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IPlayVideoGames posted:Pretty short story. An SG cam girl role playing a gangster trying to rob all the other PCs? That's delicious.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:14
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This is one my more memorable gaming experiences in recent memory. And it's not cat-piss. I'm DMing Pathfinder and the party is a Monk, Cavalier, Warpriest, and Alchemist. The campaign has been going on for about 2 months at this point and the thing that's become glaringly obvious is how completely overpowered the Alchemist is compared to the rest of the party. He's dealing huge amounts of damage and can control most encounters I throw at them almost singlehandedly. There are certain instances where one of the other players has as much utility as the Alchemist, but he's generally the strongest by far. Because of this power disparity it's hard for me to scale up encounters since the rest of the party would die horribly. So I'm having to get creative with the types of challenges they encounter. After a few weeks of this it becomes pretty obvious that the rest of the players kinda check out during combats because the Alchemist is so strong. Out of game this sucks because I want my players to be engaged, but nobody has said anything yet so it continues on like that for a while longer. Meanwhile, the guy playing the alchemist starts role-playing as if he really is this super strong undefeatable combat monster. The way he carries himself in game and how he addresses the rest of the party and the NPCs shifts to an almost condescending tone. Everyone is having fun though because it makes for great role-playing. Still, I'm a little worried that this is eventually going to hurt the campaign. A few weeks go by and the PCs find themselves in a combat with an advanced ghost that is going to be incredibly hard. After a few rounds of combat the party realizes they're really getting hosed up so they decide to retreat out of the tomb and escape with their lives in tact. Everyone except the Alchemist. He stays behind, the whole time taunting the ghost while engaging it in combat. This allows the rest of the PCs to escape. We roll out the combat and I give a few opportunities for the player to escape but he presses on. Eventually the alchemist dies because he just couldn't handle getting hit with Corrupted Touch every round. When he's finally dead the player looks up and says something along the lines of "Good. That character was getting boring to play. I was way too powerful and it wasn't fun for everyone else. I was either going to come out of that combat alive and even more of a dick or die while trying to prove how powerful I really was." It was a pretty cool move that nobody saw coming. The players still reference the Alchemist in character as a cautionary tale about not being too prideful regarding your own abilities.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:42
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Agrikk posted:An SG cam girl role playing a gangster trying to rob all the other PCs? It's funny, but I never put it together that way. That makes it even better.
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Feb 4, 2016 18:44
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HatfulOfHollow posted:Eventually the alchemist dies because he just couldn't handle getting hit with Corrupted Touch every round. When he's finally dead the player looks up and says something along the lines of "Good. That character was getting boring to play. I was way too powerful and it wasn't fun for everyone else. I was either going to come out of that combat alive and even more of a dick or die while trying to prove how powerful I really was."
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Feb 4, 2016 20:17
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Yawgmoth posted:You have good players. I had a character do pretty much the same thing in a Mage game; he was part of a legacy (I forget the name) that lets you change matter into energy and vice versa. He died in a conflagration that was previously a city block, saving the other PCs and a good chunk of the remaining city from an infectious zombie horde. I had a character like this once. We were fighting some nightmare monster in the terrible dream plane where everything you imagine becomes real, and another party member blew a roll and unloaded an entire Gauss rifle magazine into me by accident. The GM didn't want to kill me for that, but hey, we're in the dream plane, so she just left my corpse floating there as the combat continued, and asked me every round what I was doing. The first few went like this: "OK, GrumpyDoctor, what are you doing?" "Uh...aren't I dead?" "If you want." Eventually I figured out the gimmick and willed myself back to life. But the thing was: From that point on, my character was alive and corporeal only because he was willing it so. This had benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side, pretty much any injury he suffered he could focus and heal back rapidly, because he only truly existed as dreamstuff shaped by force of will. (Oh, you shot my arm off? Well...nahhh, I'm pretty sure I have an arm. Oh look, there it is!) The only way to really kill him would have been to cause enough sudden brain damage for