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Poison Mushroom posted:For the reference, I'm not even Middle Eastern. I'm as white as they come. Which just makes it even more baffling. I guess he heard Middle Eastern in my terrible fake Russian accent/bad Heavy Weapons Guy impression? I suppose it may of been what the DM considered to be "humor," though debasing a PC repeatedly is pretty lovely. Making fun of a PC once or twice? Sure. Breaking down someone's character into a crappy racist joke? Lame. There's gotta be better groups out there! E: Crap, top of page.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:04
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Splicer posted:Explicitly wings or just flight? If it was flight, sounds like rocketlegs (tm). He was a legless guy with huge gently caress-you-I'm-Icarus wings. I tried to go with more of a zipZip I'm a hummingbird approach, but my GM made me roll dice for their size and, nope, Icarus. Funniest conversation we had was when we realized with wings that big he'd basically have to get a sort if lumbering start like an ostrich or a big ol vertical leap like an eagle. Either way no legs. So enter the wheeled sled. And the character concept nosedived a bit further.
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Mar 26, 2015 01:09
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Agrikk posted:And the character concept nosedived a bit further. 
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Mar 26, 2015 01:56
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My tabletop gaming experience not running very deep, I credit this thread and the nightmares within with helping me dodge what could have been a dumb, bad, no-good cat piss experience. I was being pitched by a relative stranger about his upcoming 3.5 campaign and just enough klaxons started going off between my ears to get me to ask some leading questions and reveal that this could only be a terrible, railroad-y, embarrassing clusterfuck in the making. Thanks fellas.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:11
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scopes posted:My tabletop gaming experience not running very deep, I credit this thread and the nightmares within with helping me dodge what could have been a dumb, bad, no-good cat piss experience. I was being pitched by a relative stranger about his upcoming 3.5 campaign and just enough klaxons started going off between my ears to get me to ask some leading questions and reveal that this could only be a terrible, railroad-y, embarrassing clusterfuck in the making. Thanks fellas.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:27
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Boru posted:
I had one of these guys. Any system the DM doesn't understand is either 'obscure' or 'rules lawyering' when you bring it up. Mine even required us to compile a list of our class abilities (which was short, being 2E) so we'd be less likely to catch him with his pants down.
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Mar 26, 2015 02:40
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I'm sorry to hear that. It's why it took me like three years to put together a new gaming group. Gaming people can run . . . weird sometimes.
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Yawgmoth posted:What was the pitch? What were your questions and his answers? Don't leave us hanging! It started off as a simple enough "I'm looking for players for my epic campaign that I've been working on 10+ years since I was in High School," all of the PCs were to be pre-gen homebrewed or kitbashed classes, who all had an attached demon familiar thing, for some reason, that could enhance powers, feats, skills or whatever at any given time, at a price, with an emphasis on needing to keep them "pleased." Whatever dude, maybe that sounds compelling to someone, but he wasn't selling it like anything other than a goddamn mess. More than a few times sentences were prefixed with "The players will," as in, will have to hit all of these story beats in order to satisfy his fantasy of seeing his multiplayer novel come to life. Vague mention of DMPCs. At one point I mentioned my interest in playing and running very open, sandbox-y style games with primarily player-driven focus. He responded with something about how he can't stand games that don't have a point. He was also generally goony as gently caress and probably has an account so sorry rando weirdo DM dude if I'm totally mischaracterizing you
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Mar 26, 2015 03:18
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I've got a bad Pathfinder and a good (I think good. Seems good so far) D&D story. Pathfinder: It was a Pathfinder Society game, so, organized play, yatta yatta. I honestly can't remember most of the party, because I am bad at remembering that sort of thing, and other than the couple that I do remember, no one really did anything to stand out. There was my level 4 Bladebound Magus A rogue who referred to himself as an archaeologist. I don't think that's an archetype, so he must have just statted himself out that way. A...something. Summoner maybe? Had an animal companion that was a huge fuckoff gorilla. An Oracle. A pre-gen Barbarian A human cleric of Desna. I remember him because he was sitting next to me, had 22 Strength (Which I'm not even sure how, going by Society rules.), and did exactly two useful things the entire time. A second cleric, I think. He had Cure spells, at