Wolf1066

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance Sorry, I may have misconstrued your question when I answered it. In the case of Jake accidentally pulping the drunk's cranium, the MedTech let it slide (so Jake lived to be killed by Mike's ex-Mafioso with the orbital crystal cyberarms and the impact-triggered forearm spike) - I think he would have happily punched the drunk's nose through the back of his skull, too - especially since the drunk, the wounded woman, the car load of people the drunk had hit, and the accident itself were all based on a real event at which the bloke who was playing the MedTech and I were first on scene. Where the game digressed from reality was in the actions performed by the players. IRL, the bloke who was playing the MedTech was not a paramedic but he was a first aider, as am I, so we rendered assistance as best we could and waited for the ambulance to arrive. IRL, we had to render assistance to the stupid drunk who had trashed a car full of young people returning from an office party (the driver of the second car was a designated sober driver) - fortunately none of whom were injured - and had seriously wounded a passenger in his own car - teeth through lip, broken shin-bone protruding through skin of leg. The drunk had suffered only superficial lacerations when he went through the windshield, owing to being so drunk that he flopped like a rag doll, but we had to tend to him and help the Ambos get him into the back of the ambulance - despite wanting to just "accidentally" drop him on the pavement. I suspect a bit of the player crept into the character, enabling the MedTech to let Jake survive "just this once".

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance *gibber*

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance I'd load up all the other characters with things that can neutralise Dante's abilities (I'd bloody invent them if I have to) and can send him to some dimension whence he could never return. Five minutes of Dante-esque game play and any of my regular players would have no hesitation in using said artifacts (actually, could be quite a good "Team-Building Exercise" for the rest of the players...) Of course, dimensional portals are tricky buggers and are likely to gobble up the artifacts along with "Dante" but such is life...

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance Pretty much what ghost-angel said. It's amazing what even a couple of failed rolls can do. A couple of spectacularly failed rolls trying to stabilise mortally wounded people and one of our MedTechs (my wife) got a reputation that surpassed Dr Kevorkian (sp?). After that, her rolls seemed to go to sh*t and the players were terrified they'd get into some action, get badly wounded by their enemies and then get killed by their own MedTech. "I'll stabilise him." "For God's sake, NO, we want him alive. I'll do first aid." "We're under attack!" "Find hard cover, we can't risk being wounded." The PCs were even threatening the NPCs with "tell us what we want to know or we'll let our MedTech "heal" you." This campaign she's playing a Techie and the one of the other players said to another "you sure you trust her to check out the AV?" Don't worry, the AV didn't crash because she muffed her AV tech roll - t'was a seagull through the inlet nacelle that caused the "Unscheduled Descent" (and the players were praying that their pilot didn't fumble her emergency control roll.) The MedTech who threatened to kill Jake if he murdered anyone else was previously confronted by a CyberTiger and in a spectacular Critical Success quick-drew, fired from the hip one handed with an assault weapon and obilterated the tiger. That was a high REP moment. He had also proved himself in combat on other occasions. He didn't have my wife's "Dr Death" reputation but he was better known as a (deliberate) killer than a healer. No small wonder that Chris was fearing for his character's life. "Don't f*ck with us, even our MedTech can out-shoot you!"

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance In which case, so far as GM Vengeance is concerned, the best (or nastiest) would be to let the player have the character and let the other PCs have their "fun"... It'd have the life-expectancy of a bleeding lamb in a piranha tank in one of my campaigns. My only hope would be that I'd have enough time to pour a drink, light a cigarette and get seated before the entertainment started.

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance Is the Ben 10 character a PC or NPC in the game? Who determines how well or badly he does and who is likely to cop it if he screws up? I take it the vigilante/merc type is the character who's just asking to be handed his own head with a side order of "you should have known better" and a heaped helping of "I told you so" for afters? Edit: I've noticed I've passed the first mile-stone for "Forum Whore" - my post count now exceeds my age...

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance A quick google and I'm nearly up to speed. Please explain, for the benefit of those of us who play RPGs rather than computer games, what Dante's vital stats are - aside from some stupid UberHollywood fighting techniques and running up walls?

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff Scotty, give me maximum sheilds and all weapons at my command... Or if you're down to getting MAD: Rig your reactor to go boom, soften 'em up with a few non-energy weapons - torpedoes and the like - then go critical on their hides.