him to forget who he was. He could also phase himself in and out of reality to go through walls and spy on people and poo poo, and if he really wanted to ruin your day, he’d rematerialize his arm inside your body or something. On the downside, if he got distracted and passed out, he would forget to maintain his own existence. The party would have to slog back into dreamspace to loving find him and wake him up. (The GM said that if he focused and meditated himself to sleep, he’d be able to stay coherent until he woke up.) This generally worked, except when he got too high. He was a huge pothead, you see. It took a few sessions for my character to learn about all these powers (read: for us to figure out how the hell this would mechanically work - it didn’t exactly have system support), but in short order I realized I was playing an essentially immortal character. Which was boring. And my character was bored too, because life as an immortal pothead isn’t really very interesting or exciting at all. I’d been learning about my powers in a series of sessions in which we used them to pick off the members of the shadowy global cabal of badness in ways that they found entirely unexpected (people aren’t supposed to be able to pull the poo poo I can). At one point we were raiding one of their bases to gather some intel or something, and as I’m doing my non-corporeal scouting thing I see: Oh poo poo, the cabal leader is here. The Big Bad. And this cabal has no idea what the gently caress I am, but they know that I’ve been a really nasty thorn in their paw for a while, so she’s got a shitload of bombs and other gear with her that might very well take down the building and everyone in it, but goddamnit, she’s finally going to kill me, even if she dies in the process. (And she had enough firepower that it actually would have worked.) But the GM was bluffing. She expected me to see that and go “oh poo poo” and have everyone run the gently caress away. And I did pop back and tell everyone else to get the gently caress out, Ghost (the big bad) is here, seriously run the gently caress away. But then I turned right back around and called Ghost’s bluff. It was super tense moment at the table: The GM’s like “This will kill you, are you really going to do it?” And I was. I was bored playing my character. My character was bored existing. And killing someone who, in the game world, is considered untouchable was a perfect way to go.
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Feb 5, 2016 05:50
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Does anyone remember a story from in here or one of the previous threads about someone running a game, and all I can remember is the GM getting increasingly excited and repeatedly slapping his cheeks, until the big buildup of "Boom, you're in Arkham, fighting the Joker!" I'm reasonably sure it was just a regular game of D&D or something up until that point. Thanks!
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Feb 5, 2016 16:47
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Today's Feng Shui game was notable for three things: -"Snakeman holding a gun", a foe who kept 3/4s of our party at bay with nothing but fangs and an Uzi; -The Masked Avenger, who rolled from the backseat of our car into the trunk, and popped out in a burst of gunfire (killing 2 and horrifying 7) ; -The Scrappy Kid, who tried skitching an enemy SUV with her roller skates, only for someone to pop out and try to kill her with an AK47. She then snared his ankle with a backpack strap, pulled, and sent him flying off a bridge.
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Feb 10, 2016 06:14
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My group just wrapped up a long running “7th Sea” game, and I’m going to take a turn at GM’ing, running “Star Wars” using the old West End d6 rules. Last night was spent doing some character outlines and research so we can actually make the characters and start playing next week, along with just spitballing and shooting the breeze about what kind of campaign they want (smuggling/trading/criminal with some minor Rebellion ties), what era they want to play in (three-to-six-months before Yavin), and so on. This group has been playing for five years (and has been friends for a lot longer), so I figured we could just jump right to the good stuff. “Alright, I’m going to say you guys have a ship. It’s a rundown and beaten up Clone Wars era-ship with an medical droid who’s competent…enough. Tell me how you got this ship.” Without missing a beat, the player running the captain casually says, “Insurance fraud.” So now they have a week to come up with a story about how they lost their old ship or how they’re scamming an insurance company into getting a new ship, and I have a week to come up with some third-rate, fly-by-night galactic insurance company with a Rodian insurance adjustor who figures out their scam and keeps sending low-level bounty hunter trash to try to repossess their ship.
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Feb 10, 2016 12:50
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Moisture Farmers? Whatever you do don't turn this into 4 more pages of Star Wars puns. My ulna can't take it.
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Feb 10, 2016 20:32
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Triple-Aurek.
