Richest Man in the World Disease

[csyphrett]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

So your immature players DID NOT take such an action. Are you arguing that only a mature player wold take such action?

 

In any case, my comments rekated to immature players are directed towards the ability to segregate in-game events which may cause conflicts between characters from out of game relationship so these don't become conflicts between players.

 

No. I am saying I had immature players and they realized they didnt want to release a helpful technology knowing someone would try to erase them.

 

You don't give someone a loaded gun that they can be turned on you, which is what happened according to the people who were there and posted. One man wrecked a sizeable chunk of his game world for the good of all.

 

That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard.

 

We don't know what that "one guy said". We haven't heard his views. We've only heard from those who disagreed with him.

 

Which means what. Nothing. It doesn't matter if only half of what was posted is true. What's posted is bad enough.

 

Funny, I haven't seen anyone successfully sue the manufacturers and developers of land mines for all the harm they have caused by working successfully, or by blowing up and maiming or unintended victoms. I ran a search for "Hiroshima vs Albert Einstein", and nothing came up there either. I did find some comments by Einstein regretting the use to which his discoveries were put.

 

Einstein, late in life, stated he regretted recommending the US develop an atomic bomb, but believes it was justified by the possibility Germany would develop one. Had he known precisely how matters would have ended, it seems he would not have made that reccommendation. But he couldn't know how it would turn out when he pushed for this development. To hear people on this thread villify Shadow Lord, however, I can only think Einstein was either a moron for not realizing the harm that could come from sharing his knowledge and research, or truly evil and vile because he ust have known, but didn't care.

 

Einstein didn't make a bomb. That's irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

 

It's too bad we already have the hindsight of knowing how this worked out in Balabanto's campaign. I suspect the discussion wouldn't be as one sided if all we knew was that this amazing new technology had been used around Earth by an alien race, the PC's had samples, research and a means of shutting it down, and they were debating whether to keep it to themselves or release it to the world at large.

 

They took a vote and everyone agreed to not release it from my impression above and one guy took whatever had been done which wasnt tested and sent it out.

 

That's what was posted.

 

If somebody did that in a game you were playing or running, you wouldn't say anything?

 

CES

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

They took a vote and everyone agreed to not release it from my impression above and one guy took whatever had been done which wasnt tested and sent it out.

 

That's what was posted.

 

If somebody did that in a game you were playing or running, you wouldn't say anything?

 

Well, as you can probably tell from my responses to this and many other threads, the odds that I wouldn't say anything are pretty remote...

 

What Would I Say?

 

I might well say "Good for you for playing your character in character". That was a vote taken by the player characters, where each player ran their character in accordance with HIS in character beliefs, not THEIR OWN player beliefs, right?

 

Or, if this was a "vote of players" as to the direction of the game world, I would probably say "Guys, out of character, I'm OK with this. But my character would not go along with burying this information. I need an in game reason for this. Maybe the tech is unworkable somehow. Maybe someone triggers the failsafe. But, if it's out there, my character's beliefs clearly require him to do everything in his power to get the technology out to the population at large." If the GM doesn't want it released, or just doesn't want that player vs player conflict, the onus is on him to do something to allow the players to play that out in character.

 

If the Avengers all took a vote, and voted 6 to 1 to murder their enemy, would it be good role playing for Captain America to go along with this decision, or should he play to his personality and oppose an act he sees as immoral? [Operation: Galactic Storm, if you want a cite] As a GM, I would consider Cap's player a bad role player if he just closed his eyes and went along with it.

 

Now let's broaden that - if six of seven PC's vote to kill the helpless bad guy and the seventh has a Total C vK and Protective of the Helpless, should he stand by and let this violation of his character's principals happen because the other PC's voted for it? Again, as a GM, I would see that player as a bad role player.

 

I would also note that, as a GM, THIS IS MY FAULT. I put the players in a situation where this desire to kill the enemy has arisen - assuming the other 6 are also good role players, there is presumably a good reason for them to decide to take this step. I also allowed one character with an inviolable Code vs Killing into a game where, presumably, the other characters are far more willing to kill. That decision on my part set up this conflict - if I didn't want that conflict in my game, I should not have allowed that set of characters, should I?

