slb@drutx.UUCP (Sue Brezden) (05/21/85)
Here are the remainder of the replies I received from my "How do
you fleece PCs?" question. Thought they might be of general interest.
For the benefit of certain people I know--I might mention that I
MAY have kept something back! (Or then again, I may not have. :-} )
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Sue,
As the resident "netter not against high-powered D&D", I thought
I might throw in a few suggestions. In a well-run campaign, you shouldn't
really need to fleece PCs. Once you've put yourself in a position where
you have to fleece somebody, you've goofed. No PC should get ever get
his hands on an item that will seriously upset the power balance of
the world. By this, I don't mean he can't *alter* the power balance,
just that he shouldn't have full control over the campaign. In the
campaign I play in, there are quite a few powerful groups.
The Brotherhood of the Balance (Neutral MU's, all 20+ level)
The Church of Set
The Church of Arioch
The Church of Donblas (they're on a comeback)
The Church of Dionysus
The Dragon Emperor
The Thieves Guild
The Assassins Guild
The Church of Hermes
The Church of the Ancient Ones (Hastur, Cthultu, etc. they're sort of
underground)
The Servants of the Elder Gods (Only really care about making sure that
the Ancient Ones don't get loose)
The Great Mage
The Dark Lord
Brewster
The Church of the Ki-Rin
etc.
With maybe a few exceptions, all of these groups were set up and are run
by one-time player characters. (Some still are.) Each group is individually
very powerful, but nobody gets too out of hand, because if they do, the
rest of them would gang up on them and stomp them. Thus, no one attempts
to destroy the world, and no one imports gross weapons from other planes
or does other nasty things because they all know that at least one if not
all of the other groups are capable of doing the same things themselves,
so rather than risk Armageddon, they manuever a bit more quietly.
Thus, it doesn't really matter what PC do or get. Anything they've
got, chances are some other PC or NPC has as well, and if somebody gets
out of hand, it's been proven time and time again that ANYBODY can be
assassinated. Permanently. Of course, now and then somebody does run
a little wild and things get hairy for a bit. But the world has
proved to remarkably resilient. The last mess over 1,000 years ago,
was when the Dark Lord, who was just a little bit insane, tried to
take over the world. He almost succeded as he had a HUGE army, but
The God of Assassins, the Great Mage (I think), the High Priest of Hastur,
and Bultha, a PC-turned-Demon/Demi-God, all ganged up on him and
assassinated him. The High Priest of Hastur and Bultha were still
PCs although they weren't played that much.
Our current party has a Staff of Power, a Ring of Wizardry, a Daern's
Instant Fortress (handy for storing 250,000 g.p. or so), a Wand of
Fire, lots of enchanted armor/weapons, etc., a +5 Sword of Wounding
(nasty little item), access to lots of healing, and other stuff I've
forgotten. We had a Rod of Absorption but it got disintegrated in our
last battle with a particularly vicious dragon when our MU blew his
saving throw versus the disintegration spell the dragon cast at him
towards the end of the battle. Unfortunately, the MU couldn't absorb
the spell because he'd already absorbed the feeblemind spell that the
dragon had cast at him from HIS Rod of Absorption earlier in the
round. This dragon, in addition to using lots of nasty magic items on
us, was also hasted, fire-shielded, in a globe of invulnerability, and
had one party member seriously charmed. As you can see, there's a lot
of fire-power available in this campaign, but it's not a Monty Haul
style campaign because the firepower is available to everybody, PCs,
NPCs, and monsters alike. You EARN your firepower.
It definitely is hard to DM this type of campaign. The DM I've
played with for the past 4 years has been the best I've ever seen.
He's the only one I know who can simultaneously role-play a very
powerful, intelligent monster, a character or two, and keep track
of what's going on. What's probably the hardest thing to do is
to gauge how powerful the monsters that they're facing should be.
That takes time. If you guess to low, give them some treasure,
but not that much. Fighting easy monsters should be at best barely a
"break-even" proposition when it comes to treasure and time spent
acquiring the treasure. Set things up so that in order to make
a profit on an adventure, they basically have to take on something
tough. Then, if you overmatch them, give them e.p. if they're
smart enough to hurt it and then run away. It'll encourage them
and give them a goal "I'm going hose over that @&(#! high priest
if it's the last thing I ever do...". Gradually, you'll learn
and do a better job. Then, your players will be able to play
at all levels and all levels of the power spectrum and still
be challenged. And don't be afraid to ad-lib your monsters.
If, in the course of an adventure, you see that the climactic
battle will be too easy, hype it. Dragons, for example, our
routinely hyped in our world as book dragons are meat for a
well organized party of 4th level characters.
Now that I think about it, don't be afraid to monkey with your
campaign rules. Advanced D&D was NOT designed for player characters
of over 14th level or so and can become seriously imbalanced starting
around 10th. If you play strict AD&D, (e.g. by the book for everything,
magic, PC classes, monsters) you will invariably end up in a position
where you HAVE to fleece your PCs in order to keep the balance of the
game steady. Or you'll run a campaign where a Rod of Lordly Might
is so rare that it's regarded as an artifact.
