Just want to get a general consensus of GM that get a sense of joy seeing one of their players get worked over in combat.

I'm not trying to start a shitstorm just wanting to see if most GM get satisfaction when they see this?

I play DH and D&D 4th ed and both GMs (different people) like seeing us as players drop in combat. Not killed outright, but just hurt and out of the combat sequence.

Jonas_Leman said:

If everyone is having fun then sure, I love any fight outcome which brings smiles, laughter, or even desires for revenge.

Jonas_Leman said:

I personally love working my players over! Just for giggles, I will jump the last player through my door and mercilessly beat them with a tire iron. If any of them disagree with a rulings, I and my #2 player will take the offending party into the back room, strip them naked, and then beat them with a rubber hose for about 30 or 45 minutes or until my arm gets sore. I've knocked at least one tooth out of every player at my table and at least one of them has at least one broken bone at any given time. I'm just an utter bastard I guess.

Now, my players' characters are a different story. I don't really get any joy out of arbitrarily destroying them. I do, however, get immense pleasure out of putting them in difficult situations and seeing how they get out of it, and if it's by the skin of their teeth, so much the better. It seems that most of us are hard wired to really want the underdog to triumph. When we see them go through hell and barely make it out dragging their bloody broken selves to the top of the mountain finally beating it, most of us just want to jump up screaming a big "Yes!" at the top of our lungs. I try to bring that feeling into my games. In order to do that, I've gotta put the player characters through a bit of hell.

Besides, I think most all players need bad things to happen to their characters. If nothing bad ever happened to them, there'd really be no real tension and without tension, the game would be incredibly boring. There needs to be a bit of fear and apprehension, a bit of wound up tension in order for it to be released in victory. A victory without such a release is no victory at all. Such victories tend to be described as "hallow"

I don't generally enjoy brutalizing my players unless they've earned it. For example, I put them in combat they can't avoid and one of them is nearly killed: in this case I probably fudged things to keep someone alive, as I screwed up the threat profile. However, if they player thinks he's invincible and decides to attempt to beat an arco-flaggelant to death barehanded, for kicks.... well, in the case I laugh myself silly watching them get ripped apart and burn a fate point to get hauled away by a medic later on.

I can see the balance in it all.

I definitely want to be challenged as a player. I agree, If it's too easy then it gets pretty boring. It also adds to the excitement and drama of the game if there are some tense moments.Which I enjoy.

But with one GM in particular, he gloats when a character falls..... Like he really gets his jollies from it... I thought he was just kidding around but he makes it a point to do his best to knock at least one player out each encounter....

Graver said:

This is my line of thinking. Putting the acolytes in peril and maiming them isn't about beating them, it's about cultivating an exciting atmosphere and sweeteniing the victory that they'll (probably) achieve. If you want proper GM vs player competitive play then there's always Descent.

How much fun can it be? As a GM, you have the ability to send the characters into un-livable combats, but why? Because you have the ability to, thats no reason.

I had a similer problem with the groups old GM, he didnt aim to kill us off. But insted, he made every NPC (allied and foes alike), neer superhuman. This caused a major problem, because when we would get to combats us PC's would walk away with critical hits and missing limbs, and the NPC allies would be wiping off their blades and smiling. It was funny at first, but after five combats like that you dont feel like the heroes of the story, insted you feel like you've been sidelined and get to hear the tale of how the NPC saved your arse while you were clutching the ruined stump of a leg.

As the GM you need to make it about the story, not about a power-house "who will be the last to die" game. That gets fustrating and boring.

-Ira-

I've had GM's like that, one in particular would engineer it so that you were always failing and would only every escape my the skin of your teeth, dragging the mutilated bodies of your companions along with you. and then you'd get arrested...

as for myself, I'll brutalize them if theres a point to it for the story, or if they doing something really stupid.

Although last session I had a character lose his hand in an industrial accident while undercover as a hab-worker. which was pretty funny.

Our group personally likes being taken right to that line where success and failure is still in the balance, then pulling out a win at the last minute. If a couple of us are "worked over" in the process then that's the price we pay but we'd rather have a hard fought battle that we barely lost and had to retreat from, then some ho-hum boring combat that we could have slept through and still won.

Now I've played with sadistic GMs whose whole premise was to see exactly how fast they could kill off each and every character, and I've played with GMs whose premise was that the characters can never, ever loose, and both are unsatisfying to me. Its one of the reasons I don't GM personally, is I fit into the second group way to easy, I hate to see my players die because of me, even if as a player I'd rather have it harder.

Edit: That said, as my current group, us players often get joy from working over other charactures half the time. We have no problem with killing the guardsman who just became a mutant, or the resently awakened adept who just became a psyker, or the psyker who called up a chaos storm.

I'm going to miss this group.

Actually there is one manner in which I enjoy kicking my players around: when they get cocky against a lesser opponent.

In a DnD game my players were of mid level and chasing down a side plot involving a relic having been stolen by kobold bandits/thieves that the locals really hated. They were thinking "cakewalk, let's go deal with this ourselves instead of trying to assemble the information without it", as though they thought I was not expecting them to leave town... /facepalm.

So they track the "bandits" down, find their base, and waltz in expecting it to be a slaughter... suddenly they find themselves immobilized with cheap alchemy and getting shot up from arrow slits in the middle of a kill-zone the kobolds had set up. Most of the kobolds were 1HD mooks with a couple 3 and 4 class-level "officers" in the whole base (and a nasty pair of leaders... for kobolds.). In a stand-up fight the party (being 6 people at level 6 or 7 at the time) would have taken on the whole gang without problems, instead they were nearly slaughtered by a bunch of 1HD critters using basic tactics with crappy shortbows (like cover, fortifying your position, and using squad based movement to maximize safety). In the end the session worked out, but only because the plot (well, me) had something else in mind for them entirely. The lesson was well learned and I got a kick out of teaching it.

It is not about "seeing them drop". It is about the struggle.

If the pc are faced with not even a challenge, but something that tells them "the odds are against you!" my players used to become exited. They started to take care, to fear for the outcome of their disroles. Shortly, they were in a mood suitable reflecting "combat".

If the pc perceived the opponents as something they could wipe the floor with, they were just bragging and throwing dice.

If it it was something the "did not see any change at all", they were frankly pissed.

So, I am not happy to "drop them"... I am happy if I manange to come up with something (opponent, situation, etc.) that they perceive as a real danger and that proofes to be a real danger. The first thing is harder to me then the secound. Most gamers I ever played with where powergamers with combat-****-pc. *sigh*

As a GM my main goal is for the players to be having fun... If they are having fun then I am having fun. I try to throw in plenty of Red Herrings though. I do take a perverse sense of satisfaction in watching my players head down the wrong path. It's even more fun if they don't just tiptoe down that path but sprint headlong down it thinking they are hot on the heels of their prey.

The only time I get any sense of joy out of REALLY working players over is when they start getting all munchkin on me and min/maxing and whatnot. Then I get a twinkle in my eye and I tremble with joy. That player is going to get reamed with a grox prod.

As a GM my main goal is for the players to be having fun... If they are having fun then I am having fun. I try to throw in plenty of Red Herrings though. I do take a perverse sense of satisfaction in watching my players head down the wrong path. It's even more fun if they don't just tiptoe down that path but sprint headlong down it thinking they are hot on the heels of their prey.

The only time I get any sense of joy out of REALLY working players over is when they start getting all munchkin on me and min/maxing and whatnot. Then I get a twinkle in my eye and I tremble with joy. That player is going to get reamed with a grox prod.

drseuss620 said:

I only enjoy thrashing a munchkin with their own munchkin traits/stats. Basically I abuse their lack of whatever they sacrificed to get their "awesome" to leave them useless.

Jonas_Leman said:

For me, generally this means something has been fudged and the player should be dead. If a GM is getting 'Joy' as you say out of screwing over a player then there is something wrong, when a GM considers the players adversaries he's not doing his job. The GM is there to facilitate the story, part of that invovles consequence and sometimes that means screwing the players over but the reward for the GM is in the players successes and not their failures.