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff Literally hooted with laughter at that. That's priceless! The scary thing is, it'd work quite nicely. Star Wars would have been a far shorter movie if Han Solo had half the smarts of those PCs...

Re: How to end a dystopia... So we need a neighbour to get thoroughly trashed by p*ssed-off workers and 'runners to scare the local Corps into improving the working conditions?

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff Sorry, you're on your own, there...

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

Re: How to end a dystopia... I can well imagine that "giving up ground" would not be an option for some and they would dig in their heels anyway, meaning that they would have to be permanently removed - and thus begins the descent into Russian or French Revolution for the others would dig in their heels...

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff Ouch. That's gotta smart. Closest we came to that was when our GM in a Traveller game wanted us to go to a planet where there were some creatures that were going to cause us problems in the long term. He gave us (an interstellar trader) the planet list and said, "you could go here [2-jump trip, agricultural planet], it looks interesting" and was surprised when one of the crew consulted the list and said "F*** that, if we head to [1-jump trip, high tech level planet] we can load up with cheap tech and jump to [1-jump trip, lower tech level planet crying out for tech] and make a massive profit" - the GM couldn't convince us that there was any benefit in going to the planet he wanted us to go to so we missed out on a whole mess of problems (and made a huge profit). With that crew, "interesting" was not nearly as interesting as "lucrative". Of course, the logical GM fix (*roll* "You have misjumped and you are now approaching this planet; you will need to stop and refuel to get home" *cue problematic creatures*) hadn't occured to him so his plan was well and truly thwarted. He told us later what he had planned for the party and we just laughed. The other week I put a proposition to the characters in my Cyberpunk game (accept overseas contract) and they took it then one of the players said "I wonder what he'd do if the whole party said "Nah, not interested in that, we're not going"." Another player said "something really nasty is likely to happen to the party here..." I love perceptive gamers!

