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The 4e rules already state that you don't actually kill them unless you want to. So that's of limited use.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:03
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Give him a small pool of points (like 3-5) that he can add to or subtract from his damage dealt, to be applied after the damage roll. The points can be applied in any combination the player chooses, but he only regenerates the pool daily.
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Jun 10, 2014 09:08
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Yawgmoth posted:You're not going to win this one, cat-piss. You asked "is this a lovely thing to do?" and several said yes. Now you're just being lovely because you didn't get the vindication you wanted. Are you even reading his posts Seriously you may not be wrong here but you are being a giant loving rear end in a top hat and ignoring everything he says because HE IS THE CAT PISS MAN, CAT PISS DELENDA EST, KILL AND BURN THE CAT PISS
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Jun 10, 2014 09:48
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SALT CURES HAM posted:Are you even reading his posts It's forums. They do this to people. Goes with the territory of posting on them. No big deal.
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Jun 10, 2014 11:56
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You know, sometimes those "real life" gaming moments, like the video of bunny prep, can be really enlightening. I remember in a Twilight 2000 game, we were doing the in the book prep mission where you have to get across Europe in time to make the last boat home, so time stuff is pretty crucial. My party had rolled really really well and had three Bradley's we were moving in (two rolled up, one midnight requisitioned). We had just forded a river when someone mentioned wondering about post-amphib maintenance, when the referee (who was WAY too chubster/unhealthy to have been military) whips out an actual Bradley maintenance manual, so we look the procedure up... Yeah, jaw on floor time... And, sometimes an adversarial DM is okay, too, if you know that going in. Once we weren't playing anything and the referee (Bradley manual guy above) suggests one nighter Space 1889 thing (think scifi RPG amd/or minis by way of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells). He then runs down the idea. British, American, and French commanders (the three players for the night) would try to escort a royal prince incommunicado to his court while protecting him from the pretender and his helpers. Yeah, we walked into it expecting to die after a great bit of squabbling and the ref had said he expected as much. All this being said up front, we were okay with it. It was a one off and we were going to die, but WE basically got to choose HOW to die. Like the desperate stand of my buffalo soldiers holding a hilltop after they tripped over a pending ambush while scouting ahead of the main luggage train. Yup. They all died. But, they all died while holding the hilltop all by themselves until the rest of the train reinforced them and kept the ambush from getting access to the high ground (yeah, we were rolling with the minis that night) which would have clinched things for them and kept them pretty much in disarray allowing the main train (and I mean a long line of people, not a locomotive) to mop them up with the most minimal of minimal damage. So, yeah, all my guys died. But we died like men... In battle... Cursing our enemies and spitting our blood in their eyes. So, adversarial gaming isn't at all bad as long as it is known and agreed to. Once in a while, you don't want the Monty Haul experience, but you just want to say gently caress it.
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Jun 10, 2014 12:47
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When I hear adversarial GM'ing though, I take that to mean a GM who isn't worried about the rest of the group having fun, only caring that s/he "wins", either by TPK or by thwarting any attempts the group makes to do something.
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Jun 10, 2014 17:51
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Adversarial GMing is the worst. I have friends in a Star Wars:EE game that I left because the GM just won't stop abusing the party at every opportunity. Monsters doing way too much damage, someone gets permanently maimed in every battle no matter what tactics or plans are used, more enemies appear out of a nearby closet when we're winning, getting so little money that we spend more money on healing items than we make. Any mixed dice roll result goes the GM's way and is regarded as a total failure by the PC. By the second session I made sure she was using a battle map so she couldn't just make up the distance between enemies or the number of them on a round-by-round basis in order to keep us from getting anywhere in a bttle. The session before, there was a fight we were meant to lose quickly so we could be captured and set up a longer plot line, where our captors wanted to forcibly recruit us. Naturally we had no clue of this, and so resisted, which is to be expected. Cue a massive Braveheart/Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/Boromir scenario where we're surrounded by mounds of corpses of the people trying to "capture" us--twenty or more of them dead. I guess no one told them that the wookiee character they wanted to capture might be of less use if they blew his arms off. I was blinded. Every character went down in a hail of lasers with various maiming wounds. No matter how many we killed with our melee-heavy party, the group of them would somehow magically withdraw further away from us and down one of us every single round. About the only way you can survive a single round of attacks from anything in this particular game is to focus Brawn and armor as hard as possible. This took something like two-and-a-half hours to resolve. We get it, you have control over the game. Mind, I'm only at the game because I want a ride back to my place that night, otherwise it's an hour or more by bus. If I get stuck there again I'm just busing. The session I'm describing happened like 3-4 months ago and that game is still going on. I get constant reports from my friends that nothing has changed about the style of the campaign in that time--something similar happens every time there is a fight. I guess they need to play RPGs more than they need to enjoy themselves.
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Jun 10, 2014 18:25
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Boredom is a hell of a thing sometimes. 