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Feb 10, 2016 21:57
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I've been having a sort of good/sort of bad experience with a D&D 5e game. There are six people total, I am good friends with 3 of them, 2 of the players and the DM. The DM is a first time DM who is running an adventure he wrote. It's apparently based on FF8 which I haven't played but whatever. It was described to me as a somewhat comedic, light game. We are basically in an "adventurer's school" taking our final exam. We're trying to get to the Big Bad who is working with goblins and giving them magical devices that enslave giant ants. The DM is pretty good at improv comedy as are my two friends and me (I think anyway, for reference we all do a comedy podcast together). So we've been having fun with things like the wizard that is basically Alan Thicke and goblins that talk that Jersey City goombas. There are only two problems. The first is the other two players, the brother-in-law and cousin of the DM. They apparently didn't get the "light and comedic" memo. So while I am playing a hard-drinking dragonborn sorceror sailor and chef (who likes to give enemies a nice "hard sear" and might toss herb-infused oils on enemies before lighting them up), my one friend is playing a "drunken style" dwarf monk who is always incredibly filthy, and the other is playing a fame and women obsessed elven bard modelled heavily after Bret Michaels, they are playing a grim and humorless dwarven cleric who wants revenge for his clan's death and a street urchin elf rogue character who also I believe wants revenge for someone's death. And they are firmly in the super cautious check-for-traps don't take unnecessary risks style of play. So when the bard gets ahold of a helmet that might let him control the giant ants locked in the laboratory, they flatly refuse to participate or allow a plan to let the ants out and use the ant army. They want to have the elf sneak everywhere first and scout, they want to make Perception checks all the time, and they are constantly trying to get help and advice from our "exam proctor" NPC despite the DM making it clear she has no input. The other major problem is that the DM appears to be afraid to give us tough fights even though we have all (even the cautious cats) set we could handle tougher encounters. So its been a bit boring for me when we get attacked by 3 goblins and maybe I firebolt one before they all die and we take no damage. Then we don't get to do any fun RP stuff or hatch any crazy schemes because of the wet blankets. Attempts to talk about this have gone nowhere. The wood elf and dwarf cleric say they are "just playing their characters." In fact the wood elf guy got pissy and said "my character is a STREET URCHIN if she wasn't cautious she was DEAD!" I don't know about you but when I think about Oliver Twist, Aladdin, Selena Kyle, etc I definitely think "super cautious and risk averse." So I'm at a bit of a loss. I feel like bailing will end in hurt feelings but I'm not sure I have too many more sessions in me despite occasionally having fun. I know we should just be able to lay out the fact that we clearly have different ideas about what sort of game we want to play but some of the people involved can be mighty touchy and averse to even the barest HINT of interpersonal conflict so I don't see that happening.
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Feb 10, 2016 22:54
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CobiWann posted:My group just wrapped up a long running “7th Sea” game, and I’m going to take a turn at GM’ing, running “Star Wars” using the old West End d6 rules. Last night was spent doing some character outlines and research so we can actually make the characters and start playing next week, along with just spitballing and shooting the breeze about what kind of campaign they want (smuggling/trading/criminal with some minor Rebellion ties), what era they want to play in (three-to-six-months before Yavin), and so on. If you want flavor on Bounty Hunters and Skip Tracers, re-read Han Solo's Revenge. FWIW: Spray was working for Interstellar Collections Limited.
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Feb 10, 2016 23:15
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J Miracle posted:Attempts to talk about this have gone nowhere. The wood elf and dwarf cleric say they are "just playing their characters." In fact the wood elf guy got pissy and said "my character is a STREET URCHIN if she wasn't cautious she was DEAD!" I don't know about you but when I think about Oliver Twist, Aladdin, Selena Kyle, etc I definitely think "super cautious and risk averse." So I'm at a bit of a loss. They aren't playing their characters. They are playing their preconceptions. As you pointed out there plenty of street urchins that play fast and loose. There are a lot of traditional crime figures that came from poverty and rose up through the ranks and became big-time flashy guys. You might point out that she used to be a street urchin, but she is not anymore and remaining constantly on-edge after you've escaped the situation in question is a classic marker for PTSD. Regarding the other character, it's entirely possible to be a dwarf guy whose clan has died and adopt a devil-may-care, fatalistic attitude while you seek revenge. If you've ever seen Lethal Weapon the character of Martin Riggs is a 100% badass who suffered a huge tragedy and his response is to basically be irreverent suicidal maniac. Martin Riggs never made a Perception check in his life. But anyway the real problem is that these players are running perfectly legitimate characters that happen to be clashing with the style and tone of the campaign, and I'm sorry to say it's 4 vs 2 so they are in the wrong. So you should try to talk to them, find a nice way to point out that their characters and playstyle don't fit (in the same way that showing up to a friendly flag football game with an NFL "win at all costs" mentality would be completely inappropriate) and ask them to either get with the program or gtfo.