any rate. I don't think anyone in the party was higher than level 5. The module was Day of the Demon. Honestly, the whole adventure was pretty uneventful until the boss fight. We make our way to the basement, and the hallway splits two ways. One way is barred. I use Unseen Servant to try and jimmy the lever we can kinda see on the other side, but it doesn't work. While the summoner puts his gorilla to work trying to force the bars, I take a short walk down the other passage to check things out. As I'm admiring a mural of Asmodeus, everything goes black, and I get sneak attacked into the negatives. The party had gotten the bars removed just as I had gotten stabbed, and they make their way into the new room, which is dark as hell thanks to the Darkness spell. A whole lot of no one being able to do anything happened. The Desna cleric used summon monster to call up a giant worker ant, since they had dark vision, and the summoner sent his gorilla into the fray. But, neither of them bothered to give specific commands. DM: "Ok, so what do you tell it to do?" Cleric: "Lol, I dunno. I tell it to attack?" Summoner: "I tell mine to attack whatever smells weird." The DM decides that a celestial giant ant would smell weird, so there's a 50/50 chance it'll attack the ant instead of the demon we're facing (A Babau.) He also decides that the ant would simply attack the closest thing, since it was only told to attack. So, it and the gorilla end up taking a few swings at each other. Eventually, I get dragged out of the darkness, and the other cleric hits me with some weak Cure spells. By weak, I mean he rolled abysmally low on both of them. I think it took 3 people casting Cure Light and one person casting Cure Moderate to finally get me back to where I could get into combat. I immediately cast Shield, Blur, and rub Oil of Bless Weapon on my sword (We were expecting undead) The Desna cleric tries to cast Dispel Magic, but, the DM says it won't work since he can't see the source of the Darkness. (If I'm reading the book correctly, that's wrong, since you can target an area. But, it's moot because Babau's can spam Darkness at will, so assuming the cleric even managed to dispel, the demon would just re-do it, buying us one turn at most to do anything.) The fight drags on, and the summoner gets knocked into the negatives somehow. The giant worker ant gets killed, and the DM rules that the gorilla knows to target the Babau now. The summoner is pissy and having something of a tantrum since the way this fight is going, it is looking VERY likely that we are going to die, so he keeps rolling to see if his gorilla attacks other people. DM: "Your gorilla knows what to attack now." Summoner: "Nope. It didn't know earlier, it doesn't know now.  Misses the barbarian..."DM: "It knows what to attack! It attacked the ant because it had the Outsider subtype, it smelled "weird", which is what you said for it to go after." Summoner: "Yeah, that's nice." The oracle can see in the dark, so she tries to direct traffic, giving people a "Hey, aim that way!" bonus on a few folks who are trying to lob Holy Water into the darkness spell or fire arrows. My Unseen Servant is still up, so, I hand it my Wand of Color Spray that I've had since my second or third adventure, and tell it to stand directly behind the skeletal looking thing (We had managed to suspect we'd run into a Babau earlier in the adventure, and someone made a kickass Knowledge check, so we knew a good bit about them before the fight). I then cast Detect Magic, using my wand as a homing beacon so I can get a general idea of where to go once I can differentiate different auras. Since the babau is immune to electric, my usual tactic of "Shocking Grasp, channeled through my melee attacks, roll 6d6." won't work, and I really don't have any spells that WOULD work, since it's either immune or resists drat near everything except cold iron and holy, so the best I can do is normal attacks. Luckily, with the Bless Oil rubbed on my sword, all crits are automatically confirmed, and I actually manage to land two solid crits in a row to it. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to kill it, and it took great offense to me doing that. So, it hits me with the ClawClawBite. We're in Darkness and I don't have Blind Fight, so, I'm considered flat footed. Sneak attack applies. It succeeds on the roll to hit me and not miss from Blur. Hits the gently caress out of me, takes me to -17. My con is 14. I'm dead. Somehow, the group manages to chase it off, and they decide to cut their losses. Since it wasn't technically a wipe, I was able to use every last prestige point I had to get a Raise Dead. The archaeologist paid for one of the Restoration spells I'd need, and I fronted the second. At least I got a level up out of it. My friend had a level 2 Bard in a different group, pretty sure she had fun, if "We dropped a cow onto a t-rex's head" is any indication. As for D&D. It was earlier tonight, a 5e game at a semi-nearby game store. It was my first time playing there. Again, I'm bad at remembering people. They had all played a session beforehand, so everyone was 2nd level starting off, and the DM bumps me up as well. We had my Fighter/Warlock, a tiefling Paladin who I called Down (First as a joke, and then because he took that as his last name.), a wizard (Or sorcerer. I know he had flaming hair, though I think that was because he was a genasi.), his golem - who was another PC, he specialized in charge attacks (Along with proudly, and constantly declaring "I'm