A lot of the GM Advice I've been reading, and my own recent play experience, have led me to the conclusion that going after the players (not in a bad or hostile way, but making the person/environment opposition active and very challenging/harrying) produces much more satisfying sessions (with the end result being that players still get to be awesome and achieve their goals).
I'm currently running V20 in a Dark Ages setting, but I run lots of other stuff too.
What things have you done or do you keep in mind to "harry" the players and get this satisfying effect?
(Cross-Posted in RPG.NET (because I still get great advice from there sometimes) and Google+)
Quote from: PencilBoy99;833890What things have you done or do you keep in mind to "harry" the players and get this satisfying effect?
In an early campaign I played in I was quite impressed when the GM created the atmosphere of a wide conspiracy that our PCs had run afoul of... periodic attacks by assassins and occasionally discovering we were being watched... once in a while our hirelings would go missing or we'd get an ominous warning. It all created a sense that we were up against something big and powerful... so that when we finally rooted it out and took out the headman... and things returned to normal... we felt like we'd had a sizeable influence. A big part of why it worked was because he kept it, mostly, subtle... and let our imaginations draw the outlines of something that probably wasn't nearly as overwhelming as we led ourselves to believe.
I always kept his example in mind once I started running games of my own, particularly CoC.
Paranoia (justified or not) is an easy motivator to get the player characters to do stuff. Tables are not always 'blessed' with highly motivated PCs, such as religious ones like paladins, clerics, etc, to actively engage the setting. However, here's a few genre-separated premises that I've found help get the motivation ball rolling:
Sci-Fi
- Gov't contraband, or Mercantilism, leading to smuggling and all that entails.
- (Un)natural space phenomena that threatens a cozy status quo.
- Gold/Tech Rush on the Frontier, and all the messiness that follows.
Fantasy
- Frontier with competing strongholds.
- Factionalized dense space, with lots of profits to be had.
- Limited Magic Resource in the Dangerous Wilds.
Modern/Urban
- Domain maintenance and personal status therein.
- Cloak & dagger intelligence collection, distribution.
- Resistance to oppressive status quo, or harmful trends
et cetera... One of the notable trends among them is the mix of profitability in the face of contested space. The other is defense of self. Survival becomes a reward unto itself here because tomorrow is another day to reverse one's fortunes (be it materially or existentially).
Here's an idea for you. Let's consider that time moves differently for immortals, kinda like how seasons seemed to last forever when you're a kid, but pass so quickly as an adult.
Years ago, a young prince had a dalliance with serving girl at one of the King's many summer cottages. One lovely moonless night, they were to meet at midnight and just before the prince made it to the spot, he stopped and saw...
...one or more of your PCs sucking down the serving girl like a sippy cup. Your PCs drained her to the core with wanton lust and raucous laughter...
...now a sound that the newly crowned KING hears every night in the many years since that fateful day. By day, he's just your usual Dark Ages feudal king doing usual DA king stuff, but at night, he's fucking Medieval Batman.
Turns out that serving girl was the only person who ever treated the then-Prince, now-King as a man, not a moneypurse, and that girl the PC vamps discarded was the only woman the King has ever loved. Sure, he's got the requisite political alliance marriage and she is producing the required heir, but the King has only one thing he cares about...REVENGE!!!
But the King is no idiot. This guy would be Elon Musk in 2015. The King's got a genius IQ, OCD and tremendous resources combined with patience. This is no hothead. He knows if the PCs get wiff of him, he'll be toast. So he works through proxies of proxies of proxies. He has no friends or allies, just pawns who don't even know they are pawns.
Maybe at the start of the campaign, the King hasn't discovered WHO the PCs may be, but the heat is on Vamps in his country and growing.
Moreover, if the King gets wiff that the PCs are on to his proxies, he will cut them loose, or set the more rabid Vamp Hunters upon them, trying set it up as if some Vatican chumps are the real Masterminds. Like Bruce Wayne, the King is happy to play dumb during the day to mask his night persona.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;833890A lot of the GM Advice I've been reading, and my own recent play experience, have led me to the conclusion that going after the players (not in a bad or hostile way, but making the person/environment opposition active and very challenging/harrying) produces much more satisfying sessions (with the end result being that players still get to be awesome and achieve their goals).
