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I ran a session today and I'm still not sure if it was a good experience or a bad one. It was certainly a harrowing one to run. I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the GM Advice thread, but I'll put it here because I'm pretty sure the best advice is just going to be "talk to your group and figure out what they actually want out of the game" anyway. For the past several sessions, the party's been tracking down a wizard who's been breeding huge swarms of insects, which have been getting loose and attacking people. They break into his tower and after surviving a couple of traps and some difficult fights with giant insects set by the wizard as guardians, they find out that the wizard's abandoned the tower and continued his research in a hideout deeper into the swamp they're in. Since they're all tired and wounded, they aren't confident of beating the wizard in a fight in their current state, and they finally have hard evidence proving that the wizard has gone totally off the deep end, everyone decides that their best course of action is to head to the nearest city and petition them for help -- that is, everyone except the party's archer, who thinks that the wizard's going to do something terrible very soon, and wants to go and stop him right away, even though the party is wounded. So far, that's not totally unreasonable given what the party knows. What is unreasonable is that when the rest of the party refuses to change their minds, he decides to go off on his own and confront the wizard with or without their help. The party's mage and healer, not wanting to see their ally get killed, respond by tackling him to the ground. So here are three members of the party, all wrestling with each other in swamp mud that they know is infested with flesh-eating worms, over whether they should go fight the wizard now or later. The archer manages to break away and at this point the rest of the party finally decides: gently caress it, we're tired enough already without following this idiot to our deaths. So they all find a nice fallen log to sit on, set up camp and wait a while, hoping against hope that he somehow gets back alive. This wasn't as bad as it could have been, because the game was online so the players weren't literally sitting around a table watching as I spent most of the last hour of the session interacting solely with the archer's player, but I still feel like it was a bit of an unsatisfying end to the session for them. Anyway, the archer reaches the wizard's lair and finds him in a relatively lucid state, so he manages not to get horribly killed. Instead, the two of them strike a deal: the wizard will move his experiments further away from civilisation and refrain from troubling the local people, as long as one nearby city signs an agreement not to disturb his swamp and another dismantles a dam that's causing the swamp to dry up. The archer accepts the offer, and heads back to the party to see if they're willing to cooperate. And that's where the session ended, and where we'll be picking up next week. Here's the issue: I think that the archer's player was within his rights to do what he did, even though it was reckless and stupid, and in hindsight I'm almost glad it happened. His decision had meaningful and interesting consequences that would probably never have happened if the party had stayed together, our group had an explicitly stated understanding that PCs aren't required to all work as a group toward the same goal at all times, and there had been situations in the past where the party was split up or working at cross purposes that turned out well and were fun for everyone. So if my sympathies in this situation lie with anyone, they're with the one player who went off on his own, not with the four players who wanted to keep the party together at all costs. But at the same time, his decision did make the game less fun for some of the other players at the time -- one said that he felt as if he was being blackmailed into following the archer in order to keep the party together, even though that wasn't the archer's player's intention. I don't want to tell the players that the party has to stay together or try to curtail their arguments, because I want them to be able to decide what to do for themselves without my interference: that's something I've been clear about with my group right from the start of this campaign. But if they're disagreeing to the point where PCs are coming to blows with each other and players are getting frustrated as a result, when do I step in and how?
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Jan 13, 2012 16:10
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Doc Hawkins posted:Your time is only as valuable as you hold it to be. I am reminded of that one xkcd strip about competing standards. But hey, on the subject of wasting time, let's talk experiences. One of the campaigns I've been playing in ended on kind of a bitter note last week, and I bear a lot of the responsibility for it. A member of my regular group wanted to start up a campaign. The basic concept seemed fine: in a remote island nation, some rebels have broken into the king's menagerie and stolen some rare and dangerous animals, and our PCs have been hired to bring them back. From the description of the campaign, I was expecting a straightforward wilderness trek where we'd brave some natural hazards, track down the rebels, fight them or else maybe betray our employer and side with them, and either way get a reward and move on. Nothing too deep and meaningful, but simple and fun, and it'd give me an excuse to play around with a new character build. After a couple of sessions, though, it became clear that it was actually the kind of game where we sort of go from one place to another seeing parts of some grand plot that was going on behind the scenes and never actually learning enough to fit all the pieces together and act on the information we have until the big reveal at the end. In fact, every time we were lucky, smart or stubborn enough to achieve something major that the GM didn't plan for, the GM fussed about how we might "ruin the plot". OK, that's not my favourite style of play, but at first there were enough cool and fun moments that it was worth sticking around. Things got worse after we actually found the animals, cut a deal with the rebels and brought them back. Our characters had no reason to stay on the island after the job was done, and we as players were running out of reasons to keep playing as well, but the king told us "oh, hey, there are more animals over in this place that you didn't bring back yet!", because (as we later learned) we had to go to where the last plot dump was so that we could finish the plot. Still, it seemed like the campaign was nearly over, so I spent the next couple of sessions tolerating the game while snarking privately to another player who felt the same way over AIM (it was an online