6 hours ago, whafrog said:

One reason I never run adventures as written...

I agree the player has acted poorly, certainly could have behaved better even if they disagreed. I'm not defending the player, just making a general comment about that kind of situation.

The thing is that influence check only affects one character, there are several characters who are unaffected the trick that, justifiably so (as they are contracted to return the jewel of yawing to receive any payment. or you know, prestige as a underworld criminal) can interfere if suddenly the guy compelled to hand the crystal over, other members of the party can and SHOULD get involved in either restraining that player or simply snapping them out of their stupor.

In our case the member who held the crystal was unphased by her attempts and when the situation esclated (the gunner reached for his heavy blaster rifle when it was quickly apparent that she wasn't going to move because she was dead set on THAT crystal) the party gadgetter stepped out from the shadows and hit her with a stun shot that knocked her straight out (which incidentally saved her life). I likely would have done the same. She was left on the Yavin platform with her save and we didn't see her again until half a year later.

It was a nice character exercise that made my PC really see the Jedi as a bunch of self serving cur's, as truly he didn't know that the Jedi and the inquisition were any different.

That being said, while irritation is understandable, this player is too attached to his PC. A player should never BE his character, but rather his or her pen in this world.

21 hours ago, whafrog said:

Hmm, I'm not a fan of doing that to PCs. It completely takes away player agency.

That is btw the point of the influence power, and it does not last forever nor is it an aoe power. It is actually a fine. Next time Bill might have spend more points in discipline. The only thing I would chance is that I let roll the player against the NPC state. It always better to let the players roll. "Bill tries to resist. - Ok, make a discipline roll against two challenge and one difficulty dice". There is little difference in losing to influence than it is to lose against other combat checks. And players can keep try to enforce their agenda afterwards again, even add revenge to the plate.
What is odd about the adventure is that she actually is using influence on someone instead of just getting another crystal. She had a 50% chance to just buy some barrab ingot or dragit gem (more if the GM applies some boost dice for the home team bonus). The adventure is clashing here hard with the rules to shove its own adventure premise into everyone's face. That is a common issue with all FFG adventures I have looked into so far. The NPCs are basically dumb and not consistent with the world the game pictures.

Anyway did Bill stormed literally off? Or are we talking about his character who was pissed? One of those things is good rp, the other actually calls for doing stuff like this once per session. There is really nothing wrong with implementing losing conditions into the game, they should usually just be objective related and not downright party kills, but even a party kill is imho acceptable in cases when the players willingly take the risk for their characters. Like fighting when they should not. Important for those cases is that players indeed have choice about the matter and have enough informations to know the risk in advance. But that is again a matter of taste and personal playstyle, there are groups who like to be immortal and get away with everything and there are groups who like a more constricted approach which runs with the game worlds premise, but not an inch further, creating a world with similar constraints to the real one and thus usually ruling out murderhobo behavior by in game consequences and not by ooc unwritten social contract. Still, different play styles require different solutions.

23 hours ago, Ender07 said:

In the past we ended our EotE campaign with the Jewel of Yavin and right when they were stealing the Jewel Elaiza (the Jedi) appeared and used Force Influence on Bill's character to give it to her. Bill's character did not have much discipline so he refused but was compelled by the Influence power. It was at that point that he basically turned into a 5 year old that didn't get his way and sulked, didn't talk IC or OOC, was on his phone, and then left as soon as the game was over without offering to help cleanup. That was very frustrating and I almost kicked him out because he acted in such a childish manner...but I ended up talking to him out of game and explained it to him, he said he felt like I targeted him directly (which I didn't he was just holding the jewel) and we talked for a few hours over dinner to come to a resolution. The other players thought he overreacted and didn't appreciate it either, but that was over a year ago now and he has been better since then.

Wow, what a difference in gaming mindsets. As long as it's entertaining, I love it when bad things happen to me. Just last weekend the guy I was fighting in a cantina wound up setting me (and the spilled booze on the bar) on fire via a triumph. This allowed me and my triumph to leap over the burning bar through the flames like a badass demon from hell and smash him with my burning Gaffi stick - setting him on fire. Oh sure, I spent the rest of the game wearing bacta mittens for the 2nd degree burns on my hands, but it was awesome.

Sulk like a little manchild because something bad happened? I ain't got time for that!

(Thinking about it, something 'bad' did happen to me in very similar circumstances. We were playing JoY, the Jedi did the mind trick on my princess - an Imperial Loyalist who had a strong distrust/hate for Jedi who was just coming around on her views about the Force when someone forced her to give up the Macguffin. Sadly the game fell apart right after that game so I didnt get to explore the fallout and repercussions of that mind trick undoing all the progress she had made. So yeah, Bill can suck it.)

