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mindflenzing β RPG The Jack Traven Doctrine
Published: 2012-11-21 21:48:45 +0000 UTC; Views: 2987; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 9
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Description
R.P.G. (Ransack People's Gold) is the tale of four D&D/Star Wars/RPG players and their DM, who wishes he were a player. These intrepid players are, from left to right:Kenneth, the over-achieving, yet under appreciated DM.
Adam, the guy who has a theater background but needs a girlfriend.
Barry, the munchkin power-gamer with a bad case of arrested development.
Josh, the straight-laced guy who just wants to play the game.
Kassi, Josh's homicidally-minded younger cousin, whom he regrets inviting.
A few weeks ago I got the privilege of watching another DM make a boneheaded calculation in negotiations with the party. Years ago, I learned the hard way that desperate/angry PCs tend to make very aggressive decisions that do not look like what your typical action movie hero does. I had to explain to this DM that angered players are always one poor scene choice away from uttering Captain Ahab's famous line, "From Hell's heart I stab at thee." As a player I have had PCs shot the hostage, murder "untouchable" villains in broad daylight, and detonate explosives on their own persons when the DM has so graciously provided my character means, motive, and opportunity with no reasonable (to the character) alternatives. As a DM you must realize that hope and the threat of additional loss are the only thing that can keep most players from going Liam Neeson on you. Remember, the dramatic death of a character is hardly loss to that PC when he kills the man who is trying to destroy the world, orphaned him, and most importantly destroyed is prized weapon.
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Comments: 84
I'm more a fan of the whole, "Skulls for the Skull Throne!" Though if I had to pick a chaos god in Warhammer I'd probably go Malal because I dislike most of the chaos players I know so why not serve the god who mostly destroys his own allies.
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have you ever play gaslight call of chuthu?
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No, I've only played the d20 version in the roaring 20's and the old Chaosium d100 version. I can only remember the major gods mentioned in Lovecraft stories. I have a complete collection of them but since I read stories out of several compilations I'm not sure what percentage of the stories I've read.
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I'd have gone through all the stories but I rather quickly realized why so many of them did not make it to other compilation books.
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Or is about to build an orphan cannon out of one's little sister.
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He let slip that he was going to kidnap my hero's only friend in the world and then blackmail my character into helping him take over a country and destroy her knightly order. I let him know in no uncertain terms that she would simply hunt him down and murder him in cold blood assuming her friend was already dead, and that given a hostage situation, I go Munich on his @ss.
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He was going to do that with a character who killed her own almost-lover for the good of her order? I... can't imagine how he thought that would work.
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Yes, he thought that a character who murdered their first and only lover without hesitation to fulfill their duty could be blackmailed into betraying that same duty to save someone they cared about. I've made it abundantly clear that she puts duty above all else and is willing to suffer any pain or loss to fulfill that duty without a second thought. I've also made it no secret that she grants very unclean deaths anybody who lays a hand on her Ruken. Why he thought a hateful masochist like the "White Beast" of House Dietrich would do anything other than go Ahab on him is entirely beyond me.
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I mean, a situation like that would work on Remy, and I guess probably Bonnie, but probably not even Alonso or Rolf, let alone Dahlie. You need a character who's really single-focused for that to work. Remy has a hard time comprehending large-scale consequences, so she probably wouldn't be able to see past "OMG my sister my sister my sister." *Nobody* else in the party is like that. Everybody else looks at greater good, super lawful good or lawful neutral types. Bonnie aside, Remy's the only chaotic character in the group. So that story really just can't work in the group at all, unless the entire rest of the party were separated from the one character who'd bite that hook.
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Except that Bonnie cares only about one person, herself. Alonso would probably not sacrifice the Invisible College for his buddy (not that he could with their structure), Rolf's most important NPCs are either dead or his enemies, though his backstory is mostly rejecting duty in favor of his emotions so I think that makes him more chaotic than lawful, despite being Eisen. Still, we already showed him that we will strike while hostages are being held because a cornered animal can't run.
Dahlie is a singularly unreasonable person whose personal theme song would probably be Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" (which contains the lines, "You'll take my life but I'll take yours too. You fire your musket but I'll run you through."). Freya only gets a pass because she is a farce, if she ever became a serious threat, Dahlie would be willing to go as far as to publicly murder her and then accept her own execution. A foe who will cast aside everything they value to hurt you is not somebody whom you f**k with, ever. You either kill them or they will kill you.
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It's possible that his sister is alive still though, remember?
Even though he did that in the past, Frasier did establish that Rolf understands the concept of cutting losses when we were on Brett's *last* campaign.
Yeah, Dahlie's a hard character to write a focus story for, because she's crazy masochistic.
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True, but they weren't actually important to him.