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Jun 10, 2014 18:41
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quote:Adversarial GMing is the worst. I have friends in a Star Wars:EE game that I left because the GM just won't stop abusing the party at every opportunity. Monsters doing way too much damage, someone gets permanently maimed in every battle no matter what tactics or plans are used, more enemies appear out of a nearby closet when we're winning, getting so little money that we spend more money on healing items than we make. Any mixed dice roll result goes the GM's way and is regarded as a total failure by the PC. This is why I try to build my scripted encounters ("scripted" meaning that I wrote them out beforehand, rather than throwing it together on the spot) so that there's always a definite amount of enemies with definite capabilities, location, and inventory. If the party is, say, driving down the post-apocalyptic road and a group of raiders pop out and ambush them, all of them have at least a quick set of defined stats for fair dice rolls, and they all have defined equipment, weapons, and ammunition. If you're walking through a building and get ambushed by a monster hidden in a closet, that monster was always meant to be there, and you'd have never encountered it if you took a different path. This can end up being in the party's favor with the way fights go. Enemies with limited ammo and no extreme drive to continue a fight (as in, not psychotic or zealots) may run low on ammo and choose to retreat instead of pressing on with a fight. Or their weapons and armor may have noticeable limitations that give the PCs an edge against them, like a low rate of fire or poor accuracy. I don't get adversarial GMs. Unless the specific game is about trying to compete with the GM as if he were simply a more powerful player, that's doing it wrong. As far as I'm concerned, as long as the players play smart (which, unfortunately, can be hard to find), they shouldn't be suffering.
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Jun 10, 2014 21:13
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I guess they need to play RPGs more than they need to enjoy themselves. Has anyone said anything to the GM?  I have a horrible mental image of the GM thinking that 'unfair' = 'gritty realism'.
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Jun 12, 2014 10:40
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chitoryu12 posted:This is why I try to build my scripted encounters ("scripted" meaning that I wrote them out beforehand, rather than throwing it together on the spot) so that there's always a definite amount of enemies with definite capabilities, location, and inventory. If the party is, say, driving down the post-apocalyptic road and a group of raiders pop out and ambush them, all of them have at least a quick set of defined stats for fair dice rolls, and they all have defined equipment, weapons, and ammunition. If you're walking through a building and get ambushed by a monster hidden in a closet, that monster was always meant to be there, and you'd have never encountered it if you took a different path. When I used to DM, I stopped scripting stuff other than broad outlines as my PCs would inevitably pull something out of their collective asses (not in a bad way, mind you) that would throw my plans totally out of whack. Generally, if the players seems to be thinking about their gaming and what was going on and being a team and responded creatively, I would "overlook" die rolls and such as the whole thing is about having fun, right? (WARNING - NONE of the above refers to my Paranoia games. Any suggestion I am anything other than a complete rear end that adjudicates initiative by any other method other than "Those that speak first shoot first" is proof you are a commie mutant traitor. Please report to the food vats for assimilation immediately.) I have been in some seriously adversarial games before, and resorted to surviving as long as possible to piss off the referee as long and as much as possible. Once, back in my old school D&D games, I had a DM that was determined to kill off my favorite Paladin 15 and had told me so. He finally did (you can only dodge the dice so long) so I lit the character sheet on fire and threw it on an empty plate in the middle of the table with a smile. You should have seen his face... And then there was Randy. When we were playing some game based on Twilight 2000 (with the idea that the tabloids were true with aliens and everything), my combat monster (really more the party damage sink) was getting shot in the head at least ONCE every session. To the point "HEAD SHOT!" showed up in every edition of the FLGS's newsletter. Finally it took something called something like Bhuta, Devourer of Souls, a psionic powerhouse monster to kill my character off, and that was with all of it's mind controlled lackeys just delaying the rest of the party while it ate me, with no lackey attacks, just interposing their bodies. FWIW, it was at 25% health when it finally ate me. He hurt it but good while it munched. Okay then, I roll up an urban psyker. No serious combat experience so I role play that. Outside of the city, as we travel, we start getting attacked by a local militia. That has MORTARS and are using them from out of sight so I can't lock on to any of them. The convoy stops, I seriously look at the character concept and decides she freezes as she has never been under artillery attack before and they are peppering us with small arms fire. From out of sight also. So she hides in the middle car of a three car convoy. Who wants to guess which car gets a direct hit from a mortar shell? The poo poo we will put up with for a fix... (Also, do not play poker with your GM if you are any good at it. I suspect that as a possible causation.)
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Jun 13, 2014 03:38
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Samizdata posted:All that poo poo Man, I think no gaming would be preferable to that. I think I'm blessed and also cursed that I've yet to encounter a true moment of cat piss; I feel like I'm missing out on an important milestone in my TG development.
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Jun 13, 2014 04:05
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Glukeose posted:Man, I think no gaming would be preferable to that. I think I'm blessed and also cursed that I've yet to encounter a true moment of cat piss; I feel like I'm missing out on an important milestone in my TG development. Not so much for me. As I said, I can find glee enough in dodging the DM's attempts to slaughter me. I will declare an outright, out of band kill as victory. Not like I am looking for such games, but sometimes, for me at least, a bad game is better than no game...
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Jun 13, 2014 06:23
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We didn't really have PC deaths often in my old group. I killed the one character of my cat piss guy when he had spent three sessions (plus one session as DM) doing everything possible to aggravate both the players and the characters and repeatedly pulling stupid plots that nearly got him killed, and his later character in a GURPS space game was shot out the airlock off-screen when he left the state. Then there was Casey's short Jewish guy in the alt history WW2 game who tried to do a one-man infiltration of a concentration camp and got caught almost instantly. But I think that's it.
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Jun 13, 2014 16:05
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chitoryu12 posted:Then there was Casey's short Jewish guy in the alt history WW2 game who tried to do a one-man infiltration of a concentration camp and got caught almost instantly. Inglorious Bastards: The RPG My Wednesday night encounters game got a little more complicated this week when a family with a bunch of ten-year-olds showed up (with more on the way next week). As it happens, young kids are way more enthusiastic about D&D than adults, far less jaded, and significantly more clever about how they approach problems.