 

What about a decision by six of seven members to retreat from a foe that the Overconfident character has a Hatred of? Should he just go along, despite his character's personality, or should he play his character? I get far more frustrated with players who view their characters as checkers, always rationalizing them making the most tactically effective decisions, rationalizing away both their out of genre play and their out of character decisions. And, again, I as GM SET UP this problem by allowing characters who would take divergent decisions, and by placing them in a situation where those differences would be highlighted.

 

Making it work out in a manner enjoyable to all the players is MY RESPONSIBILITY AS A GM. It's not CVK Man's or OverconfidentMan's job to say "I'll ignore my psych limits". It's MY JOB as GM to ensure that playing those limits will result in a good game, not a crushed campaign. Will I always deliver that successfully? Everyone who's ever GM'd knows that sometimes things get out of control - no one is perfect. But, if the game fails, it wasn't the fault of the players who played their characters in accordance with their personalities. It was my fault for first allowing personalities that would tear the game apart and then putting them in a situation where that personality clash would ignite.

 

What Would I Expect of the Other Players?

 

And I would expect the other players to play their characters in character as well. That may mean expulsion of the "problem character" from the PC group. "He's betrayed us - how can we ever trust him again?" This is also something all players should accept - the rest of the group is also playing their characters. My first comment to the other player might well be followed with "My character can never forgive that act of betrayal.", but the fact that my character now has a grudge against his character doesn't mean I, as a player, have any negative feelings for the other player.

 

As a player, I have a responsibility to play my character. As a GM, I have a responsibility to fix this problem I have caused, and I would look for a way to do that. Hopefully, that would not come to telling a player I should never have allowed his character in the first place and negotiating a change. Maybe it would, and that initial failure on my part should be admitted honestly, with an eye to fixing the game, not avoided by pointing the finger at "bad players" who are playing the characters they designed and I approved. This is especially so in Hero, where psych limits make character personalities pretty obvious in even the character writeup. If those traits aren't in the writeup, maybe it's a bit easier for a player to "shift" his character's personality in the interests of the game as a whole.

 

This is what I would expect of any group of mature players. And let's be clear - "mature" often has nothing at all to do with "age".

 

Character vs Character or Player vs Player?

 

To me, it sounds like some PLAYERS are holding the actions of CHARACTERS against other PLAYERS. The sense I get (maybe wrongly, and intuited from a lot of comments along the way) is that Shadow Lord's PC has had a long-established and strongly held belief that knowledge should be shared, not held away in secret. He acted in accordance with that long-held belief. I'm assuming that's reflected in a psych lim somewhere, but it may also be an off-character sheet personality trait. Either way, it sounds like it was known from the outset of this scenario.

 

There seems to be an underlying assumption that all the other players brilliantly role played their characters' decision to keep this knowledge secret, and vote that decision, but that Shadow Lord's player was looking for some way to cause as much internal strife and damage to the campaign as possible. No thought is given to the possibility that "After much soul-searching, Shadow Lord reluctantly concludes that, despite long friendships and loyalty to his teammates, their decision to withhold the possible benefits of this technology from the human race is unconscionable. No matter the cost, I must do the right thing and ensure this information finds its way to the outside world."

 

I also respect the fact that Shadow Lord apparently made it very clear that he was releasing that information. Given the resources he apparently has available, would it have been that difficult for the research data to have been released without him clearly being person who released it? I suspect he could have left considerable doubt in that regard (not relieved of suspicion, given he was the only dissenter in their vote, but who says no one else has, or could gain, access to this information). Most ***-disturber players love to leave that kind of doubt and then wave it in your face. "Yeah, Shadow Lord did it, but your characters have no way of knowing that for sure, so you can't act on that knowledge. Nyah Nyah Nyah"

 

While I don't know enough to say "Shadow Lord's player is blameless", that same lack of knowledge precludes me from concluding he is not. All I've heard are comments from two people who don't like the decision he's made, and I don't believe, from their tone and the information provided, that they are objective in their conclusions. It's a bit disturbing to see his lynch mob so happily forming.

[Balabanto]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The thing I'm seeing here, Hugh, is that you're using the "Unheroic" decision as your benchmark decision in your example.