game). Not the most productive response, I know. The last straw came when we actually got to the place where the rest of the animals were. After more than four hours (real time) of travel through a forest and a mountain pass with no significant challenges or choices, we spent over an hour listening to two NPCs talk to each other about a bunch of stuff we mostly didn't know or care about. We'd been promised (not for the first time) that this would be the last session, and as the hours dragged on it became obvious that it wouldn't be. I couldn't bear the thought of showing up yet again for another session like the one we'd endured for the last six hours, so I finally spoke up and said I wasn't having fun, I didn't feel my input into the game even mattered any more, so was there any reason for me to still be playing? The other player I'd been snarking with did the same. The GM seemed sincerely surprised and a little hurt -- they had no idea we felt this way, did anyone else in the group feel the same? A noncommittal chorus of "no, I'm still having fun" followed from the rest of the players. Well, at that point I couldn't just let it drop because I was baffled about how anyone was still enjoying the game after that session, so I pressed on and asked the rest of the group what they were actually enjoying about the campaign. After an awkward pause, I got two answers of "not much, really", one answer of "I'm curious to see how the plot ends", and one answer of "I dunno, I just kind of gently caress around and make my own fun" (I was doing the same at first, but I can only stand that for so long before I want to make a decision that actually matters). In the end, we agreed to end the session, talked for a little longer about where to go from here, and decided that the GM would run one more session to wrap things up for those last two players, while the rest of us left the game. That final session just got run, the campaign was wrapped up and the last two players seemed satisfied with the ending. In hindsight, I wish I'd brought up my problems with the campaign at least three or four sessions earlier. The only reason I didn't is that for the last two sessions we'd been promised that the next session would be the last one, for sure, and I figured that if everyone else was okay with how the campaign was going I might as well stick it out and not make waves. Lesson learned: don't do that, or you'll end up playing D&D in Abilene. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 04:10 on Jan 30, 2012 |
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Jan 30, 2012 04:06
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Colon V posted:It sounds like this may have been that DM's first time at the wheel. If you get a chance, talk to him later, and tell him what your grievances were, so he can learn. Yeah, it was the GM's first time. We've talked about it a little since then, and things are basically cool between us now, I think. I'm just not sure yet whether it's the kind of cool where I can trust that their games will be fun for me or the kind of cool where I agree not to play in their games so we don't end up hating each other.
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Jan 30, 2012 04:19
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Thelonious Funk posted:Just curious, you're not hating on 4e for this, are you? Because this is not the fault of 4e. It's the fault of nerds being nerds. ... no, I am pretty sure she is not using her experience of sexual harassment as an excuse to edition war. Why would you even ask this?
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Feb 16, 2012 22:57
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Chaltab posted:Is this actually true or are you making it up? Yeah, it's called the overjustification effect, and it's a real thing but as usual it's a little more complicated than the pop-psych version of it. If there's a simple take-home message at all, it's that you probably don't need to reward people with tangible benefits for doing what they're already more than happy to do spontaneously: everything else depends on the kind of reward and the circumstances. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Feb 27, 2012 |
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Feb 27, 2012 01:29
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Colon V posted:Me, too. I wanna be the Lawful Evil guy who shoots the generic "guy who's taken a little kid hostage" villain. Because if he's not serious, then there's nothing to lose, and if he IS serious, he can't be trusted to negotiate with anyways. Funny you should say this: I've been that guy. In my defence, I was playing a young beholder at the time, so not acting like a sociopathic rear end in a top hat would have been seriously out of character. The party were refugees in hiding from an oppressive invading empire that, for various reasons, wanted them all dead. We came across another group of refugees, who ended up running away from us (mostly my character's fault: they fled in panic as soon as they saw it). They left behind their wagon, containing most of their earthly possessions and a sick child who was in no condition to run. Over the next few days, we nursed her back to health and tried to get her to the nearest town. We hadn't had too many chances to do actually heroic things instead of just running for our lives, so we're all feeling pretty good about saving her. My character in particular develops a grudging respect for the kid over time, mostly because she's the only human it's met who seems genuinely unafraid of it. Anyway, things are going fairly well for us and we're about a day's travel away from town when we run into a patrol of imperial soldiers. A fight breaks out, we kill most of the soldiers, but the last survivor sees the girl hiding nearby and grabs her as he flees. He holds a knife to her throat as he backs away, warning us not to come any closer. I realise that if he escapes he's probably going to report on our location and call for reinforcements to hunt us down, so I try and use telekinesis to pull the knife out of his hand. I critically fail, flinging the knife straight into the kid's throat. The soldier freaks out, drops her and runs for it: the fighters chase him down and kill the hell out of him, while the party's healer (a charlatan with some basic medical skills) critically fails an attempt to stabilise the kid. The girl we'd spent the last two sessions trying to save bleeds to death in the healer's arms. The session pretty much ended right there, with everyone needing some time to process what just happened. We'd all signed on for a fairly gritty game where we'd likely be making all sorts of moral compromises while fighting for our survival, but nobody was expecting things to get quite that dark, that soon. In hindsight it was a memorable moment that led to several PCs' character development taking unexpected turns, but I felt kind of bad about it at the time.
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Jun 2, 2012 15:49
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I am still super wired from the game session I finished playing in a few hours ago. It was supposed to be the final session of the campaign, but things went wrong in the best possible way. I've posted about the game a couple of times before in this thread: the PCs are inhabitants of a province occupied by an invading empire, which has reasons to want all of us, jointly and severally, dead. We've slowly grown from desperate refugees into elite combatants waging a guerrilla war, and we've got a battle-hardened group of NPC bandits following us around thanks to working with them on some successful attacks against the empire's patrols and supply lines and one PC defeating their former leader in a duel. Just as it finally looks like we might be able to find an escape route from the occupied territory, we're surrounded and badly outnumbered by an imperial patrol. Accompanying them is a former PC who retired from the party a while ago over ethical disagreements with the rest of the group. (The GM got the player's permission to use him, of course.) The former PC offers us a deal: if we turn ourselves in and let the soldiers escort us to the empire's local centre of power to meet with the general overseeing the invasion, we'll receive amnesty for all our crimes. They give us a little time to think about the offer and discuss it among ourselves, but keep watch on us from a distance. On one hand, it's an obvious trap; on the other, it's pretty clear that they won't take no for an answer. Our first idea is to stall for time until we can find a way to escape as we originally intended. Then, the PC who's the bandit leader comes up with a "better" plan: why run when we can fight? We should walk right into their trap with eyes wide open, get as close as we can to the imperial general while holding on to our weapons, and then figure out some way to get out alive after assassinating him. The rest of us, preferring survival over a glorious death, insist on having a more well-fleshed-out strategy if we're going to do this. We consider our resources: a small group of bandits, a couple of wagons and boats full of various supplies and... ooh, about a hundred stolen imperial military uniforms. A plan begins to form. Before accepting the empire's offer, we ask a couple of our bandits to sneak away while the soldiers are busy dealing with us. Their job is to take the supplies and uniforms to a fellow resistance group, and ask them to mount an attack on the fort we're being led to while dressed in the uniforms. We don't know if they'll come through for us -- we've jerked them around a bit before by changing plans at the last minute -- but they're the only allies who might be able and willing to help us. Meanwhile, as the soldiers take us toward the fort, one of our spellcasters works subtle mental magic to influence their captain while the rest of us chat to the tired, demoralised conscripts, telling them our side of the story and hoping they'll see the justice of our cause. The plan is that once we get to the fort, our escorts will let us right in there with our weapons still on us and then join us in assaulting it from within. Then, to further add to the confusion, our reinforcements from the resistance group will show up in their imperial uniforms and charge the fort. By creating the impression of a large, organised rebellion against the empire by its own army, we hope to bring about that rebellion in reality -- or at least produce enough chaos to give us a chance of survival. In short, we're planning an insanely ambitious false-flag attack on a target way out of our league with backup that may never arrive. If even a single part of our plan goes wrong, chances are we're all going to die. And it's going to be awesome.
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Jun 15, 2012 08:15
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Part of it can be an identity thing, I think: if you see yourself as A Gamer, then you play games because that's what gamers do, sometimes even if you're not getting anything good out of doing so. I don't know if that was part of Bassetking's problem specifically, but I've definitely seen other people fall into that trap.
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Jun 19, 2012 06:49
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LuiCypher posted:Any advice on how to prevent a campaign with evil characters from becoming chaotic stupid? I think it's ironic that after writing about how my group is trying not to kill each other that as soon as we start a new Pathfinder game, all of the players decide (I was the last to roll a character, so I fell in line to promote some sense of cooperation) to roll evil... Talk to them about having a clear, long-term common goal to work towards. They'll be less interested in petty backstabbery and casual murder if they've got a city to take over or a king to dethrone.
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Jun 19, 2012 14:39
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Ratspeaker posted:I know that, which is why I spent the first couple months trying to man up and deal with the situation like an adult, but it's gotten to the point where I need to either compromise or bow out. When I explained the situation to the rest of the group and asked if they'd rather I stay or left, they said I should stay, so whether or not they were just being polite, this is where I am now. I don't want to poo poo up the thread further with e/n posts so I'll just say that I am trying to get non-crazy, and building a tolerance is part of that, and I'm just trying to make it suck for as few people as possible. I'm sorry I brought it up. Why are you asking for their opinion on whether you should stay in a game you're not enjoying? You have the right to walk away and find a better game rather than resort to ridiculous earplug bullshit.