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Jun 13, 2014 16:16
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During this weeks session our groups team of teenage magical girls took part in a talent contest at their school before being interrupted by Tuxedo Mask. And here's the story with a bit more details for those interested: Okay so the group I'm playing with online is running a modern day Magical Girls game using the Burn Legend alternative rules for Exalted and takes place in the far future of 2015. The group consists of the following people: Ashni Raj aka Lightning Princess, has as the name might imply power of electricity and lighting. Izumi Kuromi aka Shining Witch Izumi, has Moonbeams and spirit manipulation based powers. Alicia Dempsey aka Maiden Dasvidaniya, rip and tear powers fuelled by the underworld. Alexandra Black aka Panzer Walküre (me), arms and legs replaced by hyper advanced robotics, has rocket fists among other things. Roselyne Dolce d'Allegra Beaumont VI aka Épine de la Rose, various illusionary powers, can make copies of herself (which will be kinda important here). Also the Queen bitch of the universe pretty much. Should be noted that the player playing Izumi was absent during this sadly. Now the team is having some downtime after preventing the summoning of a vampire lord and their school to celebrate Columbus day is having a talent contest and they're all praticipating. Alex gets roped in by a friend of hers to perform with the cheerleaders. Ashni has her own performance arranged which she's being quiet about. Alicia has both her own performance has been convinced by her friend Dolores to help her with her "puppy" show. And Roselyne is having her own thing aside from playing the assistant to a friends magic show. Aside from having copies of herself in almost everyone else's show and in audience as well. So the big day rolls around and Alex is the first of the team to go out on stage where she sadly screws up making the team earn low points (I botched the performance roll). Her act is followed by one rather influenced by Roselyne during a previous improv session wherein a friend performs a country electronic D&B track that is all about the singers platonic girl-crush to Alicia in non-veiled terms. After that it's Roselyne's turn and she rolls out with a five hour long show in three acts depicting the team's battle against the vampire with everybody else in the team (all played by copies of herself) being utterly incompetent and her being the main star of the show. Only for Ashni to interfere towards the end by blowing out the lights with her powers. This is followed by Roselyne's second act where she's the assistant for a magic show wherein she screws with the guy and pulls out tarot cards instead of normal playing cards as intended. Tarot cards with her on them as well. Because that is how Rosie rolls. Then it's turn for Alicia's act with Rosie where she saws her in half with a chainsaw in the goriest way possible before putting her back together. After that it's time for the "puppy" show, and I'm saying that in quotations as Dolores had been incredibly vague about them. And then on stage she reveals, Sparky, Rolly and Spot which turned out to be a Displacer beast, a quillbeast from Diablo 2 and Cerberus. After some general tricks the three dogs barely avoid pummelling Alicia into a pulp despite the thick padding she is wearing as they pounce on her. (As to why no one in the audience reacted to them? Magic, that's why.) Finally it's Ashni's act who drags out two tesla coils on stage and first does a number of tricks "using them", as in masquerading her powers via them, before doing a music number as a finale. Ashni's showcase is enough to make her the winner and once the applause has died down lights go out and everybody who is not magical goes unconscious after they've gotten back up, the team then receives a warning from their handler that a "friend" is on the way as moments later a demon dressed as Tuxedo Mask bursts in through the ceiling and that's where we kinda left of due to time constraints.
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Jun 13, 2014 16:46
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Cooked Auto posted:Magical girls. Burn Legend is such a good variant.
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Jun 13, 2014 18:59
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Cooked Auto posted:teenage magical girls This was a wild ride from start to finish.
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Jun 13, 2014 23:13
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chitoryu12 posted:This was a wild ride from start to finish. I really can't help but to wonder if you're sarcastic or not. I'm just gonna mention that all characters are between 17 or 18 years old. Something I probably should've done in the post as well. 
Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 13, 2014 |
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Jun 13, 2014 23:20
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I am the cat pissed distilled! I started playing D&D with the Basic Boxed set (when it was reprinted in 1983) and in so doing started a D&D group that has withstood the years and is still around today. Having absorbed the idiocy of the Basic set my band of merry murder hobos required stronger meat. I had just bought the AD&D1e Dungeon Masters Guide:  when one of the other players said they'd like to DM. No problem! I had a bunch of other stuff going on so I handed him the books all of my dungeon modules and all my setting notes and what not. So started the juggernaut. The very first party was a miserable bunch of misfits with terrible alignment clashes and a preference for magic items that required a DM roll. Our first thief was left impaled on their own sword after a 'disagreement' during a dungeon delve. A wand of polymorph was gifted to us by the gods of the AD&D1e DM loot tables:  There's some litter box liner right there. And so began an odyssey of presto chango that became a staple and theme of much of our future work. In AD&D1e if you were an elf (or a half orc) being raised from the dead was not an option and at our levels reincarnate was all that was available. So when an elf (or half orc) died we would reincarnate them. Our DM determined that if you passed a system shock survival you came back alive and if you made another roll you could keep playing as a character so long as what you came back as was capable of being a character class. Enter the wand of polymorph. A character who was a multiclassed elf died and was reincarnated as a badger or something worthless and so was polymorphed into an elf. After a perilous and lengthy series of rolls it was determined that they made all the system shocks necessary and also the one regarding maintaining personality and mentality. This was the start of a long and various career of a character who was called Wazzit for short because with each new incarnation they added a syllable to their name. I'd have to dig out their character sheet but I think they came back around six times. Notable polymorphings included a half orc warrior who died and was reincarnated as a hobbit. The player wasn't impressed and kept whining that they needed a polymorph. They in fact became a pain in the arse about it. Further on into the dungeon was an altar. Our Cleric or Mage then did a Stonetell or Legend Lore on the altar and determined that it was dedicated to one of the abysmal demigods and if 666 hobbits were sacrificed upon it it would summon the demigod to the altar. So wrapped up in his own little world of 'halfling not wanting to be' our ex-halforc missed this conversation, but piped up on queue to complain about his reduced status. So our cleric says, "Hop up onto the altar and we can fix all your troubles". Now what goes one way can go the other right? During a dungeon delve we were attacked by a carrion crawler and low on HP and spells the wand of polymorph was brought to bear. The harmless creature selected was halfling. Did it make it's personality and mentality roll? It did not. So it was to all intents and purposes an actual hobbit. We called her Carrie the Crawler and gained a loyal hench-thing. Carrie was eventually killed by a dragon many years later. The player of the Halforc Hobbit form before was a generally nice guy who just didn't really get D&D but passionately wanted to play anyway. After his experience with altars and Halforc warriors he then became dedicated to playing Druids. I think he has played nothing else now for the last thirty years. The main other guys were: Me - The party caller. For much of the later campaign I played a Paladin but earlier on a Bard (Yes an actual AD&D1e bard). Keith - Usually a magic user and a pretty clever guy except when it came to working out the volume of fireballs. Bacchus - Usually a cleric and a remarkable 'outside the box' thinker  Mark - The creator of Wazzit. Phil - Often a thief, always a dark horse. John - Alternate DM and actual katana owner. (There was obviously lots of  and  I didn't really need to say that did I?)So in one of our earliest adventures the party is being caned by various monsters and things are looking grim. It comes down to the druid to save us. After looking at his sheet for an eternity he says "I turn into a tree". This led to another PC (A dwarven warrior) later declaring that if he ever saw a tree in a dungeon he was going to cut the fucker down. That was by way of a preamble that leads us to: How to We had played basically only among our own little crew for a while. The Druid had some other RP friends and so we tried to play with them but they were all capes and mi'lady and stuff and it didn't fit our particular way of doing things. There was another guy who tried to get us to play traveler but we didn't make it past character creation. Our group were a formidable bunch of players with a strong goal focus and a really through grasp of game mechanics. And so it came to pass that an actual D&D convention was coming to our pitiful little burg. We signed up in a flash and one of the main features was a competitive dungeon for prizes! Premade characters spell lists etc. In we jump. At one point an Iron golem threatens the party (All around level 5 if I remember). We don't even hesitate and engage the monster. By the use of a staff of striking (supplied on a sheet) and the spell fire-shield (also premade) along with a bunch of good rolls and tactics down goes the golem. And down goes the DM. Apparently we weren't supposed to do this, it was a shunting engine on the railroad to a clever escape. The DM scurries off and consults the coordinator and it is decided that we can retcon the scene and continue on properly on the rails. The rest of the dungeon was a bit of a let down after our epic struggle with the Iron golem. We were judged as second best and didn't get the grand prize. Underwhelmed by our entrance to Tournament play we held off further competition until CanCon 93. Once again we were lured by the shiny prizes and trophies on offer in a similar set piece play off. We knew that we were in for something 'special' because each character sheet had a full page character portrait of the character. Sheets were distributed and backgrounds read. The set up was one of the players(John) was returning to reclaim his ancestral home. Why this should be a problem wasn't made clear and so we start. Upon entering our comrade's ancestoral abode we are greeted by the start of a very long description of the room. It includes many treasures. The player who is on a mission to recover it all simply says "Don't touch anything it's all mine" we interupt the DM and suggest that if there are any other exits we are going left. There is the sound of several pages of flavour text being turned. And so we go left. The next room is lovingly described.. "MINE!" "We go left" etc. Until we very quickly find our selves in a library. "We search for secret doors". The DM who had become accustomed to our murder hobo stampede asked why we were stopping to search for doors in this room. "Because it's the library"!? And so we found the most secret and important (plotwise) of all secret doors and emerge onto a balcony behind a mysterious figure. They are dressed in a.."I cast reverse gravity" Now in AD&D2.0 Reverse gravity outdoors could put you in orbit or so the ruling went on this occassion. We put the main antagonist in orbit before he could complete his tiresome exposition. "You know you can't get his gear and won't get the exp for it"? "Who cares? Come fellows let us feast at my table as my ancestors did!" Synopsis: Ridiculous high level dungeon was meant to revolve around a single confrontation with a high level opponent who was immediately excised from further involvement. We didn't win that one either, despite finishing over an hour before anyone else