a rock!"), a monk, and a giant. Never found out the giant's job class. I get assigned to work with Down, as we're both Zhentarim agents, and are tasked to go to a nearby town and investigate rumors of strange treasure popping up. This leads to the whole Me: "So, I guess I'm supposed to work with you." Him: "Cool. I'm down." Me: "Nice to meet you, Down." As we leave town, the donkey I've bought winks at me. Okaaaay. Apparently, this thing is a running joke from one of their other groups, it does more stuff later. We arrive in our location, just as the rest of the group is returning from their bandit hunt/last session before I got there. Carting a pile of dead bodies on a Floating Disc. Which they deposit in front of the door of the inn. Much screaming and calling for the guards. I drop my donkey, who I've named Punch, off at the stables, and it continues to wink at me and the stableboy. We're both a little confused. I suggest the donkey at least buy one of us dinner first, and then go to investigate all the screaming about dead bodies. The group clears up the situation to the local magistrate, pointing out the whole "Hey, you said there was a bounty." To which the magistrate points out "Yes, and they all bear the same tattoo. You could have just brought those. Or their heads. You didn't need to bring the whole thing." While the bodies are getting disposed of, a giant hole opens in the ground, several children falling into the earth. The golem declares "I'm a rock!" and jumps down after them, while a group of old men scream and rant about "No, we will deal with this ourselves, outsiders do not need to meddle in this, etc etc." Being the pragmatic sort, I attempt to talk some reason into the old men, but, between the golem player screaming "I'm a rock!" over the DM, and the Monk trying to see how much they're willing to pay us to leave instead of investigate, my own attempts go nowhere. Shrugging, I say fuckit and start securing a grappling hook so I can climb down. Eventually, the rest of the group follows suit, to the continuous protests of the old men. The spellcaster uses his Floating Disc spell to lift the children safely out of the hole, and then we investigate, since we see some doors, some new looking cloaks, and other adventure hooks. I then go to buy a pepperoni roll, because I'm loving hungry. When I get back, the DM is explaining that the group found an ancient dwarven latrine, and the methane is about to cause an explosion because we have torches, and a wizard whose hair is literally fire. The monk makes a successful reflex save to snatch the torch out of my hands and throw it safely away, the wizard stays far enough back that he doesn't cause an explosion, and we resume searching. The entire time, a bat that only I can see is on my shoulder, whispering things to me. Helpful things, actually, so I roll with it. It also changes shape into a squirrel, a spider monkey, and a dog as we wander, and it brays at me so I also know that it's Punch. We walk down a hallway, and a series of cages get dropped on us. A few of us fail the saves to avoid being caged, but, we have a golem and a giant in the party, so lifting them up and freeing ourselves is done in short order. As we get out of the cages, we hear the sounds of running from the door we were approaching. Attempting to follow the tracks, we botch like hell, and end up at a massive, yawning chasm. The DM informs me that Punch crawls inside my backpack, and it begins feeling heavier, even when Punch climbs out and tries to convince me that "What sleeps at the bottom can be ours. We should go down and I can control it! =D" I politely decline the suggestion and decide to look in my bag, to see what's going on. I am told to make a Sanity roll as I pull a long, very ornate, very black staff out of my backpack, cackling hysterically as I do so. The wizard more or less shits himself after an Arcana check, telling me that he's pretty sure I'm holding THE Blackstaff in my hands, and throwing it down that pit is probably the smartest life choice I will ever make. I also pull out a plain, golden ring, and putting it on seems like a VERY good idea. And yes, it is the One Ring. Not liking strange compulsions in my head to do stuff, I toss the ring down the chasm. Or try to. The giant makes a reflex save, grabs it, and puts it on. He goes invisible, turns around, and sees the Eye of Sauron staring at him. I decide I'm going to hang on to the staff. Because, yeah. It's not suggesting anything to me. I'ma keep that poo poo until the owner comes looking for it. We make our way back to the cages, and there's a group of men dressed in black, except for the leader who is some sort of half-orc or ogre (I didn't catch which) He yells Attack, and we roll Initiative. And then the golem's player gets pissed off about something on his cellphone, storms out with nary a word except "I'm going home.", and leaves. Since no one knows what the gently caress that was about, and the golem is one of the beefier party members, the game gets called. So, other than the abrupt ending, I had fun with this one. Seems like a decent group of people, so I'm looking forward to finally getting some quality gaming in. the_steve fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 05:04
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the_steve posted:As we leave town, the donkey I've bought winks at me. Okaaaay. Apparently, this thing is a running joke from one of their other groups, it does more stuff later. Calling it now, the donkey is Elminster.