I guess my advice would be to THINK carefully about any item you
leave in a treasure hoard. Make sure you've considered most if not
all implications of what you let the PCs get their hands on before
you give it to them, not after. And if you screw up, well, that's
ok. That might make their lives easier for a while, but eventually,
they should hit a point where the things they're facing get tough
again and the vacation ends.
I hope you don't mind the length of this article. I was planning
on just writing a 30-50 line note and I got a little carried away.
Ray Chen
princeton!tilt!chenr
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If you've just gotten a null mailing, I apologize...things are just
a bit screwball today.
If you've already been inundated with replies, ignore me...I go away.
Otherwise, my two favorite methods of vaping excess funds/items are:
1) Theft. "You wake up in the morning. There are signs of a struggle
outside your bedroom door. Your chest has been ransacked. Sorry."
Something like that. Nobody ever said that innkeeps don't get
kickbacks from the Thieves' Guild.
2) Taxes (REAL theft). Yes, yes, I know, this is dull. Well, maybe not.
Tax them for whatever you want. Fouling the footpaths ("But Officer,
that wasn't my elephant!" "Oh, yeah? Can you prove it?" -- nobody
ever claimed shirriffs don't take graft, either). Creating a
disturbance. Blaim them for a bar brawl, and make them pay through
the nose. Entry taxes. Export taxes. Water taxes. Be creative.
There are other things, too. Loss. NPC thieves, along with the party(
"Go on, take the money and run."). Rust Monsters can be diverted with
piles of metals. That sort of thing. Throw in a band of brigands as
an encounter (the sort that are really too tough to fight, but not to
tough to buy off).
-shp
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Sue:
Have you ever tried using either the Rolemaster (tm) or the
Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) (tm) gaming system?
Both are, of course, a lot like D&D or AD&D, but they get around
some of the weaknesses of Gygax's stuff.
MERP is a simplified form of Rolemaster, and so
many players start out in MERP until they reach say
second level or third level, then they switch to the
more complex and rich Rolemaster.
The game I'm currently in is really cranking up:
We are all low level at the moment,
having just started this new game a couple of months ago,
with all new, first-level characters:
Two Elves, two Men, two Dwarves...Mage, Bard, Warrior,
Warrrior-monk, Animist, Warrior.
We are about to enter a haunted cairn,
occupied by a wight.
Anyhow, I just wanted to find out if you had ever used
or heard of MERP or Rolemaster.
Brega the Dwarf (warrior) [aka Dennis L. McKiernan]
ihnp4!cbuxc!dim
(Yes, that is an "i" in dim)
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ps:
Oh yeah,
I almost forgot:
HONK!
___________________________________________________________________________
Thanks for all the replies--I appreciate it.
By the way, for those who asked about how things are going, I have decided
that my PCs do not yet need any real, total fleecing at this time. They
have some nice stuff, but not enough that they will be unworried, I think.
We are in someone else's world now, having come to a pause in mine. (I
needed a rest--that is hard work!) They ended up with, among other things,
a ring of regeneration, a nice staff, and a mithril circlet which gives the
wearer psionics. The last is tempered by the fact that psionics are hated
and killed when found. The PC with that one is going to have to watch it.
However, I do intend to slow them down a bit when I DM again. The first
adventure sort of got them started, gave them some levels, some good tools
for later, and an idea of what's going on in my world. And I hadn't ever
done this before. So I was pretty easy on them, and had lots of stuff
lying around. I think a bit too easy, and too much stuff. Not so bad
that things are going to be out of balance--but more than I probably should
have, i.e. more than I would like to make a regular practice of. (Only 2 of
them died --how easy can you get?) Think things will get rougher now,
with fewer goodies. (Are you listening out there folks--especially Jim?)
--
Sue Brezden
Real World: Room 1B17 Net World: ihnp4!drutx!slb
AT&T Information Systems
11900 North Pecos
Westminster, Co. 80234
(303)538-3829
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Honk if you love Shiva!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~billp@ISM780.UUCP (05/28/85)
Re: rotating referees
The method that has been employed by the referees/players that
I have liked the best is where each referee runs her/his own
universe, but the various universes are contected via Gateways
The model we use is based upon TFT. We have had a couple of
TFT universes and a RQ universe interconnected without too much
trouble.
ON THE SUBJECT OF MULTIVERSES:
One of the best layouts I've seen involved home "world" built inside
a truly tremendous crater. There was a rather large sea in the middle
and these wonderfully high mountains all around the outside (we never
tried to breach them for it was clear that we would need life-support
systems to climb out of the crater, and there was plenty to do inside
it). The referee connected this crater world to a multiverse though
a room of six TFT Gateways of 3 meter diameter. Though each one
you had a whole new world in which to explore/conquer/die. The goal
he set up for people to strive for (if one wished) was citizenship
in the home city which involed the attainment of certain skills, a
certain amount of wealth, etc.
Bill Putnam
UUCP: ucbvax!ucla-cs!ism780!billp
Variation on ancient chinese curse: May your characters live in
interesting universes.