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Jun 16, 2014 10:32
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I've got a short little story from last night's 7th Sea/Fate game. The cast of characters: Erhard - A stern but earnest young knight from Eisen (not-Germany). My character. Busla - A drunken, dirty, and somewhat shiftless doctor from Ussura (not-Russia). Has a pet binturong named Staver. Wun Sukong - Definitely not the Monkey King. The three characters find themselves in a sub-basement of the grand opera-house in Charouse, one of the preeminent cities of Montaigne (not-France). They had previously made a narrow escape from a large group of musketeers, after climbing through various tunnels and ladders on the way out of the catacombs. The party was tasked with finding the princess of Montaigne's husband and bringing him home, as the Emperor was possibly trying to have him assassinated while the prince was away at war! So, all that stood between the three rescuers and freedom from the opera-house was the stage itself. Wun backflips across stage a few times, being a terrible show-off. Busla manages to sort of lazily roll his way to the other side. Erhard, being completely obvious in basically everything he does, managed to squeeze between the painted backdrop and the back wall of the stage, which lead to the wonderful mental image of "a garbage can being dragged down the street," as described by the GM. This is as close as we could get to accurately describing how it sounded. Needless to say, we were found out by the ushers, who were already looking to turn us over to the musketeers. Busla and Wun start bullshitting some story about how Staver the Binturong is actually Sir Stavington, the renowned theater critic, confusing the poor ushers long enough for us to get caught from behind by a freshly recruited musketeer. Erhard tries to threaten the dude to back off, but Wun uses his extendable staff to nut-tap the poor man. Incidentally, that was the 7th nut-shot of the game, and we've only had 2 sessions so far. We high-tail it past the prone musketeer, through the dressing rooms, and manage to exit the main lobby via a cunning ruse where Erhard dragged Busla out, as if the scruffy Ussuran doctor was actually a scruffy Ussuran hobo. It was not hard to convince the onlooking crowd and musketeers. With that, the three off to the rendezvous point with the rest of the party, who managed to escape the secret mission briefing in the catacombs without getting tied up in all of the above. 7th Sea is a fun setting, you guys. Edit: Did I mention that the Diva was doing her solo on stage at the time of our shenanigans? No, I did not. Green Intern fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Jun 17, 2014 |
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Jun 17, 2014 12:08
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quote:Incidentally, that was the 7th nut-shot of the game, and we've only had 2 sessions so far. If it works once....
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Jun 17, 2014 15:45
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Green Intern posted:Erhard, being completely obvious in basically everything he does, managed to squeeze between the painted backdrop and the back wall of the stage, which lead to ...This  Also loving Cartoon's (plot)-murder-hobos-from-hell.
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Jun 17, 2014 16:59
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Notable in the "Overheard at the game shop" sense: I went out to my FLGS (For given values of local, I had to drive 90 miles to get there) with the intent of buying Eclipse Phase if they had a copy. While browsing, I heard a man and his daughter looking over the Gundam models in the case at the cash register. Dad said, "Huh, are those Transformers?" prompting a nearby staffer to correct him that no, those are Gundam models. "But it's like Transformers, though, right?" The staffer paused noticeably before finally answering "Yeah, sort of." I mentally applauded his self-restraint. They did have Eclipse Phase, and also had a copy of Lamentations of the Flame Princess with a "Mature Content" sticker over the snakewoman boobs on the cover. A good experience all around, although one of the customers was wearing enough cologne to kill a canary.
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Jun 17, 2014 18:17
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Eclipse Phase is the one that's like Star Trek, right? 
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Jun 17, 2014 19:15
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Cartoon posted:How to This poo poo is lovely 
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Jun 18, 2014 00:57
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The lessons we learnt too well I'm going to write in a broadly correct chronology of stuff. Because we were new to PnP we had to learn all the bad stuff by doing it. As I mentioned the first party basically did all the falling apart over ridiculous alignment bullshit and that dwarf tree line was about all that remains (in my memory) of 'good' stories from it. Obviously we had our first moral and ethical challenges back with the Keep on the Borderland and founded orphanages for captured kobold children (etc). We had our first real TPK not long after when we encountered a Yellow Zombie musk creeper. As all DMs I guess, when you read the books you go 'cool lets have one of those!' and it isn't until afterwards you realise it was a terrible idea. So it was with this monster. A few bad saves and it will destroy a party. Like many of the monsters in the Fiend's Folio it was ridiculously overpowered (OP). It just so happened that in this homebrew dungeon one of the encounters we had failed to get to was a party verses party battle. These guys were also pretty OP and would probably have wiped us also. There was still mull in the bowl and beers in the fridge so we did the rest of the dungeon as the opponent party we never faced. They were, of course, appropriately evil. So began our first (but sadly not last) Evil Campaign™. There are pages written in all the AD&D core books about how and why this is a terrible idea but sometimes you just have to find out for yourself. Lawrence the Lark (Bard mentioned before) was born along with an evil cleric (Bacchus), an illusionist (Robert) and a supporting cast of loons. After making my guy a bard, the hard way, he embarked upon a setting destroying reign of wickedness that involved all of the usual suspect artifacts (Eye and Hand of Vecna) but also the Pipes of the Sewers and the Drums of Panic. In the hands of a normal player these were bad enough. In the hands of a bard whole empires crumbled before us. We would roll up on a fortress/city and those who weren't fleeing from the drums were fighting the rats while illusions of the most hideous things imaginable were assailing them from all sides. We deliberately sought out an old paladin's home and surrounded it with walls of stone then summoned in the rats. The bard's 'charming' song was an appropriately punk 'gently caress on all your mates!' and our cleric was amassing a huge army of followers with an enthusiastic 'convert or die' program. Eventually the only opponents worthy of our powers were each other and so the bard and the illusionist turned on the cleric and his entire evil temple of followers murdering them (mostly) in their beds. Just as well really, it meant we had to start a new campaign. This time the DM knew better than to let us entirely off the moral leash and certainly learnt the hard way about random loot tables and artifacts. What the gently caress Gygax and co were thinking when they allowed evil bards, as player characters, is anyone's guess. Not cat pissy enough? The real bad didn't start till the second Evil Campaign™.
