Frei's Memories: Day 2

Here's another installment of the gecko's memories.

Day 2:

When we became conscious again, we found ourselves outside the Elysium tower.  Serradus, one of the lower ranking Aons and the game master, appeared and gave us eight hours to make a sad statue happy.  With a minimum of searching, we found one of the marble statues in town was missing it's hand and, given the message on the plaque, a soccer trophy as well.  Surprise, surprise, when we walked past the area we noticed huge signs advertising a soccer tournament.  We entered the area in time to notice an ersatz goblin score a goal on a minotaur.  Then, the minotaur's team was consumed in pillars a fire!  I had seen Serradus's favorite game, "sudden death soccer", but never this early in the competition.  The Aons were trying kill everyone early this time.

We signed up to play the game, along with a team of elves and a team of dragonborn, but we had to wait over an hour to play.  From the look of the brackets, we suspected the tournament could easily last more than our alloted eight hours.  That was typical of Serradus.  He always seemed like a nice guy, but his games usually killed a huge fraction of the players.  We immediately decided to gain the prize by other means.

Our sniper spotted the trophy and statue hand on the balcony overlooking the arena.  Our team, along with the dragonborn, tried to create a ruckus on the path up to the balcony to distract everyone while the sniper found his own way up to the balcony.  To our surprise, Serradus allowed us on the balcony and told us to enjoy the view.  About that time, a group of humans met their ends on the bloody field of sudden death soccer.  Naturally, the shining trophy was an illusion.  Our priest asked Serradus for the ritual he used to create the illusion and Serradus, the joker that he is, completely filled the priest's ritual book with some kind of obfuscated spell.  He then wished us luck and told us, "I think it's your match, now!"

We had a couple of close calls with a hobgoblin running a Hail Mary play on us, but our team beat the ersatz creatures to death before they could score on us (it doesn't matter how you kill the other team in sudden death soccer).  Afterwards, we went into the city with the dragonborn and the elves to find the trophy.  We found the hooded man from the day before.  He told us three places in the city to find ways out of Elysium and instructed each of us to hurry.  After following his directions, we neared the end of a dead-end alley.

Strangely, a black obelisk appeared out of nowhere when we neared the end of the alleyway.  I emanated a destructive aura and had a slot shaped like the game piece the cloaked man had given us.  Our mystic placed the piece in the obelisk and it reacted by sucking the life out of all of us.  The obelisk hummed menacingly, but nothing else developed quickly enough for us to notice.  I still have trouble believing such a thing could have survived undetected by the Aons for as long as it did.  I surmise the Aons' unity is less solid than they let on.

A short while later, we met up with the elven and draconic teams.  They reported similar experiences with the obelisks.  We decided not to rely on the cloaked man's plan to save our hides and resolved to continue our search for the trophy.  We discovered the artifact in a museum of all places.  With the dragonborn covering us and the elves creating a distraction by streaking through the museum, we disarmed the traps on the display case and made off with the trophy.  With all due haste we escaped the museum and sprinted to the statue, pursued by a hoard of ersatz creatures.

With the statue in sight, we thought the game was over, but we were mistaken---Manath appeared.  The crazy Aon taunted us and erected a tall stone wall to block us.  Thinking quickly, the dragonborn stacked themselves and then launched our sniper over the wall with the trophy.  The dark elf channeled his adrenaline, fought through the pain of the fall, and repaired the statue seconds before we were all overwhelmed by our enemies.  Victory!  Serradus congratulated us on our teamwork.  He didn't seem upset at all.

Frei's Memories: Day 1

My purpose for posting these logs is to help new players get up to speed with the story and to help current players remember what happened.  Of course, that sort of violates one of my rules about players---don't expect players to read anything.  Oh, well, maybe someone will find them interesting nonetheless.  The following tract was taken from the memories of a tiny house gecko named Frei, the helper NPC in the Razvalitsya Redki series of adventures. 

Day 1:

I was greatly disappointed to find myself back in Elysium, the Aon gaming capital of the universe.  The name, Elysium, I think is some kind of cruel joke, because this sure isn't Heaven.  The Aons decided to give me a handicap to make sure I die here; they turned me into a damn gecko!  I really hope those guys Victor is supposed to send show up soon. If not, I expect the Aons will be getting their wish, because I'm not going to get very far if the only power at my disposal with the ability to stick to things.