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Mar 26, 2015 05:24
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Bieeardo posted:I had one of these guys. Any system the DM doesn't understand is either 'obscure' or 'rules lawyering' when you bring it up. Mine even required us to compile a list of our class abilities (which was short, being 2E) so we'd be less likely to catch him with his pants down. Ugh that's so dissapointing. While being a DM does lend itself to being a control freak, I've found the best moments in a campaign are when a PC decides to do something surprising. I try to facilitate that as much as possible by always giving the PC something for being creative. Then again it's much the same when I teach; some of the funniest/profound comments are made when kids feel comfortable enough to take a risk. I guess what I'm trying to say is that DMing is a lot like keeping the peace between a room full of insecure 13 year olds. 
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Mar 26, 2015 12:26
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Boru posted:Ugh that's so dissapointing. While being a DM does lend itself to being a control freak, I've found the best moments in a campaign are when a PC decides to do something surprising. I try to facilitate that as much as possible by always giving the PC something for being creative. The thing is, as a GM, you're *always* in control, no matter what. No matter how powerful or clever or lucky the players get, you're always going to have more resources than them. For some reason, though, crappy GM's don't seem to understand that, and get extremely insecure when PCs do something they don't anticipate leading to stupid overreactions. "What, your flight spell completely negates my pressure-plate corridor? Well gently caress you it's several miles long so your spell will run out before you get to the end" "You prepared Death Ward this morning so you're immune to level drain? Well guess what you were dispelled on your way in and the wraith still drains you". Just loving give the players their "a-ha!" moment, let them feel good that they out-thought you and quietly add another obstacle somewhere down the line if you need to preserve tension. The pressure-plate corridor thing actually happened to me once. We were playing Star Wars d20, and I rolled an engineer because I really liked the crafting rules. While searching some caves for some ancient Sith bullshit we came across a corridor whose floor was tiled with some strange symbols. After some quick investigation we found out some of the tiles were trapped, and when one of those was stepped on, the walls would open and a torrent of loving lava would pour out, burning anything in a 40 metre radius of the opening. I'd spent several months building myself a nice armour with a built-in jetpack, which I tried to use to bypass the pressure plates, only to find out that apparently it went on for 7 loving kilometres and my armour didn't have enough juice to be able to take me all the way there without landing. For an extra gently caress you, there was a pattern in the symbols that told you which were safe and which weren't, but it would completely change every 100 or so metres requiring a new int roll to understand the new pattern (failure, of course, meant an immediate and potentially lethal lava-ing).
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Mar 26, 2015 13:28
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Kulebri posted:The thing is, as a GM, you're *always* in control, no matter what. No matter how powerful or clever or lucky the players get, you're always going to have more resources than them. For some reason, though, crappy GM's don't seem to understand that, and get extremely insecure when PCs do something they don't anticipate leading to stupid overreactions. "What, your flight spell completely negates my pressure-plate corridor? Well gently caress you it's several miles long so your spell will run out before you get to the end" "You prepared Death Ward this morning so you're immune to level drain? Well guess what you were dispelled on your way in and the wraith still drains you". Just loving give the players their "a-ha!" moment, let them feel good that they out-thought you and quietly add another obstacle somewhere down the line if you need to preserve tension. Haha 7 kilometers. The deepest mine on Earth is 3.9 kilometers. The deepest known cave is 2.1 kilometers. The Mariana Trench is 11 kilometers. I'm as big a fan of pressure plate traps as anyone, as my players will attest, but drat.