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Feb 10, 2016 23:48
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:They aren't playing their characters. They are playing their preconceptions. You make really good points. Maybe I'll get with the other 2 and try to figure out a strategy. I'm not optimistic based on how quickly they jump to "its just my character" though. To give a small further example, we had an encounter with some goblins where I intimidated the lead goblin (voiced by Joe Pesci) and had a good bit of threatening dialogue, and he ran for it on his ant steed. Dwarf cleric comes up on initiative order and since the DM said he was 100 feet away (another small issue is the DM is opposed to learning Roll20 so we are all playing on Skype with theater-of-the-mind) he decides to guided bolt him in the back (range 125). I said in character something like "hey I thought we were the good guys that didn't shoot routed enemies in the back) since the cleric is LG and I thought we were all on the same of being fun but not methodically murderous. He replies "evil must be punished my god is cool with it." So I say OOC that I thought it would be fun to start a beef with this guy, like we run into him later and I'm like "remember ME, I said next time I saw you I'd make you into goblin fritters." The guy just goes "nah I don't want him to get reinforcements and my character would want to smite evil even if it was running away." So I offered an IC and OOC reason asking him not to do a thing and he just did it anyway which makes me think he's not that open to change. But its worth trying. EDIT: that reminds me of another story, that I actually told the group as a way of maybe coyly trying to make a point. I was playing in a D&D campaign a long time ago in college, it was 3e I think. It actually was kind of a bullshit campaign with a DM who loved having crazy powerful DMPCs that outstripped the party. But anyway I was some sort of mage/thief specced to use his magic to enhance rogue abilities. We have some sort of fight (some of the details are fuzzy by now) and I end up taking a dagger off a duergar in a scene were none of the other characters were present in-character. The dagger starts whispering to me about unlimited power and smiting my enemies and stuff, its clearly an evil weapon but has cool abilities like daily teleport or something. So I thought it might be fun to let this play out a little bit, I take the dagger. Instantly this broke one guy's brain. He has his fighter character immediately start grilling me about the dagger, saying we should have it tested for evil, etc. I say "nah its just a cool knife I checked it out" since I'm the only caster as I recall. He demands to check if I'm lying, the DM to his credit says he doesn't really like to do that between PCs. His character keeps after me about the dagger and eventually when we are talking to the king interrupts the whole plot to say "J Miracle has a dagger from an evil guy and I think we should have it checked by your clerics" and the DM essentially gives in and has the clerics take and dispose of the dagger. I guess I just don't get that mindset of needing to avoid any choice that is the least bit suboptimal even if its based on information that you as a PLAYER know but your CHARACTER doesn't. I didn't know enough then to say to the guy "hey man can you just let me have some fun with this dagger I mean if I start going full dark side we could handle it in game" so I should try to avoid making that same mistake through avoidance of conflict again. J Miracle fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 00:03
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My response to "it's what my character would do" has always been and will always be "then your character sucks and you should play a different character that doesn't suck."
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Feb 11, 2016 00:13
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I wouldn't be optimistic, either. "I'm just playing my character" is little more than a lovely excuse to be a contrarian, when it isn't busy killing discussions dead.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:20
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Yeah I've never gotten that either. You made the character!
