Friendship is Dragons
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Page 717 - City of Villains, Part 2
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Rainbow Dash appears to be playing Pharoah, Fluttershy is playing Long-Face, and I think Rarity is playing High Heel.
(In retrospect, I probably didn't need to go digging through the archive looking for speech bubbles to compare to figure out that last one)
Based on the color of the word bubbles, Fluttershy is playing Long-Face and Rarity is playing High-Heel. Someone who's read the IDW comic might be able to guess who the other four are.
Most of my questions or polls have ether been positive or neutral.
Today however, I'm taking a step back from that, and going down a more negative path.
Have you or your follow players ever had to ban someone from your gaming sessions?
If so, why?
Me: Still haven't played yet
Today however, I'm taking a step back from that, and going down a more negative path.
Have you or your follow players ever had to ban someone from your gaming sessions?
If so, why?
Me: Still haven't played yet
I had to ban someone kind of? I just couldn't make games that would not get him upset, and I told him so. ...He doesn't like conflict. And that is a major thing in RPGs. How are you supposed to have an adventure without conflict?
I remember you told us about him before, when I was doing the 13 things list a few pages back. Page 714, number 8 on the list.
A few times. I try not to but it happens. The first was because the person in question was a very discomforting person. He would mooch ceaselessly. he didn't clean and he tried to justify being generally a jerk as "being native". Removed quite quickly.
Another was temporary for not cleaning. once he started bathing I let him rejoin.
Yet another was for blatant theft. Don't ask. It was messy.
Yet another still was a weird one. CIS person. Not the reason but ended up being related. Ended up being a total drama whore. Started insisting that we were discriminating against him/her (it fluctuated very frequently) whenever a DND combat situation ended up with him/her dead or heavily damaged. Yeah. general pissiness followed and then banning.
Another was temporary for not cleaning. once he started bathing I let him rejoin.
Yet another was for blatant theft. Don't ask. It was messy.
Yet another still was a weird one. CIS person. Not the reason but ended up being related. Ended up being a total drama whore. Started insisting that we were discriminating against him/her (it fluctuated very frequently) whenever a DND combat situation ended up with him/her dead or heavily damaged. Yeah. general pissiness followed and then banning.
Naa, since Rhino wrote 'him/her', it's about being discriminated on gender, or what they identify as.
There are people who are extremely sensitive, even to odd looks and such. In this case, I think personality traits just stacked and made for some unpleasantness.
There are people who are extremely sensitive, even to odd looks and such. In this case, I think personality traits just stacked and made for some unpleasantness.
Yep, Just recently in fact. The guy was invited by another player, and I kept trying to help him, but he never took the games seriously, and it was always pulling teeth getting him not to use the exact same character every single game. I banned him, and after just last night, where he begged the GM to give him more bullets for his gun in a fantasy campaign (she relented and let him have it so he'd join), he one-shotted her boss, cried when she tried to fudge it to a miss miss, and ruined the entire encounter. So she banned him to.
(Same person, just remembered to log in)
Oh, and this all after he alerted an entire area full of enemies by shooting a random bird the DM had fly by to give us a hint to where the enemies were.
Oh, and this all after he alerted an entire area full of enemies by shooting a random bird the DM had fly by to give us a hint to where the enemies were.
Not a hard ban, but we stopped inviting a guy after it became clear he was far more interested in being high on methadone than he was in contributing meaningfully.
And trust me, I heavily hint at the power level of a major boss encounter if I think a TPK will be nearly assured. Still, some PCs do like that "going out in a blaze of glory" moment... well, maybe just a blaze in the case of certain dragon encounters. ;)
Not too long ago, the DM for a campaign I'm in set up a "supposed to lose". Unfortunately, it was so blatantly obvious (we were all on the ground, with enemies all around us, weapons pointed at our heads) that the only IC thing to do was to not even try, so we'd be in better shape to deal with the consequences. The DM's narrative depended on us trying and failing.
Worse, what PC actions had been done to avoid getting into this situation were ignored - not "dice rolled, impossibly high DC failed to meet", not "explanation given for the no-sell", but flat-out ignored by the DM.
