Wisconsinland, home of cheeseballs and moo-cows, and moved in with us. She promptly joined in the game I was DMing. She wanted to play an Entwife, because this was when LotR was big in theaters and people were like OMG FIVE HOUR EXTENDED DVD EDITION WOWZA! For you heathens who don't know Tolkein, Entwives are like Ents, but female, and Ents are like gigantic big loving talking intelligent trees. I honestly didn't care, and there was a Savage Species entry for Treant, the D&D version of an Ent. By this time, most of us knew Jessi was a complete and utter whore, except Joe, who doesn't play D&D and doesn't really count because of that. So here we are, playing some nerdy game focused on getting the PCs stuck in a war between heaven and hell, letting them choose their sides as spells fly by and NPCs lie, cheat, and beg for money. She's also cheating on Joe with another member of the group, but I didn't know till later. So, of course, what's an entwife to do? "I want to get pollinated," intones Jessi with a perfectly straight face. "It's springtime, high mating season for us ents." I just stare at her. "Uh, pollinated? Sure...there's some bees in the field. You get pollinated while you're walking towards Haven." The others look grateful and go back to stacking dice and eating Cheetos. "What, just like that? You're not going to DESCRIBE it? What kind of DM are you? And who said we're going to Haven? You're railroading me!" She begins ranting and raving about how I'm a terrible DM. True or not, you don't just say it like that. It's not polite. And no one wants to pollinate a rude treant. Now everyone is giving me a look. You know, the LOOK. The one where everyone is thinking "What the christ is going on and why aren't you stopping this?" "Jessi, calm down. You're going to haven because, uh, everyone just spent the last half hour and decided that was the best place to go, since your hometown got burned down. And no, I'm not going to describe pollination in detail. I'm not a loving entomologist." Jessi quiets down, and the game continues. Several sessions later, the incident forgotten, the group is walking cross country. Everything is going well. The sky is blue, the orcs are dead, and the tree is humping a sunflower. Wait a minute. "Jessi did you just say you're going to go hump a sunflower?" "Yes. I still want to get pollinated." "Oh for christ sakes we already went over this! Besides, there's no bees here." "There's always bees where there are flowers." And so begins an argument that derails the game for about an hour. Eventually, I snap. "You want bees? You want loving bees? Here ya go! Roll initiative!" And this would end the tail of Jessi the treewhore, since a quintet of colossal monstrous bees attacked and destroyed the treant. A few days later, Joe finally figures out that she's been cheating on him for quite some time, and kicks her out. We all cheer, even the guy in the group she'd been banging in her spare time, and throw a party. A few days after that, she shows up to the D&D game with a character sheet. She's playing a succubus this time, right? Wrong! Ten minutes, two phone calls, and a trio of cops later, our fledgling succubus is being escorted off the property, never to return. I still see her occasionally, since she's been unable to convince anyone else on the internet that she's worth moving cross country, and I always think of her treewhore when I do.
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Apr 11, 2012 05:13
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God, that story never gets old. 
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Apr 11, 2012 05:26
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ImpactVector posted:I was thinking more that he'd headbutt the goblin as it's holding the knife up to his ear, so the headbutt is what actually takes the ear off. I think this is the best way to go about the situation - propose something that means you got to be a badass as you lost your ear. If the DM has a problem with that, then he's being lovely. To be more detailed: I don't think the DM is being lovely yet. I've done similar things to characters' backstories, and the reaction is usually "He took my loving ear? I'm going to kill that little gently caress, but slowly!" It's a matter of play style, and it only makes him lovely if he does things like penalties to listen checks or refuse to alter the story so you get to be a badass while you lose your ear. Edit: if it was my game and I did that, and a player got huffy, I would take everyone's ears, and the BBEG would be collecting ears for the ear god, and you'd kill him and his earwax-golem minions and get your ears back, and then you'd fight the avatar of the ear god (vulnerable to sonic attacks), and the treasure would be magical prosthetic ears that gave you a listen/perception bonus, and everyone would laugh their asses off for a couple of sessions in the cochlea shaped Dungeon Of The Ear Collector shouting "WHAT? SPEAK UP!" at each other whenever there was a discussion. Further edit: It would only work because my players know I'm not going to be a douchebag. I wouldn't do it to a group that I hadn't played with a lot. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Apr 11, 2012 |
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Apr 11, 2012 05:44
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AlphaDog posted:if it was my game and I did that, and a player got huffy, I would take everyone's ears, For all we know this email could've been sent to all the players (seeing as details like name, class, age or gender weren't included,) and all the players are missing an ear.
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Apr 11, 2012 05:55
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Then you can instigate some inter-party drama by giving them a single prosthetic ear and watching them fight over it.
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Apr 11, 2012 06:05
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| # ? May 15, 2024 19:06 |
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Or having that be the true story for only one of them, and have the goblin only recognize the mage.
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Apr 11, 2012 06:38
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