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Mar 26, 2015 13:48
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7000 divided by 100 is 70 that's 70 loving int rolls you'd need to make 
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Mar 26, 2015 14:10
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He wasn't descending, though- sounds like some kind of volcano chunnel. I would've just said "Cool, you're across. Can you lift your buddies and all their poo poo, too  ?"Tollymain posted:7000 divided by 100 is 70 Some bad GMs just go "Nuh-uh", some make you suffer for not following their script.
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Mar 26, 2015 14:12
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Haha 7 kilometers. The deepest mine on Earth is 3.9 kilometers. The deepest known cave is 2.1 kilometers. The Mariana Trench is 11 kilometers. It's not 7 kilometers deep, it's 7 kilometers long 
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Mar 26, 2015 14:14
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scopes posted:It started off as a simple enough "I'm looking for players for my epic campaign  quote:that I've been working on 10+ years quote:since I was in High School,"   Good pattern recognition and a large sample size is really essential for anyone hoping to have a good tabletop experience.
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Mar 26, 2015 14:14
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scopes posted:"I'm looking for players for my epic campaign that I've been working on 10+ years since I was in High School," ABANDON SHIP Like seriously if anyone tells you they've been working on their game since high school and they are old enough to drink in the US you should just loving run 100% of the time. The poo poo with "demon familiars you have to placate" for everyone is just poo poo fondant on the burning garbage cake that is his pitch.
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Mar 26, 2015 14:44
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Kulebri posted:The thing is, as a GM, you're *always* in control, no matter what. No matter how powerful or clever or lucky the players get, you're always going to have more resources than them. For some reason, though, crappy GM's don't seem to understand that, and get extremely insecure when PCs do something they don't anticipate leading to stupid overreactions. "What, your flight spell completely negates my pressure-plate corridor? Well gently caress you it's several miles long so your spell will run out before you get to the end" "You prepared Death Ward this morning so you're immune to level drain? Well guess what you were dispelled on your way in and the wraith still drains you". Just loving give the players their "a-ha!" moment, let them feel good that they out-thought you and quietly add another obstacle somewhere down the line if you need to preserve tension. In 13th Age, I had no idea their Cleric had Turn Undead ready and she vaporized a good bit of a major boss's backup on turn one. There's really no reason to do anything but say 'Well, I guess that worked out really well and that power worked.' No summoning extra reinforcements or whatever, they set themselves up to win fairly.
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Mar 26, 2015 14:57
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One time I completely dismantled a one-on-one boss fight with a vampire because the DM didn't realize that half of my powers were radiant damage. The rest of the party just thought it was hilarious that my Cosmic Sorcerer was basically giving a vampire interdimensional swirlies with portals to the surface of the sun.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:25
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Tollymain posted:7000 divided by 100 is 70 This guy was all about the overkill. Another particular favourite was his spiky room trap, where walking into a room would cause a bunch of huge spiky steel rods to suddenly come out of the walls which would either impale you against the opposite wall if they caught you head-on, or cut you with the spikes if they just grazed you. If you made your reflex save and dodged the rods, you'd then immediately get hit by the little spikes on the rods, which would shoot out and hit everything in the room. And if you somehow managed to avoid that, the spikes all were connected to the rods with steel cables, so they would immediately retract only to shoot out again the next round. Oh yeah, and the spikes were poisoned, too. Crazy poo poo.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:26
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Do some people just not understand how fun works or something?
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Mar 26, 2015 15:53
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Do some people just not understand how fun works or something? Fun is a zero-sum game. In order for me to have fun, I must extract it from you as anguish. Please play my game where you only get to do exactly as I say, it'll be fun! for me
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Mar 26, 2015 15:54
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Do some people just not understand how fun works or something? No, some people really don't. Also you know a lot of people have legitimate psychological issues that are manifesting in-game.