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Jun 18, 2014 03:10
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Cartoon posted:The lessons we learnt too well 
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Jun 18, 2014 09:45
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That sounds kinda cool to me, honestly. And I assume the second one was "this time we know what went wrong before, so it'll work fine!"?
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Jun 18, 2014 12:57
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Eh, evil campaigns can work, it's just that there needs to be a good motivation for the PCs to not just constantly backstab each other. One of my favourite sessions ever was part of an evil campaign - we had just finished a very heroic campaign and we were a bit tired of goody-two-shoes adventuring. It was my turn to DM, and I started a Pathfinder game with no alignment restrictions. Most of the group took this as an invitation to play the most evil bastards they could think of, rolling up an infernalist bard, an anti-paladin and some other assorted Lawful Evil assholes, all devout worshipers of the Devil Prince Asmodeus. Our last player, however (Same guy as the Shaolin, a bunch of pages back), cheerfully declared he'd be playing a Chaotic Good cleric of some hippie nature god, and no amount of warning from the rest of us could persuade him not to. The campaign worked suprisingly well, as our bard, being the unofficial leader of the group, managed to keep the whole evil thing mostly under wraps. The player, however, would tell the cleric's player every session that he was going to kill and sacrifice him to Asmodeus. Despite a moment of doubt when the cleric happily decided to cut up and make travel rations out of a white unicorn carcass they found along the way, the bard eventually followed through with his promise and after a quick skirmish knocked out and tied up the cleric in preparation for his sacrifice. The cleric would have none of this, and, of course, tried to escape. This guy is notorious in our gaming group for his ridiculous luck, and sure enough he 20'd the escape artist roll right away. He didn't go far, though, and he was quickly knocked out and brought back. This time the bard bound him tighter, blindfolded him and set the anti-paladin to watch over him constantly. Undeterred, the cleric unties himself again and legs it, but the anti-paladin is standing right by, and knocks him out once more. Fed up of this bullshit, the bard now completely hogties him and leaves hanging from a tall tree, knowing that the fall would knock him out immediately in his hurt state. This time, the cleric is unable to release himself, and it looks like the bard can finally concentrate on the goddamn ritual. No dice. The cleric, having seen too many spy movies, decides the only course of action at this point is suicide, and attempts to put the rope he's dangling from around his neck to strangle himself. Once again, he rolls a 20 and somehow manages, but the anti-paladin, who had been watching the whole time, quickly climbs up, undoes the makeshift noose and knocks him out for good measure. At this point we've spent about 4 hours on the cleric's attempts to foil the ritual, and the bard is starting to get exasperated. Still, the cleric decides to give it one more go, and tries to bite his own tongue off and choke on it. He can't quite make it, but nevertheless the anti-paladin, who is just as done with this bullshit as the bard, eventually catches on and cuts out the guy's tongue just in case. Finally, after 5 real-life hours, the cleric gives up and the sacrifice can happen. The bard got very lucky on his roll in the sacrifice table, and Asmodeus rewarded his patience with the services of a pit fiend for one whole hour, which was enough for the pit fiend to pretty much finish the whole chapter by himself, which I quite honestly think he fully deserved after the whole ordeal.
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Jun 18, 2014 15:13
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I'm in the process of severing contact with a gaming group thanks to the recent and mostly unwanted addition of a major Cat Piss Guy and his Star Wars Revised game. I never thought anything could make me hate elfgame sci-fi hijinks, but Jack and his bizarre idea of what's "fun" have done so quite thoroughly. First, a little background on our group: I've been developing a rules-light storygamey dice system with a companion mage-punk/frontier setting, and my friends Josh and Bob have been helping me test it out at Bob's house. It was a big hit from the word go, and Bob got so excited about it that he hastily welded a mountain of oMage mechanics onto my dice system and started up a weird, post-apocalyptic game of his own. We decided to rotate games every week, and everyone was having fun until Bob told us that Jack would be joining the group. He didn't ask, mind you. He just dropped it on us after a late-night session. Josh and I are both fairly laid back, and had never met Jack, so we thought nothing of it until next week. We show up to not one, but three new players. The two mystery players (don't remember or care about their names) are a huge dreadlocked guy with a wide variety of anime fashion accessories and a small reedy girl who barely spoke. Jack, though, is Cat Piss all the way. I don't like to judge people based on appearances, but this time I really should have. Jack's mighty ball-sweat stench, bad skin and teeth, and grimy wrinkled clothes all painted a fairly dire portrait of our near future. His copy of the core book looked like it had been savaged by a bear. And he told us all to make level one characters. It's just a personal opinion of mine that no OGL game is ever fun at first level, so I let it go and made my character. I found a cool-sounding class variant called the Information Broker that combined levels of Noble and Scoundrel. Besides my character, we had Josh as a fighty Jedi, Bob as a female mind-tricks Jedi, the anime dude as a Kel Dor Force Adept, and the reedy girl as a weird Ewok that specialized in demolitions. Jack then rolled our stat blocks for us. Yeah. He rolled up three 3d6 sets of six, in secret, for each player and had us choose one of those. The best one I could choose left me with a 5, which I stuck in Strength - my class is balls in a