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Feb 11, 2016 00:25
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Here's another older post of mine I dug up about this, you can add "preventing interesting things from happening in the narrative despite the objections of the group" to the list.Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The problem is that most players are bad actors (not in the legal sense, but in the professional "acting" sense) and have no idea how to play drama or desires. They say "my character doesn't like Person X, so I won't do what Person X tells me/deal with Person X in any way" but of course that's not how anyone works in real life. In real life there are long term consequences, there are social relationships that need to be considered, etc. etc. etc. All of us have people in our lives that we don't like and want nothing to do with but still have to subsume this desire and deal with them on a frequent basis. This sort of push-pull of desires is very rarely modeled in table-top "role-playing", player characters are generally simplistic cartoons with 1 - 2 desires that override everything (usually based on the player's own frustrations, which is why teenage boys are more likely to play characters who try to sleep with everything) and that they pursue with a sort of psychotic dedication and stubbornness that borders on parody. In fact there's an entire RPG dedicated to overcoming this problem called Hillfolk where players are actually rewarded for caving in to others or compromising their desires. You want to have fun narrative shennanigans. They want to play your typical poo poo D&D garbage. There are 4 of you and 2 of them. They need to get with the program.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:27
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Here's another older post of mine I dug up about this, you can add "preventing interesting things from happening in the narrative despite the objections of the group" to the list. That is a really insightful analysis seriously (not just the quoted portion but your older post). We are all adults in our 30s, we should be able to work this out. Real life complicates this somewhat because the split also occurs neatly along existing group lines (those two previously knew each other and the DM but not me and my 2 buddies) and are family of the incredibly conflict-averse DM so there's no way he'll ever say "get with the program or leave" but we should all be capable of talking it out. If those guys think that we are silly jackasses who aren't acting realistically that is also a valid viewpoint, its just that we're playing two different games to the detriment of both.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:33
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J Miracle posted:I know we should just be able to lay out the fact that we clearly have different ideas about what sort of game we want to play but some of the people involved can be mighty touchy and averse to even the barest HINT of interpersonal conflict so I don't see that happening.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:50
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Yeah, I should point out something else: I can totally see a taciturn dour dwarf as the anchor to all this magical goofiness, but the problem is that he is quite literally killing the opportunities for jokes.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:56
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Cartoon posted:Great comedians need great straight people. If this doesn't work out. Stop playing. No gaming is better than bad gaming and it seems you could pick up another game with the player/DM who aren't being difficult. First time DM makes this tricky because a longer standing DM would be able to put these kill joys in situations that would force the issue. You're totally right. And I wouldn't be averse if they weren't that into the comedy aspect if they didn't actively try to shut down any sort of crazy schemes or risk taking. The game isn't nonstop absurdity, the tone I think the DM is going for is more like an lightly comedic action movie a la the previously mentioned Lethal Weapon or Last Boy Scout. But these guys want to play The Hunt for Red October. EDIT: The other two are on board for having a polite conversation about it with the DM and the 2 serious dudes. We'll see if this ends up a good, bad, or cat-piss story. J Miracle fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 00:58
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For what it's worth, the DM can help push players out of the super-safe, Perception-check-every-5-feet mindset by making lots of OOC declarations about the world and how it isn't going to kill them every chance it gets. "You know for a fact that the ant-mind-control helm isn't going to backfire on you horribly" "You know for a fact that the corridor is clear"
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Feb 11, 2016 02:16
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yeah, I should point out something else: I can totally see a taciturn dour dwarf as the anchor to all this magical goofiness, but the problem is that he is quite literally killing the opportunities for jokes. My old 13th age group had four levels of that. The craziest was the Barbarian (who later turned out to be a chaos mage). She would piss off the Rogue (a corrupt elven lawyer) by being messy, impudent, and befriending any enemy with an intelligence under 3. Meanwhile, the rogue bullied her sister (the half-elf Sorcerer), mostly by being 60 years older than her and recalling the pranks the rogue pulled "Growing Up". All three of them would team up to mess with the Bard, who was usually a straightwoman, but also had an incredibly hot Tiefling brother (see below). And all four of THEM would call out the Paladin for being a creepy, zombie-obsessed square. Meanwhile the Cleric had non-magical blue skin and was really old.
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Feb 11, 2016 03:42
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A Lakota shaman, a Chinese monk, a Yankee bounty hunter, a Mexican mariachi and an English scientist walk into a bar. The bartender says "Is this a loving joke?" Deadlands 
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Feb 11, 2016 07:19
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Skellybones posted:A Lakota shaman, a Chinese monk, a Yankee bounty hunter, a Mexican mariachi and an English scientist walk into a bar. The bartender is a rad skeleton dude with a cowboy hat and is probably in the Illuminati.
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Feb 11, 2016 09:07
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J Miracle posted:Evil Dagger story Had a vaguely similar thing happen to me once. It was oWoD mixed game. Myself as a Mage, two friends of mine as different Vampires, the ST's wife as a werewolf, and their friend as a demon, with the story itself cribbing very heavily from the Dresden Files. Our primary antagonist was a Black Spiral Dancer who was apparently working for Queen Mab (he may have been the Winter Knight in this campaign, I can't rightly remember), and was the longtime nemesis of the PC werewolf (which meant that the story more or less revolved around her, and we were just non-combat lackeys, since as a werewolf, she probably could have killed all of us solo, but needed us to make knowledge checks) At some point, I can't remember how, I'm captured and brought before Mab in the fae realm. Not wanting to be killed, and honestly being willing to serve the Winter Court in exchange for power and perks anyways, I agree to work for her. She gives me a magic staff that can shrink to pocket sized at will, and brands me with some mark that I never learned the capabilities of. Before the ST was even done saying that I reappear in front of the group, his wife's character tackles me and explains to everyone that I turned traitor and she can smell Wyrm all over me. Despite a convincing lie to the tune of "I escaped, I AM a loving Wizard." She just decided that she KNEW I made some sort of deal. The session ended at that point, and we ended up not playing anymore because the ST took over as a regional coordinator for Pathfinder and was busy with that.
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Feb 11, 2016 09:19
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J Miracle posted:I guess I just don't get that mindset of needing to avoid any choice that is the least bit suboptimal even if its based on information that you as a PLAYER know but your CHARACTER doesn't. One time they were in the enchanted fey forest and had been warned by everyone to bring their own food and not eat anything growing in the forest, because it was all so delicious you couldn't stand to eat anything else ever again and you'd stay in the forest forever. Or you'd get one of the many fruits that would make you trip balls so you'd get lost, or give you magic effects, or any other variation of "eat fruit = you're lost to the forest forever". So they loaded up on rations and stuck diligently to them while exploring the forest. At one point they did something nice for a talking tree who gave then one of his fruits as thanks. They politely put it away and marched on. Eventually night fell, and they made camp. Still plenty of rations left. First thing out of the assassin's mouth: "gently caress it, I'm cutting up the fruit for dinner."
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Feb 11, 2016 09:59
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Sounds like a great excuse to have the party come to/come down/sober up in the Grumpy Mirkwood Elves' drunk tank. "Let me guess, talking tree?" "Yep." "Yeah, that guy's an rear end in a top hat. [munch munch munch] Want an apple?" Six hours later... "You humans really aren't very bright, are you?" girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 10:38
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J Miracle posted:You make really good points. Maybe I'll get with the other 2 and try to figure out a strategy. I'm not optimistic based on how quickly they jump to "its just my character" though. To give a small further example, we had an encounter with some goblins where I intimidated the lead goblin (voiced by Joe Pesci) and had a good bit of threatening dialogue, and he ran for it on his ant steed. Dwarf cleric comes up on initiative order and since the DM said he was 100 feet away (another small issue is the DM is opposed to learning Roll20 so we are all playing on Skype with theater-of-the-mind) he decides to guided bolt him in the back (range 125). I said in character something like "hey I thought we were the good guys that didn't shoot routed enemies in the back) since the cleric is LG and I thought we were all on the same of being fun but not methodically murderous. He replies "evil must be punished my god is cool with it." So I say OOC that I thought it would be fun to start a beef with this guy, like we run into him later and I'm like "remember ME, I said next time I saw you I'd make you into goblin fritters." The guy just goes "nah I don't want him to get reinforcements and my character would want to smite evil even if it was running away." So I offered an IC and OOC reason asking him not to do a thing and he just did it anyway which makes me think he's not that open to change. But its worth trying. I might be on the other side but, I think you should let him play how he wants. If his character will shoot a goblin in the back, thats fine. Them being cautious and constantly checking for traps is okay, the DM just has to handle it. Make things work with a sense of urgency. Instead of OOC trying to get them to chill out, try to get your character to befriend them and talk to them before things to have a "plan". Try to get them involved and think they are making decisions and its not you slapping them on their hands. Of course, I dont know just how combative they are so I am speaking from conjecture. I have worked with problem players in the past ( and been that problem player too ) and I find it works out best when characters resolve their difference rather than players. Especially when they are using the " i am playing my character " jawn.
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Feb 11, 2016 14:33
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TheRagamuffin posted:Triple-Aurek. Heh. I'm going to go with AIS - Accredited Intergalactic Services. I'm debating if I want to give them a ship that's obviously run down...or a brand spanking new ship that's actually just been detailed and is actually an old piece of junk, so every time they try something they find out what the "true" die code.