 

I don't consider the Avengers, by any means, to be necessarily a specific example here, they could be Team of Totally Unrelated Superheroes Gathered By Writers to Make Money. The point is, the decision you've chosen is inherently an unheroic one to make your point.

 

My contention here is that by doing this, the character MADE himself into a pariah who the other PC's hated, and most of them had good reasons for doing so. And yes, the character had this belief, but MOST of the people at the table didn't A) Know that or Expect him to do something without the approval of the scientist whose research it was. The point was that the action came out of left field completely, no one was really expecting it, not even the GM, he just did it. The thing is, the character had a history of doing unpredictable stuff like this, but actually, he didn't make it clear until he actually DID it.

 

The characters just all woke up one morning and there was the result right in front of them, and everyone was like "Oh, my GOD! He did it! I can't believe he did it."

 

Technological characters the world over were !@#$!ed, people began ramping up their "Collective Nanotech Growth Factories" and the problem is, truthfully, some of these people were in countries that were secretly supported by "Talks Through Skulls Evil Organization" previously mentioned. All the player really did was raise the power level of the opposition until someone got rid of it, because the UN was also, obviously, manipulated by "Talks Through Skulls Evil Organization."

 

If there's one thing I've learned, Hugh, it's that nothing makes a player angrier than busting your rear end for a year to fix something and then having someone else storm in and tear up your work in five minutes.

 

You're right. Someone broke the social contract. But the problem is, the social contract in games is designed to remain unspoken. There shouldn't be a NEED for the GM, out of game, to say "I think you're breaking the social contract." during a session. That's handled AWAY from the table. AWAY from the other players. And there simply WASN'T time to do that.

[Mephron]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The gadgeteer in question was at the time known as 'Gomi-no-Sensei', or just Gomi to most people.

 

(I say 'at the time' because, due to another PC deciding that they could use the character's gadget pool without having the gadgeteeriing skill, or the inventor skill, or even some of the relevant complementary skills, the character is now called 'Gadget Queen'. Frankly, I could turn my PC into a vigilante supervillian taking out those who misuse technology with very little argument.)

 

And by the time Gomi found out about the fact that Shadow Lord had given the technology out, it was already being used for medical applications.

 

The counteragent Gomi created also required touch contact - it was an injectable. Warstar's most powerful advancement was making it airborne, which Gomi had worked out was possible, but had too many possible side-effects to make worth the danger to others.

 

Finally: Hugh, why is funding education in third-world companies with a lot of money, raising their educational standard, not heroic? If you want them to increase their standard of living, education is one of the major starting points. As I said, first you teach them how to do things, then you introduce the technology to them. Anything else is creating a cargo cult or a client state. Changing the world, in the Gadget Queen's eyes, is a long-term project. The adults may not be the ones to improve the world, but the children will.

 

In a way, this is one of the larger disconnects in the game: some people want the world to change immediately, to be better and shinier overnight. Other people want to change the world, but think it takes time to make those changes self-sustaining in the parts of the world that need to be improved most, using the power of education to bring them up.

 

Shadow Lord is the first camp. Gadget Queen is the other camp.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The thing I'm seeing here' date=' Hugh, is that you're using the "Unheroic" decision as your benchmark decision in your example. [/quote']

 

One could certainly flip it around. "Avengers don't kill", but Mockingbird made the deliberate decision to kill the Phantom Rider, despite the fact that she knew the rest of the team, including hisband Hawkeye, would disgree. She also made every effort to cover it up. For that matter, there's that old Captain America comic where he picks up a fallen opponent's machine gun and takes out a target. Why? There was no other way to protect the life or lives that target otherwise would have immediately taken. Superman has made the difficult decision to take the life of three Phantom Zone criminals.

 

Are those decisions inherently "unheroic"? One could argue that they are, I suppose. I don't see the decision to release technology to the masses to be inherently "unheroic" either.

 

I also don't have any issue with the other CHARACTERS taking action as a result of Shadow Lord's decision. I do have a problem with concluding that Shadow Lord's PLAYER is a problem as a result.

 

The point is' date=' the decision you've chosen is inherently an unheroic one to make your point. [/quote']

 

Actually, it was the second example that came to mind (the first being a hot button as the story arc itself is controversial). Do you prefer this one:

 

Some years ago, Iron Man discovered his technology had been stolen and was being used by numerous armored suits, including government agents and supervillains alike. He created a virus to take his own tech out, and went around removing that tech from various characters who had access to it. I would suggest that's neither inherently heroic nor inherently unheroic.

 

It was certainly not viewed favourably by many of his colleagues and friends, again including Captain America. Was one of them clearly in the wrong? I don't believe so. Both characters remained consistent with their established personalities. The recent IM/CA one shot spinning out of Civil War can provide some added examples of those two (that's what jogged my memory on Galactic Storm).

 

My contention here is that by doing this' date=' the character MADE himself into a pariah who the other PC's hated, and most of them had good reasons for doing so.[/quote']

 

So the character has brought adverse effects on his own head by sticking to his beliefs, rather than taking the easy way out and compromising what he believes to be right for what he knows to be expedient. I'm not seeing that as inherently unheroic.

 

And yes' date=' the character had this belief, but MOST of the people at the table didn't A) Know that [/quote']

 

Presumably, from the course of the discussion, they might be able to tell he had some feelings about the matter. But "we all voted; you lost" was decided to be adequate for dismissing his concerns. When I meet with a group of people to discuss important decisions, I don't generally just take a vote. It's also very common to ask whether everyone is onside with this decision. Did Shadow Lord, at any time, agree to abide by the results of a vote? Did anyone consider addressing his feelings on the matter? Or did everyone else at the table simply assume that "we all voted; everyone is bound by the vote"?

 

Again I'll ask - WHICH table? Did all the PLAYERS at the gaming table vote, or did all the CHARACTERS at Supers HQ vote?

 

Expect him to do something without the approval of the scientist whose research it was. The point was that the action came out of left field completely' date=' no one was really expecting it, not even the GM, he just did it. The thing is, the character had a history of doing unpredictable stuff like this, but actually, he didn't make it clear until he actually DID it. [/quote']

 

As you have previously noted, we don't always get advance warning of what's coming up. It sounds like the character realized full well (and likely correctly) that further discussion wasn't going to change anyone's mind, so he took action.

 

The characters just all woke up one morning and there was the result right in front of them' date=' and everyone was like "Oh, my GOD! He did it! I can't believe he did it."[/quote']

 

I'm curious how he accomplished it without making the GM aware of his intentions, however.

 

Technological characters the world over were !@#$!ed' date=' people began ramping up their "Collective Nanotech Growth Factories" and the problem is, truthfully, some of these people were in countries that were secretly supported by "Talks Through Skulls Evil Organization" previously mentioned. All the player really did was raise the power level of the opposition until someone got rid of it, because the UN was also, obviously, manipulated by "Talks Through Skulls Evil Organization."[/quote']

 

I still fail to understand how only the opposition's power level rose. Didn't allies have the same access to the same technology? Did they choose to ignore it, for some strange reason? They knew how to render that new tech useless, but they didn't put that knowledge to any kind of use. Even after being attacked by it once (the octopus), they ignored it?

 

If there's one thing I've learned' date=' Hugh, it's that nothing makes a player angrier than busting your rear end for a year to fix something and then having someone else storm in and tear up your work in five minutes. [/quote']

 

So the aliens were somehow "undefeated" by this action? I thought that's what it took a year to accomplish.

 

You're right. Someone broke the social contract. But the problem is' date=' the social contract in games is designed to remain unspoken. There shouldn't be a NEED for the GM, out of game, to say "I think you're breaking the social contract." during a session. That's handled AWAY from the table. AWAY from the other players. And there simply WASN'T time to do that.[/quote']

 

With 50 players, I find it difficult to believe anyone could reasonably take it on faith that everyone had the same view of the social contract. And it's always possible, even during a session, to say "Let me get back to you on that". For greater clarity, by the way, can you tell us PRECISELY what you feel the social contract was, and PRECISELY how you believe it was violated?

 

If Gadget Girl had chosen to IMMEDIATELY release the airborne tech-killer, for example, would you have considered that player to have similarly violated the social contract? After all, that undoes Shadow Lord's work.