Forgive me if this has been covered already but I did a search and couldn't find anything close: It is the function of the GM to keep the players on the hop, but occasionally the boot is on the other foot and the player comes out with something that is so left-field that all the GM can do is blink. What are some of the surprises you've inflicted upon GMs or have had players inflict on you? By way of example, I'll share a few: One was a girl I knew playing in a Cthulu game who stymied the GM by having her character, wearing a long black evening dress, stand up on a table in the middle of the cafeteria of Miskatonic University in the 1930s and sing "Love Me Tender". She's a great singer so she didn't tell the GM, she demonstrated. Then there was the first Drow Elf I ever played. A female. As a first level character, the only magic I had was Darkness, Fairy lights and Fairy fire. We were in some village full of yokels and the dwarf in our party was accused of murder and arrested. They came for the rest of us - myself and a male Drow. He cast his only spell in the room in the inn - Darkness - and hid under the bed under the cover of the pool of darkness he had cast. I did the same in my room and the yokel who was trying to capture us starts freaking out because we're magic users and they are simple folk who fear magic users. I cast fairy lights out the window and most of the village chases after them because they thought we'd escaped but the yokel outside the door isn't convinced and only pretends to leave, he jumps out at me when I exit the room. I was physically outclassed - puny Drow vs huge human yokel - so I cast fairy fire on him, giving him that lovely green glow, and yelled "I curse you!" The GM just sat there stunned, she had never expected to see fairy fire - normally a way of marking an object you want to follow - used as an offensive "weapon". I was grinning quite evilly as I asked her what the yokel was doing since the GM, an intelligent woman, was flabbergasted and the yokel was supposed to have a room-temperature IQ... Eventually she had to concede that he was running around in circles screaming "I'm cursed, I'm cursed" and the other Drow and I legged it. And, saving the best for last, there was a character called Boris in one of my cyberpunk games played by THE player/GM from Hell. He's one of the two most fiendish gamesmasters I've ever played under but at that moment he was roaming around my universe. The team is being hassled by the mafia so Boris decides he's had a gutsful and packs his cyberarm full of C6 ('coz C4 just don't cut it, baby) and heads for the Corporate Plaza that is controlled by the local Don and barges in. Aha! "Alarms go off everywhere" says I, "Corporate guard rushes up with a gun." "Dead-man switch," says he, holding up a clenched fist. So I figure the guard elects not to shoot but keeps him covered, calls for backup and keeps an eye on him Meanwhile, the plaza is rapidly being evacuated as people realise the danger. "Do I see the Don?" "Yep, he's beating it outta here." So Boris races after the Don, catches him and wraps his C6-packed arm around the mafioso's neck. A conversation ensues of the "leave my mates alone" variety and the Don doesn't want to die so he cuts a deal - he'll call off the goons and leave the team alone etc. "Anything else?" "Just this," says Boris, holding up his clenched hand, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" - he counts off on his fingers, finishing with an open hand... "Boom!" I was just flabbergasted. I'd been operating on the premise that the player would want his character to come out of it alive once he had successfully negotiated a truce, I thought I had acheived the understanding that would have him and the Don living to see another day and suddenly I'm having to calculate what sort of damage a large quantity of C6 would do to a mostly glass plaza... Later that same player used his replacement character to murder most of the rest of the party but at least he warned me before he did that.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Re: How to end a dystopia... There, as in the here and now, the "Golden Rule" applies: "Those with the gold make the rules." The rich powerful person/company has the resources to make the scandal - and anyone making too much noise about it - "vanish". I fully agree. Any dystopia's end is going to take major work and the period immediately afterwards is going to be unstable and fraught with danger. A couple of "Truth broadcasts" and demolished buildings and "peace reigns before tea time" does not cut it. It's hard to see how a Cyberpunk dystopia could do anything but degenerate further into anarchy of the realistic sort (as opposed to the "humans are basically nice and will all get along fine without rules" sort) without some one exerting a universal order to bring Corps, Netrunners Street Trash and Edgerunners alike into line. Sure, you can topple the power-base of a few Corps, but all of them? So maybe you target the biggest and most corrupt. What then happens in the streets? Especially when all those Edgerunners lose the very Corps that manufacture their cyberware? It'd become more like the Post Apocalyptic dystopias where people are warring over scrap metal and functioning cyberware because the manufacturers would be gone or the smaller Corps that were scarcely able to compete with the giants would rise up to fill the demand and in so doing probably become just as corrupt as the giants were. To end an Anarchy dystopia you need to enforce a regime, to end a Dictatorship dystopia you need to topple a regime.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Re: How to end a dystopia... Dystopias and dictatorships always fall - many that were have already fallen; all those that currently are, will fall. Sooner or later the people at or near "the bottom" decide they've had enough abd the result is often bloody revolution - not always, but often. I have ideas that the cyberpunk world I set my campaigns in will eventually fall to blood and fire - netrunners, edgerunners and street scum alike will rise up and bring the megacorps to their knees, expect to see guys in Armani suits kicking on the end of a rope flung over the nearest street lamp. Corporate security may or may not be effective ("how much did you say we were paying our guards?") and electronic security isn't worth a cup of cold snot if your mainframe's been breached and the "rabble" now controls all your doors. "Agent of Chaos" by Norman Spinrad is an excellent story of the fall of a dystopic regime and promotes the idea of "Social Entropy" as the reason - the more Draconian the regime, the more energy is required to maintain it. Eventually, the system gets to the point that The Powers That Be can no longer afford to maintain control - because it is a "closed system" with no more "energy" (money, manpower, resources) coming in from "outside". Opening up new avenues (interstallar travel, asteroid mining) may well serve to extend the dystopia as TPTB (corps, Supreme Lord and Dictator, whoever) will have a new source of "energy" to bolster the flagging resouces "at home" or it may cripple it by suddenly increasing the area over which the requisite level of control must be applied ("WTF! It costs how much to send troops to Io?") I also try to factor in Niven's Law (f*s=k or "the product of freedom and security is a constant") - improve either to the detriment of the other. OK, the "constant" varies from regime to regime but for any given regime, if you increase people's security, you're going to take away their freedoms (like the "Patriot Act") if you increase their freedom you'll make them "free to be mugged, raped and murdered on the street-corner of their choice", an entirely different sort of dystopia. When the dystopia falls, what takes its place? Is it any better than what was before? Are the people any more free or have they merely changed masters? Were the French truly any better under the "Glorious Republic" and "Madame la Guillotine" than they were under the King and "les Aristos"? Were the Russians truly any worse off under the hereditary Czar than they were under the self-appointed Czars that replaced him? So the down-trodden (or at least, those who perceive themselves to be down-trodden) will rise up to smite [those they believe to be] their oppressors, "streets will run red" etc and there will be a power vaccuum and a period of confusion while everyone gets sorted out and there will be a new regime - which may or may not be more benevolent than the previous. In the interim, there will probably be a lot of bloodshed in the wake of the revolution - competing factions, general lawlessness etc.

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas