Learning from mistakes

[zornwil]

Here's a mistake I made...long story somewhat short...a PC had been tracking a particular villain who had become a sort of arch-nemesis. I say "sort of arch-nemesis" because therein lies some of the issue. From my perspective it was one of many villains that might trouble a hero but ultimately aren't an arch-nemesis - more of an arch-annoyance. Anyway, the PC went through considerable trouble to search down tips on the villain and to go after him. After a long period of time the villain reemerged for a final battle, at this point the villain being monstrously strong, and with some assistance from a few other villains of note.

 

The good guys in the battle had it tough and once the battle was underway 1-3 heroes out of 5 were down at any given moment. Not dissimilar situation for the villains except that they were ahead for a while. Sort of like how you like a battle to go, tense, outcome not a foregone conclusion for the heroes even if somewhat likely.

 

But the kicker was that the aforementioned PC (recently redesigned) has been getting slammed a bit in combat lately, so after 2 earlier successive combats where he got laid out, he also got smacked down in this one. He's a more flamboyant PC and has the stronger history as one that villains go after, but he's also just undergone a radiation accident (in game terms that is) and is a rather different character, so he doesn't stand up quite as readily to punishment. As GM I'm letting the villains that know him "relearn" and their first inclination is to give their all in hitting him, so right now they are being "too" tough on him but generally not an issue. What is an issue is that this arch-nemesis bested the hero and it took the other 2 teammates to bail him out at the climax of the battle, as the villain grabbed the hero and raised him above him (though barely standing as he was down to single-digits END and starting to wane on STUN).

 

The biggest problem was it hurt the PC's - and to a degree the player's - pride and served as less fun for the player. Not that the player wants to win all the time. In fact he has very reasonable dramatic expectations. But this was one of those situations where it just wasn't very dramatic or heroic in retrospect. I didn't think much about it as I tend to let chips fall where they may. But we talked about it - and I'm glad. There are many ways I could have played it.

 

For example, the villains should have wanted to "save the hero for last" (as this hero was one the arch-annoyance/arch-nemesis was in fact concentrating on and hated most). This doesn't disturb the game balance one iota but does allow for the player with the greatest vested interest a chance to keep going and duke it out.

 

Another way to handle it would have been to let the arch-annoyance - as he's nutty as a loon - grab the hero and warp out (he could do that) and then let them go someplace where the environment would allow for an even duel - that was possible at this point but I didn't think of it.

 

A psych lim of the arch-annoyance was over-complicating things. While he did this, his final duking it out was not in that character in the end. That could have been revised.

 

I'm posting this not because it so disturbs me or anything. The player was pretty cool about it and as far as I'm concerned it's a "live and learn" thing. But I think these are the kinds of things that we can do well to learn from in executing games so I thought I'd share this "lesson learned" for anyone interested.

[lemming]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

I think Nexus had been beat on a bit much lately, but I think the next few games should sort that out. You should pick on Hamlet some more.

[zornwil]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

I think Nexus had been beat on a bit much lately' date=' but I think the next few games should sort that out. You should pick on Hamlet some more. [/quote']

With the shift from Troll to Nexus, and with the recent track record of Nexus, the villains will start to focus more on Hamlet, Sammy, and Spectrum, though not necessarily in that order...

 

Basically the downside to the Troll (which was reasonably in concept though and okay when it was that character) was that he made himself quite a target, not only for being physically tough and a healer but also for his known cruelty. As word spread that Nexus was the same guy or a direct replacement (among the "regular" sorts of villains) there was an inevitable reaction to take down Nexus first. Now that will definitely change, particularly with Bogeyman out of the way (Bogeyman was pretty much the last villain obsessed with Troll/Nexus). This "bottoms out" Nexus, in more ways than one. Remember, he's been atoning for his sins as the Troll, and has gone through (and will go through) legal hassles as well as facing old enemies. From hereon out things should be improving noticably.

 

By the way, there's a funny (just funny, not bad) set of consequences to the Bogeyman's demise...

[Kirby]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

The biggest problem was it hurt the PC's - and to a degree the player's - pride and served as less fun for the player. Not that the player wants to win all the time. In fact he has very reasonable dramatic expectations. But this was one of those situations where it just wasn't very dramatic or heroic in retrospect. I didn't think much about it as I tend to let chips fall where they may. But we talked about it - and I'm glad. There are many ways I could have played it.