It was pointed out to the DM that he'd gone so overboard, that the narrative he was trying to set up could no longer happen. There was no reason for us to act and much reason, ICly and OOCly, for us to do nothing. (OOCly, this extended to one player asking to be prompted when the cutscene ended and the game resumed, and then excusing himself from the table.) That was when we took session break; by the next session, the DM agreed and modified things to skip past the no-longer-viable narrative point. Even with the modification, the DM had to openly fudge rolls to avoid a TPK on the third session of what is supposed to be a long campaign. (The PCs are apparently intended to reach at least level 15; we were still level 1.)
Worse, what PC actions had been done to avoid getting into this situation were ignored - not "dice rolled, impossibly high DC failed to meet", not "explanation given for the no-sell", but flat-out ignored by the DM.
It was pointed out to the DM that he'd gone so overboard, that the narrative he was trying to set up could no longer happen. There was no reason for us to act and much reason, ICly and OOCly, for us to do nothing. (OOCly, this extended to one player asking to be prompted when the cutscene ended and the game resumed, and then excusing himself from the table.) That was when we took session break; by the next session, the DM agreed and modified things to skip past the no-longer-viable narrative point. Even with the modification, the DM had to openly fudge rolls to avoid a TPK on the third session of what is supposed to be a long campaign. (The PCs are apparently intended to reach at least level 15; we were still level 1.)
Sucks about that situation, when you really can just do nothing.
"in the case of certain dragon encounters"
All encounters a dragon encounters, if Digo runs them! :P
All encounters a dragon encounters, if Digo runs them! :P
Our gm once set up a "supposed to DIE" situation at beginning of campaign (it was a setting with easy resurrections). I still remember his face when not only had we survived, we also killed a boss many times more powerful (we also discovered that mages are OP in this setting).
I've had "supposed to die" happen, first session of a campaign. Of course, the whole point of the campaign was that we were to be wandering the lands of the dead, and the DM told us beforehand that we would be dying in the first session.
Once, in a savage worlds game, we were playing using the fantasy companion.
the lich we ended up fighting was taking forever (a FOUR HOUR real time combat) and the gm ended up saying that we could keep playing IF we died.
his reasoning?
we killed the raised warlord in under one turn and then began wailing on the lich. and he wasn't even that powerful!
it was only after that we started to roll well (within five min of that we won, much to our dismay).
the lich we ended up fighting was taking forever (a FOUR HOUR real time combat) and the gm ended up saying that we could keep playing IF we died.
his reasoning?
we killed the raised warlord in under one turn and then began wailing on the lich. and he wasn't even that powerful!
it was only after that we started to roll well (within five min of that we won, much to our dismay).
A friend of mine shared the story of how his character did the impossible against an opponent there was almost no chance of defeating, a god. Said god caused harm to come to someone my friend's character, a psychic, cared about. He proceeded to fire everything he had at the god...and one-shotted it. The DM for that campaign no longer allows psychics in his campaigns...and he's infamous for allowing anything.
Of course, it depends entirely on the setting. In some settings, the killing of gods might actually make sense, but even then, the GM should totally be able to say "No, your attacks don't do jack." if he deems the player characters to simply not be strong enough.
Really, unless the campaign specifically asks for gods to be killable by mortals, they shouldn't be.
That incident was just the culmination of the psychic being ridiculous. This friend kinda has a rep for things going insane in campaigns he's involved in, like the one where he unmade the world by touching a mirror or the poison pizza incident.
The three of us are currently in a contest to get in to this prestigious guild (each player having their own reason for doing so). It explained to us at the very beginning of this campaign that we weren't going to get in the guild, because the premise of the game is to make our own guild.
We have yet to reach this point (currently trying not to die in giant stone tower to get a trophy), and I am perfectly ok that we won't get in the guild. I'm just happy that it was explained that we don't have to risk everything for nothing, and lose our characters unnecessarily (though the DM does make a good job making seem like we might die horribly anyway).
We had a 'supposed to lose' encounter in a Star Wars game, which everyone knew about ahead of time (they were all supposed to get frozen in carbonite so we could fast-forward the game to the Legacy era), and yet when we actually came to do it, everyone seemed to have forgotten that it was coming up and got annoyed at me for not letting them win the clearly telegraphed no-win situation.
This is why I now only run games that have some sort of 'compel/intrusion' mechanic actually written into the rules, so I can bribe them into cooperation.
This is why I now only run games that have some sort of 'compel/intrusion' mechanic actually written into the rules, so I can bribe them into cooperation.