fight anyway. Then, I made my first misstep. I started with a good sum of money, but spending it on anything for myself would be kind of a waste, as I was a face-type squishy character who couldn't lift a heavy suitcase without getting a hernia. So, I opened up my pool of funds to my allies, thinking it would be a cool party cohesion hook for my character to be running supplies to the group. People grab what they want out of the core book, leaving me with 100 credits on a cred-chip. Jack: "So, you bought nothing for yourself?" Me: "Well, I thought maybe I could buy some extra outfits for disguises-" Jack (suddenly IC as a Republic judge): "GUILTY! This court finds you guilty!" Me: "What? We haven't even start-" Jack (still IC): "You are sentenced to work service on board the Starship Whatever!" (OOC) "You start with a prison jumpsuit. Nothing else." Okay, so my underworld-connected, smooth-talking con man begins play as a known and convicted criminal serving an unspecified term of forced service aboard a frontier starship. No biggie, though. I've rolled with worse circumstances. One session crawls by, with awkward IC introductions all around, and the action focuses largely on the ship's chief engineer, who is a spice addict and also not even an actual engineer because WACKY. Eventually we roll successful skill checks to fix all his shipboard screw-ups, and I even grift a gram or so of spice off him. I also manage to appropriate two blaster pistols, one of which is fancy for no reason. Session ends. Boring, but not awful. Next session, the two mystery players were gone. I find out later that when Jack learned he wasn't going to be the only GM, he told them that all gaming at Bob's was cancelled. We play Bob's "Mage" game that night, and Jack disrupts the hell out of it, but that's another story. The important session is the next one GMed by Jack. We land a small spacecraft on the surface of a wild, unsettled planet. Jack tells us that we have to rescue a Republic "special operative" (my DMPC alarms start going off here since there is a folded character sheet on the table), and that the natives here can be hostile. Sure enough, as soon as the craft touches down it is surrounded by "buxom, statuesque" (his words) no-poo poo Space Amazons. They immediately draw bows on the two male characters (Josh and me). Now it's my time to shine, right? Right? I go into some detail about how my character tries to non-verbally communicate a message of peace and goodwill to the Amazons, trying to set up the scene for a Diplomacy roll. No dice, literally. Jack just tells me that they growl at me and jab with their spears, but smile at Bob's female character and crowd around her. Desperate, Josh and I dig out some rations from the craft and offer them to the Amazons. They grudgingly accept, and we part ways with no violence. Or so it seems... A few wilderness-related skill checks later, we enter a small clearing. Bob's character, with no Spot check, suddenly sees the same drat Amazons poised to ambush us, with the addition of a shaman-ish leader soon revealed to be a Force Adept. The warrior women try to wave Bob away, then attack the two male characters with no provocation. What follows is an unadulterated game-balance trainwreck. Our two heavy hitter Jedi are in single-digit HP on round two. I roll a natural 18 on a blaster attack and still miss by a mile. Frustrated, I pull a second blaster pistol and begin firing wildly into the melee. Jack laughs, rolls some hidden dice, and tells me that I hit one of them. From that round on, I don't make attack rolls. I just spray and pray like an FPS newbie, Jack rolls some hidden dice, and sometimes I hit. I am the only one landing hits on the enemy, and like I said I'm complete balls at combat. The two Jedi turtle up into full defenses, barely managing to survive round after round of relentless assault. A few rounds in, Jack rolls a die and frowns. Jack: "Well, that'd kill you. So it's a miss. I should have adjusted this encounter." No poo poo. Suddenly, we hit a string of "incredible luck", landing hits on numbers that, two rounds ago, were complete misses. The Force Adept is still wrecking our poo poo, though. We focus fire on her, and within two rounds she is staggering and bloody. I go back to normal d20 rolls for my blasters, and I throw a natural 20 on my next round of fire, dealing max damage. Jack: "The shot vanishes in a flash of light, and the shaman turns toward you. She's entered a FORCE RAGE."  I don't know a lot about Star Wars, but I did some checking and it seems that's a really high-level power. Not surprising, since the FORCE RAGE deflects blaster bolts and lightsabers alike with impunity. We all panic, as one hit from her will down anyone in the fight. The round ends in chaos as I decide to run away and the two Jedi resign themselves to death. Blam! Blam! Blam! Three "football-sized" holes appear in the Force Adept's body and she crumples to the ground, dead. The other Amazons break away and run, presumably off to Space Lilith Fair. Atop a nearby rock, holding a loving slug-thrower hand-cannon and wearing a smug loving grin, is a loving Ewok. Jack: "The Ewok blows smoke off the barrel of his gun. 'Looks like I got here just in time, friends. The name's Higgins.'  "The session ends there, in near-complete silence. I haven't gone back to that group, and I'm working up the courage to tell Bob why. I just can't be in a game that features sexist stereotypes, unbalanced grind fights, unavoidable plot rails, GM Fiat Armor, and above all, that loving Ewok with a gun. Wow, that was long. Sorry, I just really needed to get it off my chest. tl;dr We fail to negotiate with, and nearly get murdered by, over-powered psycho Amazons; Ewok with a loving gun saves us for no reason. Am I being too thin-skinned here? Jack's been just as unpleasant as a player in the other two games, which he insists on referring to as "improv" instead of RPGs. I've got two more stories about Jack as a player: Breaking Character, Chewing Scenery and Monkey Naps. If folks enjoyed my horror story, I'd be happy to type those two up later.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:38
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To be fair, the "I hosed up this encounter and it would kill you, have a freebie" thing is kind of cool. To be double-fair, he probably doesn't deserve that fairness.
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Jun 18, 2014 23:46
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Mr. Damage Control posted:Am I being too thin-skinned here? Jack's been just as unpleasant as a player in the other two games, which he insists on referring to as "improv" instead of RPGs. Tell him he sucks at improv if he can't do basic yes anding.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:25
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mr.capps posted:Tell him he sucks at improv if he can't do basic yes anding. drat, this is a really good point. Allowing us to defuse the Amazon situation through roleplay would be the essence of "yes, and", wouldn't it? Thanks.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:30
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I am imagining Jack as being Jack from a certain infamous webcomic and I think it fits rather well.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:38
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Mr. Damage Control posted:drat, this is a really good point. Allowing us to defuse the Amazon situation through roleplay would be the essence of "yes, and", wouldn't it? Thanks. I don't know about totally defuse but, from my perspective, your efforts to RP totally should have allowed you guys to avoid an all-out assault by an unbeatable encounter. Oh wait, it was all just an excuse to show the party how squishy they are and how badass his DMPC is, anyway.
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Jun 19, 2014 00:55
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I'd definitely tell Bob that you just flat out not enjoying things when Jack's around, especially when He's GMing. I admit the bit where Jack told his buddies to stop coming when he realized he's not GMing all the time is raising some major red flags. I'm not sure what for, but it's just weird.
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Jun 19, 2014 01:06
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He probably thought they'd play "improv" games as well. Or he wants to reduce the number of DMs so that his fantastic story is played more frequently. Tell Bob that you think he's a twat for the reasons stated, and have no interest playing with him.
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Jun 19, 2014 01:28
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SALT CURES HAM posted:To be fair, the "I hosed up this encounter and it would kill you, have a freebie" thing is kind of cool. I do think that every GM should be willing to do that. I mean, he probably kept you alive just so his plans for Higgins the Ewok Savior wouldn't be derailed, but it's still not a bad thing.
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Jun 19, 2014 01:37
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Lesson the second? Modules and Loot. Never trust a module. Before our first Evil Campaign™ ran off the rails into the abyss our DM learnt many other important lessons. All DMs have to find a way of preventing the Monty Haul effect. AD&D1e actively made the problem worse by ridiculous rules like the one about gaining a level (AD&D1e DM guide p86): "LEVEL OF THE TRAINEE CHARACTER X 1,500=WEEKLY COST DURING STUDY/TRAINING" This, coupled with the rules about treasure and experience (AD&D1e DM guide p85): "Covert all metal and gems and jewelry to a total value in gold pieces. If the relative value of the monster(s) or guardian device fought equals or exceeds that of the party which took the treasure, experience is awarded on a 1 for 1 basis." I have never found an instance of a DM actually using the first rule. If you know of one, that's certainly worthy of this thread. For example take Eric the Cleric. Knowing that we would need 1500 gold to get from level one to level two he wisely began to beg for coin on the street. After many hours he had amassed 1500 gold and by so doing had gained the 1500 experience he needed to get to level two! Having a wisdom of eighteen sure helps sometimes! Now he faces a real dilemma. He needs only 1500 more experience to get to level three but needs 3000 gold to afford the training. Gygax to the rescue! He can choose easier marks for his begging! That way he can get a 2:1 modifier for the lesser challenge and gain MORE gold for every experience point. Yeah I really don't think that was play tested. So we entered the White Plume Mountain. Apart from the decently stupid Whelm, an intelligent LN hammer and the totally bogus Wave, an intelligent Trident that had a whole convert to Poseidon or die thing going on there was Blackrazor... Blackrazor is a ridiculously overpowered sword that does soul sucking and has a built in domination effect that means if you don't feed it souls regularly it makes you do it. What level is it for? According to the cover levels 5 to 10 can enjoy the ridiculous sword of soul sucking. How do you think it would go in the hands of a NE Bard? Yeah about that well. It also transfers the levels and hit points of its victims to the wielder. The DM was utterly aghast at what happened next, partly because of all of the extra maths that was necessary to keep track of a rampaging Bard of infinity levels. That was the initial key to our taking over of the realms immediately adjacent and the Monty Haul end to everything. I can't remember what eventually happened to Blackrazor but it wouldn't have surprised me if a huge disembodied hand hadn't snatched it from my bard's grasp and disappeared with it at some point. In passing the DM also learnt another lesson. When a first level player with an oil flask and a rag witnesses the destructive potential lurking only a few gold away so it was with a 'certain spell'. Our long suffering DM learnt all about a 'certain spell': Transmute Rock to Mud. White Plume Mountain really only 'works' (If you can say that about something so fundamentally broken) due to the architecture. The 'puzzles' rely on the shape of the mountain and of individual rooms. Players Handbook posted:Transmute Rock to Mud (Alteration) Reversible As a fifth level spell a 10th level Druid could have as many as two of these a day. That will be a very bad day for any dungeon. Our team was so adept at casting it that using angles and what not for drainage were a feature of our habitual abuse. It eventually led to our DM designing very different dungeons. On one of the very rare occasions that I did a guest DM spot I was keen to run a module who's name escapes me but involved a magic user with a thing for the magic jar spell and a highly dangerous stone tower. The party made it's way through the surrounding terrain and once within 16" of said tower cast Transmute Rock to Mud causing the top two thirds of the tower to slide off. I tried to recover and strung things out a bit longer but it was game over really. You'd think a high level magic user would have had a better plan. At least they didn't get all the (buried) treasure.
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Jun 19, 2014 02:33
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