 

The gadgeteer in question was at the time known as 'Gomi-no-Sensei', or just Gomi to most people.

*********************************************************

the character is now called 'Gadget Queen'.

 

And by the time Gomi found out about the fact that Shadow Lord had given the technology out, it was already being used for medical applications.

 

Well, someone was obviously able to work out how to use this tech for benevolent purposes in record time, given Balabanto's comments of how fast this all happened.

 

I'd say the prospects of this being used in medical applications may have been a very heroic reason for wanting this technology to be released. Too bad no one on the "keep it secret" bandwagon considered the possibility of a "limited release" compromise. [And, in fairness, equally "too bad" that Shadow Lord didn't consider such a counterproposal - but no more "bad" on his end than on the Secrecy end.]

 

The counteragent Gomi created also required touch contact - it was an injectable. Warstar's most powerful advancement was making it airborne' date=' which Gomi had worked out was possible, but had too many possible side-effects to make worth the danger to others.[/quote']

 

I thought the US wanted to use the counteragent immediately, but were thwarted by the UN. How could they have used it effectively if it still needed to be injected?

 

Finally: Hugh' date=' why is funding education in third-world companies with a lot of money, raising their educational standard, not heroic? If you want them to increase their standard of living, education is one of the major starting points. As I said, first you teach them how to do things, then you introduce the technology to them. Anything else is creating a cargo cult or a client state. Changing the world, in the Gadget Queen's eyes, is a long-term project. The adults may not be the ones to improve the world, but the children will.[/quote']

 

I'm not saying this is not heroic. But that's a long way from saying that using previously unknown technology to enhance standards of living is villainous! What's gadget Girl doing for people who are starving today? Education is hard to focus on when your stomach is rumbling.

 

In a way, this is one of the larger disconnects in the game: some people want the world to change immediately, to be better and shinier overnight. Other people want to change the world, but think it takes time to make those changes self-sustaining in the parts of the world that need to be improved most, using the power of education to bring them up.

 

Shadow Lord is the first camp. Gadget Queen is the other camp.

 

Thus, the CHARACTERS disagree. That's fine. However, I don't see where, by playing a character who falls into the other camp, Shadow Lord's player is somehow a villain.

 

What I see is players letting game events spill over into out of game interaction. Do the characters have reason to dislike each other? Sure. Why should that spill over into enmity between their players? Surely Balabanto has run many characters who strive against the goals of your character. presumably, you can separate the actions of those characters from some personal grudge Balabanto has against you as a player. Why are the actions Shadow Lord takes against Gadget Girl's wishes a personal affront by his player against you?

[csyphrett]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

That's fair enough, Hugh. In my case, if someone took stuff one of my characters was working on and everyone know was potentially a loaded gun, and just posted it to be used by anyone, my character would seriously consider exacting a pound of flesh.

 

And no I don't play heroic characters as a rule.

CES

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

That's fair enough, Hugh. In my case, if someone took stuff one of my characters was working on and everyone know was potentially a loaded gun, and just posted it to be used by anyone, my character would seriously consider exacting a pound of flesh.

 

And no I don't play heroic characters as a rule.

 

Shadow Lord's player shouldn't expect his character gets a free ride either - the other players are just as much responsible to play their own characters. It's the GM's responsibility to overrule any characters inappropriate to the campaign. Once the character is accepted, the character should be played according to concept.

[TheRealVector]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

Shadow Lord's player shouldn't expect his character gets a free ride either - the other players are just as much responsible to play their own characters. It's the GM's responsibility to overrule any characters inappropriate to the campaign. Once the character is accepted' date=' the character should be played according to concept.[/quote']

 

Preach on brother Hugh!!

[Kelcyron]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

This may be off topic, but I'm confused by something.

 

... due to another PC deciding that they could use the character's gadget pool without having the gadgeteeriing skill, or the inventor skill, or even some of the relevant complementary skills, the character is now called 'Gadget Queen'.

 

How does one character use another character's gadget pool without the character who has the pool knowing it? Sure, the character with the pool can hand out the Foci created with the pool, but he/she is the one who controls the pool and thus should be the only one able to change the pool configuration at all.