What things have you done or do you keep in mind to "harry" the players and get this satisfying effect?
I have seen it quite often as it seems a recurring theme for a couple of GMs I play with. Sometimes it is a recurring villain or more likely an organization that keeps causing trouble. Sometimes focused on the PCs. Sometimes it is coincidental as the PCs keep getting in the way. Wrong place at the Wrong time.
This works best when the foe is pervasive and the PCs have a good chance of running into them accidentally just from being in the area or travelling.
Other times a villain focused on the PCs can be fun. The level of activity depending on the level of the villains interest in the PCs. Maybe they want some item the PCs are carrying, but do not want to draw attention to it. Or maybe they have an old score to settle. They might have limited resurces to devote to the PCs, or might be holding back for their own reasons.
Other problems can be cultural ones. What is common in one land might not be in another. Or the local government might be corrupt and so you have militia acting more like thugs. Or you have a secret socioty plotting and the PCs keep stumbling into it. Political intrigue that tangles up the PCs can be all sorts of trouble.
If the PCs screw up then they may end up dead and/or their goals ruined.
Quote from: PencilBoy99;833890A lot of the GM Advice I've been reading, and my own recent play experience, have led me to the conclusion that going after the players (not in a bad or hostile way, but making the person/environment opposition active and very challenging/harrying) produces much more satisfying sessions...
If I want to harry my
players I force them to make fast decisions in combat or require them to remember stuff that happened in play 10+ sessions ago. Oh, and I turn the background music up too loud in Star Wars and make the lights too dim in Cthulhu.
But on reflection, I'm guessing you meant
PCs not
players.
Quote from: Spinachcat;833917But the King is no idiot. This guy would be Elon Musk in 2015. The King's got a genius IQ, OCD and tremendous resources combined with patience. This is no hothead. He knows if the PCs get wiff of him, he'll be toast.
That last sentence is
why such threads are necessary: the pervasive belief that PCs are unstoppable forces of nature that can obliterate anything they don't like.
Why
would the King be toast? Isn't he the King? Doesn't he have vast resources that dwarf that of the PCs? (If not, he's a pretty weak monarch.) The way I'd look at it, if the King is as described, how I'd do it would just be to take off my GM hat and put on my PC hat: how would I find and eliminate a group of PCs given that I'm a patient genius with control over the region's security forces, vast wealth and -- possibly -- no need to respect the laws?
Any gamer who couldn't pull that off with ease is either not trying hard or not very good at it, which is why I'm pretty down on the "unstoppable forces of nature" paradigm.
Quote from: Ravenswing;834058Why would the King be toast? Isn't he the King? Doesn't he have vast resources that dwarf that of the PCs?
Quote"If somebody wants to take my life, there is nothing I can do to prevent it."
"If somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it."
These quotes, said to be from Lincoln and Kennedy, point out that leaders recognize the impossibility of perfect safety from determined assassins. So PCs being able to kill the King in an RPG...that's totally reasonable. And if the PCs are some sort of difficult to find murderin' monsters, it's reasonable for
some kings to decide to do things to stay off the Monster-PCs' murder-radar (or murdar™) as a specific threat to their continued ability to murderize to their little black hearts' content.
- PCs who have no fear of a King because they are just that damn tough? Meh. Not my cup of tea.
- King's who have no fear of assassins because the king is always just that damn tough. Meh. Also not my cup of tea.
If four to six Vampires want a mortal king dead, I imagine its dead king 99% of the time. Vamps are scary powerful, not just as combatants, but they have nigh unparallelled stealth and mind control.
If the King wants supernatural anti-Vamp support, he will be forced to make uncomfortable alliances - which this King does not (yet) want to do. AKA, he can't just cut an easy cash deal with some Mages, Werewolves, or Fae to whack the PCs. Any deal will have hidden price tags and repercussions.
Also, if the King goes all Vamp-hunting across his realm, then he has lots more than just the PCs to contend with, justifying the Vamp PCs getting Vamp NPC allies and creating a huge clusterfuck for the king.
Plus, the King can't have his regular guard go all holy water and stakes, covering every hallway in garlic because now he looks like a paranoid loon and that affects his standing with fellow mortals. Sure, everybody's got the basic cross, cloves and priest blessings, but as the King has learned The Truth of Vamps, he knows basic superstition level protection isn't going to do diddly squat when the Real Deal come knocking.
Also, I don't imagine this King as a monarch of a major nation. That level of continental power in the Dark Ages is definitely courted by the various Vamp factions. This King would be more like King of Moravia or Bohemia.
Quote from: Bren;834068These quotes, said to be from Lincoln and Kennedy, point out that leaders recognize the impossibility of perfect safety from determined assassins. So PCs being able to kill the King in an RPG...that's totally reasonable.
Mm, but you're missing a trick. This isn't a matter of whether rulers are vulnerable to assassins generally. This is a matter of whether a ruler can curbstomp a
specific band of people he knows are likely to be coming for him. Tell the US goverment in March of 1865 that the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth is at the head of a conspiracy to assassinate the President -- names and IDs of the other conspirators included -- and you'd have had an entirely different outcome.
Actually Ravenswing, I am almost more interested in running this campaign from the perspective of the King's secret inner circle, aka a group of mortal adventurers who are tasked to protect him from Vampire assassination and take out the blood sucking bastards.
Hmm...that would do me good since I'm not WoD fan and such a campaign would make a nice mini-campaign for Warhammer or even D&D. Wheels be turning...
one of my favorite tricks are toe popper traps especially when the players are running low on healing magic or they are in a setting where there is no healing magic. run the traps is normal but focus on the feet. if a player sets off the trap and he takes damage halve his movement rate from injury. if they can't heal it the injury can really slow the party down especially if there's a time crunch or they are being pursued. it's always fun to see what solutions or sacrifices the PCs come up with.
Quote from: Ravenswing;834089Mm, but you're missing a trick. This isn't a matter of whether rulers are vulnerable to assassins generally. This is a matter of whether a ruler can curbstomp a specific band of people he knows are likely to be coming for him. Tell the US goverment in March of 1865 that the well-known actor John Wilkes Booth is at the head of a conspiracy to assassinate the President -- names and IDs of the other conspirators included -- and you'd have had an entirely different outcome.
They certainly knew who Booth was after he shot Lincoln and it still took 12 days to catch him. They never did catch John Surrat.
Now if Booth, John Surrat, Mary Surratt, and the other half dozen or so conspirators were all vampires? I'd agree the outcome would be different. It's unclear if the outcome would necessarily be easy destruction of the conspirators and safety for Mr. Lincoln though.
Quote from: Spinachcat;834091Actually Ravenswing, I am almost more interested in running this campaign from the perspective of the King's secret inner circle, aka a group of mortal adventurers who are tasked to protect him from Vampire assassination and take out the blood sucking bastards.
Hmm...that would do me good since I'm not WoD fan and such a campaign would make a nice mini-campaign for Warhammer or even D&D. Wheels be turning...
Totally with you on WoD. :) I could see me enjoying PCs as part of the really secretive anti-Vampire division of the Secret Service. Do we know what James West and Artemis Gordon were doing before the end of the Civil War? I think silver crosses, wooden stakes, machete, and holy water sprayer mounted on the sliding pull-down panel at one end of the train car would fit right in.
QuoteMoreover, if the King gets wiff that the PCs are on to his proxies, he will cut them loose, or set the more rabid Vamp Hunters upon them, trying set it up as if some Vatican chumps are the real Masterminds. Like Bruce Wayne, the King is happy to play dumb during the day to mask his night persona.
Maybe set up some of the proxies of proxies to go overboard and break the law. Now the King needs help putting down some overzealous vampire hunters. The King and the players now have a common goal. Maybe word gets out (through proxies of other proxies) that the King would offer an amnesty to any vampires that helped him with the problem.
I doubt the King would mind if a few Vatican big-wigs were offed in the process. Meanwhile the Vatican might be playing a similar game (and they wouldn't mind seeing some disloyal bishops offed either).
Proxies, being the kind of people they are, would also have their own agendas; some fanatic, some more mercenary. Possibilities include holy orders, agents of foreign kings, or electors and nobles wanting to advance their position.
A scenario like that would leave the PCs very harried, no matter if they were vamps or agents. At any moment they could be targets, patsies, or useful fools. And a misstep could quickly shift their position with their bosses.
That would be a tough campaign to keep track of and GM fairly though.
Having the PCs being wanted/hunted certainly help keep the party both united and moving.