Ok, we've talked about how "heavy shit" exists (or not) in our games, and examples of what those things can be.

What I wonder now is, do your characters ever have to take any hard decisions in relation to the heavy shit? It's usually pretty easy to decide that you want to stop a brutal serial killer whose crimes has been described in vivid narratives by the GM, but what if doing that meant some very real sacrifice (beyond the common risk of death, which is ever present in most games)? Does those kind of choices ever enter your game? How? Examples?

(Of course, I read one or two already in the old thread, but I figured by focusing the question, we could get some more meat out of the topic.)

In RtToEE, my character made the decision to allow the rest of the party to die, to ensure someone was left to rally forces against the Temple.
 
I know it sounds like saving my own butt, but it was actually a difficult decision and made from a LG perspective ("greater good" and all).

:heh:

I had a character who's sole motivation for adventuring was to gather enough money for a Resurrection spell for his dead brother.

Last session, he had finally collected the sum needed, and traveled to the family farm so he could dig up his brother's grave and take his bones to the temple.

His entire family had been kidnapped, and there was a note nailed to the door by a dagger: "If you want to see your family again, go to the clearing to the north and wait for us"...

Yeah, he had to make some decisions there, and being who he was, he decided that people who fuck with his family earn a swift death penalty.

Quote from: Dr_AvalancheIt's usually pretty easy to decide that you want to stop a brutal serial killer whose crimes has been described in vivid narratives by the GM, but what if doing that meant some very real sacrifice (beyond the common risk of death, which is ever present in most games)?

I have often wondered when we talk about the impact of heavy shit in our games, that the only impact that has any overt significance are when the choices of one player/character makes with regards to heavy shit which confronts him/her affects the choices/options/safety/etc of the other players/characters. I mean no matter how much we(as GMs) invest in the characterizations of the setting's npcs, the players would naturally(hopefully) have more empathy towards the other players.

Just putting it out there.

Regards,
David R

I had an NPC assassin try to get to know the group of heroes arriving in town. She observed for a while and finally approached the shy (LG) rogue with a tale of woe. They hit it off, he fell for her. Then, right after their first kiss, he discovered that she was an assassin.

Very cool. In the end, he snuck into her home at night and killed her in her sleep, only to discover that she'd fallen for him as well, and that the Thieve's Guild leader uncovered her identity to spite her.

Needless to say, the player now carries a certai grudge towards that guild leader, and in a few sessions, he'll get to repay him :heh:

Another thing we had was just our cleric of justice wanting to judge a few cases and ingratiate himself with the people. The first two cases were a drunk losing his day trade because the bartender threw him out too harshly, and the second was a whore being pregnant from a shop owner. In both cases, the well-to-do employees also appealed to court, and the cleric's decisions changed his status with lower, middle and upper class seperately.

I'll soon have a ritual that needs certain victims; the PCs only know one prospective victim, a child. When time runs short, will they still try to stop the ritual through some miraculous die-rolling, or will they actually sacrifice the child?

There's the succubus who's seemingly trying to help them, the lich with his undead city right next to the party's home town who doesn't bear ill will – or does he? –, and of course the dead lover/assassin coming back to haunt the city, as well as a paladin showing up to arrest the rogue.

I rarely have things clear cut; most NPCs are shady or act shady, and almost all of them have their own motivations, some running counter to the PCs. As I write a SH, I can easily bring some shading into the game by describing events the players aren't privy to – one PC's mentor reads all the PC's mail, for example. There are still some good guys out there (of course), but they don't wear shiny plate mail and have a paladin's aura.

However, my players started it all when the cleric of justice fed a prisoner to a mimic.

Quote from: David RI have often wondered when we talk about the impact of heavy shit in our games, that the only impact that has any overt significance are when the choices of one player/character makes with regards to heavy shit which confronts him/her affects the choices/options/safety/etc of the other players/characters. I mean no matter how much we(as GMs) invest in the characterizations of the setting's npcs, the players would naturally(hopefully) have more empathy towards the other players.
 
