Subj : Re: New Game...? To : ANDREW_S._TOTH@WLM.TORONTO.ON.CA From : HAROLD GROOT Date : Fri Jul 07 2000 05:16 pm You mentioned that the possessions taken from the characters would be quickly found, right next door. I'm afraid that if anything this simply compounds the distaste I have for such adventures. The big problem I have is that it makes no sense. There are many possible things that could and should be done with possessions. If it is a society based on law they would possibly be locked up SECURELY somewhere pending the outcome of a trial. If it is a society based on force rather than law the people responsible for the jailings may have helped themselves to the powerful items and spread the rest among the guards. But it won't just be sitting there, ready to rearm any people doing a prison break. People who run prisons deal with these problems on a daily basis. I don't know, maybe the whole rationale behind your adventure is a mass outbreak of insanity in the city. That could explain both being in jail for stupid reasons and items being left where they can be easily reclaimed. But mass insanity is not an appealing scenario either. It generally throws away the possibility of out-thinking the opposition. If you face a rational opponent you can try to anticipate their moves and counter them. If your opponents are insane, trying to anticipate and counter is hopeless. There is another reason why I feel that your proposed "quick re-equip" is bad. It trivializes what should be a dramatic, traumatic (and RARE!) event. It is basically a violation of the integrity of the character through DM violence. While I do not wish to be accused of trivializing the word (and my apologies to anyone who feels I am doing this), considering the nature of characters that are only figments of the imagination this has many similarities to the act of rape. Since they do not possess physical bodies, what gets attacked and violated is the "what they are, what they can do". It gets done in the face of overwhelming force (DM authority, pretty much the same as being at gunpoint in the real world). There is no possible defense, no way for the characters to protect themselves. Very traumatic. If the DM response is simply to say "OK, after a few minutes they get their stuff back and can go about their business" it trivializes things. It has parallels to a real world rape victim being told "It's OK, after a few minutes of rape we'll give you back your clothes and let you go on with your life." If you're going to make it central to the plot, make it central. If you're not going to make it central to the plot, don't do it at all. Have it happen to some NPCs and let the characters find out about it, maybe. This can give good-aligned PCs all the motivation they need without violating their characters needlessly. But don't trivialize it. Players vary quite a bit, of course. But over the long haul I have made some observations that seem to have wide applicability. The happiness of the players can vary greatly depending on the way a reward is handled, for example. Let's assume that the players have played well and deserve a reward of 1000 gp. If you give them 500 gp in cash, a parade through the village, lifetime free room/board at the inn and so on they will generally have a pretty high level of happiness. On the other hand, if you give them 2000 in cash, then declare a special tax that takes away 600 gp and have thieves steal another 400 gp, there will be a much lower level of happiness even though the amount gained was the same. Why? Because with the special tax and the thieves the players basically feel you are being unfair to them. And almost anything you do to the character concept will feel the same way. If someone has spent 5 years getting a character up to 12th level, you can't expect him to be happy if you hit him with a flock of vampires and drain him down to 2nd level. Even if there are RESTORATION spells available later, it is a major violation of the character integrity. So any time there is something as violent as this planned, there should be ways where an intelligent player can figure out what's happening and take steps to prevent it. Good play will save them from an awful fate. Bad play and they can admit that it was at least partly their own fault. But if you put them in a "No Win" scenario you will tend to have unhappy players. So - rather than put them in a "No Win" situation, give them some clues as to what has been happening to other victims. Then send a squad after them. If they've picked up on the clues they'll be ready and can evade or even defeat the squad. They can then question them, find out some friends are being held, and go after them. This puts them in the same position as you were going to have them - they will be fully armed, in the dungeon, battling their way out. The difference is, good play let's them avoid the "character rape" of your initial "strip the players". If they play poorly, you can have them go through it just as you laid it out - but now THEY have to share in the responsibility. It wasn't "The DM did this to us, no way out" but rather "We had the clues and didn't put the pieces together". In PBEM games there is another consideration - time. As has been recently demonstrated here by several DMs, it's tough to keep a game going for long periods of time. The "strip the players" beginning tends to take longer to get going than many other kinds. BATH OF RETURN serves as an example. It took months to just begin to get the players oriented and equipped. These were months that were never used to solve their problem - but at least in that story, the stripping of the characters was indeed vital to the storyline. In yours it is not - or you wouldn't make it so easy for them to get their stuff back. All of this is just my person opinion, of course. Others may react differently. --- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5 # Origin: Solar Quest Online (1:285/85) * Origin: ConchGate (1:106/357.0) .