All of that is assuming the characters are acting in an appropriate manner. Lets face it... we have all been in a strange mood at one point or another and acted out a time or two in a game session, but I don't think any of us are really talking about punishing people for that kind of behaviour. What I am specifically referring to are people who like to like to 'game the game' and honestly though, I think those people are not as common as our discussions here might lead one to believe. Players who are genuinely trying to have a good time... No, I won't usually work them over... And generally if they get worked over its because they did something REALLY REALLY dumb or its part of the story.

I generally just try to make the opposition's power level make narrative sense and then let the chips fall where they may. If the players decided to have their characters walk into a meat grinder they've got no ***** coming when they get chewed up. Then again, unless there is a sensible in-setting narrative reason, they don't just get destroyed out of hand either.

In addition to this thread I've seen a lot of GM's talking about making the opposition the appropriate power level for the PC's. I think that's a load of crap which hinders a good game. The opposition's power should be appropriate to who they are and what they're doing irrelative to the PC's. Generally (but not always based on circumstances) if the PC's take a little time to investigate/think about what they're doing they should be able to get some idea of what they're facing before they walk into it. If something is too powerful for them to fight then they should come up with an alternate plan.

For example, recently two characters where trying to defend a position against a mercenary force w/ overwhelming numbers and better equipment than the PC's. They could have gone "oh, my GM wouldn't put in any challenge we can't beat" stood their ground and died like idiots. Instead they pulled some sneaky tricks to create a diversion and got the hell out of there (like sensible people, even though one had to be talked into it).

Point being - the GM should not view his role as GM vs. PC's and he shouldn't try to rig things so PC's die horribly and he can laugh at them, but on the flip side neither should the GM rig things for the PC's to win. The GM should present a good story w/ characters in it which are appropiately powerful to who/what they are and their place in that story and from that point work to be fair.

I've noticed that the topic is focusing on "working over" the PCs in combat only. Let's not forget that there are other ways to work them over, which are much more fun and rewarding. And that, my friends, is mentally.

I take a special pleasure in offering up connections from a character's background, daemon's choices where they must act and neither choice is perfect, scenes that are heart or gut wrenching. In interactive story telling, it's not just about the dice, but about the characters' progression, or fall and redemption, or fall and failure (though the last one should be rare, in my opinion).

I don't like getting gribbly with stats and foes, that is usually transparent and not a lot of fun. (Although, the big bads should be appropriately badass, and if the PCs have to take a second or even third stab at a takedown...well, then you've got yourself a true Nemesis to deal with.)

A gaming group, in my opinion, is cooperative, not adversarial GM vs party. Yes, I play the adversaries, but I am rooting for the players to win. Not too easily though, they gotta work for it. Sound schizophrenic? GMs have a tough balance to keep!

Some of you GMs are just evil.......

I am an old school GM, having been around the block for many years, and I can say there is a certain wicked little joy that comes from seeing the players smacked around once in a while. But that is it, once in awhile. When the gm is cackling every session about how he slapped down character X or Y, then he is taking too much joy out of the experience and someone has to mention to him that it gets old, after a time, seeing someone get the stick each episode. This means time to heal up, time to rest, or whathaveyou, which slows down the game and - inevitably - harms party morale as they know that they will be going through the same thing in the next fight, or the fight after.

Indeed, even pushing the limits of the characters every session can be going too far. I was running a Star Wars game for some time and after a couple months of pcs encountering life or death fights each week (they always managed to live, mind you, but by the skin of their teeth) I was approached by a player (speaking unofficially for the entire group) who told me he'd really like it if we saw fewer of those and more laid back combats - ultimately it became too stressful and the enjoyment leaked out of it.

Thus, I encourage diversity in the nature of your encounters. Quick, fun encounters in interesting locals, full of cinematic excitement but low on stressful life or death conflict should be the norm - while true gritty, picking your guts up off the floor and fighting to your last bullet encounters should be held in reserve for truly important events. Sometimes you'll not let the players know which is which until the fight is well under way - so a seemingly major showdown might turn into an amusing chase and henchman pummel, while a seemingly cake of a fight might transform into the event of the campaign.

If this is becoming a problem and infringing on the fun of the players, have someone step forward and bring it to the GMs attention ... it may be that he doesn't realize you're not having fun with it - or doesn't realize he is doing it so often.