Just putting it out there.
 
Regards,
David R

I think that's an interesting line of thought. I'm not sure if it is always true, but interesting to think about.
 
I mean, I know cases where I have agonized (really agonized!) over hurting an npc my character was emotionally invested in. Of course, in that case, you could rightly argue that I was agonizing about sacrificing part of my character concept (Concept: "PC loves NPC X") and not a "setting npc".
 
I'll have to mull about this a bit.

Quote from: David RI have often wondered when we talk about the impact of heavy shit in our games, that the only impact that has any overt significance are when the choices of one player/character makes with regards to heavy shit which confronts him/her affects the choices/options/safety/etc of the other players/characters. I mean no matter how much we(as GMs) invest in the characterizations of the setting's npcs, the players would naturally(hopefully) have more empathy towards the other players.

Generally speaking, my players don't "naturally" have more empathy towards the other players.  They have the amount that makes sense for their relationship and situation.

I could easily see one of the PCs in my last campaign maybe sacrificing the life of a PC to save a "no-name NPC" they believe is an innocent.

If it fell the way David R. describes then no NPC-related heavy shit would have any real weight - and in my own experience that is not the case.

one guy i knew came up with his own gaming system which featured around futuristic mercenaries in power armor with crazy weaponry and such, etc.

bascially, every character was almost totally amoral.  we would take "heavy shit" and run with it - often with the most disastrous results possible.  as long as it was amusing.  

Quote from: David RI mean no matter how much we(as GMs) invest in the characterizations of the setting's npcs, the players would naturally(hopefully) have more empathy towards the other players.

We'll see.  I hope you aren't right, really.
 
Last August, or so, the PCs captured an assassin (Soulblade, actually) and turned her over to one of the PC's religion (semi-pacifistic, though he's a fighter).  She was sent to a nearby temple, where the PCs have forgotten about her.  Well, she's been reforming and will be reintroduced tonight or next Tuesday.
 
I'm hoping to hold her out as a potential romantic interest for the devotee of this church.  He's actually a split personality, one a LG fighter, the other is a CN(E) warlock.  The backstory is that the character was a N merc who got stranded in the evil empire from which the Soulblade hails.  This empire does some freaky shit and the character basically walked into a "radioactive" zone, which personified his inner turmoil.
 
Anyway, I'm thinking that a reformed psi-assassin is one of the few people who might be able to understand and care for both halves of the split.  That may allow the character to be "healed", or at least come to terms with his issues by the end of the campaign.  
 
I've had this semi-planned since the soulblade was first introduced, many months ago (glad the players cooperated).  Well, one of the other players (the one with the demon sword, for those who read my thread on that) declared, between last game and this one, her character's interest in the warlock (who is the only character the "sword" hasn't turned her against).
 
If the players can take an NPC seriously, this could be entertaining.  I'm not sure that "love-triangle" is sufficient to describe the clusterfuck this could become.

I think I should attempt some clarification here. Firstly my post came of sounding more of a statement than what I intended it to be -a question. Hence to rephrase the post -Do you think the choices a player makes when dealing with heavy shit(can we please use the term heavy stuff? ) could have more of an overt significance on the other players then perhaps the  setting/npcs? Just to be more clear - by this I mean that the other players  could/do have more at stake with the game, then the npcs who are controlled by the GM.

Quote from: el-remmenGenerally speaking, my players don't "naturally" have more empathy towards the other players.  They have the amount that makes sense for their relationship and situation.

