Unmaking

[Zed-F]

Re: Unmaking

 

No win scenarios are commonplace in fiction. That does NOT mean anyone necessarily wants to roleplay one.

 

The only time I will allow a no-win situation to come up is when the players make it a no-win situation. I always give the players options at the outset, but if they choose not to think and paint themselves into a corner.... well then they are in a corner, and have to figure out what to do from there.

[Cygnia]

Re: Unmaking

 

I would slightly disagree. Circumstances where it is okay to kill a PC:

 

1. With the players consent, as part of his own dramatic conclusion. In other words, if intentionally initiated *by* the player. ( this requires that the rest of the players know OOC, too )

 

2. If, when given every reasonable opportunity to be aware of the dangers of his planned course of action, the PC still insists on doing something suicidally stupid. Not heroically brave, but incomprehensibly dumb. I also include here cases where a character breaks the campaign premise in such a way as to threaten the continuance of the game and the fun of the other players ( like, say, a superhero PC in a superhero game randomly deciding to start offing innocent bystanders, and then attack the police who come along ).

 

3. If the hero, knowingly on the part of the player, takes an extraordinary risk, and the dice don't end up panning out.

 

Thats in rough order of acceptance. If the players wants his character to die in a noble sacrifice, then thats fine ( though you should put extra effort into making sure that sacrifice is meaningful ). On the other hand, while bad luck in a high stakes situation is an *acceptable* reason for character death, you really should put every reasonable effort into making sure that luck alone won't kill a PC.

 

Bad dice luck, in a situation where the PC is not knowingly in danger, and where the circumstances are not dramatically important, is *not* a good reason to kill off a PC.

 

Can someone rep Metaphysician again for me? I'm still on cooldown...

[Drhoz]

Re: Unmaking

 

So... sacrifice myself to prevent the birth of the villian and save the universe from collapse.. Vitus would snort in derision and say something along the lines of "Sacrifice my existence to benefit that arsewipe? Bugger that! The universe can go hang for all I care."

[Egyptoid]

Re: Unmaking

 

4. You *don't* jump in. As the scenario is written' date=' this means the world gets destroyed, basically. And it all happened because you weren't willing to take one of the above three horrible options. . . and thus acts as a coercive element forcing the above.[/quote']

 

Besides, everyone knows that Paradox Waves always ripple out by the end of the scenario and put everything back just the way it was, except the villains swallowed into a crack in the earth.

 

Besides, our Heroes should never go along with evil's demands, since some other possibility might show up. I'm thinking Dr. Fate or maybe Hermione Granger.

[Vulcan]

Re: Unmaking

 

This whole scenario sounds like my GM's 'timestream-fixing obelisk' scenario. It usually ends with all the PC's taking one in the neck - along with the one PC whose temporal shennanegans started the whole problem. (And the temporal shennanegans don't necessarily mean that the PC has time powers, just that he has an origin of being 'out of time,' or had disads that the GM made into temporal shennangans...)

 

And if you think just going back in time will fix the problem, well, in the game I'm in it doesn't. By the time the obelisks show up, the timestream is so 'muddled' that attempts to time travel wind up with you going into the obelisk... Which is almost always a one-way trip.

 

The last time they showed up, the only survivor from inside the obelisk got out because he made a sacrifice of the best of mankind's technology that was literally decades ahead of it's time - Mechanon! Win-win situation, right?

 

Wrong. The next time the obelisk showed up, it used Mechanon as a tool to set up the destruction of the world so we'd stop mucking up the time-stream.

[Certified]

Re: Unmaking

 

Heh, almost a year to the day it lives! A post that has likely generated the most vitriolic of reactions from anything I've put up before or since. The idea was never meant to be a black and white, do you jump in more along the lines of how to find a third option.

[Greywind]

Re: Unmaking

 

Shooting the GM is always an option...

[Certified]

Re: Unmaking

 

Shooting the GM is always an option...

 

And it continues...

[Kal'El Wayne]

Re: Unmaking

 

Sir Johnstone smacks the anomaly with a rolled up newspaper. It stops destroying the world.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: Unmaking

 

The Damacles Scenario (And the Kobyoshi Maru) are tests, done in a simulator. They are, indeed, character tests... but just tests. I'm with others on this thread (and Captain J.T.K.): I don't believe in the no win scenario. "I reprogram the simulator to make it possible to rescue the ship."