It's more that she can't be cowed into doing things. Most of the people she cares about are dead and the only way for her to be released from her duties is through death. Is it that surprising that she has no fear of her own demise. Lillie is the only thing other than her obligations that ties her to the land of the living. Otherwise, she probably would have disappeared into the Schwartzen Walden years ago trying to secure Wulfenburg Castle.
There are plenty of situations she can be flustered in where she cannot respond in her usual way, and would have to grow as a character to deal with. Those are not situations dealing with direct hostility. She may not be as awkward in a dress as a man would be but a court situation would have her off guard. R
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She's. Crazy. Masochistic.
If the situation ever presents a solution where she hurts herself to serve some other person, she hurts herself.
Masochist.
I don't even know what I'd do with that tidbit if I had to write for her.
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That reminds of a character in Inu X Boku SS. Look at the beating she's taking, M. But with that crazy sword, S. That bird just took a sh*t on me, S.
First off, never imitate ideas that Brett has. With Dahlie you can put her in suicidal situations, provided you give her the chance to be appropriately dramatic and be prepared to have a way for her to not die. You can put her in social situations where there are no enemies to fight. Throw in an opponent who is an unwitting hindrance or an admiring rival.
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It's surprising how often S and M coexist in the same character.
So I have to give her a villain that she wouldn't *want* to touch, as opposed to a villain she *can't* touch, because there's no such thing as a villain she can't touch.
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Combining untouchable with incredibly dangerous only works when your heroes have a strong sense of self preservation or feel absolutely no guilt when people they let live murder other people.
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Self-preservation would probably be the deal here. It makes for inner character conflict to be worried about how getting rid of this highly influential, extremely public figure would absolutely ruin your life, but at the same time, to not in good conscience be able to leave that person to keep doing what he's doing. But players are a lot crazier and riskier than real people, or even most author-controlled characters. Players rely on plot immunity and a lot of other ideas that only work because they're players. That's part of what makes writing for a campaign so much harder than writing a story.
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There are characters and people who are willing to risk their lives on the gambit that their opponent will expect them to behave like a rational person. I can tell you that holding pin to a plasma grenade in your teeth while holding it as a deadman trigger tends to get the DM and NPCs in a tough spot. When you hate the Villan enough to be willing to bum rush him with the thing knowing you'll be killed by his guards and then bring his mansion down around his ears, you don't really care if he gives in to your demands or not.
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Yes, well, the point is that this is far more likely to happen with RPing than with real people or most characters. You might get one character that crazy in a story. In an RPG campaign, you might get all *but* one who are okay with going that crazy.
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Ask that question of angry 20-30 something guys IRL and you might be surprised. Though, they also have less regard for their fictional lives.
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If most people, even angry twenty- or thirty-something guys, found it that easy to take out their anger by murdering someone, the consequences be damned, we'd have a helluva lot more murder.
And preciselyβif they're feeling reckless with their real lives, they're even worse with their characters.
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But a lot of young guys get killed doing stupid things for stupid reasons.
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True, but I always figured that was a lack of will or capacity to think about possible consequences (since I believe they say the "consequences" part of a male brain is still developing into his 20s), rather than deliberately doing something they are perfectly aware they are likely to die for because they have decided it's that important.
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When the explosives are more of a threat you don't tend to consider them a means of your own death that much more than the train you are playing chicken with.
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Not when you intend to give them the classic die quickly or die slowly options. Actually, hostile negotiations work best when the heroes think that they are the ones stalling for time.
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That's just awesome. And frightenly familiar.
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I love games where you can make a bluff check to take that headshot you've been aiming for for the last five minutes of dialog without triggering the villain's threatened shot (thus getting a difficult called shot and its bonus damage for free). I like even better when you can just toss a flashbang, stun grenade, or force slam and sort them out later. I love when DMs forget you have such options. Unlike movie heroes, your PCs will remember all the obvious solutions you've forgotten.
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I have a player (ex-military) whose solution to everything is a flashbang and stun grenade and sort it out later. Believe me, I keep these things in mind--and one time, when he used it, and it knocked everyone but him out, the rest of the group decided to take his grenades away.
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I've used canisters of compressed gas (i.e. oxygen in hospitals), puddles of accelerant (i.e. a fight in a wine cellar), flammable gas (i.e. natural gas operation), and crates of explosives (i.e. a mining operation), to punish players for fragmentation and flashbang grenades. I have a whole separate list of tricks for sonic grenades. Unfortunately for me, they did once figure out a way to use it to their advantage but they still nearly killed themselves in the process.
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That sounds both scary and hilarious. I don't mind pitting them against me. As I tell them repeatedly, there are worse things than death, and I won't let them die accidentally.
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I've only once permanently injured a PC (which was one that I killed shortly there after). I generally punish the party for bad decisions/ignoring obvious warnings by causing their actions to starve them of resources and by making them have to do things the hard way rather than killing them. Humiliation is generally more of a deterrent than death. I only kill PCs deliberately, and usually because the rest of the party is sick of them and their inability to be team players.
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