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Feb 11, 2016 14:40
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Smash it Smash hit posted:I might be on the other side but, I think you should let him play how he wants.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:27
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Smash it Smash hit posted:I might be on the other side but, I think you should let him play how he wants. If his character will shoot a goblin in the back, thats fine. Them being cautious and constantly checking for traps is okay, the DM just has to handle it. Make things work with a sense of urgency. Instead of OOC trying to get them to chill out, try to get your character to befriend them and talk to them before things to have a "plan". Try to get them involved and think they are making decisions and its not you slapping them on their hands. This is bad advice and goes wrong in so many ways all of the time. The proper course of action is to have a brief talk at the beginning of the next session you meet about what tone everyone wants to go for, and try to get them to agree to lighten up a little. Be frank and open about your feelings, don't throw any insults and they'll either compromise or it'll all fall apart like it was going to anyway.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:49
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Honesty if the dude playing the LG Cleric shoots a goblin in the back when he runs away after being intimidated, not even after fighting, then that's all you need to know about how these guys are going to be in game. They're terrible roleplayers and they're just going to cause problems. Sever.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:54
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It's funny because just recently I was talking to a grognard friend of mine who complained that one of the players at a recent 2e game had random-rolled a 4 Intelligence and used it as an excuse to be a huge disruptive dick and got the party in a lot of trouble by basically antagonizing powerful people and they spent most of their session dealing with the fallout, which pissed everyone off. I told him that as a DM I would have ruled that before the words came out of his mouth he would vanish from existence like Marty was doing in Back to the Future because he was clearly too stupid to make it to adulthood. My take is that the group needs to gel on expectations for tone and premise of the campaign. Are we doing a dungeon crawl or feudal politics? That sort of thing. If the player just has a premise mismatch with the character and the campaign they should change it. I actually had one of my long-running players do this to himself in my Feng Shui game because he knew that was my stance. He just couldn't justify the character's desires with the campaign's direction so rather than throw a huge hissy fit or be disruptive he rolled up a new guy no problem and said he might bring the other guy back when it gelled more with what he wanted (and I promised to try to move things in that direction after the current arc was resolved). Another thing you can do as GM is remind the player that somebody who behaves like they do would never have made the life decisions to get into their current professions/situation in the first place. A guy who murders fleeing dudes does not become a priest in a good guy church. That sort of attitude speaks to an entire mindset that leads to you being the bad guy inquisitor that the good guys take down halfway through the campaign (in fact that player pretty much sounds like your boilerplate sympathetic bad guy - his clan was murdered and now he's snapped and gone over to the dark side) A guy who jumps at shadows and OCD checks every square for traps doesn't go adventuring in the first place. etc. etc. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 17:34
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J Miracle posted:Evil dagger story the_steve posted:Had a vaguely similar thing happen to me once. These kinds of things drive me absolutely insane. I don't GM much - and by all means, I don't think I am a great one - and I play mostly with friends, so this hasn't really ever happened. However, I don't understand why some PCs are so averse to a PC going bad, or meddling with things they might not be able to control. That's interesting and promotes a good story if done correctly. I know it's definitely situational with who you have playing with you, but as a GM I would outright not let players do that kind of thing, like saying "somehow I suspect this dagger to be evil beyond reasonable doubt" or "you made it back alive from x, you must be a traitor". Secret information is hard to handle in RPGs and I guess note-passing / whispering (if you're doing it online) is a better way to do it, but even then if you pass someone a note or have someone roll a secret check, other players are immediately suspicious. Chill out, guys, the GM is trying to make the story more interesting for all of you, not trying to get all of you killed. usually I mean I'm about to run an EotE campaign, I have one character with an Obligation that is essentially "I was betrayed and seek revenge on the corrupt Admiral who betrayed me", another who collaborated with me to have his backstory, in secret, be "I am being blackmailed by (the same) Admiral to find everyone who survived [betrayal]", and yet another player whose Obligation is that his memory core (he's a droid) stopped working and he's seeking to repair it. Once he regains some or all of his memory, he will recall he's a medical droid with a thermal detonator installed in his chest that was retrofitted to suicide in a hospital, yet he somehow got out. I will honestly tear my hair out if the players start metagaming, but we're doing it online so secret information and slowly revealing the juicy backstory to other players should be alright.