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Jun 22, 2012 04:42
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Thuryl posted:In short, we're planning an insanely ambitious false-flag attack on a target way out of our league with backup that may never arrive. If even a single part of our plan goes wrong, chances are we're all going to die. And it's going to be awesome. Quick refresher: the party's a group of resistance fighters against an invading empire, and are currently being escorted by imperial soldiers to the fort from which the empire is overseeing the invasion, with the promise that they'll be granted a full pardon by the general there. We know it's probably a trap, but we're going to take advantage of it to attack the fort and hopefully assassinate the imperial general. People in this thread (okay, one guy) asked for updates on this plan when it actually went off, so now that the next session's come and gone, here's the end of the story. We try to stall as long as possible while getting to the fort, both to give our allies time to arrive (if they're coming) and to give us time to persuade our escorts to betray the empire and side with us when the fighting starts. By the time we get there, the captain of the escort force is eating out of our hand and we're marched right into the general's office fully armed. Pretty quickly, we realise something's weird. The office is guarded, but only lightly. No soldiers pour in to drag us off to the dungeons. The general actually seems interested in talking things out with us. Realisation dawns: it wasn't a trap. The general's lost too many good soldiers trying and failing to hunt us down, and enough is enough. He really does want to offer us a full pardon for our rebellion, in exchange for us giving up the fight against the empire and getting out of this war forever. If we play our cards right we can still take advantage of the offer before he finds out we've convinced about 100 rebels and 40 of his own soldiers to assault his fort. Well, poo poo. We hadn't planned for this possibility. We look at each other awkwardly for a few moments, trying to gauge who wants to take the offer of safety and who's angry enough at the empire to keep fighting. Eventually our fighter breaks the tension by hitting the general over the head with an axe. The battle itself is long and brutal, and marked by incredibly swingy luck with the dice: there's barely a round that doesn't feature at least one critical success and one critical failure. One of our mages, a somewhat unhinged stone-shaping expert, botches an attempt to collapse the floor under the general, and instead she brings the whole room crumbling down to ground level with all of us still in it. We pick ourselves out of the rubble and look around to see imperial soldiers fighting among themselves throughout the fort, as our attempts to talk our escorts into treason finally pay off. Archers rain arrows down on us from the outer walls. A wizard storms out of her quarters and blasts us with fire, searing us relentlessly as we scatter and scramble for cover. Our party's second mage gets taken down to within one good hit of death by the third round of the fight; after our healer brings him back from the brink, he stays in hiding and takes pot shots at soft targets while the party members who still have HP and resources left go on the offensive. Our archer spends half her supply of hero points on a single attack, and rolls a critical success on it: the enemy wizard is pinned to the wall by a barrage of arrows and bleeds out. Our fighter duels with the imperial general amongst the rubble of the fallen building, taking him down with a critical hit of his own. Our shaman creates an illusion of a terrifying dragon rampaging through the fort to sow even more chaos. Our NPC allies within the fort are slowly being boxed in between a wall and the enemy: if they're wiped out, their attackers will turn on us next, but we're too busy on our own front of the battle to help them. As the fighting rages on, we start to hear shouting, running footsteps and the sounds of battle from outside the fort. Our supporters in the resistance movement have come through for us after all! We hold out for a few more rounds, slowly pressing back the enemy into the central courtyard of the fort, even as our allies fall one by one and our party grows increasingly wounded and exhausted. Finally, the main gate of the fort is forced open, and a triumphant rebel force pours in. Almost instantly, the tides of battle turn, and the surviving Imperial loyalists, surrounded on all sides, drop their weapons and surrender. The war isn't over, but the campaign is, at least for now: with a fort of critical strategic importance in our hands, one of the empire's most respected generals dead and a small army of rebels on our side, the imperial forces are in disarray and we've got a nice long breather to decide what we want to do next. Some of our characters will continue fighting for the resistance, while others will escape into unoccupied lands and try to live out their lives in peace. Overall, it was one of the best sessions of the best game I've played in in a long time. At the lowest point in the fight I honestly thought we weren't going to survive it, and apparently the GM thought the same: he told us after the session that halfway through the battle he'd started writing up a little epilogue about how we'd be remembered as heroes who gave our lives fighting for the resistance. But instead we rallied, and achieved a victory beyond our wildest dreams when we first went on the run from the empire. We had to manipulate our own allies and throw a sincere offer of peace back in the face of our enemy to do it, but we've struck a decisive blow for the freedom of our people -- on balance, it was worth it.
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Jun 23, 2012 10:22
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