Players who rebel against the entire premise of cooperative storytelling
are obviously not going to work out, but I understand where the paranoia
comes from. Since it is storytelling, Vonnegut's mandate that the author
must be a sadist with his characters so that it can be revealed what they
are made of is fully operational, but like you, I'm not trying to kill
them, just stretch them, test them, challenge them.
On the other hand, when you're dealing with dice bad things happen. But
even there, when I am horrified that someone just got "killed" (fatal
trauma, can be arrested with immediate medical attention), vaporized most
of a continent, or got the party's MU and Cleric turned to stone, those
unexpected setbacks have yielded some of the best roleplaying and
side-adventures ever, proving Vonnegut's point.
Re: "adventure path," I don't go the "cinematic nugget" route, as that is
just another name for pulling them by a ring through the nose. I create
the whole tissue for the matter being considered, how it functions when
the players aren't there, the timeline for the things that will take place
if the players don't get involved, etc. That way they can take it or leave
it, or pull back and dive into it from another vector than the one
"cinematic nugget" which has been written. That's harder, but it makes me
happier, because not only is it more "realistic," but NPCs are my PCs so
it allows me to play too. Only once did I ever have to slam the file
folders down on the table and say, "well, there's the whole campaign for
the next month, but they're all dead now, thanks a lot." But the players
were more thrilled by that accomplishment. It's not often that the
Universe stops and says, "you win."
> 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.
>
>
are obviously not going to work out, but I understand where the paranoia
comes from. Since it is storytelling, Vonnegut's mandate that the author
must be a sadist with his characters so that it can be revealed what they
are made of is fully operational, but like you, I'm not trying to kill
them, just stretch them, test them, challenge them.
On the other hand, when you're dealing with dice bad things happen. But
even there, when I am horrified that someone just got "killed" (fatal
trauma, can be arrested with immediate medical attention), vaporized most
of a continent, or got the party's MU and Cleric turned to stone, those
unexpected setbacks have yielded some of the best roleplaying and
side-adventures ever, proving Vonnegut's point.
Re: "adventure path," I don't go the "cinematic nugget" route, as that is
just another name for pulling them by a ring through the nose. I create
the whole tissue for the matter being considered, how it functions when
the players aren't there, the timeline for the things that will take place
if the players don't get involved, etc. That way they can take it or leave
it, or pull back and dive into it from another vector than the one
"cinematic nugget" which has been written. That's harder, but it makes me
happier, because not only is it more "realistic," but NPCs are my PCs so
it allows me to play too. Only once did I ever have to slam the file
folders down on the table and say, "well, there's the whole campaign for
the next month, but they're all dead now, thanks a lot." But the players
were more thrilled by that accomplishment. It's not often that the
Universe stops and says, "you win."
> 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.
>
>