You didn't explicitly state who won. Was it the villains? This was my first thought after reading your post (from the information on the latter half), though when rereading it, it seemed like the heroes may have (from the info on the upper half).

 

Since you talked with the player after the game, I think you did everything pretty well. I just have to options that might help the player and his PC, but you'll know better than me. Both are on the theme of rematch.

 

1) If the heroes won, then the next time the PCs are fighting a villain group of hired muscle, said NPC nemesis is one of them. He boasts he'll take care of said PC " 'cause he's a lot softer now." Those two go one-on-one; your results may vary.

 

2) If the heroes lost, then during some other plot you are running. The villains show up out of the blue because they want another go-around with these "creme puffs." Their first attack (maybe by surprise) is to entangle the main PC. Not an entangle that will keep him out of all combat (though they think it will), just a phase or two. "We want to save you for dessert, pretty boy!" Then the group goes one-on-one with everyone else, with the extra (if any) "guarding" said PC. The guard is either the weakest member, the one most susceptible to said PC's attacks, or his nemesis. Unfortunately, by "guarding" the villain's definition is to have his back turned to the PC while watching the fight, cheering his teammates on. This way, when our underdog escapes the entangle, he gets one heck of a surprise move on his opponent, and maybe he can turn the tide of the fight.

 

2b) If the "guard" was not his nemesis, then his nemesis sees the beating of the guard, breaks off the fight who he's with and yells that he's going to squash our mentioned hero. This way, hero should be relatively fresh with villain slightly worse for wear and both seeking retribution of some sort. Plus the *other* hero that was fighting the nemesis can take a recovery or go help someone else.

 

Just my thoughts. I hope they help.

[Blue]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

I can't think of any such mistakes. I am an infalible GM. So far as you know.

 

I don't even consider the time I turned Jester, a NPC hero, homocidal, to be a mistake. That was um... just, um... a dream! Yeh, that's it. It was just a dream sequence. The credibility and interest in the character didn't subside after all...

[zornwil]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

You didn't explicitly state who won. Was it the villains? This was my first thought after reading your post (from the information on the latter half), though when rereading it, it seemed like the heroes may have (from the info on the upper half).

 

Since you talked with the player after the game, I think you did everything pretty well. I just have to options that might help the player and his PC, but you'll know better than me. Both are on the theme of rematch.

 

1) If the heroes won, then the next time the PCs are fighting a villain group of hired muscle, said NPC nemesis is one of them. He boasts he'll take care of said PC " 'cause he's a lot softer now." Those two go one-on-one; your results may vary.

 

2) If the heroes lost, then during some other plot you are running. The villains show up out of the blue because they want another go-around with these "creme puffs." Their first attack (maybe by surprise) is to entangle the main PC. Not an entangle that will keep him out of all combat (though they think it will), just a phase or two. "We want to save you for dessert, pretty boy!" Then the group goes one-on-one with everyone else, with the extra (if any) "guarding" said PC. The guard is either the weakest member, the one most susceptible to said PC's attacks, or his nemesis. Unfortunately, by "guarding" the villain's definition is to have his back turned to the PC while watching the fight, cheering his teammates on. This way, when our underdog escapes the entangle, he gets one heck of a surprise move on his opponent, and maybe he can turn the tide of the fight.

 

2b) If the "guard" was not his nemesis, then his nemesis sees the beating of the guard, breaks off the fight who he's with and yells that he's going to squash our mentioned hero. This way, hero should be relatively fresh with villain slightly worse for wear and both seeking retribution of some sort. Plus the *other* hero that was fighting the nemesis can take a recovery or go help someone else.

 

Just my thoughts. I hope they help.

The heroes did win.

 

I appreciate the input, thank you! The nemesis was finally roundly defeated, with the advice of his hero nemesis (he had put in all that research after all). This was to finish off the bad guy once and for all, and indeed, that was done, although there will be a sort of postlude coming up. In this case I don't want to bring the villain back (that would really be naysaying all the hero's research and efforts, besides, this villain is just about done really, he was fun for a while but his welcome is over I think).

[Hopscotch]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

Someting very much like your situation happened to me a couple of years ago. My campaign has been going on for about 15 years, so none of the origional members of the team live in the same state anymore. We all got together at DragonCon in '02 and decided to have a big blowout Champions game that would tie up a loose thread that dated back to the first days of the game. We combuned the origional members of the team with the current members of the team, plus a couple that had been members along the way. We had, I think, ten players, some of whom had never played together before. During the climactic battle with the "Big Bad," two of the players, who had never played together before, combined their powers in such a way as to make short work of the opponent. I was VERY anticlimactic. We discussed it later and decided that the GM (I was not GMing this one, though I helped design the session and was "Playing Dumb") sould have kept the villian standing for annother round or so as to let everyone "get a lick in." No one would have been the wiser and everyone would have felt much better about the whole thing. As with you, we have decided that it was a live and learn type of moment, and something that I will never let happen again.