I've come into a scenario that I think works for the "supposed to lose" scenario. I'm running a Pathfinder game of insanely-overpowered PCs, and so the stakes are higher. The friendly, helpful NPCS are all at least CR 20, up to CR 50. That alone should tell you how broken it's gotten.
So with characters this powerful, what could possibly stand against them? An Eater of Worlds. I created Galactus on a multiverse scale. Her minions are creeping into the world, to see if it is ready to be eaten. Her Harbinger (who really isn't the silver surfer expy that this write-up will make him sound) has been attempting to warn the inhabitants to flee, while still preparing for her arrival.
The party finally got a glimpse of her, thanks to a debacle with the Deck of Many Things. They know they're outmatched, even with all our strengths. My goal is for them to find some clever means of turning her aside, rather than fight her head on.
In the end, my goal is not a fight they are "supposed to lose" but rather a fight that they know to avoid, because they would lose.
So with characters this powerful, what could possibly stand against them? An Eater of Worlds. I created Galactus on a multiverse scale. Her minions are creeping into the world, to see if it is ready to be eaten. Her Harbinger (who really isn't the silver surfer expy that this write-up will make him sound) has been attempting to warn the inhabitants to flee, while still preparing for her arrival.
The party finally got a glimpse of her, thanks to a debacle with the Deck of Many Things. They know they're outmatched, even with all our strengths. My goal is for them to find some clever means of turning her aside, rather than fight her head on.
In the end, my goal is not a fight they are "supposed to lose" but rather a fight that they know to avoid, because they would lose.
Huh, in a PBP game I'm playing right now, the plot really got kicked off when our characters died, so our GM put out a lot of hard hitting monsters in our path, making the first death a real surprise. But in the battles themselves, the GM was perfectly fair, rolling the dice and allowing us to escape however we could. Of course, when the GM threw us a bone by sending a second monster to fight the first on, all but one of the remaining players decided to engage the new monster. (By that point, we knew death didn't mean rolling up a new character, so we were less cautious than we might have been) The last player made it surprisingly far dodging monsters and hitting and running. But eventually, fell to a group of sharks. It's been pretty fun so far, both playing and watching.
I... Oddly enough haven't encountered any, the GM's have been overall fair for the most part. Poor tactics and rolls were most often the culprit.
On the other hand I saw a lvl 5-8 campaign like that, it had several "supposed to lose" fights in them in the form of "The Baddy Got Away". It was meeting #4 or 5 where it turned into the final show-down.
Most of the setups were in *social* settings though, so especially early campaign you could more-or-less diplomacy through it.
That said, it was also obvious that you could become chopped liver rather quickly.
On the other hand I saw a lvl 5-8 campaign like that, it had several "supposed to lose" fights in them in the form of "The Baddy Got Away". It was meeting #4 or 5 where it turned into the final show-down.
Most of the setups were in *social* settings though, so especially early campaign you could more-or-less diplomacy through it.
That said, it was also obvious that you could become chopped liver rather quickly.
What about a setting where illusion/clone is not applicable though?
Can someone explain to me why Long Face/Fluttershy is saying it's Ironic? I Don't get it.
Sorry it's not entirely relevant to the current story but I recently re-watched Equestria Girls and it got me wondering about how you might be able to use caps from that in the comic. One idea that somewhat appeals to me is using it to tell a story about the players (effectively using the EQG versions for the players) but I'm not sure how well that'd work as Spud's previously said he wanted to leave details about the players themselves somewhat vague.
I ALSO re-watched Magical Mystery Cure recently (before EQG, I'm going chronologically!) and it occurs to me a fun setup for that could be the players swapping characters/classes for a session and the chaos that would ensue.
I ALSO re-watched Magical Mystery Cure recently (before EQG, I'm going chronologically!) and it occurs to me a fun setup for that could be the players swapping characters/classes for a session and the chaos that would ensue.
Though really, unless you run the RPG by the book and make it very clear you're not predisposed to the players winning or losing, the "supposed to lose" fight is hard to justify. Sometimes it works best when it's a surprise or a blitz, when the time it takes to lose is at just the right balance. Too fast, and it feels cheap and undeserved. Too slow, and the players catch on and feel the despair of waiting for a situation they can't control to end.
However you do it, the worst thing the "supposed to lose" fight can do to your players is underwhelm them.