Bad things are fun...like the time our enforcer got a chain wrapped around his neck and it got tangled and he had to wear it like a scarf for a long speeder chase...

But in that case the player still gets to decide how to make the best of the situation. Using Influence to dictate a character's actions is quite different IMHO.

11 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Bad things are fun...like the time our enforcer got a chain wrapped around his neck and it got tangled and he had to wear it like a scarf for a long speeder chase...

But in that case the player still gets to decide how to make the best of the situation. Using Influence to dictate a character's actions is quite different IMHO.

Yeah, and you dictate what happens to the player's character after you have stunned him or overcome his wt too, in the literal same and unfun way. But unlike this specific influence example it usually lasts more than just 3 turns.

edit:

And speaking of bad things happening. Two of the literal most memorable events on my game table are my two so far only character deaths. Once an other PC gave my character a headshot. Per accident. While aiming at the guy to my left how tried to take my character hostage. And the other time a troll shaman tried to heal me from an aneurism, though his spirits were not very precise about how to deal with it, so he rammed his stone knife into my character's head to remove the evil spirit … so yeah, bad things happen, but they are not necessary fun, but certain can make a campaign all the more memorable. Certainly those events left my characters with even less agenda than some limited mind-control spell. *grin*

I'm late to the discussion, but I'd like to contribute from the other direction.

As a player, I strongly prefer playing murder-hobo characters. Partially this is because I generally find the tactical combat portions of a system the most interesting, and partially because I just find the imaginary violence fun. However, I do acknowledge that being 'evil' in an RPG is difficult, and can lead to as many, if not more, problems than an anal-retentive paladin player.

I've found that I need my evil to have a code of conduct for it to be fun for everyone. Generally, I need two keys: first I make clear to the other players that I will not indulge in PvP (including stealing from or otherwise causing direct problems to the party); I make that clear OOC and try to build in an IC reason why my character doesn't fight the others. Second, I make clear that if the party doesn't like a given course of action, I will let my character be overruled. Again, while making that explicit at the table, I also build an IC lever into the character. For example - my axe-crazy characters are Jayne , not Starscream . Maybe he's loyal to the captain, or has a crush on another PC, or has a sense of honor that leads him to keep his commitments even when he wants to murder everyone and wear their skin.

Now, in this situation, you just plain don't want a darkside character, so control methods won't necessarily work. I wonder if the consular route was just too passive for his style. I wonder if giving him a chance to be direct and mischievous (or *******-ish) while being lightside might work out better? Does he like rogue-style characters? I've had tons of fun playing a sentinel shadow/artisan saboteur type character. High cunning, high int, decent presence & agility, rely strongly on deception, stealth, and skullduggery checks, etc. Point out how much fun grenades are with ranged(light), how much fun that palm stunner can potentially be, how much fun it is to convince a COMPNOR battalion that you're a bunch of inquisitors and that they should go attack those pirates for you. My absolute favorite character is this kind of guy - his achievements include rigging a potential enemy's ship with an explosive in the engine that would go off if he came within a certain range of our ship, getting an imperial picket to capture a ship for us by convincing them that we were an ISB insertion team in pursuit, and counter-boarding an attacking pirate cruiser with stun grenades. It's fun, way more fun that just being a mealy-mouthed cryptic consular.

So I might have just read John Wick's Play Dirty book and now I am full of new ideas for my campaign and Bill's PC (if he reverts to his old behavior lol).

Not a big fan of John Wick, and there's an article that perfectly encapsulates why for me: http://personal.linkline.com/stevenhoward/never.html

Yeah I think some things go too far or don't seem to work for me, but some of his ideas do foster new ones and give me new ways to think about how to go about things.

*sigh* another case of getting out of something what you read into it. The whole point to the original article was not that JW hates Super-Heroes, but illustrating several ways to deal with Munchkins and to make the game more interesting and involved for everyone else. If you read the full article you'd know that the players in those LOVED those stories and even, even as they hated what happened to their characters.

The "Die-Hard" effect he talks about in one of the articles is very real, I've used it before and people love those games...get gritty and get dirty all in the name of having fun.

I and own both Play Dirty books and have read them both cover-to-cover. I went into it knowing I wouldn't agree with everything in it and I didn't. But I did, as Ender did, get a lot of good ideas on how to handle certain situations and more importantly, how to make a game more interesting in the long run, how to build a stronger story and a more interesting narrative.

Again take out of it what you will, if a few articles give you some ideas to fire up your campaign, then you've gotten some good out of it. Take it and run with it, just remember, everyone needs to have fun, including the GM!

