A tale of yesteryear

[dave_littler]

This is a story from years and years ago. I'm going to say

Comments

[sagelylegs]

That's the funny thing about being an antagonist, is that you have to be ready to lose. I, personally, applaud the nonstandard way in which it happened, and look for that from players in my games. Sure, he probably covered his bases in terms of direct combat, but when one does that, you have to almost expect people to come up with an alternative.

[dave_littler]

The genuinely baffling thing is, he HAD a player character in the game. This Tinspanner business was sold to the mod as a temporary antagonist in order to serve the purposes of this storyline.

I'm as surprised as anyone, but apparently I still have all the old e-mails from this game, and I found the relevant part of his final statement on the topic:

"With the death of 1 Tinspanner , there goes my master plan so I decided to call it quits. The scientist can't even wait for my post and they kill it like that. Last time I remembered I did that due inactivity of players, I got flamed by GM. Bah."

So apparently he had some secret master plan for this ultimate doomsday device which he had not informed the mod of, and which was more important to him than actually playing his own character in this game.

[monocle_claire]

I think that was a fantastic way of getting through it and I applaud you both. :D

That said, the guy sounds like a giant jerkoff. The machine had weak points, you exploited them. A winner is you.

Incidentally, that game sounds awesome and I wish I could have seen it. Whatever happened to it?

[dave_littler]

I'll post more about it tomorrow. I've already got the second part I hinted at here written up. It's the most spectacular crash and burn I've ever seen a game go through, as a result of one genuine-I'm-not-using-this-as-a-pejorative-I'm-totally-serious-from-a-medical-perspective completely insane player.

And yeah, he was always a bit of a jerkoff. I think it's telling that nobody spoke up when he threatened to quit.

Of course, he also had the class not to come back after his rage quit, so I guess he had that going for him.

[monocle_claire]

Oh man, I hate it when that happens. I seriously think we need an insane_rpers_are_insane.

Haha, I almost feel sorry for them when that happens. It's like they're expecting us to flock over and be all "NO DON'T LEAVE ;___;"

[dave_littler]

Yep. When I leave a game, I'm quiet and discreet about it. I don't feel like making a fuss or a scene, and so I'll just quietly bow out. If I no longer care enough to play in a game, I no longer care enough to make a big deal about my presence or absence in it.

[sixteenbynine]

Back in my feudal-Japan game, we had a few players who were happy to assume the role of antagonist as needed. I made it clear upfront that in the long run, they were probably going to lose, and if they couldn't stomach that then they shouldn't do this. All of them were cool with it, and they even rolled with it quite enjoyably. (It helped, I guess, that many of them also played good guys in the game, so they had a separate outlet for their heroics.) The few exceptions were players who didn't last very long anyway. I suspect that was hint enough about their demeanor all by itself.

[dave_littler]

It's a good system, if the players all understand it and get into it appropriately. It takes a load off the mods' backs, and rewards players for their creativity. It really can turn sour when they lose sight of what they're supposed to be doing, though.

[sixteenbynine]

One of the things I built into the char-app process was a "Where is this character going to end up?" thought-experiment question. That way people could build stuff like that into the character's arc, and so I'd have some written evidence (so to speak) of their original goals, and wave it under their noses if it ever came to that.

[dave_littler]

Oh, man, I wish more character applications had stuff like that. I see a lot of people apply to play a character, have them show up in game, say hello, and then vanish. I ask myself, "What did this person have in mind for this character? Did they have any kind of plan in mind at all? Did they think through what role this character would play in the game?" A lot of the time, I have to assume the answer is "no".

It's puzzling to me. I always think up five or six interesting things for a character to do before joining the game, and tend to find or create any number of new ones during the course of game play.

[trickster_lord]

Darn it, rule *one* of having a big plan if you're not a mod is to explain it to the mods so they can plan around it. Trying to surprise the mod is seriously stupid and rarely goes well.

Of course, rule two of having a big plan is to expect the PCs to effortlessly screw it up in a way you haven't foreseen fifteen seconds after first contact with it.

[dave_littler]

A line I muttered to myself any number of times during my time as a tabletop GM: "No storyline survives first contact with the player characters." The sooner you learn to plan out five different contingencies, the better you'll be at running a storyline for motivated and creative players.

I doubt very much that this fellow ever learned it, with this sort of thin skin.

[sixteenbynine]

My TT group calls this "Going to Burma". The name stems from a situation where the ENTIRE PLAYER BASE decided to do exactly that when they encountered an obstacle in the current plotline, which forced the GM to scrap everything he was doing and move it to Burma.

RP is what happens when your GM makes other plans.

[irrisia]

I am learning that very, very quickly, ever since my players spent half an hour discussing whether to strap an oxygen tank to a bottle full of diesel, add a rag, set it on fire, and throw it at the zombie. =) They were in an upstairs room of a very flammable house at the time.

Then again, they also spent half an hour discussing whether the dolls house was evil, and whether or not to destroy it.