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Mar 26, 2015 15:58
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Kulebri posted:The endless mine story. Yeah that's lovely. I think the issue that leads to "cat piss" is the misnomer that roleplaying is DM vs PCs. Unless it's a game like Paranoia, the DM is both an ally AND villain to the Party. Like, I never feel slighted if my PCs are clever enough to break my dungeon, no, good for them for out thinking me. My perspective isn't that I want to "win", but rather I want everyone at my table to actually have fun. I mean I figure that's the point of playing a role playing game. E: That'll teach me not to hit "refresh" first! Lanky_Nibz fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 16:03
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Do some people just not understand how fun works or something? Some people just never understood the true depths of the episode of Dexter's Laboratory called "D & DD".
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Mar 26, 2015 16:11
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Kurieg posted:The rest of the party just thought it was hilarious that my Cosmic Sorcerer was basically giving a vampire interdimensional swirlies with portals to the surface of the sun.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:17
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This thread goes a long way to explaining why players in my games who've had mostly (if not exclusively) D&D/Pathfinder experience play so dang adversarially. I am not out to get you, man. Just because I needed a term for it, "lasagna questions" has entered the vocabulary of my gaming circle to describe the kind of behavior where a player is deadset on being oblique as possible to keep the GM from foiling their secret plans instead of letting them help. Instead of just asking if they can do something, or saying that they want to try a plan, they cautiously make sure everything is present so that they can spring it on the GM like a trap or something. "How far across is the pit?" "Are there any support structures on the ceiling?" "How sturdy do they look?" "Could I get a running start?" "How sure is my footing?" Dude, please. Yes, you can swing across the pit. I'm not going to stop you. That is a rad idea. You've been wasting our time asking me architectural minutiae for like ten minutes. Can I pick tomatoes? Do I have pasta dough? Can I get a roller? Do I have sausage? Is there cheese? Stop trying to tiptoe around a scheme and just say you want to make lasagna.
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Mar 26, 2015 16:21
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Bieeardo posted:Calling it now, the donkey is Elminster. I don't think so. Unless Elminster really wanted me to wake up the Tarrasque. (I was told after game that at least once, if someone botches a Survival roll when underground, the party will inevitably come across a pit leading hundreds of miles down into the earth, where it sleeps.)
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Mar 26, 2015 16:54
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ellbent posted:Can I pick tomatoes? Do I have pasta dough? Can I get a roller? Do I have sausage? Is there cheese? Stop trying to tiptoe around a scheme and just say you want to make lasagna. But what it there's no oven? Trap sprung.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:27
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Lorak posted:Some people just never understood the true depths of the episode of Dexter's Laboratory called "D & DD". "And you're walking.... and you're walking.... and you're walking..." Had a few campaigns that were that quote by itself.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:27
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Ichabod Sexbeast posted:Do some people just not understand how fun works or something? As a general rule, most people do not understand how other people's fun works. They only kind of understand their own fun, and usually just project that onto other people. Which to be fair, when it comes to video game design intended to be played by an audience of thousands or more can be an entirely valid design pattern. It's when you apply it to a half-dozen people who are socially locked into a room together that things get wonky.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:28
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I mean hell I go as far to set up the PCs for glory. If I know they kind of want to accomplish something, I'll sneak in a few plot hooks that they can "discover" so they then get all psyched that their dreams come true, and they did it "themselves." Case in point see me next few session event logs Ima post when I'm off phone posting.
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Mar 26, 2015 17:33
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Boru posted:I mean hell I go as far to set up the PCs for glory. If I know they kind of want to accomplish something, I'll sneak in a few plot hooks that they can "discover" so they then get all psyched that their dreams come true, and they did it "themselves." That's exactly it, for me. When I'm writing a session abstract, I'll make absolutely sure that the party can win the encounter with the abilities/tools they have. I recently got them trapped in a quarry while the Big Bad's cronies broke a levy to flood them out, knowing they had a barbarian who could break some poo poo to make a temporary dam while the portal mage got them to safety. If my players die, it's their own fault and they hosed up. I even managed to long-con them once, as they were hunted by a wraithlord from the future who would pop in and attack them from time to time (even if they killed him, he would come back since he was attacking from the future where he wasn't killed yet)... anyway, sure enough when they got to a Minor Big Bad I got them to use three different artifacts (they had collected trying to fight the wraith) to make an ad hoc unstable time portal, and sure enough they throw the MBB through. Everyone was happy they had come up with an insane macguyver solution. "Can I scry the portal to see where it goes?" "Looks like it goes backwards." Then the dawning realization what I had set up. And the wraith attacks stopped. Evilreaver fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 19:30
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It's also distressingly common for GMs to try and make intentionally extremely hard games with ridiculously overwrought traps and instakill or even TPK threats out of a desire to "Give a challenge" or "Make them work for it." I won't lie, I enjoy seeing my players beaten down and built back up again. But I prefer to do it in ways that are fair and make sense and not to kill them if I don't really have to. I usually play relatively gritty games where injuries are serious and major, but I try to give them some kind of way out instead of playing adversarially and massacring them. If someone takes a bullet, it hurts. But they'll probably only take that one bullet that puts them close to death for most of the game unless they play stupidly or need to be taken out of the campaign altogether; maybe the bad guy will start missing shots or failing to penetrate the armor, or they'll be delayed in making a coup de grace long enough for an ally to come in. The injury will need to be treated and will leave a lasting scar and the effects might be felt for a while (or even forever depending on the damage done), but they'll survive and probably learn a thing or two. I find it much more fun to see a party struggle but ultimately succeed and probably have the PCs come out the other side as different people rather than just slaughtering them wholesale and playing every die as it lands. Now, it's fully possible for them to die "before their time". But generally that's something done through incredible stupidity. In my short-lived zombie game, one of the PCs took a major wound that came within centimeters of semi-permanently crippling his arm when he decided that the appropriate response to two jumpy cops with AR-15s gunning down an NPC in their party was to scream and magdump a .45 he barely knew how to use in their general direction; it may have technically been in character, but it was also hideously stupid and if I rolled the dice properly for the encounter he would have come out looking like he was dragged across a cheese grater. So I just did a GM fiat on a bullet hitting a limb and used the dice to determine how much damage was done and what level of severity the crippling would be (he was still a few points above 0 HP and his arm would heal on its own over time; a slightly worse roll and he would have needed surgery to regain use of the arm or even have it permanently disabled). Had this been later in the game I would have likely rewarded his impulsiveness with actually killing him, but this was still the first "session" and I wanted to emphasize the difficulty of the campaign in a way that wouldn't remove a character prematurely.
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Mar 26, 2015 19:37
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Evilreaver posted:That's exactly it, for me. When I'm writing a session abstract, I'll make absolutely sure that the party can win the encounter with the abilities/tools they have. I recently got them trapped in a quarry while the Big Bad's cronies broke a levy to flood them out, knowing they had a barbarian who could break some poo poo to make a temporary dam while the portal mage got them to safety. If my players die, it's their own fault and they hosed up. My GM did something like this in a long-running Dark Heresy game a few years back. We were sent to a hellworld on a mission because we'd hosed up. Loki (I think it was called, it was several years ago) was a big old frozen ball of ice with a set of Xeno teleportation gates and legends of a "force of immense destructive power" that had been sealed away for five thousand years. The shields were coming down soon, so we were sent in to go get this thing, which was obviously archaeotech and could help win several wars. So we go and find we need eight parts of this McGuffin that have been scattered around the world. We find one and my psyker figures out that it's also keyed to the network of teleportation gates scattered around the planet. Teleporting around, we find a total of five before I almost botch a roll and we come out of the gate in the middle of the Eldar forces on the planet. Like, right in front of the main tank line, and they're waiting for us. I figure we're