 

Hopscotch

[lemming]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

With the shift from Troll to Nexus' date=' and with the recent track record of Nexus, the villains will start to focus more on Hamlet, Sammy, and Spectrum, though not necessarily in that order...[/quote']

The order is fine. I think Alphabetical order is the way to go.

[red_eagle123]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

Like Blue, I'm a perfect GM. I have no mistakes to learn from. And er... any of those players that happen to die because I throw a 20d6 penetrating RKA at them from megascale range... that was... er... uhm... their 1d6 of badluck kicking in. Yeah, that's it.

 

[proditor]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

I had a similar(ish) and somewhat goofy event occur in one of my older games. One of the players wanted to go through a massive radiation accident and buy off his focus. He was hands down the most powerful mentalist good guy on the planet already. He was also Blood (from Blood and McQuark) and was basically having an insanity moment where he was trying to throw off the vestiges of his heritage from ole Azor. We dropped all sorts of clues, including big showy manifestations of a gigantic blue wombat in the sky over several cities (The wombat thing was a weird continuing thing through several games, but that's another story). The PC's proceed to completely ignore every single clue, hint and portent (There were 15 all told) so in the end, Matrix (Our hero) mind controlled the entire world for 15 minutes, decided he didn't like it and went on as a hero.

 

To this day only Matrix's player and myself know that any of this happened.

 

I'm not sure what I really learned other than my group, which usually pounced on clues like a cat on tuna, just missed these entirely.

[zornwil]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

I had a similar(ish) and somewhat goofy event occur in one of my older games. One of the players wanted to go through a massive radiation accident and buy off his focus. He was hands down the most powerful mentalist good guy on the planet already. He was also Blood (from Blood and McQuark) and was basically having an insanity moment where he was trying to throw off the vestiges of his heritage from ole Azor. We dropped all sorts of clues, including big showy manifestations of a gigantic blue wombat in the sky over several cities (The wombat thing was a weird continuing thing through several games, but that's another story). The PC's proceed to completely ignore every single clue, hint and portent (There were 15 all told) so in the end, Matrix (Our hero) mind controlled the entire world for 15 minutes, decided he didn't like it and went on as a hero.

 

To this day only Matrix's player and myself know that any of this happened.

 

I'm not sure what I really learned other than my group, which usually pounced on clues like a cat on tuna, just missed these entirely.

Given what you said, you probably did this, however I'll say it anyway - my favorite advice on mysteries/clues was from Lamrok when he said he uses Scooby-Doo as his bar for players. Yes, that may sound overly simplistic but it's a good one when you consider how players will follow various red herrings and they're trying to do something in a couple or so hours that their characters (often super-intelligent even) are doing over many, many hours if not days and even weeks.

[proditor]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

*Nod* After that I did make one change and that was not to assume that my group would always be "on". The other thing was to remember that the guy who almost always got the clues was Matrix.

 

So in some instances, the clues would get more obvious or a luck roll would come into play so that the heroes would get a salient piece of info and never feel that they missed out on the chance to kick evil's butt for goodness.

[Doug McCrae]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

With the shift from Troll to Nexus' date=' and with the recent track record of Nexus, the villains will start to focus more on Hamlet, Sammy, and Spectrum, though not necessarily in that order...[/quote']What sort of a superhero name is Sammy?

 

Troll and Hamlet are good though, especially the latter.

[lemming]

Re: Learning from mistakes

 

What sort of a superhero name is Sammy?

 

Troll and Hamlet are good though, especially the latter.

Well, you could call him Sammy the Slime, but it still doesn't have that great of a ring to it.

 

And Hamlet is the character name, while one of the forms is Rodin. (An inanimate indestructable statue). Are his other forms named? I'm not sure.

 

You can see the outdated descriptions of the characters at Meet the Characters

 

Some of the latest character developments in a couple of the characters are fairly radical. Spectrum is learning magic with a heavy mentalist bend, Nexus as described above, and Hamlet has gained quite a few more forms.

But what changes will happen with Sammy? The readers want to know!