On 3/30/2017 at 11:05 AM, Benjan Meruna said:

Not a big fan of John Wick, and there's an article that perfectly encapsulates why for me: http://personal.linkline.com/stevenhoward/never.html

Holy Christ, Wick is a terrible GM. I'd flip the table and walk the hell out the first time he tried any of that bullshittery with me.

Ok I didn't mean to start anything with that comment...I just meant I read the book and I took a few thoughts and ideas away from it that might help me in my campaign. I'm not advocating destroying your players at every turn and whatnot...

..

Really need to read the original article, that link is a review of the original article...quite a bit gets taken out of context in that review...then form your own opinions.

Having met the man and played in at least one of his games I can tell you he is NOT taking out characters just because, he just likes to make things interesting, make a good interactive story and occasionally keep players on their toes...8)

1 hour ago, Ender07 said:

Ok I didn't mean to start anything with that comment...

In that case I'll just shut up. : )

On 3/28/2017 at 0:50 PM, Ender07 said:

It keeps being brought up that I "punished him" by killing off his character.

Ahh yes, I didn't mean to imply you did this, it was quite clear in your post that you discussed it with Bill and had an agreement. I was responding to some other comments in a more broad fashion. My apologies for the misunderstanding.

7 hours ago, GandofGand said:

Really need to read the original article, that link is a review of the original article...quite a bit gets taken out of context in that review...then form your own opinions.

Ah, the problem is that the original article seems to be a dead link, so we only have the response article to go off of.

8 hours ago, Desslok said:

Ah, the problem is that the original article seems to be a dead link, so we only have the response article to go off of.

And without the original article the answer to it becomes rather useless too. He said, she said stories are rarely worth wasting time on it, because you introduce far to many misunderstandings that way and are basically reading the results from an echo chamber, the original idea rarely survives such distortions.

I found an archived version here http://googlebordello.crushhumanity.org/internettreasures/hitem.html for more context.

Reading the archived link, I stand by my original assessment. This GM is an world class ass hole and were I involved with him in a game, A) the table would well and truly be flipped, and B) He would no longer be an associate/friend.

Quote

Immunity gives a character supernatural immunity to diseases and poisons. It’s a very popular advantage. Of course, Mr. Carter had to do something about that. I had his scientists come up with a disease that would kill off anyone with the “super gene” that meta-humans had. Carter had a cure, of course. The only problem was all those super fellows who bought Immunity were, well, immune to it.

I cant imagine any context where this is not sociopathic behavior on the part of the GM. That's just "rocks falls, everyone dies" to get his power trip jollies off. Yeah, F this guy. Advice to new GMs? Don't be like this jackass.

I read that article. I concur. A GM's focus should not be killing off PCs in any game system. Primarily a GM should be an entertainer and story teller. Setting out with a focus to kill PCs without their buy in sounds dumb. That guy strikes me as having some serious self esteem issues.

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My favorite trick has to do with Find Weakness. This little puppy lets characters observe their enemies to find a weakness in the defenses of a target. The better they roll, the more damage they can do. A lot of combat monsters take this one. I always let them. They only use it once.

Carter designs supervillains with a weakness the heroes can exploit. These villains he calls his “throw-aways”: punks he can throw at the heroes to watch their fighting styles and skills. He shows the heroes films of the throw-aways and shows them the weakness he’s “found.” Then he sends them out to confront the baddie, armed with the knowledge he’s given them. They find the throw-away, engage him, find his weakness and hit him as hard as they can.

This little strategy always has the same result. The villain’s eyes go wide, he mumbles something about forgiveness and the hero watches the life slip out of his eyes.

Killing a villain is a major crime. Heroes are expected to bring the bad guys in alive. But there’s no need to worry. The hero can rest assured that Mr. Carter’s lawyers will take care of everything.

My response - if I suddenly had a brain aneurysm and decided to keep playing under this manbaby for some reason - would be to go off the grid. You want to use my Find Weakness to make me a villian? Fine - I guess I'm The Punisher. I'd be murderhobing mooks left and right.

Also, this jackass doesn't know the HERO system:

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Remember, Luck isn’t contagious. Making a character Lucky does not make the whole group Lucky.

Actually, it does. Luck (and unluck) when purchased in sufficient quantity (25 points, I believe), it can roll over onto the team. So not only is he a idiot, he's ignorant too.

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Of course, the money belongs to a crime syndicate or something even more diabolical, and they’re going to be looking for that money and who “found” it (of course, they believe the hero stole it). And all of this trouble because the character was Lucky.