Any GM who set up such a scenario without my consent is one that I will never play with again.

That's not to say that PC's never die... they have a whole bunch of enemies, armed with the latest in technobabble, and they're going to try like heck. But there's a difference between "You failed your perception roll, you're armor wasn't high enough, and your teammates chose to abandon you rather than heal you" and "Commit suicide or the world ends and you die anyway". One is bad luck and bad choices, the other is a deliberate effort by the GM to eliminate the character.

The only excuse is that after leaping into the vortex, the character finds himself standing next to his teammates, with his teammates talking about how brave NPCMan was to sacrifice himself like that... that by leaping into the vortex you changed history to the point where someone else sacrificed himself instead of you, someone who you never met and don't remember but your teammates do.

 

As for the "Heroic Sacrifice" thing: of course my character sacrifices himself! He's a hero! That's what he does!

 

Upon review: I hope this is clear. Too many words.

[bubba smith]

Re: Unmaking

 

From my characters pov: Most of my characters would look for possible third options. Any would be willing to sacrifice themselves to save the world, but in the cases of several (Style, Flesh Gordon) having their entire lives erased would end up destroying the world anyway.

 

From a Game pov: I'm with Meta and Treb on this. If my character were put in a position where he had to die to save the world, I might be OK with it, depending on circumstances; a heroic death has been the point of several of my favorites. In my current campaign, one player has requested a specific heroic death for his character, and since I like the story arc I plan to provide the opportunity.

 

However, if the GM basically said "Your character's entire existence is erased, and all of his adventures meant nothing; the world would have been better off without him", I'd stop gaming with that GM. It's an OK short story concept (though too angsty for my tastes); as a game scenario, I'd feel that the campaign had been pointless. Having the GM sit there arguing that it was a brilliant deconstruction of the idea of the superhero wouldn't help.

i agree with you oddhat, well said

[Split Decision]

Re: Unmaking

 

This doesn't strike me as a no-win scenario. There are plenty of "no-win" scenarios in comics and RPGs, and heroes go ahead and win anyway, like they never got the memo.

 

To fix time problems, you need time solutions.

 

Coax Victor von Doom out. He'll sort this mother out in no time with his time machine, and my hero would owe a favor to one of the worst people in the world! There's some grist for your gaming mill.

 

I'm really surprised that all these thoughtful people are angry that this sort of thing might come up. Don't we, through our heroes, cheat metaphorical death all the time? Isn't that the meat and drink of superheroes?

 

As I read somewhere:

 

When Captain Cold freezes Batman in a solid block of ice, does the thought balloon read, "My chances should be better than this!"

 

And as I answer:

 

No, Batman busts out with the Bat Heat Ray and melts the block of ice, just in time to stop Captain Cold from crushing Comissioner Gordon and Robin beneath a giant frozen dinner or whatever.

 

And bigger calamities require bigger solutions, but superheroes always find them.

 

---

 

Now, if the GM won't let you get around a problem, then it's time to pull the plug on this particular subplot until you can figure out what you did to him to make him so sore at you.

[Greywind]

Re: Unmaking

 

I thought Batman would just keep going due to the heating elements in his cape and suit, and his insulated underwear.

 

Assuming, with the time ripples, the time machine works properly.

[Balabanto]

Re: Unmaking

 

Create a "hole" in the Anomaly using a quantum separator, and yank the villain to be out.

 

He's saved, and he's X number of years in his future, but nothing else changes. He was still a villain up to that point, because Science does not recognize his lack of villainy up to that point. Someone else is now that villain, because Nature abhors a vaccum.

 

Of course, this leads to "Thanks, Captain Victory, you've saved him. Now, since I've secretly been this villain for the past ten years while you thought he was your adversary, it's time for you to pay MY piper! KAPOW!"

 

The issue people seem to be having is that there is no solution without consequences. However, I would like to point out that there is no solution without consequences anyway.

 

As much as I hate Time Travel problems, THIS ONE is relatively easy to fix.

[Greywind]

Re: Unmaking

 

The problem isn't with "consequences". The problem is with deus ex GMs...

[Certified]

Re: Unmaking

 

The problem isn't with "consequences". The problem is with deus ex GMs...

 

There's a temptation to rehash old statements but I'll leave it at this:

 

[Karma]

Re: Unmaking

 

This brings up another question.

When is it O.K. for a GM to kill a PC?

 

My reply to this is, "Never, but sometimes crap just happens."

 

Yes but does that mean it isn't O.k. for a player to kill his own P.C. with the aid of the GM? What about simply using a GM's set up to do so. From the sound of it you think this would cause tension in the group. I disagree. If a Player wants to sacrifice his character for the greater good he should be within his rights to do so.

[Split Decision]

Re: Unmaking

 

I played a super-archer, and in his first adventure, he blinded the team with a smoke arrow, and then killed himself by firing off an Explosive arrow while so blinded.

 

It was a hilarious mistake, but I wouldn't have been happy if he was a longtime PC. Then again, if he was a longtime PC, his player probably would have had a better grasp on his abilities.

[Karma]

Re: Unmaking

 

The only time I will allow a no-win situation to come up is when the players make it a no-win situation. I always give the players options at the outset, but if they choose not to think and paint themselves into a corner.... well then they are in a corner, and have to figure out what to do from there.

 

I have a GM who fully considers 'one warning' enough before placing us in no-win situations of our own making. Sometimes there are vague warnings and so his TPK rate is higher that you'd like in a GM, but "hey" (he says) "If I tell you/hint that something is suicidally stupid and you go ahead and do it don't blame me if you die."

[DocMan]

It's not the End

 

I think everyone has been missing something.

 

Every person/thing that comes in contact with the anomaly disappears from the universe and is never heard from again, and ONLY this one hero (your character) has any memory of that person/thing. Temporal effects gone wild as window dressing. Theory says that these people/things were unmade and the timeline is adjusting around where they were. Further theory is that if the hero goes in the anomaly will dissapate and the universe will be saved, but the hero will never have been and all his good deeds will be undone.

 

Theory is obviously lying his ass off.

 

You don't KNOW what happens until you go through. This is a case where the character is given the choice of Certain Death (we're out of cake) or Destruction of the Universe! And even if the character is removed from the timeline, that doesn't mean that they are killed/destroyed.

 

This is an excellent vehicle for taking the campaign transdimentional, or for doing a drastic genre change. You go through the anomaly... and wake up lying in a field. You remember everything that happened to you in the old timeline, but now you don't have an identity. No one knows you. You're a man out of time. Are your powers the same? Do you even have powers? Does ANYONE have powers in this world? Is this the past? The future? A parallel world?

 

My question is, what happens to the rest of the players? If only one player goes into the anomaly then they are the only one off in their new reality. Do you pull the other players in, too? Do you play solo with the one player until they can find a way home? Do you play two parallel games? Or does the rest of the party know about the planned outcome of this scenario and have their new character sheets at the ready?

 

Doc

[input.jack]

Re: Unmaking

 

If the scenario resolves itself through a clever third option, or something like what DocMan was saying happening, then Im OK with it. Otherwise...

 

And yes, if the villain falling into the vortex didnt close it, then theres no reason to believe that the hero doing the same would close it either.

[Vulcan]

Re: Unmaking

 

There is that. If the 'vortex' totally undoes the life of anyone it absorbs, then when it absorbed it's creator, it would have undone its own creation.

 

The hero throwing himself into it is just plain dumb, in that case.

[Badger]

Re: Unmaking

 

I disagree. Properly handled, the no-win scenario is the ultimate test of heroism.

There's a reason Starfleet uses the Kobayashi Maru and Ravenswood uses the Damocles scenario.

 

 

Yes, well. But, I do see my characters (Bob at least) pulling a Cpt. Kirk on the Kobayashi Maru.

[Badger]

Re: Unmaking

 

Sir Johnstone smacks the anomaly with a rolled up newspaper. It stops destroying the world.

 

I'd go get Chuck Norris. I dare the anomaly to gobble up Chuck.

 

 

This blatant mentioning of Chuck Norris has been brought to you by Badger....Badger, praying Chuck Norris doesnt whoop his arse

[Badger]

Re: Unmaking

 

Sir Johnstone smacks the anomaly with a rolled up newspaper. It stops destroying the world.

 

Speaking of Kirk, maybe I should just throw Shatner's toupee in. Let the anomaly choke on THAT hairball.