My Players looted the room

[Maccabe]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

If superheroes can loot then why can't supervillians? Have the PC's fight a villian who uses stolen foci from other superheroes. If they defeat the villian a long line of supers show up for their stuff back, undamaged of course, assuming they can beat the villian with 200+ extra point of stolen foci.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I had the same problem with my Players when they played Jedi in a Star Wars game I GM'ed. The they refused to change and ended up outlaw by the Jedi' date=' Republic, Hutts and every other major entity. Had million credit bounties on them. They refused to give though and ended up fighting almost as soon as they entered any civilized system.[/quote']

 

Which IMMEDIATELY brings to mind a certain ... dialog in a certain cantina in the original 'Star Wars' (Or 'A New Hope", if you insist). You know the one.

 

There was an amusing variant on this I saw years ago. Way back when 'White Dwarf' was actually a magazine for gamers, and not just a fat pamphlet for Games Workshop products, it had this regular comic strip called 'The Travellers'. It was basically a send-up of SF/Space Opera-style RPGs, and one of the things that often went on was that the characters would be doing "their thing" whilst, in the background, one often got to see almost-familiar faces doing THEIR thing. With variations.

 

In any case, in one sequence, the group is in a certain cantina. In the background, one sees a certain farmboy being menaced by a certain thug.

 

THUG: You DON'T want to mess with me. I have the death penalty on me in twelve systems.

 

FARMBOY: (Points at the thug, and yells to the rest of the room) Hey!!! THIS guy has the death penalty on him in twelve systems!!!

 

THUG: (suddenly looking REALLY scared) Uh, no. No. It was a joke...

 

(Massive burst of gunfire that seems to come from just about everywhere in the room. The smoke eventually clears, to reveal FARMBOY counting money)

 

FARMBOY: 98...99...100. Oh, hi, Ben.

 

BEN: Hmmmmm.

[hfergus]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I had a situation that was somewhat similar but not quite. It was DnD. New players. I told them "No evil characters." They agreed. Then promptly proceeded to be marginal then blatently evil. I decided then to show them consequences of their action. The "Big Goods" (counterpoint to "Big Bads") were promptly after them once a trully good NPC turned them in. They got real upset and said "This is not what we agreed to." I then killed the campaign and never played with them again. If they had told me they wanted to be evil, I may have gone along with it. ....Heroes on the "wrong side of the law"... Yup.

[AnotherSkip]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

It can be a struggle.

 

I have plans though in my current campaign.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I had kinda the flip side happen once. I was changing from a 4 year-old Champions campaign to one with new characters, and I thought it would be interesting to start them all off as UNTIL agents (highly-trained normals) and then have them get their powers after a session or two. They seemed willing to do this and drew up a bunch of UNTIL agents.

 

For the first session, I set up a total-party capture scenario. They were undercover security for some UN dignitaries at a fancy dinner, and the regular security was way-too-easily (suspiciously so) overrun by a bunch of guys with machine guns and body armor. At that point, the bad guys didn't know the PCs were armed or even security in any manner. The PCs were way outnumbered, way outgunned, and had lots of innocent bystanders around them.

 

But instead of acting like agent-level characters, they were stuck in full-out "mega-powerful superhero" mindset and attacked the gunmen. Despite me pointing out the odds against them and giving them several chances *not* to go on the offense.

 

(Gee, y'think maybe, possibly, their capture was supposed to result in them getting powers somehow? Can't imagine why you'd think that...)

 

What a mess that was. DD, you have my sympathy.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

(Gee' date=' y'think maybe, possibly, their capture was supposed to result in them getting powers somehow? Can't imagine why you'd think that...)[/quote']

 

I think that you CANNOT be subtle when GMing a set-up like this. Drop definite hints before play, about what will happen. If the PCs start going off the reservation regardless, issue blunt warnings. If they persist, it is up to you whether this fiasco should actually be played out.

 

Personally, if things had gone this bad this early, I would give thought to not playing it out (why bother?). Just tell the PCs that their characters died along with ALL the hostages - and it is all their own fault. Then reset straight to the beginning (Characters alive and just starting out, etc.), tell the Players to get a frackin' clue, and start again.

 

Then again, I'm very lucky - most of my group have enough smarts to NOT do the above (or, at the very least, WIN if they do).

[drunkonduty]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

Thanks Bolo. Right back at ya. :-)

I suppose we should remember the first rule of GMing: no encounter plan survices contact with the PCs.

 

I do have a happy ending though. The next sesson was played and the Heores actually used their brains and thought things through without going psycho and killing and looting. They even caught the bad guy and didn't cause an international incident.

[Shadow Hawk]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

Thanks Bolo. Right back at ya. :-)

I suppose we should remember the first rule of GMing: no encounter plan survices contact with the PCs.

 

I do have a happy ending though. The next sesson was played and the Heores actually used their brains and thought things through without going psycho and killing and looting. They even caught the bad guy and didn't cause an international incident.

 

There is a story involving researchers studying monkeys. They put a monkey in a cage with a banana out of reach, and gave the monkey 3 ways to reach the banana.

The monkey found a 4th way.

If the monkey had been a PC, he would have broken out of the cage, slain the researchers, and left the banana behind.

[Kewlen]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

Ha! ran across you again! but then I guess it is reasonable to think that we would be interested in the same forums...

 

As one of the players of this game, I would like to chime in. I personally was having a little trouble working out the level of realism for the setting and it wasn't exactly a DnDism from my point of view. But, I took the advice of consequences well into consideration and I think I have now sorted out how my character at least will interact with the game world (as commented by DrunkonDuty about the players being better behaved in the next session).

 

The main reason why things were taken (I had initially only acquired acces to scope the place out) was that several of the artworks were linked with another character's backstory, involving her father. The player stated that her character wanted them, and a short discussion warranted the best solution being a robbery. And as the character wanted the "badder guy" to have some way of linking it back I suggested we get the brick to do some only-possible-by-brick property damage and take a lot of stuff.

 

It doesn't matter, the game is good and I think the other players are getting the idea as well.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

There is a story involving researchers studying monkeys. They put a monkey in a cage with a banana out of reach, and gave the monkey 3 ways to reach the banana.

The monkey found a 4th way.

If the monkey had been a PC, he would have broken out of the cage, slain the researchers, and left the banana behind.

 

... Or, he would have broken out and then killed the researchers WITH the banana.

[dmjalund]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

... Or' date=' he would have broken out and then killed the researchers WITH the banana.[/quote']

destroying the banana in the process

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

Ha! ran across you again! but then I guess it is reasonable to think that we would be interested in the same forums...

 

As one of the players of this game, I would like to chime in. I personally was having a little trouble working out the level of realism for the setting and it wasn't exactly a DnDism from my point of view. But, I took the advice of consequences well into consideration and I think I have now sorted out how my character at least will interact with the game world (as commented by DrunkonDuty about the players being better behaved in the next session).

 

The main reason why things were taken (I had initially only acquired acces to scope the place out) was that several of the artworks were linked with another character's backstory, involving her father. The player stated that her character wanted them, and a short discussion warranted the best solution being a robbery. And as the character wanted the "badder guy" to have some way of linking it back I suggested we get the brick to do some only-possible-by-brick property damage and take a lot of stuff.

 

It doesn't matter, the game is good and I think the other players are getting the idea as well.

Always good to see the other side of a situation. Thanks for supplying this info. Yeah, "realism" and "superheroes" don't always go hand-in-hand.

 

Given the backstory connection, I could easily see taking those pieces, and that there could be logical reasons for the property damage and taking other things (for instance, to cover up the importance of those particular artworks she wanted). Given that, though, I'd have played "Robin Hood" with the other stolen stuff, or if they were originally stolen find a way of getting them back to their rightful owners.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I think that you CANNOT be subtle when GMing a set-up like this. Drop definite hints before play' date=' about what will happen. If the PCs start going off the reservation regardless, issue blunt warnings. If they persist, it is up to you whether this fiasco should actually be played out.[/quote']

Yeah, this was early in my GMing career, and I learned my lesson (the hard way).

Personally, if things had gone this bad this early, I would give thought to not playing it out (why bother?). Just tell the PCs that their characters died along with ALL the hostages - and it is all their own fault. Then reset straight to the beginning (Characters alive and just starting out, etc.), tell the Players to get a frackin' clue, and start again.

That campaign did die a quick death, and I went to them just drawing up new supers right at the start, since it was obvious that was the kind of game they wanted to play. One player based her new super on her UNTIL agent character, so I ended up running her through a solo origin story, which worked well.

 

In fairness, I've run a few sessions more recently where the players filled in as agent-level characters, and they went much better. But the players knew each was a one-shot, and I presented it to them as that part of the session being the exposition pages in a comic book. So long as I don't do that too often, they're cool with that.

[Peregrine]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I have never had good luck with a "playing the origin" game, whether the one time I tried to GM such, or the nigh-uncountable times one GM I used to PBeM game with tried to run such. Even when the players knew that the "origin event" was coming, it's never been a fun experience.

[Broadsword]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

Judging from Kewlen's description, I can see the situation being possible. It is repeated and blatant robbery of anyone and everyone that is so heinous. My Jedi players allowed the Scoundrel they were traveling with to basically employ Sith Spirits because they did not think he would do anything "wrong" with them. Sith Spirits!! He also was allowed to steal priceless Jedi artifacts and holocrons, and the Jedi PCs did nothing till I hammered them with Dark Side Points and experience penalties.

 

In Champions, I'd probably outline experience as normal and then assign a penalty for unheroic behavior. If they then stated their ethics were different then the EP penalty could go, but they would be considered Grey and not true heros. More like Mercenaries.

 

Broadsword -|--->

[Karmakaze]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I have never had good luck with a "playing the origin" game' date=' whether the one time I tried to GM such, or the nigh-uncountable times one GM I used to PBeM game with tried to run such. Even when the players knew that the "origin event" was coming, it's never been a fun experience.[/quote']

 

The variant of this that I've run started with the characters having their powers, but not knowing it yet. (The mutation even happened offscreen shortly before gamestart). The players start with their "normal" character sheets and then switch to the full sheet once they've discovered most of their powers in character. It works fine, but its also a case where everyone is onboard ahead of time with what's going on.

[WarriorKnight]

Re: My Players looted the room

 

I have never had good luck with a "playing the origin" game' date=' whether the one time I tried to GM such, or the nigh-uncountable times one GM I used to PBeM game with tried to run such. Even when the players knew that the "origin event" was coming, it's never been a fun experience.[/quote']

 

A friend of mine ran a game where we wrote up 50pt characters & she wrote up the powers(a speedster,brick,energy projector,etc.) & our powers came out during the 1st adventure.It was a blast & we all had fun.My character ended up being the 1st villian:eg: in the game,due to the mentalist character kept getting into his brain.Unfortantly RL ended the game & we've never gotten back to it.