 

Kelcyron

[KA.]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The thing is, that when two of the world's most brilliant scientists tell you "You should not do this without allowing us to test the results." in theory, you should listen to those people. They should be trusted. They're superheroes.

 

In effect, the player created an organic nanotech arms race throughout the world, where people were desperately using this technology and trying to keep up with one another.

 

Some results of this:

 

1) The United States Government was forced to double bankroll, developing both this technology and non-collective alternatives. This created debt.

 

2) Warstar, the villain in question, KNEW as SOON as this was released what his course of action was going to be. He had the counteragent, all he had to do was wait. Shadow Lord, seeing Warstar as his archenemy, SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER THAN TO RELEASE THIS TECHNOLOGY WITHOUT TESTING. My first thought if >I< were a superhero would be "What if some madman takes advantage of this? More testing is required."

 

3) Third world nations implemented the technology immediately, regardless of the consequences, because that's what third world nations do.

 

4) Some of the people who were affected by the counteragent were OTHER HEROES! Shadow Lord effectively released into the environment the power and ability to KILL HIS OWN ALLIES! While I don't like to talk about GMPC's often, one of mine did have this concept and almost died outright. I was a !@#$$@!@ to myself, because I always am, you can't play favorites with GMPCs, you have to be just as mean, if not meaner. So I rolled randomly to see if anyone was with her when she fell over, looking for the other half of her intestinal tract. She was lucky. She rolled the 8-. And I never make a roll like that that hinges on PC survival without at least three witnesses. Doesn't matter who the PC is. But what if it HAD been a PC and not mine? There's a scenario for OOC resentment that will fester FOREVER.

 

5) With science, GOOD, HEROIC scientists don't just release untested technologies upon the general public and say "Here. Use this." If a bunch of aliens invade the earth, you should trust your superheroic buddies when they say "I think this needs some more testing." Even Reed Richards doesn't just throw out random technologies for people to use, and he's the most irresponsible high tech scientist in comics. Shadow Lord took that decision out of their hands, and let the chips fall where they may.

 

 

6) A villainous organization (Who we shall call Talks Through Skulls People For Fear of Violating Contracts until Balabanto comes up with a better name) used this technology to construct a giant flying robot octopus and blow up the Pentagon with it. My gameworld now has something called "The Dome" instead.

 

 

7) Needless to say, the United States Government wished to activate the counteragent right then and there, but the UN, and the massed outcry from third world nations, prevented them from doing so. As a result, thousands more died between the pentagon blast, and the Superhero team that destroyed the Octopus, AND the fact that when the UN Superteam went after it's replacement, the Giant Robot Manta Ray, Warstar had finally had enough. These things were a threat to his conquest of the world. THAT was when he released the counteragent, regardless of the consequences, killing the Giant Robot Manta Ray, which also paved the way for his invasion of Africa, the Middle East, and most of Central Asia.

 

8) Warstar had INTIMATE knowledge of everything the US would do, because he had spent close to 50 years GENETICALLY engineering the US President.

 

9) However, despite his own Megalomania, he considered himself to be a warrior. He didn't want to fight helpless sheep, but he pretty much figured that it would be acceptable if he needed to. So, when the discussion came, Warstar said "I really don't think you should do that. I think it would be a mistake." Warstar would have only conquered about 30 percent of the world instead of the amount that he got because he would have actually had to fight real armies, instead of dying chunks of neoorganic vegetable matter.

 

 

I have some comments on this.

I am not completely in agreement with Hugh, but I do see what appear to be problems on both sides in your campaign.

 

The player in question, either out of a desire to roleplay his character as he conceived him, or a desire to 'blow up' the campaign, took an action that the rest of the players disagreed with.

Or at least he wanted to.

I know that it might be difficult to tell a player that their character can't do something that they have the in-game resources to do, but it is still your game.

If you did not want the gameworld reshaped in the wake of a nanotech revolution, you could have done any one of several things to prevent this from happening.

Warstar could have prevented to release of the information, or altered it so as to make it useless, because he wanted to develop a more durable version of it for his own use.

Some government agency could have stepped in for the same reason.

