Yeah, I can relate. I've had all sorts of paranoid players who thought
that there was a conspiracy to get them. One player even thought one of
the other players was a mole in the organization. In one extreme case,
this guy, who doesn't game with us anymore, insisted that I was just out
to kill the group's characters. Despite my insistence that that wouldn't
be much fun and a colossal waste of the time spent rolling up said
characters, he wouldn't let it go. Fortunately, the rest of the group
thought he was bonkers. They knew that I was out to /torture/ their
characters, not kill them. ;-)
The most recent episode of paranoia among players was when a guy's
character woke up from cryosleep and insisted that he wasn't actually
awake, that the campaign he was in with the other characters was just
some VR prison (a la /The Matrix/). He'd been captured in 1122, thrown
in a low berth, and now it was suddenly 1202. And when he heard how the
Imperium came to its end (not to mention vargr and humans living
peacefully together in a PE up in Windhorn), he just couldn't accept it.
I think he may have finally let it go as he hasn't brought it up in a
while and stopped intentionally trying to break the alleged simulation.
Players always seem to wander off the path no matter how many
contingencies you plan for. When I gamed in person, that was disastrous.
I felt like the Bridge Keeper in Monty Python's /Quest for the Hol//y
Grail./ I'd be forced to wing it on the spot, or we'd be done for the
night. With PBEM I can avoid the sudden gaming crash, but I still need
the flexibility to adapt to players going off path. So to prepare, I
outline the campaign's story and make note of the steps the players need
to accomplish to get from A to B. This way, if the players decide to
take a side route to C or D--or further to C1, C2, and C3--I can fill in
the details just before they get there. It saves me from having valuable
time invested in developing something go to waste.
\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
=========================================
dcnilsen13 wrote:
It helps that any good PC group is raving paranoid. Even adventures that
you intend to be fairly straight-forward they can turn into horror shows,
convinced that the universe is against them, not realizing that mostly I
am trying to help them tell a story, not kill them all. All in all, I
think they've terrorized me more by destroying hours and hours of my
preparation by just blowing everything up.
that there was a conspiracy to get them. One player even thought one of
the other players was a mole in the organization. In one extreme case,
this guy, who doesn't game with us anymore, insisted that I was just out
to kill the group's characters. Despite my insistence that that wouldn't
be much fun and a colossal waste of the time spent rolling up said
characters, he wouldn't let it go. Fortunately, the rest of the group
thought he was bonkers. They knew that I was out to /torture/ their
characters, not kill them. ;-)
The most recent episode of paranoia among players was when a guy's
character woke up from cryosleep and insisted that he wasn't actually
awake, that the campaign he was in with the other characters was just
some VR prison (a la /The Matrix/). He'd been captured in 1122, thrown
in a low berth, and now it was suddenly 1202. And when he heard how the
Imperium came to its end (not to mention vargr and humans living
peacefully together in a PE up in Windhorn), he just couldn't accept it.
I think he may have finally let it go as he hasn't brought it up in a
while and stopped intentionally trying to break the alleged simulation.
Players always seem to wander off the path no matter how many
contingencies you plan for. When I gamed in person, that was disastrous.
I felt like the Bridge Keeper in Monty Python's /Quest for the Hol//y
Grail./ I'd be forced to wing it on the spot, or we'd be done for the
night. With PBEM I can avoid the sudden gaming crash, but I still need
the flexibility to adapt to players going off path. So to prepare, I
outline the campaign's story and make note of the steps the players need
to accomplish to get from A to B. This way, if the players decide to
take a side route to C or D--or further to C1, C2, and C3--I can fill in
the details just before they get there. It saves me from having valuable
time invested in developing something go to waste.
\_/
DED
TNE @ Yahoo ml Admin
=========================================
dcnilsen13 wrote:
It helps that any good PC group is raving paranoid. Even adventures that
you intend to be fairly straight-forward they can turn into horror shows,
convinced that the universe is against them, not realizing that mostly I
am trying to help them tell a story, not kill them all. All in all, I
think they've terrorized me more by destroying hours and hours of my
preparation by just blowing everything up.