The Aons and their Game:
When a person dies, that person's latent life energy goes to the Aons.  They usually refine it into essentia, the raw material of magic, and use it to fuel their godlike power.  However, a certain fraction of souls are infused with extra essentia and allowed to play the game, a 14 day battle of attrition.  Winners are allowed to join the ranks of Aons' angelic host or return to the mortal world, complete with essentia-soul-infusion-granted super-powers.  Survivors are allowed to reenter the game.  Those who perish in the game get melted down with everyone else.  The Aons put on the game once a month and it's been going on for who knows how long.  In the past ten years, only two teams have won.  I was fortunate enough to witness a win, but not fortunate enough to be on the winning team.

My life link started flickering as a band of people approached the bush I was using for cover.  They (a priest, a knight, a crossbow sniper and a mystic) were all clad in some top notch equipment from Zerthadium.  A sign of relief passed my lizard lips as I realized Victor must have been successful and there was a chance I wasn't going to die on the first day of the game.  I just hoped they didn't turn out to be complete idiots!  I gave them a cautious interrogation, to see if they really were the right people, but they acted like amnesiacs.  I wasn't sure why they lost their memories, but I suspected Victor might have had some reason.  Anyway, I lied and suggested that it might be a handicap from the Aons. That might not have been the right decision, now that I think about it.

About that time, Geralt, the game master appeared on the little floating island where we were standing and gave us our task, reach the top of Elysium's central tower before the day was out.  He gave us plenty of time, but we didn't waste any.  We were on an isolated mote of land, one of many, floating in the clouds and we could just barely see the central island.  There wasn't anyway to get to it without teleportation, so we immediately searched the little farm for the glyphs.  Immediately, the usual, ugly, ersatz creatures came pouring out of the farmhouses.  Manath, an Aon that's four flavors of crazy, appeared and offered us rewards for destroying the ersatz creatures in nasty and creative ways.  I honestly don't what purpose she serves or why the other Aons tolerate her, but it is fun to kill the ersatz creatures in nasty and creative ways.

Ersatz Creatures:
The Aons use some of their essentia to make these copies of creatures, but they're not fully real.  Of course, the Aons promise to make them real, free beings if they kill us!

We marched through the teleport circle to the main island.  Well, the adventurers marched, I had to ride on the priest's shoulder, but that's beside the point.  On the other side, we were working on the typical need-a-key-to-enter-the-tower business when something decidedly odd happened.  We met a hooded man who promised us a way out of the game if we helped him.  He remarked on the inhumanity and injustice of the Aons' Game and handed us a piece to a board game, then vanished.  I'm pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be in the game.  I had seen the Aons' tricks before---he wasn't one of them.

We had to jump through a few hoops to get into the tower, and we had to bash the heads of tons of ersatz creatures to get to the top, but we made it there with plenty of time.  Then, another strange thing happened.  The game master personally challenged us. They usually don't to that on day 1.  I have a feeling they just had it in for me, but to this day I'm still not sure.  The really strange part was how Geralt acted like he was being forced to fight us.  I felt a bit sorry for him, but it was him or us and my team slaughtered him and his minions before he had a chance to swing his sword a second time.  Manath seemed disturbingly pleased.

How To Be a Bad DM

You'll be seeing a lot of these echoed in my more specific posts, but I don't think it diminishes their value.  Also, I'm sure there are lists like this one out there somewhere, but this one is mine.

• Compete against the players.  Gloat when you destroy them and curse them for their incompetence afterwards.  Extend your pleasure by never letting them forget the past.

• Get cocky players out of their comfort zone by designing encounters to thwart them.  Repeat this mercilessly.  For added bonus, negate player characters' powers arbitrarily and without warning.

• Complicate trivial tasks, but still give trivial rewards. While you're at it, just don't reward the players for anything.

• Encumber players' characters with campaign specific restrictions.  Things will be much more interesting when the wizard's spells only work under a full moon.

• Make it impossible to the players to make characters with the race/class combination they want.  If you do let them have it, correct that mistake by forcing them to change it later with a contrived plot device.

• Ensure your NPCs are much cooler than the player characters and give those NPCs the spotlight as often as possible.  Use these NPCs as irresistible adventure hooks by bullying the players' characters into submission.  Have this NPC steal their kills, but withhold aid when its really needed.

• Make frequent rules changes, especially if they limit player's options.  However, remain completely inflexible about game rules that irritate the players.

• Don't bother preparing anything before game time.  Don't bother knowing the rules, either.  Just make everything up as you go, but be sure not to take notes---that way you can be inconsistent, too.

• Unleash your emotions.  Become furious or hopelessly depressed whenever the players accomplish something you didn't expect.  Being drunk helps.

• Pick one of the players, preferably an obnoxious one.  Only make eye contact with that player.  Favor that player's character in every possible way.

• Pick another player, preferably a shy one.  Use your divine power to doom that player's character to fail at everything.  For added effect, frequently put that player on the spot and berate that player whenever any undesirable thing happens.

• Punish the players for their successes.  Completing mission goals and overcoming difficult challenges should make their lives much harder.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to contribute.  I doubt I've given everything you need to be the worst DM you can be!

Dealing With Character Strengths

Suppose the scout in the adventuring party is specialized in awareness and ambushes such that only a few monsters or situations can ever surprise the party.

The worst thing you can do:

Take the scout's optimization as a personal challenge and optimize all encounters to negate the party's advantage, or even reverse it!  Since you are the DM, you are all powerful, and beating a player character at something is not an accomplishment.  Very little breeds bad blood in the group more than a competition between the DM and the players.  And, since the player worked hard to build the scout, the negation of all the player hoped to achieve will result in that player requesting a new character or, worse, leaving the group and hate you for the rest of your life.

Another way to get it wrong:

Be lazy, or oblivious, and never consider stealth and perception rules and just have all encounters start with both parties aware, maybe even start them at fixed positions you decided when you.  This attitude still negates the scout's labor, but won't make the player nearly as angry.  The player will be bummed, and might complain, retrain, switch characters, or all of the above---but probably won't leave you.

A non-ideal, but not-quite-as-bad case:

Give full consideration to the stealth and surprise rules, but don't respond to the scout's optimization.  The party will have surprise almost every encounter.  If it continues, they will front-load their powers and make your encounters very, very short.  If you respond at all, it will be by raising the difficulty of the monsters, which is going to eventually start risking total party knockouts, which are a pain.

A good case:

Fully cognizant of the scout's optimization, you intentionally let the party have surprise more often than a normal party (which is easy because it will be the natural course).  Additionally, you sometimes design encounters that obviously depend on getting surprise. That way, they player's feel rewarded for their design work on their characters.  On the other hand, you sparingly use terrain, weather, deception or ritualized combat to complicate advanced scouting.

Conclusion:

The bottom line is, as a DM, you are a fun enabler.  You should be spending your time making the players' hard work pay off, not trying to compete with them or work against them.  But, sometimes you have to protect the party from itself by kicking it out of a rut.

Annoying the Players

Introduction

Intentionally getting under the players’ skin is generally not good for the game.  Eventually, the frustration with the game object will transfer to the DM.  If you want to use an annoying challenge make sure you know when to quit and be sure to give a hefty payoff for dealing with it.  If done correctly, the reward shows that you believe the players have accomplished something great. Also, be sure to only use this strategy sparingly because repeated use will tire the players and they will give up.

An example:

Suppose the adventurers are repeatedly attacked by a lich (who keeps reviving himself in his lair).  The lich works his wonders by crippling the party when they are fighting otherwise normal monsters. You must quickly make the information for permanently destroying the lich available (or at least provide a method for keeping him away).  Destroying the lich must also be possible soon (especially if keeping him away is not possible); don't allow more than one or two complications.  When the players manage to destroy the lich, they should receive very nice magic items.  Overcoming this challenge will give the players a real sense of accomplishment.  Once it's over, be sure to wait a while before introducing another annoying challenge; give them some time to recover mentally.

Another example:

Using mind controlling monsters in random encounters just to abuse the fighter is mean and the players know it. You can do it once or twice, but, if you don't make effective countermeasures available soon. Also, stopping the mind control assault as soon as the party is ready for them denies them the satisfaction of getting back at the mind controllers---and that's also mean of you.

Conclusion

I generally don't recommend using annoying challenges because they are so likely to backfire.  But, with proper judgment, I'll admit these sorts of challenges can be satisfying.  Just always keep in mind that a game that ceases to be fun for the players ceases to be fun for you.