Perhaps empathy is the wrong term to use. What I had meant was that the players in the game are/could be playing the game to accomplish certain goals/objectives within the setting/game. The players could be working together or not in attempting to realize these goals and when one of the players makes a choice when dealing with heavy stuff that affects the other players and these goals, the impact is felt much more, then when  said choices only affect specific npcs. This also extends to relationships between  the players themselves and the relationships with other npcs.I say this only because at the end of the day, the gm controls all the npcs and as such the players have little/no control over the way how these npcs behave. Whereas in the case of players, not that one player has control over what another does, but rather amongst players the choices another player makes is  regarded less of something beyond their control and that there is normally very little doubt as to the intentions of the player making the choice(the only motive is the interests of the character in question) - with the gm the thinking could be is that the gm is attempting to influence the game in a certain direction, trying to add plot points etc.

Yeah it's a bit disjointed, but do you get where I'm going with this. I could attempt more clarification if this all sounds a bit muddled

QuoteI could easily see one of the PCs in my last campaign maybe sacrificing the life of a PC to save a "no-name NPC" they believe is an innocent.

Actually this is exactly the kind of impact I'm talking about. Perhaps it's just my games, but when a choice like this has to be made, I assume(from post game discussions) the impact is felt more between the players, esp the one who was sacrificed then it would  have felt if it was just an npc who was sacrificed.

QuoteIf it fell the way David R. describes then no NPC-related heavy shit would have any real weight - and in my own experience that is not the case.

Again I do not know if I feel this way. It was just a thought I was putting out there.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: SobekWe'll see.  I hope you aren't right, really.

Don't think it's a question of right or wrong, just something we(the crew and I)have been discussing
 

QuoteIf the players can take an NPC seriously, this could be entertaining.  I'm not sure that "love-triangle" is sufficient to describe the clusterfuck this could become.

I hope they take it seriously (I'm all for clusterfucks :heh:)  Just as a side note, my comments may be taken as me questioning the impact of npcs in the game - far from it. I was just thinking aloud that's all.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Dr_AvalancheOk, we've talked about how "heavy shit" exists (or not) in our games, and examples of what those things can be.

What I wonder now is, do your characters ever have to take any hard decisions in relation to the heavy shit? It's usually pretty easy to decide that you want to stop a brutal serial killer whose crimes has been described in vivid narratives by the GM, but what if doing that meant some very real sacrifice (beyond the common risk of death, which is ever present in most games)? Does those kind of choices ever enter your game? How? Examples?

To me, choices like that are among the main reasons to have heavy shit.

So, yeah.

The ongoing thread has some heavy situations.

The party owns a "possible" way to end the plague of the Risers. (Zombies) A prion based on the "mad cow" genotype that has been radically altered. They found it raiding a college lab for the servers.

BUT, there's a massive chance for genetic drift, where it would attack live tissue instead of the "half-dead" tissue that makes up the brains of the Risers.

So, if they release the virus, it'll destroy many, many zombies.

But they're worried about releasing an airborne virus that can survive up to 120 hours outside the human body, can remain airborne and viable, and can be spread by fluids as well as consumption.

Those Risers who drop from it, are irresistably delicious to other Risers, who die within 4 days.

BUT...

Since it's supposed to attack the Risers, that are merely "altered" humans, what happens if it mutates?


Another problem: When they needed repairs for four of the Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicles they possess, after a run-in with a war-lord, they traded VX 4.2" mortar shells for the parts and metal, as well as use of the tools. They also traded 5,000 .50 cal rounds, 2 M2A2 GPHMG's, 6 SAW's, 25,000 7.62mm NATO round, 50 M-16A2's, 5 M-249 SAW's, and 50 boxes of 5.56mm ammunition.

Now, the guy they traded it to has become the worst kind of Warlord, having gone from peaceful commune runner to bloodthirsty, slaving, child raping, raiding warlord who has taken possession of an entire valley.

THEY caused it. THEY enabled it.

Taking him down can and will be costly.

But two of thier friends and a trader they are friendly with have been taken prisoner to either kill, rape, or use on the "communal farms" and things may be coming to a head.

Quote from: David R(can we please use the term heavy stuff? )

No.

Edit: (Not funnay.)