A member of the Hero group could have realized what Shadow Lord was going to do and taken steps to prevent it.

Etc.

While we were not present at the gaming table, it seems like the sequence of events was:

a) Shadow Lord says he is releasing the information about the nanotech.

The GM, possibly with the help of some of the other players, comes up with the absolute worst outcomes possible, and then puts them into play.

 

It is like me telling a player that it might not be the best idea to try to shoot the tires of an escaping vehicle.

He chooses to anyway, because his character is Overconfident and Impulsive.

I then proceed to tell him that the bullet missed, bounced off the street, went clean through the mayor's skull (who just came around the corner), nicked the gas main at the Children's Hospital (there were no survivors of the massive fire that erupted), and then put a small hole in the hull of a ship full of aliens that were coming to cure all human diseases but are now going to destroy the Earth.

Of course none of that is my fault as a GM, because I had planned to have the Mayor walk around the corner ahead of time, he was suppposed to end up a hostage, and the Children's hospital just happened to be in the line of fire, and the aliens were scheduled to appear months ago, but were delayed by a cosmic storm.

 

Now if the player was trying to roleplay his character as he saw fit, he has been unfairly punished at the expense of your gameworld.

 

If he was trying to blow up the gameworld, he has succeeded.

 

But in either case, you could have prevented the outcome.

 

I think that it is possible that your campaign has become too unwieldy, and that you may have an underlying desire to 'blow it up' and start over on a smaller scale, possibly with a smaller group of players who enjoy the same genre that you do.

 

Without getting too deep, it may not be that you were trying to punish the 'bad' player, it may be that you use his rash actions as an excuse to do something you wanted to do in the first place.

 

KA.

[massey]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

Yeah, this is definitely a player vs player (and GM) conflict.

 

What Shadow Lord did was not unreasonable. I doubt any of my characters would have done it, but it wasn't crazy or psychotic. It could have played out as well or as poorly as the gamemaster and other players chose to make it play out.

 

You wake up one day, and suddenly it's all over the news that the nanotech blueprints have been released. At this point, you (as GM and players) have a choice to make.

 

1) You can allow this to go smoothly. The nanotech develops in different directions, eliminating the chances of a universal off-switch that makes everything from supertanks to artificial hearts stop working. As a GM you can declare it to be so. As a player who is a super-genius, you can do research to diversify the technology. Maybe its much harder to develop an airborne "vaccine" than originally thought. This is your chance to play super-heroes in a futuristic world.

 

2) You can hit the kill-switch before anything happens. I highly doubt that medical labs are already stuffing this junk into people by the next morning.

 

3) You can screw Shadow Lord over, making the game world play out a scenario that screams "I'm right! You are wrong! See everything that happened? It's because of YOU!!!"

 

4) Nothing happens. The nanotech blueprints may be all shiny and cool, but nobody without advanced scientific skills and production facilities can make sense of them. Third world countries have trouble installing plumbing and keeping their people from getting eaten by lions. They certainly aren't gonna be a hotbed of supertech development. "Oh, crap. Nanotech is hard." Or maybe countries don't want to switch everything over to a technology when the "off" switch is sitting there on the internet. You know, maybe this is just Darwin at work - if you build all this military hardware and give your enemies access to the power switch, then you obviously need to die to keep the gene pool strong.

 

I have no sympathy for anyone here. If a GM has his world self-destruct just to punish a player for something that doesn't seem all that unreasonable, I blame the GM. It sounds like this campaign is about to collapse under its own weight.

[Mephron]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

How does one character use another character's gadget pool without the character who has the pool knowing it? Sure' date=' the character with the pool can hand out the Foci created with the pool, but he/she is the one who controls the pool and thus should be the only one able to change the pool configuration at all.[/quote']

 

The parts were in the lab; the character in question basically went 'I've been studying and I know where the stuff is in the computer! I can build the healing device!"

 

Balabanto let it happen. I was out of the room, with a character at -9 BODY and -124 STUN. (I'd run late that night and, when I got knocked so far into option-land, decided to take the time to go get some food - I mean, I wasn't going to have any action in the combat at that point.)