dead, but a Wraithlord, a walker possessed by the spirit of a dead Eldar hero, steps forward and announces that we're actually the saviors of the planet! He explains he was actually there at the sealing five thousand years ago, as the general, and remembers us going forth to perform the sealing ritual! He hands us the rest of the pieces of the McGuffin, opens the portal to the path, and herds us through. We come out in pretty much the same place, only some Chaos Space Marines we've been fighting are fighting the Eldar and winning. We take down the Chaos forces, figuring that we'd rather have the Eldar here to fight than Chaos. The Eldar essentially tell us afterward they'd been having visions of a great destructive force that needed to be sealed off and had set up a ritual to do so, all they needed was a key. The one we conveniently had brought with us from the future! With the Eldar guns at our back "for our protection", we end up essentially storming a hardpoint fortified by the Traitor Marines, who had captured the ritual site. After a hard-fought battle with their leader, who turned out to be a mind-controlling jerk, we break through and are ushered to a library where the ritual had been set up. As we're running toward it, I yell back at our soon-to-be Wraithlord buddy, "Hey, how do we activate the ritual?" He responds with "You'll figure it out!  "We go faster, figuring we're going to be sealing off some horrible Chaos demon or something after another fight. We're critically low on ammo but figure we have one more fight before we resort to melee weapons. We run into this small-for-40k library. The door shuts behind us. All the noise of battle immediately stops. We look outside and the Techpriest notes the stars have changed. It's almost like five thousand years have passed in an instant. That's right, the GM had us lock away a destructive force so powerful it could punch its way through multiple armies without rest, keep moving when others could not, and even stand up to the Traitor Legions themselves. That force was us. And when we stopped laughing and walked outside, the Traitor Legions started dropping drop pods on us. Because that was how our luck went. That was a wild campaign, too. We went from rank 1-14, and two of us even had the same characters from Rank 1. I should type up more stories when I get the time.
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Mar 26, 2015 21:03
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Dovetailing nicely with the theme of the "long con", for two sessions I set wheels in motion that (shockingly) went perfectly to plan. Playing in the Lets Play! DnD live thread, our Druid (Keenan Wood'say) wanted to be able to shift without losing all his clothes. I hinted that, perhaps, if he asks around the city he could find someone who may help them. Here's that back-to-back arc, picking up with half the party in a hellish domain and half just kind of kicking back in the city. Session 4
Session 5
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Mar 26, 2015 23:44
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Kurieg posted:One time I completely dismantled a one-on-one boss fight with a vampire because the DM didn't realize that half of my powers were radiant damage. The rest of the party just thought it was hilarious that my Cosmic Sorcerer was basically giving a vampire interdimensional swirlies with portals to the surface of the sun. During a 3.5 Castlevania game, we completely shorted out a boss fight against the mummy Akmodan III because our Belmont had found a spell that essentially stunned the undead (Without using the keyword stunned, it was a very precise spell). As the DM looked at that and my Warblade standing next to the boss (with an RP reason to be very very angry with Akmodan), he just went "Welp, this is a foregone conclusion, and it's getting late. You win, we'll deal with loot during the week."
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Mar 27, 2015 00:38
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bbcisdabomb posted:The GM had us lock away a destructive force so powerful it could punch its way through multiple armies without rest, keep moving when others could not, and even stand up to the Traitor Legions themselves. That force was us. God I wanna play in this game so bad.
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Mar 27, 2015 00:52
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:No, some people really don't. An old friend invited me to join a league game at a local tabletop store recently. The DM was happy to see me, as the guy I was replacing looked, and acted like a cross between Otis Toole and Milton from Office Space. Apparently this 45 year old man threw fits at the table and kept doing evil poo poo that made no sense. In a previous game the party saved this slave who was being tortured as a conduit for pure chaos. When they saved her she immediately fell into the fetal position and began weeping. His reaction? "I'm gonna stab her." Table - "Wait, what?" DM - "Ok. Why?" Milton - "Oh, I just want to watch her to die."
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Mar 27, 2015 09:16
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God Of Paradise posted:
A bunch of friends and I were playing a Twilight 2000 game and one did that. The soldiers were walking into a town and they were set upon by urchins. His character pulled out his m1911 and shot a kid right in the head, killing her. The whole group was pretty aghast about it, but it turned out he was reading Blood Meridian. We eventually all read it and his actions made sense in that context. I think we all ended up channeling "the kid" at one time or another after that. Edit: but yeah, Milton sounds un-fun.
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Mar 27, 2015 18:00
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