Christ, this guy is a Jackass Genie . "I wish for a million bucks!" *trampled to death in a moose stampede*

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Whenever I get to take a character away from a player for a while, explain that they’ve been unconscious and then have them wake up with blood on their hands is a chance to have some real fun.

Okay, this is (probably) just Internet Tough Guy Talk, but I would be very sorely tempted to punch him in his smug face over that. Now, don't get me wrong - waking up at the scene of a murder holding the knife can be a useful En Media Res, as the player scrambles to figure out the mystery of what happened and clear his name. However with all the additional shenanigans going on in the campaign, the odds that this event is serving a story and not just here for the GM to serve his powertrip masturbation fantasy is nil.

Above and beyond this jackasses murderous intent, he's a terrible GM when it comes to setting player boundaries:

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Now Scrapper only goes Berserk when he sees red trolley cars (his mother was killed by a run-away red trolley car). He knew there were no trolley cars in Minneapolis and asked me why he was going Berserk

The book straight out says "A disadvantage that isn't disadvantageous to the player is worth zero points" - so a Berserk "When Sees Red Trolleys" in a town where there are no red trolleys is worth nothing . It's be like having a vulnerability to Kryptonite when Krypton hadn't exploded. It also calls out not to allow the characters to take 'silly psych disads' like berserk when someone plays "Never Gonna Give You Up" - again the idiot doesn't even know the **** system.

So yes, I still stand by my original assessment. The guy is an ass.

32 minutes ago, Desslok said:

My response - if I suddenly had a brain aneurysm and decided to keep playing under this manbaby for some reason - would be to go off the grid. You want to use my Find Weakness to make me a villian? Fine - I guess I'm The Punisher. I'd be murderhobing mooks left and right.

Also, this jackass doesn't know the HERO system:

Actually, it does. Luck (and unluck) when purchased in sufficient quantity (25 points, I believe), it can roll over onto the team. So not only is he a idiot, he's ignorant too.

Christ, this guy is a Jackass Genie . "I wish for a million bucks!" *trampled to death in a moose stampede*

Okay, this is (probably) just Internet Tough Guy Talk, but I would be very sorely tempted to punch him in his smug face over that. Now, don't get me wrong - waking up at the scene of a murder holding the knife can be a useful En Media Res, as the player scrambles to figure out the mystery of what happened and clear his name. However with all the additional shenanigans going on in the campaign, the odds that this event is serving a story and not just here for the GM to serve his powertrip masturbation fantasy is nil.

Above and beyond this jackasses murderous intent, he's a terrible GM when it comes to setting player boundaries:

The book straight out says "A disadvantage that isn't disadvantageous to the player is worth zero points" - so a Berserk "When Sees Red Trolleys" in a town where there are no red trolleys is worth nothing . It's be like having a vulnerability to Kryptonite when Krypton hadn't exploded. It also calls out not to allow the characters to take 'silly psych disads' like berserk when someone plays "Never Gonna Give You Up" - again the idiot doesn't even know the **** system.

So yes, I still stand by my original assessment. The guy is an ass.

If you want a really good laugh, check out https://web.archive.org/web/20000301041707/http://www.gamingoutpost.com/features/interviews/john_wick.shtml And skip down to " The Official John Wick Review Policy".

I wish I was making that up.

Edit: if you prefer to dilute your Wick with humor, http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/36260/roleplaying-games/ex-rpgnet-reviews-the-official-john-wick-review-policy has a piece tearing that "Review Policy" to highly entertaining pieces.

I seriously think this guy got into game design because nobody would play with him anymore.

Read the John Wick thing. Sounds awful. The GM isn't being a GM but an evil mastermind. I know someone who used to play in older Star Wars RPGs that could talk for hours about the ways they ruined the game for everyone else. Somehow, idiotically, their group kept letting them play despite knowing they would find a way to break the game by exploiting the rules or exploiting the players.

As a GM, I find it a challenge to place the appropriate level of difficulty when dealing with combats & players. I'm starting to learn what the limits are & sometimes I have adjusted on the fly due to how one-sided things went (so those 2 did have thermal detonators, but the other 4 didn't or chose not to use theirs).

The only thing that article did was make me want to play in a superhero RPG.

1 hour ago, Benjan Meruna said:

If you want a really good laugh, check out https://web.archive.org/web/20000301041707/http://www.gamingoutpost.com/features/interviews/john_wick.shtml And skip down to " The Official John Wick Review Policy".

Either this is the most clueless troll on the planet or this is the greatest piece of performance art ever:

Quote

If you've never gone through the grueling process of writing, designing, developing and publishing a roleplaying game, you don't have the knowledge neccessary to properly critique one.

I found the original, full and complete article . I am now leaning towards this being one gigantic wind up.