 

There's a whole 'nother story there, and that's entirely player-on-player conflict. If you want to know about it, please contact me off the boards, as it doesn't really belong here.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The parts were in the lab; the character in question basically went 'I've been studying and I know where the stuff is in the computer! I can build the healing device!"

 

Balabanto let it happen. I was out of the room, with a character at -9 BODY and -124 STUN. (I'd run late that night and, when I got knocked so far into option-land, decided to take the time to go get some food - I mean, I wasn't going to have any action in the combat at that point.)

 

Without knowing all the details, that sounds like a one-off solution to get the game running again (and possibly - healing device - prevent an inappropriate PC death derailing the session, and possibly the game). Someone's seriously injured and we know that, in the location we're standing in:

 

- Plans for a healing device are readily accessible

- The required parts are readily accessible

- A character has appropriate skills to allow this to be used.

 

It's not a lot different from picking up the downed villain's weapon and swinging it. There's a "focus of opportunity" available. You want to use it again in the futurre? Now it's time to shell out some points.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

Balabanto let it happen.

 

And here, I suspect, is the crux of every single one of the game's problems.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The parts were in the lab; the character in question basically went 'I've been studying and I know where the stuff is in the computer! I can build the healing device!"

 

Without knowing all the details, that sounds like a one-off solution to get the game running again (and possibly - healing device - prevent an inappropriate PC death derailing the session, and possibly the game). Someone's seriously injured and we know that, in the location we're standing in:

 

- Plans for a healing device are readily accessible

- The required parts are readily accessible

- A character has appropriate skills to allow this to be used.

 

It's not a lot different from picking up the downed villain's weapon and swinging it. There's a "focus of opportunity" available. You want to use it again in the futurre? Now it's time to shell out some points.

 

So long as the players understand that this was a unique situation, and that building a "laser rifle" from the gadgeteer's parts at some later date doesn't count as a different power from the healing device.

 

As a GM, I would probably have allowed the same thing, for the same reason that Hugh gave.

[Balabanto]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The adventure was effectively over. While the characters were on the phone with the hospital, a PC (Who is no longer playing with us) grabbed the requisite parts and tried to activate them without really understanding them or having a paramedics score.

 

The blood of three different people was all over the character when the PC did this.

 

No one made their PER rolls to see what the PC was doing, and these characters had pretty high rolls.

 

This was a case where I pretty much had to figure out what was going to happen afterwards. Mephron took one look at me and said "Realistically, I should die right here." And I said "You're right, but roll 3d6 for me." Now, I am not a mean GM ALL the time, but I didn't tell the player what the roll was. Mephron made the roll. Keep in mind, the player DID have the option of not playing the character anymore, and chose to stick with it.

 

Then I randomly determined from among the available DNA strands what was going to happen to Mephron's PC.

 

Quite frankly, he's been exceptional about it, and quite frankly, if he walked out of my game at that point, I would not have blamed him at all.

 

You guys really must think I'm a total bastard, but that's okay.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

What, so what happened to the PC because of the DNA?

[Balabanto]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

I can't tell you that, Mephron's character is part of Secret Origins II, that's under NDA.

[Mephron]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

The PC's gender changed, basically. That was the primary big difference physically.

 

There's more that happened, but I don't want to mess up Balabanto's NDA. Frankly, we need him to get published so he can buy his own pizzas. (He's eaten an entire sausage pizza, by himself, and not noticed it. It's scary.)

[Mephron]

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

 

Without knowing all the details, that sounds like a one-off solution to get the game running again (and possibly - healing device - prevent an inappropriate PC death derailing the session, and possibly the game). Someone's seriously injured and we know that, in the location we're standing in:

 

- Plans for a healing device are readily accessible

- The required parts are readily accessible

- A character has appropriate skills to allow this to be used.

 

It's not a lot different from picking up the downed villain's weapon and swinging it. There's a "focus of opportunity" available. You want to use it again in the futurre? Now it's time to shell out some points.

 

It pretty much worked that way, yes. The character wasn't going to die, but was going to be out of action for an extended period of time. I found out about the entire situation returning with some Chinese, and, well, Balabanto said what happened later.

 

I rolled with it, and I'm going to honestly say it revitalized the character, making her more fun to play post-gender-change.