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Feb 11, 2016 20:15
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Smash it Smash hit posted:I might be on the other side but, I think you should let him play how he wants. If his character will shoot a goblin in the back, thats fine. Them being cautious and constantly checking for traps is okay, the DM just has to handle it. Make things work with a sense of urgency. Instead of OOC trying to get them to chill out, try to get your character to befriend them and talk to them before things to have a "plan". Try to get them involved and think they are making decisions and its not you slapping them on their hands. I probably am not saying this well. The goblin back shoot (which to be slightly fair to the guy did occur after the guy ordered his underlings to attack although he hadn't attacked himself) didn't bother me so much because it wasn't alignment appropriate, I'm not the alignment police. But it did bother me because I wanted to set up something cool for later. I know I don't always need to get what I want, but the guy wasn't super invested in shooting the goblin either he just did it because that's how he plays, kill all the enemies. Hell he killed the goblins 'giant ant after it was running free and was basically just a wild animal that wasn't attacking us. I'm pretty sure he did both of those things for the XP. And if they want to check for traps and make perception checks that's one thing, but basically demanding the rest of us wait for every room to be declared save by the elf is another, or insisting that we not try to create an ant army or explore any of the mysterious unlabelled chemicals in the lab. And they grill the NPC that is accompanying us (that is specifically stated as the one grading us on our ability to handle things on our own) constantly and run every new piece of information by her even though the DM has said "basically pretend this character isn't here." So I'm not sure that in character stuff is going to solve it. I tried IC stuff with the goblin, and the bard tried IC stuff with the ant army, and we got nothin. A lot of this probably comes from the DM being new honestly, these guys have played a lot more D & D than him and are family members to boot so he's not that likely to ask them to change play styles. And their playstyle isn't objectively bad, its just not what the other 3 of us signed on for and not what I THINK the DM wants to run the game as. EDIT: Lots of good points from other people on this one too. I really appreciate all the advice. I know the guy who is playing the drunken monk has about had it and is going to quit the game if SOMETHING doesn't happen, while I can tell that the guy playing the elven bard, who is an experienced improv comic but new to gaming, is not having the kind of fun he thought he'd have and is probably more likely to just fade into the background and ride it out, so it'll probably be up to me to say something if anyone does. J Miracle fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 22:45
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Skellybones posted:A Lakota shaman, a Chinese monk, a Yankee bounty hunter, a Mexican mariachi and an English scientist walk into a bar. My coworker is running a Deadlands game and I want in SO BAD. I played the old version once in high school, I had a blast. I believe if I recall correctly I was a guy who left old southern plantation money to be a gunfighter in the old west (ala John Holiday basically) and I was trying to pass myself off as a grizzled tough dude even though my real name was Ashley St. Croix or something like that, but the problem is I was haunted by the angry ghost of great grandfather that wanted me to settle down and stop all this tomfoolery. Also we fought vampires on a train, it was good times.
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Feb 11, 2016 22:53
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Deadlands owns, I run a game of it that's on hiatus right now, and the party consists of The Luckiest Kid Alive that was also trained by a kung fu master living at the gates of the Anouk underworld, an Anouk high chief shaman that just white lightnings everything and is in charge of all the science rolls for the part (this gets as silly as you'd expect), an Anouk from another tribe from the previous one with a mythical blade of his people, a Templar with a heart of gold that hates not helping people (an anomaly, since Templars are usually huge dickheads), a grizzled PTSD afflicted psyker who is constantly off the rails, and a "lone" gunman that is also a spacecop. I was running them through the endgame of the setting where you deal with the Four Horsemen in the flesh and despite the game having gone on for almost a year, they haven't finished a quarter of the metaplot. Then again, having only one character death (two technically but one came back as a favoured of Banshee) has made them a little paranoid of character death at this point. When it comes to deadly systems, it doesn't get much scarier than Deadlands.
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Feb 12, 2016 00:41
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Zodack posted:However, I don't understand why some PCs are so averse to a PC going bad, or meddling with things they might not be able to control. That's interesting and promotes a good story if done correctly. That last bit is the kicker. Internal betrayal and face turns are really powerful story elements, but ultimately when you're writing you only have one actor: the author. When you've got a bunch of wildcards around a table, it suddenly gets a lot, er, dicier. Playing solely with friends, I've seen possessed cleric TPKs, stupid PCs get ratted out to the Feds, and players get angry when they were inevitably betrayed by their evil sugar daddies. The one time I agreed to pull a last-minute heel-turn for the GM's plot, the other players told me my character was lunch meat the next time we played. We didn't. I don't agree with the aggressive metagaming described in earlier posts, but I understand where it comes from-- especially if it's accompanied by checking for secret doors and evil every ten feet. I'm likely to recuse myself from a game where it happens, if discussing things with the GM doesn't go well, because I don't like playing those scenarios and I really don't like what I've seen them do to otherwise reasonable players. At the same time I'm envious of the groups who can pull them off, because as noted they're a hell of a thing when done well.
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Feb 12, 2016 02:06
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